This is a conflict as strangely conducted as it is pointless in origin, writes David Hirst in Zalambesa
Zalambesa is a natural pathway for armies. It lies on what, when Eritrea was still a province of Ethiopia, was a main highway between Addis Ababa and Asmara.
Set in spectacular landscape of deep gorges, fantastic rock formations, acacia trees and giant cacti, it is itself a nondescript place, little more than two strips of dwellings on either side of the road. Now the border town is the object of some of the bitter fighting that has erupted along the frontier.
At the weekend Ethiopia announced that its army had retaken Zalambesa, driving out the Eritrean brigade that had occupied it.
But on Tuesday morning the people of Adigrat, a town 27km to the south, were woken by the sound of battle. Journalists on both sides of the border reported intense shelling, mortar and tank fire, and saw casualties being ferried to hospitals.
Ethiopian officials said the Zalambesa area was being pounded by the Eritreans with an “incredible array of heavy weapons”. Eritrea accused its neighbour of starting the attacks.
There are several bits of territory along their common frontier over which Eritrea and Ethiopia are at virtual war. The main one, to the north-west, is called Badame; the others descend in a south-easterly direction all the way to a point opposite the Red Sea port of Assab. The Zalambesa area is one of these.
Since Eritrea achieved independence in 1991, Zalambesa has been controlled by Ethiopia. The Eritrean border post, a wooden barrier across the road, is perched on the rim of the shallow basin in which the town nestles.
But half its inhabitants are Eritreans – the remainder are Tigrayan – and some of them were saying this week that the frontier should actually go through the middle of the town.
The line was drawn by the Italians more than a century ago between their Eritrean colony and the Ethiopia of the time, and the Eritreans now insist it is the proper boundary of their young state.
At independence some bits of what they consider Eritrean territory remained under Ethiopian control. They say they had been ready to overlook this, confident that minor differences would be amicably settled now that the Ethiopian state fell under the dominance of the Tigrayans, their chief allies in the combined insurrection that brought down the tyrannical Marxist-Leninist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Such barren little extremities of the new- born state hardly seemed worth fighting for. Yet they have precipitated a bloody trial of strength between former allies which is now close to full-scale war.
This is a conflict as strangely conducted as it is trivial in origin. One of its strangest features is that the Eritrean leadership almost never says anything about it. But anyone can find out what is happening by simply going to have a look.
I took a taxi and, after a three-hour drive, found myself in the middle of this town from which the Ethiopians had supposedly driven out the Eritreans at the weekend. In fact, the Eritrean army was there in strength, busily reinforcing a new front line on the other side of the town.
Civilians were drifting back. On the supposedly Tigrayan side of the town a wizened old lady cheerfully announced that the place was safe for her return; she had left, she said, when the Ethiopians began massing for what turned out to be a full- scale offensive up the road into Eritrean territory.
She waved in the direction of her house, apparently unmoved by the charred carcass of an Ethiopian soldier which, like many others, still lay on the ground.
On the Eritrean side a young man was making a similar reconnaissance. He too had left before the Ethiopian offensive, but he was far from persuaded that it would not be renewed. It was no time to bring his family back.
To someone like myself, who twice visited Eritrea when its present leaders were still rebels in the bush, it all had a familiar feel.
First, the clear Ethiopian lie: petty, perhaps, but typical of the self-delusion with which, first under former emperor Haile Selassie and then under Colonel Mengistu, the state conducted its counter- insurgency. Almost to the end, the rebels were dismissed as mere “bandits” on the brink of obliteration.
Second, the Ethiopians’ dogged reliance on vastly superior but ill-trained and little- motivated manpower.
“They must have lost at least 200 just coming up the slope to the border post,” said the local commander, Colonel Mehretab Mesfin, describing the first Ethiopian offensive. “And at the time we were not really ready for them. We also took a lot of prisoners; their morale was rock bottom.”
Third, and most impressive, the wealth of captured Ethiopian equipment. Throughout their liberation war such spoils were the Eritreans’ chief source of weaponry. “We captured three tanks intact, too,” said the colonel. “They are already at the front.”
Presumably they are already in action – against their own side. For the young man was right and the poor old lady disastrously wrong. On Tuesday Eritrea actually announced that at 5.15am the Ethiopian army had started attacking Eritrean positions in Zalambesa.