ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: To dancing and cheers, Eritrea’s longtime president arrived in Ethiopia for his first visit in 22 years on Saturday amid a dramatic diplomatic thaw between the once-bitter rivals.
Thousands turned out in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, under tight security to welcome President Isaias Afwerki, whose visit is the latest step in ending a long state of war.
Ethiopia’s reformist new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made a similar visit to Eritrea’s capital last weekend, welcomed by Isaias with hugs and laughter.
The 42-year-old Abiy broke the ice last month by fully embracing a peace deal that ended a 1998-2000 border war that killed tens of thousands and left families separated. A series of diplomatic breakthroughs quickly followed as one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts neared an end.
Some excited Ethiopians have compared the restoration of relations with one of the world’s most closed-off countries to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Telephone links have opened, with some Ethiopians calling complete strangers in Eritrea just to say hello, and the first scheduled Ethiopian Airlines flights to Eritrea begin Wednesday.
The international community has embraced the warm reunion as a welcome development in a critical and often unstable region along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and across from the Arabian Peninsula.
The old Eritrean embassy in Addis Ababa has undergone a rapid renovation and is expected to open during Isaias’ visit. The two leaders also are expected to attend a concert of about 25,000 people on Sunday featuring local artists,
Some Ethiopians lining the streets for a glimpse of Isaias’ motorcade chanted songs that criticized the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, which for years was the ruling coalition’s strongest political party and hostile to Eritrea until the new prime minister came to power in April and began a breathtaking wave of reforms in Africa’s second most populous nation.
The gesture of peace with Eritrea has been the most surprising. The country of 5 million people perched on the Red Sea has been ruled by Isaias since gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after years of rebel warfare. While the two countries share close cultural ties, the border war and Ethiopia’s later refusal to hand over disputed border areas was used by the 72-year-old Isaias to keep Eritrea in a state of military readiness, with a system of compulsory conscription that led thousands of Eritreans to flee toward Europe, Israel and elsewhere.
Observers now wonder whether the end of fighting with Ethiopia will lead Eritrea, long criticized by human rights groups, to open up and embrace new freedoms.
Business is another focus, as landlocked Ethiopia seeks outlets for its fast-growing economy and already has signed agreements to use Eritrea’s port facilities.
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Eritrea’s leader visits Ethiopia as dramatic thaw continues
Eritrea’s leader visits Ethiopia as dramatic thaw continues
- Thousands turned out in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, under tight security to welcome President Isaias Afwerki, whose visit is the latest step in ending a long state of war
- The international community has embraced the warm reunion as a welcome development in a critical and often unstable region along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and across from the Arabian Peninsula
DR Congo’s amputees bear scars of years of conflict
GOMA: They survived the bombs and bullets, but many lost an arm or a leg when M23 fighters seized the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo nearly a year ago.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
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