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In its official statements, the Addis Ababa junta discounted the seriousness of the Eritrean revolt. But in Beirut, an Eritrean guerrilla leader vowed that if the Ethiopian government should try to step up the fighting, "the whole northeast of Africa shall burn."
Civil War. Grandiose as that boast may be, the rebel leader had a point. As the fighting in Asmara indicated, the guerrilla force may well be too large and too well armed to be defeated militarily. Moreover, Ethiopia today is ruled by an unstable, volatile military government riven with quarreling factions. If full-scale fighting continues in the north, the junta could easily find itself in the middle of a multisided civil war in which the chief casualty might turn out to be the ancient empire itself—and its military rulers.