First Published: International Forum [a journal of the Canadian group, In Struggle!] Vol. 1, No. 2, November 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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International Forum Introduction: The following article was printed as the editorial of the February, 1980 edition of Eritrea Information, international news bulletin of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). The EPLF is one of the main liberation organizations in Eritrea, where the people have battled for more than two decades for national liberation, first against the American-backed Haile Selassie regime, and in the last few years against Russian and Cuban military forces supporting the current Ethiopian regime.
We have included this brief text because it shows clearly how the liberation movements are forced to confront the same problems which preoccupy the ICM [International Communist Movement – EROL] in relation to the complex international situation, especially Soviet social-imperialism and the treachery of China’s leaders.
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No struggle for national independence can be isolated from an international context. Even though it takes place in the so-called peripheric areas of the world, it always has an effect on the international equilibrium, endangering certain interests while objectively favouring others. This has been true for the Eritrean revolution, but it has never been truer than in this current period, ever since Eritrea finds itself involved in a delicate sector of the East and West conflict. We can make a reference to numerous converging phenomena: from the recent moment of the African independence struggles, which have weakened the hold of the West, to the crisis in the Middle-East; from the Iranian revolution which has deprived the United States of a stronghold inside the oil region, to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and, in passing, the Soviet and Cuban intervention in the Ogaden and in Eritrea itself.
The latest of such events, i.e. the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in particular, gives serious cause for worry, and seems to persuade the Eritrean movement towards fresh reflections, to re-evaluate all the connections, old and new, which make them simultaneously protagonists of their liberation struggle and victims, on the rebound, of international politics. The Peoples Front for the Liberation of Eritrea, in particular, has come to the point of tracing a “recurring vice” in Soviet politics, that of manifesting its “anti-imperialist dedication” in a terminology which is quite disassociated from the interests and analysis of those who struggle in the first person for liberation.
The EPLF believes that the situation in Iran, and above all in Afghanistan, has created an alarm inside leading circles in America, leading to the creation of an alibi for launching a massive campaign aimed at bringing the region of the Horn under their control. The situation is at the point of becoming explosive, and there is a serious danger that the whole region becomes a battlefield of forces extraneous to the interests of the people of the region. Soviet politics thus ends up furnishing pretexts, when not working directly in the interest of those very Americans whose influence one would like to see destroyed. The big international power games have therefore made their entry by force into an area like the Horn of Africa, which, finding itself rather underdeveloped in comparison to the old middle-eastern front, had till now only attracted marginal attention. Now, the United States, in response to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, have begun looking for military bases in Oman, Kenya and Somalia.
While the Eritrean liberation struggle has had to confront, over a long period, American imperialism, which was represented by the regime of Haile Selassie, today, in order to defend its political autonomy and conquer its national independence it is forced to combat against an enemy who is less definable politically and ideologically but at the same time much more complex: i.e. the super powers.
The EPLF was born and has developed as an anti-imperialist movement which considered its own struggle as one moment in the more universal struggle for the mutation of relations on an international level. American imperialism has always been considered the principal enemy, while today the EPLF finds itself facing a much more complex reality which necessitates therefore, as Ramadan Mohammed Nur, the Secretary General of the EPLF, has declared “an increased capacity of analysis and political elaboration”.
Let us take a few examples. The EPLF has considered, and continues to do so today, that in principle the Socialist countries would be their natural allies, but today this very anti-imperialist international front is a prey to contradictions. We have already said enough about the USSR: a one time supporter of the Eritrean independence, today it has chosen the military regime in Ethiopia and is participating in the war of repression in Eritrea. “China” – as Ramadan Mohammed Nur himself feels – “is far, too far from us. And we are too far from China”. The Vice-Secretary General of the EPLF Isaayas Afeworki adds, “The Chinese leaders are interested in knowing only if we share their formulas, if we are inclined to imitate their slogans in exchange for a bit of aid. We do not need these kinds of friends”.
The Eritrean independence therefore finds itself facing new problems, or different from the other, and is slowly discovering the increasing links with the international scene. Faced with this new development, the Eritrean movement has taken a realistic attitude, and has been able to respond to these new demands with great political ability, qualities which it is going to be in great need of for some time to come.