Africa Today

Brothers at War is a highly useful interim account of the course and causes of the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict, which has proven so costly in human, economic, and political terms to the well-being of the Horn of Africa, a region that has suffered egregious impoverishment and destitution, even by sub-Saharan African standards. It carefully sorts out the interests and historical background factors that served to cause and inflame the conflict, doing so in a way that allows the reader to sort out for himself or herself the merits of the arguments between the two sides. Particularly valuable are the many appendices presenting the most important diplomatic documents addressing the struggle.

Brothers at War is an interim account because it was published in mid-2000, before the ink was dry on the U.N.-sponsored border-demarcation agreement. Even now, however, the longterm meaning and outcomes of the conflict are still in the process of unfolding. How satisfactorily the border-demarcation process becomes, in technical and political terms, is yet [End Page 141] to be determined. How Eritrean-Ethiopian relations develop in the context of a newly demarcated border remains in the realm of conjecture, as do the longterm implications of the war and its aftermath on the domestic politics of both countries. In addition, both countries, and the Horn of Africa as a whole, are in the process of being affected by changes in the international circumstances of the post-September-11 world. The countries and the region stand to be potentially significant players in the war on terrorism, in forms and degrees, and with outcomes, that remain uncertain.

The authors' central conclusion is that "A lasting and sustainable peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia is unlikely to emerge as long as the conflict is seen in terms of border demarcation, no matter how important this might be. The economic, political, cultural and historical links that bind these two states together have to be built somehow into a sustainable framework [for] peace." In my own reading, that conclusion is beyond dispute; however, it is unclear how much this conclusion will be taken to heart by the parties themselves or the diplomatic community that has labored hard to achieve an end to hostilities and a border-demarcation process acceptable to both parties. Realistically, the border-demarcation process had to be addressed first; however, border demarcation will almost certainly not produce peace in any lasting, fundamental, and meaningful sense between the two countries until the larger issues to which the authors allude are addressed. Whether, when, and how those larger issues are or will be addressed is not yet clear.

The authors rightly point out, first, that the two countries regard each other's opposite domestic political arrangements with undisguised fear and alarm, as well as with ideological distaste. Ethiopia's leaders believed, perhaps with good reason, that an ethnically defined confederal constitutional structure was the only way to salvage a stable Ethiopian state from the wreckage of an historic empire and the Mengistu regime's disastrous tenure. The Eritreans, not unreasonably, have feared that the strategy will lead to the Balkanization of the entire region, including their own country. The Ethiopians have dismissed as ethnic subjugation Eritrea's effort to achieve ethnic and religious balance within a centralized political structure. The authors correctly note the ways in which each government has targeted the stability of the other, though they perhaps understate somewhat the ongoing resentment of Eritrea's independence in some Ethiopian circles.

Second, the authors properly emphasize the importance of each country's resentment of the other's economic policies in the context of their historic economic interdependence when there was only Ethiopia. Even less well noted has been the competition they bring out between the Tigre region, the principal political base of the Ethiopian regime, and neighboring Eritrea for trade opportunities with the rest...