Dueling Dictators

If there were an award for the most pointless war of the last 25 years, Ethiopia and Eritrea's 1998-2000 border battle might well take the prize. An estimated 70,000 people were killed, another 750,000 displaced, and by the time of the ceasefire two of the poorest countries on earth had each spent over a half billion dollars fighting over a few dusty miles of parched scrubland. As if that weren't bad enough, the two dictators who oversaw that disaster are now leading their countries dangerously close to a rematch.

On Friday, the independent boundary commission established after the last war is slated to dissolve itself after seven thankless years—without the governments of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki having reached an agreement on precisely where their border lies. What happens next is anyone's guess. Both governments proclaim their desire for peace while accusing its rival of preparing to launch an attack.

Ethiopia has massed at least 100,000 troops along the frontier, facing off against an estimated 125,000 Eritreans--including 4,000 Eritrean soldiers in what is supposed to be a demilitarized U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between the two armies. A report from the U.N. secretary-general's office this year called the border "tense and potentially unstable." Earlier this fall, Ethiopia's foreign minister said the armies are separated by as little as "70 to 80 meters" in some places.

That means the slightest provocation could trigger a war. But why exactly are two countries with such enormous problems--and so many similarities--at each other's throats yet again? Eritrea, once a part of Ethiopia, is as close culturally to northern Ethiopia as Canada is to the United States. Many people in both countries speak a common language, practice the same ancient branch of Orthodox Christianity, listen to the same Amharic-language pop singers on the radio and share a staple diet of a fermented bread made from teff--a grain commercially grown only in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
 
Their respective leaders have a lot in common, as well. Zenawi and Afwerki were both born to ethnic Tigray families less than 90 miles apart under Ethiopia's postwar imperial regime. Both studied at Addis Ababa University. Both rose to prominence in the 1980s at the head of secular Marxist-leaning guerrilla groups opposed to Ethiopia's disastrous Derg government, which ruled during the country's great famine in the 1980s. Both preside, too, over countries that share common miseries. Per capita income hovers around $200 a year, about a third of the average for sub-Saharan Africa. More than 40 percent of Eritreans are illiterate, and one in seven Ethiopian children die before age 5. Neither country has any industry to speak of, and most of the population of both Eritrea and Ethiopia are subsistence farmers dependent on good rains to eke out a living. Zenawi himself has called the flashpoint town at the heart of the border dispute no more than "a godforsaken village."

Zenawi and Afwerki share a complex history on their journey from alliance to enmity. Afwerki's more established guerrilla group, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), helped nurture Zenawi's, which was based in the neighboring province of Tigray and was known as the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). As allies, the two groups swept aside the Derg army and captured Addis Ababa in 1991. Zenawi's TPLF took control of Ethiopia's central government, and Afwerki became governor of Eritrea and later president, when Eritrea, backed by Ethiopia, peacefully seceded in 1993.

But relations soon soured. Afwerki, who viewed himself as something of a mentor to Zenawi, found himself in charge of a country with 7 percent the population of his former acolyte. Tension was inevitable. "There was conflict over who was more important," says one Ethiopian official, who spoke anonymously due to the issue's sensitivity. "And Meles obviously became more important when he took over the bigger country."