Suchergebnisse

Klappentext: Against All Odds is the firsthand account of Eritrea's epic 30-year struggle for political independence and social justice. With almost no outside support, Eritrean nationalists brought successive U.S.- and Soviet-backed Ethiopian governments to their knees. At the same time, they worked to liberate women, workers and peasant farmers from centuries of grinding poverty, chronic hunger and numbing oppression. Connell argues that it was the blending of a social revolution with political objectives that enabled this uniquely self-reliant liberation front to weld Eritrea's fractious society - half Christian, half Muslim, from nine ethnic groups - into one of the most remarkable fighting forces in modern history. In a new Afterword, he describes their efforts to translate wartime values and experience into sustainable strategies for developing the new country.

Nation-building in Africa was hobbled by the inheritance of centralised, authoritarian 'states' prior to the consolidation of nations within them. Armed liberation movements overcame this to some degree by constructing common identities out of the struggle to throw off foreign rule. Yet the degree and kind of control inherent in such a militarised project fuelled despotism in the post-war state. Eritrea seemed to break this mould, with its high level of popular participation in its war effort, its engagement in social transformation during the fighting, and the participatory constitution-building process that followed its victory. Yet less than a decade on, the liberation front shut down the press, jailed its critics, and turned the country into a political prison. This article will situate this reversal within the transition from colony to independent state, explore its specific characteristics, and consider the prospects for a more democratic outcome.

In 1991, after a long, arduous and highly dynamic struggle that transformed many of the bases of their society, the Eritrean people won their freedom. The attempt began to reconstruct their war-ravaged society. But, following the renewal of conflict with Ethiopia in 1998 and continuation of hostilities, many of those earlier gains have been set back and the movement towards popular democracy reversed. The nature of Eritrea's post-independence state, the earlier struggle for gender equality and the current crackdown on dissent are here illuminated.