Purge and Liquidation in the ELF
Although the second Congresswas attended by 949 democratically elected
delegates , many new recruits from secondary schools and Santa familia
who joined the ELF were not welcome to the elected leaders of the ELF-RC
in the mid-1970s. As a result of this there was conflict between new fighters
who joined Front with a secular vision and seeking greater democracy,
and the old ELF leadership.
G. Hiwot (2008) also provided a good analysis to the
conflicts between the ELF.RC leaders and new
comers in the following “Jebha of the seventies was undergoing a
huge identity crisis. With tens of thousands of youth from Kebessa flocked
to mieda, it had a hard problem absorbing them without simultaneously
undergoing a drastic change in its identity. Many of the powerful Jebha
leaders, and many of their followers, couldn’t reconcile themselves
to this. In 1977 the conflict between those who were seeking greater democracy
(the Falul movement) and the ELF leaders who were against change as the EPLF leaders led the ELF leaders to take military action against
the Falul.
According to Killion (1998, 214) In June a Falul splinter group acting
largely on its own, assassinated two RC members in Dankel, provoking a
purge of the dissidents and the flight of some 2,000 fighters to Ala,
from where they joined the EPLF.
Furthermore, Mengesteab in his
book “Anatomy of an African Tragedy” wrote . When the ELF
internally fractured, a group of democratic fighters, numbering around
two thousand, broke away from the front in 1977 and tried to create their
own liberation space. Pursued by the “mother” front, however,
they were unable to establish themselves as a viable and independent force,
and they were prompted to join the EPLF. Simple commensense dictates that
the EPLF leadership would have integrated these democratic by spreading
them around the front’s various entities. Instead, the Isaias leadership
deployed them as a group to Massawa front where a fierce battle was raging
between the EPLF and the Ethiopian army. Msssawa was where the former
ELF democratis perished without enough survivors to tell their story"
Alem Tesfay in his paper "Kab Mezgeb Tarich" in 2004 wrote
Seyoum was one of the promoters of the infamous political campaign dubbed “HA Hu Bel Falulay” which brought the democratic movement of ELFto a complete collapse in 1977
What is ironically tragic is that all those Falul insurgents who died valiantly in the Massawa front ended up in their executioner’s roaster of martyrs. For all practical purposes, these are the ones of whom we could undoubtedly say, “sighumti tewesidulom”. The way Shaebia handled the Falul crisis comes from the old books of tyrants like Stalin, who got rid of many of those they suspected through a similar process.
The Falul group is part of that naïve student generation that, with all optimism and good will, flocked to mieda in a futile search for that elusive “unity”, that common thread that would weave “Eritrean identity”, only to be wiped out by two regressive identities – the sectarian identity of Jebha and the alien identity of Shaebia"[source: Falul and identity crisis] by Yosief G. Hiwot
perished without enough survivors to tell their story
Nabira in his paper Where are the Dots to be Connected Here? point out the declaration of war on the alleged Yemanwi kinfi (right wing) in 1978 in Dankalia, in which many unsung patriots such as Omer Suba were killed and liquidated by special ELF units. Referring the ELF liquidation policy in 1970s there is also a report from other source about individual fighters who questioned the ELF leadership’s corruption and division were placed into the security’s hand and interrogated, imprisoned, tortured and killed.
Among them were those 10 veterans ELF fighters who were killed by the ELF force in a place called Ibbi, Dankalia on 22 May 1978 were
1)Saed Hussien 2)Omer M. Suba, 3)Ahmed Ibrahim 4) Omer M.Omer5)Haji Saleh 6)Ibrahim Mahder
7)M.Mansur 8) M.Shedeli Ismail 9)Abdu Idris A. 10)Adem Ibrahim Al Haj
We foiled this reactionary project by resolutely liquidating these elements on May 22, 1978. The Eritrean Liberation Army units assigned this duty executed it perfectly.” One of those martyrs was Hussen the founder of the ELF in Cairo with Taha.
This is the era where anti-democratic forces took upper hand and teamed up against the forces of change in ELF. This is the era where the right wing snitchers and betrayers flourished in ELF. This is the era where ELF began to become terminally ill. Read more Read more
As
a result of the ELF purge and liquidation policies the
number of RC members declined. According to Nharent. Com, between
1975 and 1982 the number of RC members was affected by martyrdom (5),
and suspensions from membership of half a dozen members due to their roles
in encouraging extremist tendencies (the so-called ‘Falul/anarchistl’
and ‘yemin/rightist’ movements). Not only that but also the
number of fighters also declined. Mengesteab ( 2005, 55) in his book mentions
that by the late 1970s the number of ELF forces had dropped to as low
as 7,000 while the EPLF could count on 30, 000 highly trained and well-armed
liberators. He adds that the EPLF leaders restored the old ELF argument
that Eritrea could not support more than one liberation front. This was
when they realised that the ELF military was weak, and exploiting the
ELF military weakness and internal crises they declared war on the ELF
which was one of the worst crime of the EPLF leaders in the history of
the armed struggle.
The defeated of the ELF in 1980 caused for splitting
the Fronts into many factions which becomes the main impediment for
the formation strong opposition front against the ruling PFDJ.
To conclude, despite the ELF leaders crimes’
in the 1960s and 1970s none of these ELF & EPLF fighters who are leaders
within the opposition groups have ever come forward to acknowledge their
leaders’ crimes or their collabotation with them. It is worthwhile
to mention that one of the main problems within the opposition group is
that their leaders are not innocent of crime like the PFDJ leaders.
The author also appeals to all former members of
the ELF who survived the war to tell the public the truth about the ELF
leadership’s crimes against innocent fighters.
Contact: rkidane@talk21.com