THE front lines in the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia were calm, an Eritrean presidential spokesman said on Sunday, hours after the signing of a peace agreement between the two countries. This calm doesn't mean much for the moment. The peace deal generated little interest on the streets of the Eritrean capital, largely deserted in the ferocious early afternoon heat, and no announcement of the signing had been broadcast by the state media by 3pm. It's good news. There was some bitterness, too.
Every Eritrean family has a son, a brother or a cousin at the front.
The humanitarian consequences of this war are enormous. The peace plan allows for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in a buffer zone which will extend along the border 25km into Eritrea. It also calls for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from areas deep inside Eritrea, beyond disputed border regions which were at the root of the fighting that broke out in May 1998. Critics of the media coverage of this trial say the only reason the case received the attention it did was because the victims were white. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe now has the power to seize white-owned land without compensation.