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Thread: Africa@War Book Series: Ethiopia -v- Eritrea

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    Council Member CrowBat's Avatar
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    Default Africa@War Book Series: Ethiopia -v- Eritrea

    The Africa@War is a series of books launched by Helion & Co with the aim of providing in-depth coverage of warfare in Africa since 1945.

    I've already presented a few volumes in other threads of this section of the forum, and few others. Here the presentation of the next volume to be published in this series: the part 1 of the saga on Ethiopian and Eritrean wars, fought 1961-2001.

    Primary topic of this volume is the coverage of what could be described as the first two phases of this conflict: the 'low intensity' one, from 1961 until 1977, and the 'high intensity' phase, fought 1977-1987. Research for this book is based on information kindly shared by diverse Ethiopian sources (here I can only once again express my special thanks to specific members of the ACIG.info forum), but also journalists that visited Eritrean insurgencies during the 1980s, and then a number of publications about Ethiopian military released by Ethiopian scholars Gebru Tareke and Fantahun Ayele over the last decade. No doubt, this project is a kind of a 'sequel' to the earlier publication from this series, Wings over Ogaden: the Ethiopian-Somali War, 1977-1978, too.

    Content is as follows:

    Chapter 1: Sunset of the Traditional Ethiopian Military
    Quite early during the work on finalising this project, Adrien correctly concluded that any serious study of Ethiopian-Eritrean wars 'must' start with a study of Ethiopian military history. Reason is not only that this is 'rich': reason is that this is important for how Ethiopians fought most of their wars - from ancient ages right until the late 1970s. Correspondingly, this chapter contains a review of traditional Ethiopian strategy, tactics, military organisation and conduct of warfare through the history - including several sub-chapters on the Italian invasion of 1936.

    Chapter 2: From the Negus to the Derg
    This is the chapter on geo-political backgrounds of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

    Chapter 3: The Derg Nemesis
    A volume of this kind without a decent military study of Eritrean insurgent movements would be a failure. Even more so considering Adrien's expertise in unearthing most obscure details even about smallest militant organisations. Sufficient to say: thanks to his research, we've even got ORBATs for diverse Eritrean and Ethiopian insurgent movements over different periods of time. I'm not ashamed to admit: I didn't contribute anything at all to chapters of this kind. It wasn't necessary: the results of Adrien's expert research are easily surpassing anything I ever considered possible.

    Chapter 4: Ethiopian Armed Forces of the 1970s and 1980s
    During the second half of the 1970s, and through the 1980s, Ethiopian military went through a particularly interesting experience: namely a sort of conversion from an US-supported military force, to a Soviet-supported military force. At the same time, it became involved in multiple, and intensive wars. Unsurprisingly, this process was anything than easy, and it resulted in... well, a host of highly interesting lessons.

    Chapter 5: Counteroffensive in Eritrea
    Detailed description of the Ethiopian offensive of 1977-1978, aimed to recover all of Eritrea and crush the Eritrean insurgency.

    Chapter 6: Red Star – Raising and Falling
    The first Ethiopian offensive was quite successful, but remained incomplete. On the contrary, the Eritrean insurgents withdrew into their 'Sahel Redoubt', in northern Eritrea - and the Ethiopians thus launched an all-out attempt to crush the same.

    Chapter 7: The Road to Afabet
    The Red Star campaign weakened the Ethiopian military beyond the point of recovery. Additional problems emerged for reasons described in detail in Chapter 1. Thus, the Eritreans found themselves in position to launch a major counter-offensive - which, between others, became 'famous' abroad for what the Eritreans stylised as the 'Battle of Afabet'. Here a detailed study of military operations in question.

    Conclusion, thanks to patient and careful studies of all the available sources run by Adrien (and, meanwhile, there are plenty of these), a book I didn't consider possible just 3-4 years ago came into being.

    Distribution of this volume is to start in February.

    Attached bellow are the final cover and a few 'specimen pages'.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by CrowBat; 01-26-2018 at 08:09 AM.

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