The civil war in Ethiopia involves a fight for independence by the province of Eritrea, and this war began in 1961. At that time, the central government in Addis Ababa, then the government of Haile Selassie, broke a United Nations sponsored autonomy plan for the region. Eritrea is the triangular northernmost province of Ethiopia. It is dominated by a range of mountains that flattens out to form the Barka Plains in the west, with an arm of the Danakil depression one of the hottest regions on earth extending in a southeasterly direction, along the Red Sea. The Greek name for the Red Sea was Erythra Thalassa, and it is from this that Eritrea derives its name. It consists of 46,000 square miles of land, or an area about the size of Pennsylvania or Mississippi. It is believed that this region holds the key to Ethiopia's political stability and territorial integrity. Without Eritrea, Ethiopia would be landlocked, as Selassie first and Mengistu after him understood full well:
Behind all the mass executions, cabinet level shootouts, and opaque conspiracies that helped Mengistu consolidate his power in the late 1970s lay disagreements over the conduct of the war in Eritrea (Kaplan 60).
During World War II, Eritrea was placed under British military administration in 1941 after the Italian surrender. A decision in 1950 by the UN General Assembly ended the British military administration by September 1952, and it was replaced by a new autonomous Eritrean government in federal union with Ethiopia. This new arrangement enabled Ethiopia to gain limited control of a territory that was more advanced politically and economically, at least in its inland areas, and at the same time to regain access to the sea (Ethiopia: A Country Study).
A Four Power Inquiry Commission was established by the World War II Allies (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States), but this commission failed to agree in its September 1948 re...