In the late 1960's, as some of you can remember, a certain Addis
Ababa University (Haile Selassie University in those days) student by
the name of Marta
MebraHtu, along with her colleagues, hijacked an Ethiopian Airlines
commercial plane to demonstrate their disapproval of the way Emperor
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was governing the country. Later, Marta's
airplane stunt was foiled by adventurous plain clothesmen during the
flight, and it all came to an abrupt end. She died in that ending. Marta
MebraHtu, an Ethiopian of Eritrean origin, was the daughter of an army
(Ethiopias) general and was very well to do by that country's standards.
During the hijacking ordeal, many people were prompted to assume that
the hijacking was the work of the ELF (Jebha) and/or PLF (later
Shaebia/EPLF). Which brings me to the point I want to make. Neither the
ELF nor the PLF claimed responsibility for the hijacking. In fact, as I
recollect to the best of my memory, the PLF explained that Marta had
nothing to do with the PLF nor with the Eritrean independence struggle.
Even later, many PLF members would privately elaborate that the methods
(i.e... terrorism on commercial airplanes) that Marta and her colleagues
used to achieve their political objectives were categorically rejected
by the PLF organization. PLF members frowned upon such tactics, as if to
say that it was too "cowardly" and "counterproductive." Astonishing,
isn't it, that the PLF and its youthful members could reply in such a
mature and measured manner. President Isaias Afworki must have been in
his very early twenties then, and so were his PLF "btSot." Even more
remarkable is that well after the PLF became known as the EPLF, the
members of this organization stuck to this same principle of disavowing
"terrorism" in all its forms as a means to achieve national objectives,
although it was always available to them to capitalize on. I consider
this principle of the EPLF to have been, and still is, one of the
shining characteristics of the organization.
Incidentally, Marta
MebraHtu is now looked upon by Woyane as a heroine.
When one
takes a glance at the way Armenians would intermittently blow up
embassies (yes, embassies) of Turkey, when one looks at how the Irish
Republican Army (as well as the Unionists) have since the early 1970's
resorted to the torching of buildings and other soft targets in downtown
London against the English, when one checks out ETA of Basque and how
they unleash terror on Spaniards from time to time, when Palestinians
would blow up grocery stores full of unsuspecting Israeli shoppers, and
when the Israeli Stern gang blew up King David Hotel back in the 1940's
against the British, as well as the Corsican terror against the French,
I cannot help but to marvel at the EPLF's unswerving discipline in
carrying out the struggle for the independence of Eritrea against
Ethiopia to the battlefield, and only to the battlefield, and never once
deviating from this modus operandi. How can any Eritrean not be proud of
such a history, I ask?
SPEAKING OF "STRATEGIC
WITHDRAWAL"
I was watching "This Week on ABC" with Sam Donaldson
on November 25, when Sam eventually relayed the spotlight over to George
Stephanapolous. The discussion? You guessed it - bin Laden, Taleban, the
Northern Alliance, and the future of Afghanistan. If we have heard these
stories once, we have heard them a thousand times, but we keep on
listening and watching to see how the political and military drama
finally wraps up. After all, Afghanistan is a Third World country just
like ours and the rest of the Horn of Africa, hence, has a direct
relevance. The drama unfolding on our home screens on the situation of
Afghanistan allows us to experience in a vicarious way, what may or may
not happen somewhere in our sub-region at some point in the future.
Anyway, George had three guests for his segment and was going to
interview the first guest one-on-one, and then move to the next two
together.
Georges' first guest's name was Dr. George Friedman of
STRATFOR intelligence organization. Dr. George Friedman happens to be a
senior member of this organization. STRATFOR, is what is known in the
intelligence community as the "shadow of the CIA." At any rate, George
Stephanapolous asked Dr. George Friedman if he thought that the "Taleban
can hang on to Kandahar and Kunduz" much longer, against a much mightier
US? The first words out of the guests mouth were:
"I would have
suspected that the Taleban forces would have made a strategic
withdrawal, left the cities, and dug in the mountains."
I was
completely stunned when Dr. George Friedman uttered the words "strategic
withdrawal," because the term "strategic withdrawal" was popularized by
the EPLF in 1978. Although, there are many other terms which refer to
similiar terms and concepts as "strategic withdrawal" in military
academic lexicon, they don't connote the sum meaning of that term. The
EPLF first used the term "strategic withdrawal" when the Soviet Union
lumbered through into Ethiopia in 1977, to help shore up the fledgling
government of President Mengistu Hailemariam. The EPLF, as well as the
ELF, had successfully routed waves upon waves of Ethiopian forays into
Eritrea, and managed to liberate about 85-90% of Eritrea from Ethiopian
colonization. Much less Mengistu, Ethiopia itself was on the brink of
extinction, until the Soviet Union turned the table on the Eritrean
liberation movements. With the exception of Asmara and a few other
cities, the whole country was in the hands of the liberation movements.
The 1978 offensive by the Soviet Union against the EPLF included
heretofore unseen sophisticated weaponry, mainly surface-to-surface to
missiles, mounted and launched from the Red Sea from Soviet battleships,
that persuaded the EPLF to employ a "strategic withdrawal."
So,
what took the EPLF nearly two and half years of difficult combat against
Mengistu's Derg soldiers and peasants to achieve, was abandoned in
little time when the Soviet Union delivered a force majeur with its
surface-to-surface missiles. Overjoyed that the Soviet Union
accomplished what the Ethiopians themselves couldn't accomplish,
Mengistu and his colleagues scoffed at EPLF's insistence that what they
did was nothing more than a "strategic withdrawal," and that they will
come back to finish their unfinished business later on. In essence,
"strategic withdrawal" meant that the EPLF could've stood its ground and
defended what they had previously gained, but that placing a premium on
the lives of their fighters was weightier, because doing so would
eventually afford the EPLF the advantage of choosing the date and time
of delivering the final and deadly blow to the enemy. The element of
surprise, coupled with the obtainment of latitude of space and time
replaced short term military gains. This is the stuff of "strategic
withdrawal." Most Western military analysts in those days ridiculed the
EPLF's military choices, and sounded very much like the noise that the
buffoon Mengistu was making in Addis Ababa. As far as the Westerners
were concerned, EPLF's "strategic withdrawal" was nothing more than a
full scale admission of defeat.
Fast forward to 2000, and once
again, we see Shaebia using the term "strategic withdrawal" to explain
what took place in May of that year on the plains and mountian gorges of
Mereb-Setit, Mereb-Alitena, Barentu and Zalmbessa. In a daft
demonstration of its similarity, Meles Zenawi and his 3 million Tigrayan
Ethiopian constituency echoed what Mengistu said when confronted with
the term "strategic withdrawal" twenty-three years ago - Woyanes from
all corners of the world claimed that EPLF's "strategic withdrawal"
means defeat. But even in the 21st century, that term has its usual
resonance for me, because I can still see Addis Ababa losing sleep over
Shaebia, one year after Woyane celebrated their victory party in full
view of the Western media.
Little wonder then, that Dr. George
Friedman of STRATFOR intelligence outfit has made the term "strategic
withdrawal" an integral part of his organizations' lexicon. Its a tried
and tested military theory of the EPLF. I wouldn't be surprised if he
didn't place a great deal of currency on that terminolgy squarely on
account of the Eritrean Defense Forces military genius. The intelligence
communities of the West are paying very close attention to the how our
forces continue to dismember Ethiopias armies. However, Dr. Friedman was
overly presumptious by thinking that the Taleban would resort and then
replicate this military theory to Afghanistan's reality. The Taleban the
exact opposite of what a "strategic withdrawal" entails.
DR.
FRIEDMAN'S ANALYSIS OF THE TALEBAN
One of the major differences
between the ELF (Jebha) and the EPLF, among many other factors, was that
EPLF's approach to warfare was not just limited to warfare, but included
a whole gamut of social, economic, gender, and health policies as they
engaged in warfare. Theirs was a holistic approach to the struggle that
won the hearts and minds of most Eritreans. In retrospect, one can say
that having built a strong population base that served as a rock solid
foundation in their pursuit of independence, it was only a matter of
time before complete success would come EPLF's way. The EPLF was already
a bona fide government before independence.
Since 1996, the
Taleban had tried to make inroads into Afghani society in an attempt to
consolidate their polictical gains. The trouble was that most of the
polices of the Taleban were founded on theories that existed 1500 years
ago, and was trying to transplant it to a post-industrial international
environment. I can't help but knock myself silly when I find myself
saying this, but I have to, because there are too many people in the
world (including educated Eritreans, mind you) who insist that women
should not participate in the productive sectors of society. As long as
there are people who think this way, I have to reiterate "that it is
impossible to go forward and have progress without the full
participation of women in society, therefore they should participate in
society's productive sectors." The Taleban through their ruthless and
idiotic edicts did manage to create for themselves a cozy arrangement in
Afghanistan, but did zilch for the benefit of their country, as is
wholly obvious. This is just one aspect of their
ignorance.
Without digressing too much into medieval asininity, I
shall return to myoriginal topic - "strategic withdrawal" in the Afghan
context. Dr. Friedamn was perplexed when he saw that the Taleban were
going to attempt to defend cities (Kunduz, Kandahar and Kabul), instead
of doing what the EPLF did in 1978, and in May 2000. Even the Taleban
method of operation in war is at direct variance with modernity. The
Taleban chose to dig in the cities and fight to the death, when they
should've done what Dr. Friedman was alluding to - "startegic
withdrawal" into the mountains. Common sense, wouldn't you say? Not to
the Taleban. The Taleban thought they had a chance of defending their
"holy cities" against B-52's, sweet Jesus! They must be having second
thoughts as I am putting pen to paper for this article. If the Taleban
don't have the kind of anti-aircraft that can ascend to heights that the
B-52 flies, what's the point of defending cities? The Taleban have
allowed raw machismo to get in the way of cold analysis and
introspection, at their peril.
Simply put, the defending army has
to defer to military expedience when the opposing army is either far
superior in technology (USA), or fields WW-I type of a ponderous human
wave assault (Ethiopia). The Eritrean military school of thought of
"strategic withdrawal" defers to military expedience. Another way of
saying common sense. In this sense, military expedience refers to
re-scheduling the time and space of combat to a more propitious moment.
This military school of thought has not only delivered the independence
of Eritrea from Ethiopian colonization, but has also shown how it can be
successfully applied even in conventional confrontations in the future,
albeit with additional refinements. Two very tangible results of
"strategic withdrawal."
CONCLUSION
Around June of
1998, Ethiopian Television went around the border area (namely Agame),
and started interviewing peasants who lived along the Eritrean-Ethiopian
border. And I will never forget how one 60ish Agame peasant responded to
a question that was posed to him:
"How do you assess what Shaebia
is doing along this border area?"
In extreme anger and
frustration, the peasant replied:
"I don't mind fighting Shaebia,
but why don't they stand their ground and fight?"
The fury in
the words of the Tigrayan peasant confirmed to me that Shaebias
"strategic withdrawal" system is without a doubt working. Woyane
desperately wanted not only to engage Shaebia head on, but also had the
gut feeling that if the head on collision didn't materialize, any
thought of complete "victory" would be like running on empty. That's
exactly what happened. At the outset, Shaebias military objective was
clear - demarcation. The road to demarcation may have been slow and
agonizing, but the end result was assured from the very beginning.
Shaebia delivers once again, in a very tangible way. There were
political means to have settled the border contention, but as President
Isaias Afworki says time and again, "you can't applaud with one hand."
Woyane, as previous Ethiopian governments have tried to do, thought that
they could impose their will on Eritreans by force and actually succeed
in nullifying Eritreas sovereignty. Woyane made a scandalous error of
judgement by under-estimating the will and spirit of the people of
Eritrea to not only survive, but to eventually prosper. As long as
Ethiopians are bent on military solutions when dealing with Eritrea, the
need to be steadfast remains. The military school of thought of
"strategic withdrawal" is an intricate part of Eritreas success story
this far. As a school of military thought, "strategic withdrawal" will
probably be around until the gallant Eritrean Airforce passes puberty.
And this happening is just around the corner. Nothing stays the
same.
