ERITREA CLAIMS ETHIOPIA HARASSED ERITREANS; ETHIOPIA HAS NO COMMENT
On March 19th, 2008, the Amharic service of Germany’s Deutsche Welle Radio reported about a military clash that occurred between Eritrea and Ethiopia a day earlier. An English translation of the report reads as follows: (to read the original report in Amharic, please follow this link.) In other news, our representative in Mekele [Northern Ethiopia], Yohannes Gebrezgabheir, reports that in the border area of Ethio-Eritrea, the soldiers of the two countries exchanged gunfire yesterday. The information he gathered includes the following: “Eritrean soldiers, including a lieutenant, have surrendered and are under the control of Ethiopian soldiers; in the ensuing conflict, over thirty Eritrean civilians have been dislocated and arrived in Ethiopia.” A peacekeeping mission that had been established in the buffer area between the countries to monitor security has left the area. Cumulatively, the two sides have over 200 thousand soldiers in the border area and this has brought about anxieties that war may erupt. Deutsche Welle’s report does not disclose where this clash occurred, or how many Eritrean soldiers were taken as prisoners. On March 20th, 2008, the Eritrean government’s official website, shabait.com, reported the following: In continuation of its acts of incursions, looting and harassment over the past 7 to 8 years, the TPLF regime on March 17 carried out harassment against the inhabitants of Ambesete-Geleba villages in sovereign Eritrean territory, as well as hampering development activities. As of the date this report is being compiled, there has been no official statement from Ethiopia on what has been reported by Deutsche Welle Radio or Shabait.com. Background The area mentioned by Shabait.com, Ambesete-Geleba, is located 25 kilometers south of Senafe, in Southern Eritrea, well within the Temporary Security Zone, an area monitored by the United Nations Mission in Eritrea Ethiopia (UNMEE.) According to the UN Secretary General (UNSG) special report of March 3, 2008, “UNMEE was beginning to experience serious difficulties in sustaining its troops and military observers and in maintaining reliable communications with deployment sites in the Temporary Security Zone” since December 1, 2007. This, according to the Secretary General, was because the government of Eritrea had limited the transport of food and fuel to UNMEE, restricted its movement, and had ignored repeated communiqués from the UN to address the issue with the urgency it warrants. The government of Eritrea has downplayed the misunderstanding as a “technical” issue and attempted to re-direct the UN’s focus to make efforts to enforce its resolution demanding of Ethiopia to “implement fully and without delay the EEBC decision.” Pending a final determination by the Security Council, the UNSG at first tried to “temporarily” relocate UNMEE to Ethiopia and finalized an agreement with the Ethiopian government. When that effort did not succeed due to objections from the Eritrean government who took offense to not being consulted, the UNSG moved UNMEE to Asmara and, eventually, to “temporarily” return to their home countries. As of March 11, over 700 of the mostly Indian and Jordanian peacekeepers who were assigned to the temporary security zone had left Eritrea. Only a small “rear party” has been left in Eritrea to secure UNMEE property, not to fulfill the UNMEE mandate. Thus, the buffer zone is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. And if there is a military clash, there would be nobody there to provide independent verification. 
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