Semere Haile

Since May 12, 2000, the world leaders are dramatically illustrating in the slow response to Ethiopia's invasion of Eritrea. A nearly total lack of world attention and interest could not effectively and influentially stop Ethiopia's war of aggressions against Eritrea. Why the United States, the UN, the OAU and the EU cannot put pressure on Ethiopia to stop the war? This is disappointing, disturbing and painful for the people of Eritrea to understand and to see why Eritrea only is waging war for lasting peace.

Eritrea is still receiving only token support in its fighting war for peace rather than serious responses and actions from the United States and the international community. This reality is paralleling with Ethiopia's refusing to sign the OAU peace plan and disregarding the UN Resolutions 1297 and 1298. In contrast, Eritrea accepted these UN resolutions and complies formally beyond its required provisions. Eritrea is complying with the UN resolution and the OAU appeal only to fight the war for peace. This reality leads to a profound gap between promises and sincerity of United States supporting the OAU peace plan and Ethiopia's war of invasion and its wide scale of destruction of public and private institutions in Eritrea finds one difficult to understand. The United States could not dismiss the realities of Ethiopia's demolishing all major public and commercial sectors, acts of terror to displace the population internally externally and disrupting agricultural productions in sovereign Eritrea.

This situation reminds the people of Eritrea that the United States policy toward Eritrea remains the same, with the same overall guidelines. In the 1940s, the United States was not supportive of Eritrea's independence. It only helped to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia and that was against the wishes of the people of Eritrea. When Ethiopia abrogated the Federal Act and made Eritrea as one of its provinces, the United States endorsed by remaining silent and that was again against the wishes of the people of Eritrea. The overall assessment of United States policy has not been congruent with the wishes of the people of Eritrea and still remains unfair.

During the 1960s, Ethiopia was one of the leading recipients of United States aid, not because of its goals and objectives for improving human rights or development prospects, but to help Ethiopia suppress the Eritrean struggle for independence. Ethiopia continues to receive much of the assistance of the United States in Africa today. In contrast, the United States assistance for Eritrea continues to be difficult to make. Even since Eritrea became independent in 1993, it still receives a minimum level of development funding from the United States.

The United States supported the OAU peace plan as a way to ensure peace and security between Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, if the United States supports strongly the OAU peace plan, Ethiopia would comfortably agree and sign the peace plan and Eritrea would no longer fight a war for peace. At the same time, the immense destruction and sufferings of the war could have been minimized.

The United States' support of OAU peace plan could not be effective enough without putting pressure on Ethiopia to sign the peace plan document. By clearly understanding the apparent lack of concern of the United States toward Eritrea, Ethiopia continues to advance its invasion of Eritrea. Ethiopia's invasion of Eritrea did not stimulate the United States and the international community to apply pressure against Ethiopia to halt its advance and destruction.

The recipe prescribed Ethiopia's war of aggression against Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin has been intended by the minority government of Ethiopia to: (1) "incapacitate" the Eritrean defense forces, (2) totally annihilate and displace the Eritrean people from their homes and farms, and (3) destruct the urgent needs for public investment in health, education and other essential prerequisites for economic development. Ethiopia is accountable for all Eritrean blood shed and for the painful displacement and destruction of private and public property. It has made life hard especially for vulnerable young children.

With focus squarely on Ethiopia's invasion of Eritrea, one could debate whether the United States and the international community are contributing any effort to put pressure on Ethiopia to comply with the rules of law. The world knows there is a serious gap between Ethiopia's rhetoric and Eritrea's sincere commitment for a lasting peace and security in the region. Eritrea remains true to its commitments and redeployed it forces from all contested and uncontested areas in accordance with the OAU appeal and UN resolution.

On May 30, 2000, Ethiopia declared that the war had stopped only to deceive public opinion. Ethiopia's continuous war of invasion constitutes a fundamental breach of the OAU peace plan. It also disregards UN Security Council Resolutions, 1297 and 1298 which calls for the respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of both countries.

Remembering, for example, the United States support of Ethiopia during the thirty-year war of independence are familiar history with all Eritreans. This strong relationship apparently still exists. Today, calls for the Clinton Administration to speak and to take a strong measure against Ethiopia in favor of peace and security between the two countries are not being heard. While applauding the American envoy presence in the Algiers peace proximity talks, the Clinton Administration is downplaying criticism of Ethiopia's war of aggression against Eritrea and its impact on the civilian population. This American policy toward Eritrea is obvious and certainly inconsistent when applied to other countries. For example, the United States and other nations applied concerted international measure on Iraq for its war of aggression against Kuwait.

This double standard of the United States policymakers is obvious, in countries with major resources of interest to Washington. The United States must impose sanctions, cutoff aid, and other measures to pressure Ethiopia to comply with OAU peace plan and UN resolutions accordingly.

The Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict continues to generate new humanitarian disasters and pose formidable obstacles for regional economic advances. Ethiopia's invasion of Eritrea generates ripple effects on the civilian's population in Eritrea. An estimated one and one-half million Eritrean civilians are displaced. This civilian population is moving either to Eritrean towns away from the front or into Sudan. For example, the UN estimated that more than 50,000 Eritreans have crossed into Sudan leaving their homes and farms across the fertile region of western Eritrea, which are being destroyed by Ethiopia. Its main strategy now is to use hunger as her weapon against the civilian population.

The United States should add its influence by strongly supporting the OAU peace plan without taking sides. Ethiopia has created the illusion of progress toward the OAU peace plan since its inception in 1998. By negotiation in bad faith, Ethiopia took the advantage of the international community's unwillingness to put pressure on her and continue to advance its war of aggression against Eritrea causing terrible civilian displacement. Ethiopia is responsible for this impact on the civilian population of Eritrea.

The shared blood of one heart, one spirit and one voice among the people of Eritrea are still questioning why the United States and the international community have not taken actions against Ethiopia! What more evidence do they want or need to take action against Ethiopia's inhumane acts of destruction?

The unity of the Eritrean people and their hard work disturbs the minority government of Ethiopia out of jealousy. As a result of jealousy, they create a threat of peace and security in the Horn of Africa in the name of dubious border conflict. Since the war began in 1998, the minority government of Ethiopia is doing everything it can to break and make the people of Eritrea live in Ethiopia's world full of hopelessness and deceit. The government of Ethiopia is attempting to impose on Eritrea to be like Ethiopian-in daily despair, deceit, poverty, war, drought, famine and sickness.

Eritrea is fighting a war for peace despite all odds against Ethiopia's inhumane aggressions. Peace can be achieved as a result of balancing act among Eritrea and Ethiopia. Therefore, the United States and the international community should take effective measures against Ethiopia for the implementation of the OAU peace plan. Eritrea alone cannot fight and work for peace and social fairness as well as economic growth in the region.