The sheer, reckless imbecility of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea is breathtaking. The fighting, which began in 1998 and flared again last week, seems totally pointless.
Its ostensible cause is a dispute over demarcation of the two countries’ 1 000km border. To the extent that there is a half comprehensible explanation for the conflict, it appears to be friction over trade and Eritrea’s decision to have its own currency, valued independently of the Ethiopian birr.
When Eritrea and Ethiopia negotiated a parting of the ways, they shared a common currency, and the treaty under which they parted guaranteed landlocked Ethiopia access to Eritrea’s two main Red Sea ports – at Massawa and Assab, the latter the site of an oil refinery which then also served Ethiopia’s petroleum needs. Eritrea’s subsequent decision to opt for its own currency, however, increased Ethiopia’s oil and transportation costs considerably. Mutual irritation then played itself out on the ill-defined border between the two. The Ethiopians ordered an Eritrean border post moved, saying it was on Ethiopian territory. The Eritreans felt disinclined to oblige – their memories still fresh of their bitter war of secession which finally brought independence from Ethiopia in 1993, after the collapse in 1991 of the Marxist, Soviet-backed Derg of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.
After the initial border dispute, one thing led to another. We now have a -war, which has achieved a momentum and gravity wholly out of proportion to the original dispute. And Ethopia appears primarily responsible for the latest upsurge in violence.
Further back still, both countries have had to cope with the dislocating legacy of European empire-building. Italy took control of much of what is now Eritrea under the 1889 Treaty of Uccialli and, after its 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, ruled the region known as Italian East Africa until it was thrown out by the British (for non-altruistic reasons) in 1941.
There are ethnic and religious differences, although Christianity and Islam predominate in both countries. But there are no great riches at stake, no oil wells or diamond fields. Indeed, both antagonists are pathetically poor. There is no great ideological or political gulf. So what exactly is the present-day casus belli?
What, then, can justify the recurring carnage which has claimed up to 70 000 lives in the past two years? What can possibly excuse the creation of yet more refugee armies in a region where millions are already suffering the cruel deprivations of drought and famine?
Nothing excuses it. This war is as reprehensible as it is futile. The UN security council is right to seek an arms embargo. It is long overdue. But both sides have stockpiled enough weapons to keep on shooting.
The Organisation of African Unity should continue to press for a ceasefire. But with Ethiopian troops advancing northwards and apparently winning ground, Addis is unlikely to call off the dogs just yet. Concerted diplomatic pressure must certainly be brought to bear, although it has had precious little effect in the past. But with no vital, external strategic or commercial interests at stake, with no third party prepared to intervene physically, and with no matter of high principle at issue, the chances of quickly resolving this senseless, inexplicable, insupportable conflict look remote. It is beyond reason.
Cleaning the pigsty
It is not often the Mail & Guardian feels moved to praise a Cabinet minister for doing his job, but Mohammed Valli Moosa, the energetic minister of environmental affairs and tourism, has brought a certain verve to his post that is worth singling out.
In the past year Moosa has not only built on his predecessor’s moves to make fishing quotas more equitable and to extend national parks, but has single-mindedly pushed the job-creating potential of tourism and introduced inspired regulations that will make most South Africans think hard about what they are doing to the environment.
Take this week’s move to ban the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags.
Everybody will miss them, but how many people realise that these bags so easily discarded take hundreds, if not thousands of years to disintegrate – and that, next to the crime, the thing that stands out in most foreign tourists’ minds is that South Africa is a nation of pigs?
Valli Moosa deserves support in his battle against the mindset that demands a plastic bag for the smallest bought item and then simply throws the bag away.
He also deserves support for regulations aimed at banning 4X4s from making a mess of our beaches, setting up a sanctuary to stop voyeurs in sea-going vessels from harassing whales while they are breeding, and getting tough with the devil-may-care attitude of industrial polluters.
South Africa has the chance to become the world’s conservation trend-setter in the new millennium. Africa’s great physical beauty and charm should be central to our hopes of an African renaissance.
Last week’s opening of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park straddling Botswana and the Northern Cape, and the protocol that will be signed later this month to create the world’s largest wildlife destination in a trans-border area linking the Kruger National Park to Mozambique and Zimbabwe, are an acknowledgment of this.
We urge readers to get behind the minister in his bold steps to clean up the pigsty that is spoiling the pretty picture. Otherwise we should go the Swazi route: the Swaziland government announced last week its intention to fine litterbugs R25 000 for a first offence, and R50 000 or two years in jail second time around.