From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Tue Sep 09 2008 - 10:40:39 EDT
Was It Only an Armed struggle?
Taezaz Ghebreslasie, Sep 9, 2008
I have heard people talking about the military strength of the Eritrean
People's Liberation Front (EPLF). People within Eritrea and from abroad
were in owe about the quick and effective execution of plans and the
talent of the field commanders. The discipline and personal initiative
taken by each freedom fighter was one of the qualities of the movement
which many people talk about.
But for me, one of the key features that differentiated the EPLF as a
national liberation movement was its commitment to social and political
struggle and the amalgamation of this ap-proach into its political
culture. What I found impressive about the Eritrean struggle is not
just the military strength of the liberation armies, but their efforts
to transform Eritrea's diverse and deeply impoverished and illiterate
society -to bring about increased social and economic change.
Much of the early work of the progressive freedom fighters was aimed at
shaping the movement into a coherent political and social force - one
that could model revolutionary behavior as well as promote new values
that could develop a national identity capable of subsuming the
sectarian divisions that had undercut the liberation movement until
then. The notion that each fighter had to model the EPLF's politics was
embedded in the structure of the organization, which set out to re-mold
its members in order to transform the society at large.
The EPLF's most important interventions were in the areas of land
re-form, village democratization and gender equality. Organizers
surveyed land tenure in rural Eritrea - which varied widely from one
region to an-other - and set about reorganizing it on a more egalitarian
basis through newly elected village administrations. This indicates a
commitment to empower the disenfran-chised majority through entirely new
social and political mechanisms. At the same time, the movement worked
in tangible ways to improve the lives of people in the liberated zones.
In doing so, it brought about considerably more social equality across
gender, ethnic and religious lines, thus helping to increase human
rights in Eritrea.
I believe that the EPLF's main achievement during the liberation
struggle was to mobilize much of the population - from all walks of life
into a highly-motivated, well-disciplined military force that was able,
with no consistent outside support, to bring successive US- and
Soviet-backed Ethiopian governments to their knees. The EPLF
accomplished extraordinary things with scanty re-sources. Despite the
continuing absence of sustained external support the movement steadily
improved its military capacity, while simultaneously building basic
infrastructure such as construction, transportation, commu-nications;
promoting economic development like agriculture, animal husbandry,
commerce and trade; delivering social services such as education,
health, emergency relief and campaigning to alter fundamental power
relations within rural society such as land reform, marriage reform,
restructur-ing of village administration.
In addition, most armed movements fed their soldiers from the masses,
however, the EPLF was supplying food and other materials to drought hit
societies. Often, in history suppressed peoples throw the yokes of
servitude - so did we. But our struggle is peculiar in so many ways. A
decent and civilized culture was built parallel to the process of
eradicating colonialism. Some of the cultures and values are: the work
ethic-based on self-reliance, the commitment and determination of
individuals in the struggle. The clear and strong political leadership
and above all the courage and collaboration of the people with the
fighters are the lessons that the world should learn - and most the
existing Eritrean generation.
Most revolutions of the world are carried out by a small segment of a
country's population and usually by an army per se. And often in such
revolutions, the commands and directories are given by outsiders, which
means there is little/no public participation. That is why, in many
African countries, post independence political crisis were common. Civil
wars, often caused by ethnic or religious conflicts, were inevitable in
most post independent African states. On the contrary, Eritrean
Liberation Movement, in its thirty years in the field, had conducted all
forms of revolutions - social, political, cultural. That is why;
post-independent Eritrea was free from post-independence problems.
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