How Veterans Told the Story

of the First 10 Years of ELA

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“From this day on, none of you is an ordinary man. You are freedom fighters carrying responsibilities heavier than of any other Eritrean… We will not be able to accomplish the task unless we win the love, respect and participation of the people in the struggle… The struggle is not going to be as easy as we say it to the [people]; it may take us as long as 10 or 15 years, or even more. But then, the start being made by these antiquated guns will never fail from pushing the Ethiopians out of this country… Few of us may see it; but definitely our sons and daughters will do.”  - Hamid Idris Awate.

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October 2004 is already in but we are still in the mood of Bahti-Meskerem celebrations in commemoration of the 43^rd year of the commencement of Eritrea’s armed struggle for national liberation. Nharnet Team is pleased to present to you a highly interesting reading from the Eritrean Newsletter issue No. 44 of September 1981. The interview was conducted in the field with Mohammed Ibrahim Bahdurai, a veteran member of the Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA) who, talking about the initial 10 years of the armed struggle said in his interview of September 1981:  “We hoped when there was little to hope, and confronted the Ethiopians virtually without adequate arms and munitions. We were fully armed with the absolute conviction in the final victory of the just cause and history will not attest that we were wrong”.  Reproduced below is the full interview with Bahdurai, who in 1981 was 55 years old. It has been reported to us that Bahdurai is still alive, probably in the Sudan now. This is a must reading for whoever wants to feel how it felt to Eritrean patriots in those hard times.

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Interviewer:  Would you tell us about your feelings and the general public opinion among Eritreans in the year 1961?

Bahdurai:  [Around] the year 1961, the Eritrean people were generally overwhelmed by despair. Our national flag was already lowered down, national seals and insignia scrapped out and national languages substituted by the Ethiopian official language. The majority of the people had the feeling that it was too late to assert Eritrean nationhood and stop Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia and its imperialist-Zionist backers from totally wiping out our country from the world map. In the process of trampling over our national rights, Ethiopia resorted to mass arrests and torture of nationalists who refused to bow down to its will. But it was mistaken to assume that violence is one-sided. Despite the reign of terror and intimidations which pervaded the Eritrean arena in 1960 and 1961, many Eritreans resorted to unorganized confrontations against the occupation forces. Many nationalists were first organized under the underground Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM) or Haraka which advocated legal and non-violent means to achieve national independence. [This] soft treading organization, however, gave little hope for victory and everyone talked of armed struggle. I was one of such people although I still was serving in the Sudanese Army away from the homeland.

By the end of 1960, one Eritrean political activist came from Cairo to the Sudan and told us that an organization called the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was formed and that its main objective was to win national independence for Eritrea through armed struggle. We Eritreans in the Sudan accepted the idea with enthusiasm. This time I retired from the Sudanese Army and opened a small shop in Kassala as a cover for my political activities; I also started a farm in Hagaz inside Eritrea. When the hour of call to arms came after a year, I closed the shop, sent my wife and two sons to their grandparents in Eritrea. My wife had no knowledge of my intentions and she was confused and surprised by my behaviour. (Emphasis added by Nharnet Team).

A group of us (former members of the Sudanese Army) made the final decision to go the field at Martyr Tahir Salem’s house. We received political briefing at Kurbal-Gash near Kassala before departure. This was only about [a few months] after the Battle of Mount Adal.

Question: How did you locate the small ELA unit in the field and in what condition did you find them?

Answer: We left Kassala in two groups. The one let by Martyr Omar Ezaz entered through Galuj and the other led by Martyr Mohamed Idris Haj entered the field through Tamarat (Abu Hashala-Shukor). I was in the second group and we had seven carbine rifles and 20 hand-grenades. The two groups and the 13-man first ELA unit led by Martyr Hamid Idris Awate met at Mount Akotien. We had extra clothes and the ELA unit received its first military uniform from us. At Akotien, we accepted Hamid Awate as the leader and Mohamed Idris Haj as his deputy. We then sat for a long briefing in which I member Hamid Awate passing the following instructions: ‘From this day on, none of you is an ordinary man. You are freedom fighters carrying responsibilities heavier than of any other Eritrean… We will not be able to accomplish the task unless we win the love, respect and participation of the people in the struggle… The struggle is not going to be as easy as we say it to the [people]; it may take us as long as 10 or 15 years, or even more. But then, the start being made by these antiquated guns will never fail from pushing the Ethiopians out of this country… Few of us may see it; but definitely our sons and daughters will do.’ He then explained how his unit heroically fought the bigger Ethiopian field-force contingent at Mount Adal.

Question:  What were the most difficult problems you encountered in the early years of the struggle?

Answer: They were of course uncountable [difficulties]. We were short of literally everything. We were few in number; carried very old rifles; had no ammunition stock, space for movement was limited and we had to suspect most of the people in the villages. For security reasons, we were covering very long distances in a single day, mainly in Barka, Gash and Setit. We were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This was very helpful because the people and the enemy assumed that we were a very large army. The first three years were terribly difficult. But our fighting morale was very, very high. I can say we hoped when there was little hope and confronted the Ethiopians virtually without adequate arms and munitions. We were fully armed with the absolute conviction in the final victory of the just cause and history will of course attest that we were right.

Question: How many battles did you fight during the first year of the revolution and was your number making any steady growth?

Answer: I can’t say the exact figures but we laid many ambushes and some head-on confrontations against several police out-posts. The battle of Baligead in which the 56-man enemy forces followed our track for a week and suddenly engaged us in a hand-to-hand battle was one of the most significant confrontations. By early 1962, the message of the armed struggle spread over the country like a forest fire and many nationalists started to join us, including members of the Eritrean police force. In that year, the Liberation Army formed three platoons covering all what we today call administrative Units 1,2,3 and 4.

First Automatic Rifles From Addis Ababa:

We received our first automatic rifles from ELM members in Addis Ababa who were for armed struggle but did not know the difference between the ELF and ELM. Their contribution consisted of a Bren-gun, a few M1 rifles and 24 hand-grenades. With these arms, we attacked the police station at Halhal on July 18, 1962 and captured all the arms in it. The July 7, 1962 raid on the large gathering in Agordat, attended by Addis Ababa, the Emperor’s representative, and other top officials was also attacked by arms sent us from the Ethiopian capital.

By late 1962, we raided a big number of enemy posts. The police station at Gognie was set on fire. Gerset, Galluj and Barentu police stations were attacked heavily. The Ethiopians felt that we were very near to liberate the major towns and declare independence by force. The Emperor then dissolved the federation on November 14, 1962 and  unleashed a reign of terror in the country hundreds were imprisoned and many others fled the country. Our number started to grow fast. Members of the Eritrean police force deserted the enemy stations in Massawa, Mensura, Bushuqua, Barentu and other places.

Question: Were you holding meetings in those days to evaluate past performances and lay down future tasks?

Answer: Yes indeed. They cannot of course be to the level of today’s ELA unit meetings but we discussed every operation and the internal administration of the army. The first military meeting, to my knowledge, was held at Bergeshesh late in 1962 at which Osman Saleh Sabbe attended from abroad and named Abu Tiyara (Mohamed Omar Abdalla) to lead the ELA after Martyr Hamid Idris Awate.

Our military operations inside the towns and the police stations became more and more organized and effective. We scored a number of brilliant victories during the whole of 1963. We for instance attacked a dozen police stations throughout the country within one night and organized throughout the country within one night and organized similar operations in May 1963 so that the African heads of state who were then meeting in Addis Ababa to form an organization (the OAU) would heed to the just struggle of the Eritrean people for national independence. We also celebrated the second anniversary of the armed struggle by the famous surprise raid at the Haicota police station which we occupied for a day and withdrew taking all arms from the police headquarters.

The second expanded military meeting held at Kur in 1964 formed four platoons and Omar Ezaz, Omar Nasser Kibub Hajaj and Osman Mohamed Idris (Abu Sheneb) were named their leaders. Abuibaker Mohamed Idris (later martyred) was made the overall leader of the ELA.

Our military successes in every operation, including the liquidation of traitors in the urban centres, shook the feudal regime to its foundation. The police and the special field-forces, mainly made-up of the Eritrean nationals, failed to contain the armed revolution. Haile Selassie then decided to deploy the regular Ethiopian army against the revolution. We first confronted the Ethiopian regulars at the historic Battle of Togoruba on March 15, 1964 in which the enemy suffered over 80 dead and many wounded. Seventeen of our comrades fell martyrs of the people’s cause. That battle strengthened our convictions for final victory and also demonstrated to the Ethiopians that they will not be able to win the war they were declaring against the determined Eritrean people.

Among the important events of 1964 was the internal political struggle against the ELM whose members were blackening the struggle and attempting to sow discord among the nationalists in the field as well as abroad. Until then, the ELM was insisting on non-violence and its activists were talking against armed struggle. But when its leaders discovered that they were overtaken by events, the ELM sent a few armed fighters to the field through Sahel; were crushed easily and chased back to the Sudan.

Question: What about the zonal commands? Were the ELA fighters haply with the reorganization?

Answer: Well, I can say yes and no. We were told that the Algerian Revolution succeeded with such divisioning of the fighters and we said we better give it a try. But when the four divisional commands were formed on regional basis, many fighters were left in between and went back home or migrated to the Sudan. Tribal and regional rivalries bedevilled and the army and we started to hate the so-called Algerian model. The first group of trainees and new arms came from friendly Syria in 1964. A new generation of fighters continued to flow to our ranks in 1965-67 and heated political discussions were being conducted. The so-called Supreme Council of Idris Mohamed Adum, Sabbe and their likes was criticized and rejected in all levels. The Eslah (the Reform Movement) was secretly formed in late 1967 and mobilized the bases against the leadership of the revolution abroad. Soldiers Committees were also formed within the zonal divisions. The Yakara and Ansaba meetings in 1968 were results of this reformist movement. The tripartite union of the third, fourth and fifth zonal commands was considered a partial success of the drive towards unification of  the Liberation Army but it was not safe from the under-hand of certain elements of the decadent Supreme Council which was itself divided into rival wings competing for power.

Question:  Was the question of national unity as prickly and delicate as it is nowadays?

Answer:  The unity of the people and their revolution was not in very serious danger in the late 1960s but we were too much concerned not to have any rival wings in the armed struggle. The ELF’s success against the armed bands of the ELM was welcomed by all nationalists because everyone knew that the presence of more than one organization in the country would invite divisions based not on political lines but on the backward regional and confessional sentiments. We struggled against the zonal commands because we saw them being changed to regional power centres. The historic Adobha Military Conference of August 1969 was a turning point in the revolution.  As its fighters in the field took over control and heated struggle was started between self-seeking elements of the Supreme Council and their errand boys on one hand and the democratic elements on the other . The disunity of which the revolution is still suffering was bred and fostered by those same Supreme Council elements in the late sixties and early seventies. The First National Congress of the ELF in October-November 1971 consolidated the genuine nationalist and democratic struggle of our people by clearly spelling out the objectives of the national democratic revolution now embodied in the Elf.

Be it in 1961, 1971 or today [in 1981], national unity was and remains to be the central factor for the victory of our just and legitimate struggle for self-determination and national independence. Any one who planted obstacles on the path to national unity in Eritrea is nothing else but a traitor. This is how I see all the divisive forces in Eritrea.

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