‘Peace Is Everything’: Ethiopia And Eritrea Embrace Open Border After Long Conflict

‘Peace Is Everything’: Ethiopia And Eritrea Embrace Open Border After Long Conflict

Almost everywhere you go in Zalambessa, a town on Ethiopia’s border with Eritrea, there are reminders of war: buildings in rubble, walls riddled with bullet holes and a border still delineated by two rows of trenches.

But now, dramatic change is underway. Many of the troops have pulled out. A little cafe has popped up right on the border. Children are selling candies and drinks to travelers and, for the first time in two decades, people and goods are transiting the crossing between Zalambessa and the Eritrean town of Serha.

Tesfagabir, a man in his 40s, runs a horse-drawn cart taxi back and forth over the border. Like others interviewed in this story, he would give only his first name because he still fears the Ethiopian government. He says every time he crosses the border, it feels like a dream.

“Peace is everything,” he says. This war never made sense to him. “We have children from them and they have children from us,” he says. “We are connected by blood.”

Ethiopia and Eritrea were once a single country. Eritrea gained independence amicably from Ethiopia in 1993, but a few years later, the countries went on to wage one of Africa’s deadliest wars.

A red carpet was placed to welcome Eritreans to Ethiopia as two land border crossings between the countries were reopened in September, in Zalambessa, Ethiopia.

AFP/Getty Images

Then this past July, amid a whirlwind of political change in Ethiopia, the two countries declared an official end to the war. In September, the Serha-Zalambessa crossing was opened for the first time in almost 20 years.

Wheat from rubble

Once that happened, one of the first things that 47-year-old Mezgebo did was return to his family home. Until the opening in September, he could not have even stepped here because his family home was built right between the two trenches separating Serha and Zalambessa.

Unfortunately, when he got home, all he found was a pile of rocks. The house had probably been destroyed by a tank or a bomb.

Mezgebo, 47, found only a pile of rocks when he returned to his family home. But he began work anyway, winnowing his wheat within view of the Eritrean border.

Eyder Peralta/NPR

He got to work anyway, winnowing his wheat right next to the rubble, within view of Eritrean soldiers, trying to bring the place back to life. When the war started, lots of villagers here disappeared — taken by an enemy army, Mezgebo says. He hasn’t seen his brother in decades.

Since the violence ended and the border reopened, lots of people have returned, he says. But he doesn’t expect to see his brother again.

“I don’t feel hope that I will see him,” he says. What he wants is for Ethiopia and Eritrea to have the courage to tell him what he knows in his heart — that his brother is dead.

“Things could potentially explode”

Ethiopia and Eritrea go way back. Ethiopia’s emperor signed away the territory to the Italians at the end of the 19th century in exchange for financial assistance and military supplies.

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