By Léa-Lisa WesterhoffPosted on 04-03-2019Modified on 04-03-2019 at 17:56
First part of our series on reconciliation on the road between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Twenty-one years ago, Badme was the starting point for a conflict that left tens of thousands dead between 1998 and 2000. Today, the inhabitants of this village, along the 1,000-kilometer border separating the two countries, welcome the peace reached with Eritrea last July, but fear for their future as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abyi Ahmed pledged to implement the conclusions of a commission on the demarcation of border that assigns their village Badme to Eritrea.
From our special correspondent to Badme,
Wherever you look, the horizon is only stony ground and warmth. On the left the cemetery. On the right, the town of Badme unfolds along a dusty track. Straight ahead, at the end of the trail that serves as the main road and is lost in a vast arid area, Eritrea, inaccessible for 19 years. It is hard to imagine that it was in this small town that the war started and that the small town was the scene of one of the most deadly offensives of what has sometimes been called the "war of cousins".
" Do you see the river there? "Asks Telahun Gebremehdin, administrator of this village of 5,000 inhabitants," it is our border! At the end of his finger, in the distance, a point shines. This is where the Mereb River is located which demarcates the border with Eritrea according to the inhabitants of Badme. As a result, when we tell him about Badme's possible return to Eritrea, the administrator gets upset: " It's not the Algiers accords or the two governments who know who owns this land, it's us. population, we who live here who know who owns this place and they too, the Eritreans, they know it! "
Everywhere, along the track that serves as the main street, regardless of gender or generation is the same story. It is unthinkable that Badme could pass under Eritrean administration. How many fighters have fallen for Badme to stay in Ethiopia? It is unknown, but the memory of this military butchery, one of the last of the twentieth century, is as present as the dust in the air. " I remember the war, " says an old lady in front of the TV in her small living room open on the street. " We were crawling to avoid attacks, it was shooting! After all that, if someone asks to recover this land, nobody will give it to him. It's impossible ! "
" Badme blew blood "
Biniam, his 23-year-old grandson, was barely two years old when the war started, but for him also Badme's nationality is not in doubt. He regrets that the peace concluded with Eritrea last July has not changed anything, for the time being, in the daily life of his city. " The priority is to open the border, so that we can circulate, go back and forth on each side, because for now we say there is peace, but here there is no change, buses can not go to Eritrea and vice versa. We are stuck. "
For Telahune Gebremehdin, the administrator of the city, if the war started in Badme, it should also end in Badme: "It's good that they opened the border in Zalambessa (border post to the east) or Humera (border post to the west), but they should start with badme. It's in Badme that the blood flowed, it's because of Badme that the war started. "
The administrator says that shortly after the opening of the first border post, a delegation of Ethiopians wanted to go to Eritrea to discuss demarcation of the border with its neighbors. But the Eritrean soldiers would have asked them to turn around. In the distance passes a camel driver with a dozen animals. In this village located at the end of a track about fifty kilometers after the last tar, and more than a thousand kilometers from the capital Addis Ababa, nothing seems to indicate that Badme will change nationality. For its inhabitants, the border is still a few kilometers further north, and the road that leads to it remains a stalemate.
The Badme cemetery, martyred city of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea which made between 80 000 and 100 000 dead.
RFI / Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
Telahun Gebremehdin, the administrator of Badme, points to the Mereb River which, according to him, is the natural border between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
RFI / Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
The small village of Badme, the last Ethiopian village before the border with Eritrea, is built along a track that leads nowhere, the border with Eritrea still being closed.
RFI / Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
The small village of Badme, the last Ethiopian village before the border with Eritrea, is built along a track that leads nowhere, with the border with Eritrea still closed.
RFI / Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
This elderly lady was born and raised in Badme. For her to pass under Eritrean administration is unthinkable.
RFI / Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
On the same subject
In Ethiopia, Eritrean refugees dreaming of elsewhere
Between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a new border post opens
Eritrea restricts several crossing points on the Ethiopian border
comments