Eritrea's thirty-year war and the making of Africa's newest state
From the first shot in 1961 to the 1993 referendum, a generation of fighters, drought and Cold War alliances produced independence — and its harder aftermath.
Yasmin Abdi·Asmara·
Asmara — The Eritrean war of independence began in 1961 in the western lowlands and ended in 1991 when EPLF forces entered Asmara. A UN-supervised referendum in 1993 confirmed independence with 99.8 percent of votes cast in favor.
The war shaped everything that followed: a highly mobilized society, a state built around a wartime party, and a still-unresolved border question with Ethiopia that erupted again in 1998 and only formally thawed in 2018.
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