Situated in the volatile Horn of Africa and blessed with a long, pristine coastline along the Red Sea, Eritrea is a country marked by a rich, complex, and turbulent history due to successive occupation and aggression. After one of the longest and most destructive wars for liberation in modern African history, Eritrea finally achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1991.
This is Part 2 of a series that seeks to illuminate the country’s decades-long struggle against colonial occupation. While Part 1 explored the foundations of Eritrea’s colonial experience and early political aspirations, this instalment focuses on the systemic erosion of the “Federal Act” under Ethiopian rule and the pivotal events that gave rise to the armed liberation struggle.
Resilience amidst efforts to quash independence
On 2 December 1950, following a protracted international process, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 390(V) with a vote of 46 to 10. This resolution dashed Eritreans’ hopes for full independence, instead federating Eritrea with Ethiopia as “an autonomous unit … under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown.” According to the resolution, Eritrea was to retain legislative, executive, and judicial autonomy in domestic matters, while Ethiopia would control defence, foreign affairs, and international trade.
However, Ethiopia’s absolute monarchy, under Emperor Haile Selassie, viewed the Federal Arrangement with disdain. This contempt was laid bare in a 22 March 1955 speech to the Eritrean Assembly by the Emperor’s representative, who declared:
“There are no internal or external affairs as far as the office of His Imperial Majesty’s representative is concerned, and there will be none in the future. The affairs of Eritrea concern Ethiopia as a whole and the Emperor.”
Over the following decade, Ethiopia systematically dismantled the Federal structure. Merely 19 days after the Federal Arrangement came into force, the regime issued Proclamation 130, placing Eritrea’s final Court of Appeal under the Ethiopian Supreme Court – an overt breach of the Eritrean Constitution. Eventually, the Eritrean Constitution was abolished altogether, the national flag replaced by Ethiopia’s, and Amharic was imposed as the official language, with Eritrean languages banned in schools and official transactions.
The Ethiopian regime resorted to additional draconian measures. Elected local leaders were forced to resign. Eritrea’s share of Customs revenues was confiscated, and foreign investors were pressured to divert investments to Ethiopia. Eritrean tax revenues served imperial interests, and profits from successful Eritrean industries were siphoned to the Ethiopian heartland.
Repression also intensified, while peaceful opposition was violently crushed. In 1957 and 1962, students in Eritrea staged mass demonstrations, and in February 1958, a four-day general strike by underground trade unions brought the country to a standstill. Ethiopian troops responded with lethal force, killing dozens, wounding many, and arresting hundreds. Prominent nationalist Eritrean leaders like Woldeab Woldemariam and Ibrahim Sultan were forced into exile, where they continued the resistance and helped form opposition movements.
Although Eritreans were promised the right to appeal to the UN in case of violations, repeated petitions by Eritrean leaders to protest Ethiopia’s actions were met with deafening silence. The UN and the international community failed to uphold their commitments. Ultimately, “Eritreans’ hopes and faith in the United Nations waned as the situation worsened.”
Finally, in November 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie formally dissolved the Eritrean Parliament by force and annexed the territory as Ethiopia’s 14th province. Western observers described the move as a “putsch” and “a brutal and arbitrary act.” Eritreans, dismayed and outraged, refused to participate in the regime’s staged celebrations.
As these events unfolded, the international community remained silent, time and again, despite the clear violation of Resolution 390A(V), which stated that only the UN General Assembly had the authority to alter the Federation. Rather than defeating the Eritrean national movement, this betrayal galvanized it. The imperial annexation became a turning point, spurring the transition from peaceful protest to armed struggle. Indeed, if Eritrea was denied the right of decolonization in the first place in the 1940s, the international community’s complicity by its silence when the bogus “Federal Act” was wilfully and utterly abrogated by the Ethiopian regime, nudged them to resort to armed struggle as the only option for regaining their inalienable national rights and human dignity.
The birth of armed resistance
On 1 September 1961, Hamid Idris Awate, a seasoned soldier with a reputation among Italians, British, and Ethiopians as a rebel, fired the first shots of the armed struggle in the Gash Barka region. Leading a small band of fighters armed with a handful of aging rifles, Awate initiated what would become a 30-year war for independence.
Awate had earned medals for bravery during his time in the colonial army and was respected for his military acumen. A few months after the start of the armed resistance, Abdu Mohamed Fayed became the first martyr of the struggle when he was killed in Adal near Sawa. (Fayed’s grave is now in Sawa, and Awate died of illness roughly 10 months after launching the revolution.)
For the peace-loving Eritrean people, the armed revolution was “the expression of the indignation of a people whose rights [were] flagrantly and ruthlessly suppressed.” As one scholar succinctly put it, “Three times denied their dreams, the Eritreans now had no other recourse than to take their destiny into their own hands.”