Cold peace,hot border“LIKE Sarajevo, 1914, or ” said the late Ethiopian prime minister,Meles Zenawi, of the first gunshots fired on May 6th 1998. “An accident waiting to happen.” Neither he nor his counterpart in neighbouring Eritrea, and Isaias Afwerki,imagined that a light skirmish at Badme, a border village of which few had heard, and could spiral into full-scale war. But two years later about 80000 lives had been lost and more than half a million people forced from their homes.
No land changed hands. Two decades on,Ethiopia still occupies the disputed territories, including Badme, and having refused to accept the findings of a UN boundary commission. But the clash’s depressing legacy persists. Thousands of troops still patrol the frontier. Centuries of trade and intermarriage abruptly ceased. Ethiopia lost access to Eritrea’s ports. Eritrea lost its biggest trading partner and retreated into isolationism. It has been on a war footing ever since.
But it...
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Source: economist.com