Cry, the beloved countryCry, the beloved country
Justin Hill on Michela Wrong's moving and ultimately uplifting account of Eritrea's emancipation, I Didn't Do It For You
Saturday February 5, 2005
The Guardian
I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
by Michela Wrong
448pp, Fourth Estate, £16.99
When historians look for a way of encapsulating the story of the 20th century they could do a lot worse than pick Eritrea, the small country in the Horn of Africa that is the subject of Michela Wrong's second book.
Wrong relates a history that began when the British suggested the Italians might like to start getting themselves an empire, and offered up the Red Sea port of Massawa, hoping by this ruse that the Italians would prevent French influence spreading out from Djibouti.
Italian colonialism seems to have involved murder of the local potentates and then the confiscation of their land and women. When news of the behaviour of their boys abroad broke, there was an Abu Ghraib-style crisis, and the eminent liberal Ferdinando Martini was sent to investigate. Considering that he was an anti-colonial, his conclusions are all the more shocking: "One race must replace the other; it's that or nothing ... whether we like it or not, we will have to hunt [the native] down and encourage him to disappear, just as had been done with the Redskins, using all the methods civilisation - which the native instinctively hates - can provide: gunfire and a daily dose of firewater."
Italian rule took a decidedly worse turn with the rise of fascism: Eritrea was the first country to pass a set of apartheid laws, and was used as the launch pad for the 1936 invasion of Ethiopia.
Eritrea was liberated along with Ethiopia by the British in the second world war, and things continued pretty much as before until 1950, when the question of what to do with it was handed over to the United Nations. Up to this point, Eritrea was suffering the same sort of experience as other African colonies, but cold war realpolitik and strong US lobbying meant that its fate was sealed. It was once again colonised, not by a European power this time - but by Ethiopia, which, curiously, considering its dreadful record on subjugating its own minorities, remains for many the international symbol of black freedom.
What many people have not understood is that Ethiopia is as much a creation of the scramble for Africa as any other African country: a mini-empire formed when one Abyssinian warlord got hold of western rifles and brutally conquered his neighbours. Eritrea was the last territory to be added to the Ethiopian empire, which was now led by the image-astute Haile Selassie, under a federation agreement sponsored and guaranteed by the United Nations.
Not surprisingly, Haile Selassie, an absolute monarch, broke all his promises to protect Eritrea's fledgling democracy. He abolished not only the parliament, but also education in anything but his tribal language, Amhara, and set about terrorising the Muslim lowlanders when they complained. His army was trained by the US in pacification campaigns, the same sort of pacification that led to My Lai and other such massacres in Vietnam. Not surprisingly Eritreans took up arms. A war began that was to last 30 years.
The story of Eritrea is well told in this thoroughly researched and detailed book. Perhaps most impressive is the list of interviewees that Wrong has tracked down: the last Italian left in Massawa; an America GI posted to Eritrea in the 1960s, now a barman in Florida; an Eritrean freedom-fighter, working as a mechanic in south London; and one of the last Eritrean parliamentarians who voted their parliament out of existence, now a petrol-station owner. The range of voices serves to highlight the effect on individual people of decisions that were made thousands of miles away.
It seems fitting that this book should come out 20 years after the Ethiopian famine, which - in stark contrast to Eritrea - everyone knows about. As was said of the Irish potato famine: nature creates hunger, but only man creates famine. And so it was in 1984. While we know there was famine, many of us have no idea why. Somehow, through all the news broadcasts and pop concerts and images of thankful Ethiopians, no one thought to mention that the famine was largely being caused by the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who ended up leading the coup against a senile Haile Selassie.
Mengistu blocked the distribution of food in areas he considered politically suspect. Instead of going to feed the starving, western food aid was unloaded on the docks of Massawa and then reloaded on to Soviet ships in return for more arms. And the focus of all this war effort was the brutal subjugation of the Eritrean people, whose resistance had continued to grow.
Eritreans tried many times to bring their plight up at the UN, but their petitions were ignored and, as Eritrea had ceased to exist as a country, the delegation was ejected from the building. There is an interesting moment when Wrong goes to the United Nations Library in New York and asks to see the files holding the stacks of petitions written over a 40-year period. The apologetic assistant explains that the files have gone missing, that this has never happened to her before.
All Wrong finds is a document dating from 1963, in which the UN's man in Cairo reports being met by a group of exiled Eritreans with a petition for the secretary-general. They were concerned that the previous seven petitions had not even had an acknowledgement. "Can you please see to it that an acknowledgement is sent," the message runs, but scrawled in ink at the side of the paper are two notes that sum up the international attitude to the Eritrean predicament: "My feeling is that we should not acknowledge," says the first. And the second: "I think we are really through with the question of Eritrea."
Another fascinating chapter, perhaps all the more relevant following America's astonishment after 9/11 that there were people out there who didn't love it, is the one that describes the lifestyle enjoyed by the GIs in Agnew Base in Eritrea, the US's premier listening post through the first half of the cold war. Housing 4,000 US troops and their families, the camp boasted picket fences and front lawns, a 10-lane bowling alley, swimming pool, craft shop, library, and, of course, bars, where the majority of the young GIs spent their energies whoring and drinking.
Outside the camp Ethiopian troops, who had been trained by the US and Israel, were busy massacring their way across Eritrea. In 1967 alone 300 settlements were burnt and hundreds of people killed. The GIs were sealed inside their bubble with increasing regularity in an attempt to isolate themselves from the atrocities - and, with the distractions to hand, most managed to ignore what was going on. But it was hard to ignore the rotting bodies hanging from the lamp-posts, and camp commanders had to issue warnings about listening to "rumours".
Orwell said the future was a boot stamping on a human face, and for much of the 20th century Eritrea seems to have been that face. But against all the odds, the Eritrean people defeated both cold war superpowers in turn, and in 1993 gained their independence through a referendum. Despite the brutalisation and neglect, and despite the troubled times that have followed independence, Wrong offers an uplifting testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Eminently readable and full of fascinating detail, this is a book that deserves and needs to be read.
· Justin Hill is the author of Ciao Asmara (Abacus). His novel The Drink and Dream Teahouse was shortlisted for the Whitbread first novel award