History Repeats Itself: Ethiopia Attacks Eritrea

As I’m sitting here enjoying my cup of coffee I couldn’t help but to spill my drink over out of anger when finding out that Ethiopia launched military attacks on Eritrea! Seriously, is this really happening again?

It was reported today several camps were attacked causing numerous deaths. According to BBC Africa the attack was due to Ethiopia assuming Eritrea was “training subversive groups to carry out attacks inside Ethiopia.” I am very interested to hear what Eritrea officials have to comment from this attack.

One of the main reason’s I majored in Conflict Resolution is for the sole reason of Eritrea and Ethiopia’s constant conflict. It seems as though just when things have calmed down, the drama between the two country starts up again.

After a 30-year war, Eritrea gained its Independence from Ethiopia, and after announcing its own currency in 1997 another war broke
-out again a year later as a result. The May 1998 – June 2000 war alone resulted in 100,000 deaths and millions of dollars taken from much needed development into military activities and weapons.

However, according to interantional analysis ”the major reason for the recent conflict is the fact that Ethiopia no longer has a border along the Red Sea and therefore relies on going through other countries such as Eritrea in order to ship and trade goods along that line.”

And although it has been almost twelve years since conflict broke out between the two, will this cause another war? And how many deaths does it take to make both parties realize we must come up with better conflict resolution. It is clear that the peace treaty signed by both parties is not respected.