Eritrea-a Name to Remember

...Still, even with these pitfalls in mind, other Vietnams are alarmingly possible...

...In the villages, a lot of people sympathize with these young men, if only because the army and the police go into the villages and take everything and shoot them up...

...I'm looking for—," he said, mentioning the name of a well-known American correspondent...

...At any rate, during the conversation, one of them, Ahmed Muhammed Hashim, suddenly looked slightly mischievous...

...Jackson, a virile man with an engaging personality, traveled regularly all over Eritrea in his jeep, including the quarter of the country held (more or less) by the rebels, often for such things as "cultural programs...

...So what will happen to American interests here if, when the Emperor dies, the country falls into some sort of civil war, as could easily happen...

...Another American propensity in Ethiopia is to interpret the rebellion as nothing more than "banditry...

...What would happen to Kagnew Station...

...But this is impossible to prove or disprove, and American officials say there are many fewer...

...Her book, "The New Latins," has just been published by Doubleday...

...At first they were afraid the story would leak out, and Robert McCloskey, who briefs the press for the State Department, was forewarned...

...Haile Selassie is seventy-eight years old...

...The local tribes vary—from nomadic Beni Amers who still wear Crusader chain mail costumes and joust on horseback to one tribe in which a young man's manhood is observed by his presenting the genitals of a man of a neighboring tribe...

...By its own admission, it has difficulties with the divisiveness of tribal loyalties...

...He has made no plans for his succession and, while he has made attempts at modernization, the country remains the most backward in Africa, and he has almost the entire young generation against him...

...It was not an unusual trip...

...But his information led me, several weeks later, to the seat of Eritrean Liberation in Khartoum, Sudan...

...As I suggested at the outset, the term "more Vietnams" may be overworked...

...for fear they might be taken by the guerrillas...

...we are doing some devilishly strange things in some devilishly strange parts of the world...

...In terms of the official American assessment of the movement, one comes up again—as in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and all those other places—against protestations of innocence of American intentions and outright falsifications of fact in an attempt to downplay the problem...

...But the rebels I talked to in Khartoum said they had watched him for "some time" and carefully arranged the "meeting...

...Here is the story of the kidnapping as American officials told it to me...

...Before they let him go, they helped him find one of the wild goats...

...Within Eritrea you can find every kind of countryside and mood—from the charming, tree-lined Italianate capital of Asmara to the rugged mountain country to the desert-edged Red Sea coast...

...But Ethiopia, as many Americans well recognize, is a weak straw...

...What it all comes down to in the long run is something rather striking: Eritrea is the one place in the Middle East where Americans are deployed in direct opposition to an Arab-supported nationalist movement...

...Both American embassy officials in Addis Ababa and in Asmara were shocked when I asked them about the "kidnapping...

...Even men as knowledgeable as Jackson will tell you, too, that the fact there are more than 30,000 Eritrean refugees across the border in Sudan is of no importance...

...communications bases in the world, it is of particular importance here, where there's simply no place else to run...

...We thought he was poorly informed, and we wanted him to make the right reports...

...Here, the contact is in the Somali Embassy, and after calling there one day, three casually-dressed, well-educated, dark-skinned young men suddenly appeared to see me at the Grand Hotel, the old British stopover on the Blue Nile...

...They all agreed, in closing, that they had liked Jackson...

...As the Arab countries become more and more hostile to the United States because of its support of Israel, Christian Ethiopia remains the only country in the area in which the United States has overflight rights, landing rights, and port rights...

...Here the accounts and the interpretations of the two sides differ slightly...

...But amazingly, no one had reported it...

...Che Guevara perished in Bolivia, his call for "one . . . two . . . three Vietnams" in this hemisphere echoing futilely from liberation front office to liberation front office...

...The movement also unquestionably gets help from the socialist bloc countries...

...The shiftas were a bandit tribe and about three centuries ago the Emperor divided them up and sent them all over the kingdom...

...The guerrillas also stop cars—but they take no pants and instead give political lectures...

...News of it had not got out, and they most certainly had not sent word out...

...It was an Italian colony from 1890 to 1941...

...Among the Liberation Front's main drawbacks are the curious topographical and ethnological patterns of Eritrea, which is mostly a vast, often hilly desert, with only sparse bush cover...

...The shiftas still stop cars and take watches, money, and, sometimes, men's pants, leaving travelers stranded —shifta-less and pants-less...

...On the day Jackson was taken, the guerrillas suddenly appeared by the side of the road and told him to drive off to the side...

...They were pretty well indoctrinated, and they made a fetish of speaking Arabic although some spoke good English," Jackson told me...

...Why the huge military mission...

...He was impeccably dressed, and his English—really British ¦—was just as impeccable...

...The Eritrean rebels are only indirectly anti-Israel...

...This contention, of course, is directly contradicted by Jackson's description of them as "well-indoctrinated...

...Eritrea is not on the front pages yet, but thoughtful Americans should learn how to pronounce it, for if we continue our present course Eritrea may soon be Page One news...

...Far from Vietnam, the United States is directly involved in fighting some largely unknown but important guerrillas...

...Moreover, the American consul-general, Murray Jackson, a native of Eldorado, Illinois, is no ordinary consul-general...

...At any rate, they held Jackson for about half a day, explained their cause, and asked him to sign a paper acknowledging he had seen them...

...Eritrea is the Red Sea coast province of Ethiopia and, like most plots of land in this part of the world, it has a rather peculiar history...

...They identify with the Arab countries because of religious ties, and because the Arabs support them in their quest for independence...

...But according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose work it is to care for these refugees, this is not true...

...Miss Geyer, who speaks five languages, has been awarded professional citations for outstanding journalism...

...I first heard of Eritrea one morning in Jordan...

...He said if we'd strike in Asmara every night instead of in the countryside, we'd be more effective...

...Their work is helped by the historic curiosity that the Christian Ethiopians, one of the most ancient peoples in the world, believe they are related to the ancient Jewish tribes...

...Part of the reason for these denials was a genuine fear that the psychic contagion that has led to the series of kidnappings and the occasional murder of American officials would be encouraged by publicity...

...Another time they kidnapped the British consul-general, an animal lover, who was out with his wife searching for the Nubian ibex in the hills...

...The Israelis have the same thing the Americans have to gain from this exercise—keeping this portion of the Red Sea coast out of the control of the Arabs...

...Navy communications specialists, is in Asmara...

...To detail American involvement in Eritrea a little more, the United States has given some $100 million in military aid to Ethiopia over the last ten years and has an enormous 100-man military mission in Addis Ababa, the capital...

...In effect, they seeded bandits all over...

...Today it is the only portion of the Red Sea coast inhabited by a non-Arab country (except for the Israeli-occupied southern tip of Sinai) and inhabited by a country friendly to the United States...

...This is shifta country," one American official told me...

...Within Eritrea and Ethiopia, news of the rebels' doings passes only by word of mouth...

...Some really believe in the movement, others just follow...

...Also, the Emperor's commandos, who fight the rebels, are Israeli-trained...

...He feared he would be held for something—perhaps in exchange for Eritrean prisoners held by the government...

...But then why is Jackson, no ordinary consul-general, stationed here...

...They seemed very young, very eager, and very innocent, with none of the cynical hardness you find in other movements of this sort...

...They're not a serious problem now, but they could be...

...As for the United States, the dilemma is real...

...The guerrillas say today that they have 4,000 men under arms...

...That didn't seem to me to be too good an idea," one American official most definitely in a position to know told me...

...As one of twenty-three U.S...

...This is one concrete example the Arabs can claim to be an overt American action against them...

...Where...

...Nor was it the first time the rebels had "struck" in the kidnapping business...

...Like Eritrea...

...Jackson says they told him "the usual stuff"—that they wanted Eritrea to be separated from Ethiopia because the Ethiopians were colonizing it...

...There are various points of contention involved in explaining the rebellion—not enough money given Eritrea, for instance—but basically it comes down to the point that half of Eritrea's 1.6 million people are Moslem and identify more with the Moslem and Arab countries to the north...

...That is why we are involved, not only in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, but in Eritrea as well...

...I was standing at the cashier's desk in the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman, thinking about all the money I had spent, when a little, almost prim, dark-skinned man with glasses walked up to me and stood there blinking...

...Why are American servicemen who take Rest and Recreation leave on the coast at Massawa explicitly forbidden to drive up to Asmara after three p.m...

...We've got an economic problem, terrible unemployment...

...To help drive this point home, the ELF had drafted a statement for the consul's signature in which he acknowledged he had talked with the Liberation Front's representatives and had seen their troops...

...They told me you were an American journalist, and I thought you might know...

...It is said they live well there...

...In only the last year, both Sudan and Somaliland on the Red Sea fell to violently anti-West Arab nationalist-style regimes friendly to th socialist bloc, thus cutting off evei •. ore totally access to the Red Sea nd the In-"',n Ocean...

...But the latter was abrogated by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1962 and Eritrea was reduced to the status of an ordinary province...

...American officials both in Addis Ababa and in Asmara take an "It's-nothing-to-worry-about" attitude toward the situation...

...Afterwards, according to American officials, the houses in the town nearby were completely destroyed as a typical punitive measure by the Ethiopian soldiers...

...he is also a counter-insurgency specialist whose last job was in Vietnam in the mid-Sixties as a political adviser to the military negotiating the settlement with the South Vietnamese government which made it possible for American civilian planes to land in interior bases...

...Since he was convinced of their existence, they did not show him all of them...

...He was perfectly willing to sign our statement," one said, "and he gave us some good advice...

...In effect, they explained, it was sort of a military briefing, not unlike the kind one gets from the American army in Vietnam, except without the charts and pointers...

...It was not until last year, after the highly-publicized hijacking to Aden, that the Emperor even acknowledged publicly that they existed...

...UNRWA officials say flatly that these Eritreans are "real refugees, not nomads," and that they fled from the crossfire and deliberate burning of villages by Ethiopian troops...

...Did you know," he asked, "that we kidnapped your American consul general in Asmara [the capital city of Eritrea] last fall...

...And what were we doing in Eritrea, anyway...

...He looked, in fact, a little apologetic and at the same time rather pleased with himself...

...They stay for a year, become disillusioned, and then come in for an amnesty...

...Those are Beni Amer tribesmen," one official said...

...Kagnew Station, a $60 million complex run by the U.S...

...Signal Corps and the U.S...

...American pilots supposedly on mapping missions over the rugged Eritrean terrain call in the commando police when they spot guerrilla groups...

...Eritrea constantly comes to have more and more importance...

...These kids pay for everything...

...All of these Americans work closely with the Israeli military mission of twenty-five men, who directly train the Ethiopian commando police force of 3,300 men, who directly fight the guerrillas...

...Jackson insists he was picked up accidentally, that they did not know he was coming...

...They are nomads who wander back and forth and do not recognize national borders...

...Neither are the guerrillas simply shiftas...

...We kept him for seven hours...

...Haile Selassie is old, and no one knows what will happen when he dies...

...That's why the ELF has been able to attract these young men so easily...

...we are doing some devilishly strange things in some devilishly strange parts of the world...

...I explained to him I didn't know, and then asked him who he was...

...Where...

...It puts us too closely in league with everything the army does...

...it has continuously hijacked planes, thrown bombs in the capital city of Asmara, and even ambushed Ethiopian troops...

...What struck me as probably the most accurate description of the problem came from an Eritrean businessman who does not particularly sympathize with the guerrillas...

...Eritrea would be only a barren strip of sand and wild mountains on the Red Sea, dizzied by the white heat that sweeps down the Arabian peninsula, except for its sudden enormous strategic importance to the West...

...Jackson is a rugged and extremely attractive and knowledgeable man...

...Those are the questions...

...So my newest liberation front (I had been with or covered those in Guatemala, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Arab countries) had kidnapped an American consul-general in an extremely touchy and strategic area for the United States—and the story had never been reported...

...Her reportorial journeys have included Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Russia, and Latin America as well as the Middle East...

...later it became a United Nations protectorate and later entered into a federal relationship with Ethiopia...

...Even after I was there, unless a reporter asked the direct question of whether the consul-general in Asmara had been kidnapped, embassy officials were denying that American officials had ever seen any guerrillas...

...Independence for Eritrea" is the rallying cry of the ELF, whose leaders are constantly in Cairo and Damascus...

...We wanted him to know about our movement...

...Most of the black African liberation movements fighting colonialism have moved there from Cairo, where they are closer to direct Soviet advice and help...

...It was in that year that the ELF began its operations, and since then it has held approximately one quarter of the area...

...That day last September, Jackson had traveled with a British businessman to the town of Keren, approximately seventy miles from Asmara...

...I'm from the Eritrean Liberation Front," he said brightly, as an uncertain little bell rang in my head...

...Part of it was not so well-meaning: Because of the Vietnam fiasco, Washington does not want our involvement in Eritrea to become widely known...

...In short, it seems clear that the ELF is a typical politico-military liberation front in Twentieth Century style, with the same vague and open pseudo-Marxist ideology of the Palestinian Arab commandos...

...Still, the attempts by American officials to clothe it totally in obscurantist, non-ideological folds gives to the American involvement here a suspicious aura that makes one think of attempts to mislead in other times—in Santo Domingo, Vietnam, Laos, and other places...

...Ethiopians have accepted banditry for centuries...

...I did not...

...In 1965, they captured two American servicemen by mistake and held them for two weeks believing they were Israelis (they apologized...

...His office was in Damascus, that city now so closed to the West...

...Jackson complied, and he and the businessman were taken to a nearby group of thirteen guerrillas...

...What would that do to the Eritrean rebels' interests in secession...

...The Bulgarians, for instance, were shipping "tractors" into Asmara under a front organization called the Red Sea Development Corporation, until one day a crate of "tractors" fell open on the dock and what should fall out but machine guns...

...Other Vietnams," it is roundly warned in the Congress, may spring up anywhere at any time, as though "Vietnams" were now a marketable commodity like frozen fish or packaged kidneys at the Shop and Save...

...Hashim went on to say that they had some 300 troops in the area that day to show to the consul, Murray Jackson...

...But they don't stay with it...

...Still, in places like Eritrea, my own firsthand observations lead me to fear that we seem to be repeating the same infant steps of involvement that led us to where we are in Indochina today...

...These young men—both Moslem and Christian—who get out of school, or drop out, find themselves with no work," he said...

...They aiso asked him to take pictures of them, and finally let him go, convinced he "understood our position...

...What's more, they are so un-nomadic that UNRWA is settling 25,000 of them at Umm Saqata in Sudan's Kassala Province, and the Swedish Red Cross recently contributed $110,000 to build a small hospital and two dispensaries in the new—and permanent—settlement there...

...GEORGIE ANNE GEYER is a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News...

...I had just read about an Ethiopian airliner being hijacked to Aden by the Eritrean Liberation Front, and, being a collector of liberation fronts, I immediately sat the man down in the lobby and grilled him...