http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/2013/05/18/20832951.html
Remarkable to witness birth of Eritrea
By Peter Worthington, QMI Agency
EDITOR'S NOTE: Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington passed away a week ago. A short time before his last dispatch for the Sun was written. It’s a remarkable look back at the “barefoot guerrilla army” of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front he covered in 1988 — and the historic Battle of Afabet that saw some 20,000 Soviet-backed Ethiopian soldiers killed and a new, independent nation of Eritrea rise from the bloodshed. We miss him already.
On May 24th, the small but vibrant East African country of Eritrea celebrates its 22nd year of independence after winning a 30-year war to free itself from the shackles of Ethiopia.
One of Africa’s poorest and youngest countries, Eritrea is also one of Africa’s proudest. In a United Nations-supervised referendum in 1993, Eritreans supported independence by a whopping 99.17% — and a country of some five million broke away from Ethiopia with a population of around 80 million and the largest, most mechanized army in Africa, supported by the Soviet Union and before that the United States.
One battle in 1988 — the largest on the continent since the Second World War — was the turning point for victory: The Battle of Afabet (also known as Nadew)
Received on Sun May 19 2013 - 12:44:03 EDT
