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An earlier phase of the offensive went better for the Ethiopians. In October government forces moved by air, sea and land to capture a stretch of the Red Sea coastal plain held since last year by the rebels. They dislodged the insurgents, who retreated into the hills. In the southwest, Ethiopian armored units recaptured two rebel-held towns, Tessenei and Barentu. Mengistu reportedly was jubilant over the advances. But the gains probably mean little: the recaptured areas were changing hands for the second time--and almost certainly not the last. "We cannot defend the plains against the armor and air power of the Ethiopians," says an E.P.L.F. commander, "but we will return to those areas when the time is right."
Unlike rebels fighting Soviet-supported regimes in Nicaragua, Kampuchea, Afghanistan and Angola, the Eritreans are fighting a conventional, set-piece war. Their estimated 24,000 fighters, backed by thousands of trained militiamen, control several hundred square miles of inhospitable mountainous terrain. Guerrilla units also move freely in rural areas behind Ethiopian lines, though government forces hold the major cities. "The Ethiopians concentrate their effort on crushing our main units and controlling the roads and towns," says E.P.L.F. Politburo Member Sebhat Ephrem. "That strategy does not leave them enough troops to control the countryside."
The incessant fighting has intensified the effects of the drought that led to widespread famine in the region. Heavy fall rains should have produced % healthy crops in Eritrea and neighboring Tigre province; in nearby Sudan, record crops are already being harvested. But in Eritrea and Tigre, so many farmers have been pushed off their land by the war that the Eritrean Relief Association, the rebel's relief arm, estimates that Eritrea's fall crop will reach only 25% of its potential. Says Selass Ghimay, 28, who fled her village because of the drought: "Even if there is food and seed, there will be no peace. I will not go back."
Although the war is the rebels' main preoccupation, their vaguely Marxist, 13-member ruling politburo promotes land reform and supports a health-care system in areas it controls. Through the ERA, the rebels operate 23 camps in Eritrea for 135,000 persons displaced by the war and famine. Trucks and camels transport grain and other supplies to another estimated 750,000 Eritreans, many of them behind Ethiopian lines. Western agencies give the relief operations high marks. "It's really extremely efficient," said Robert Cottingham, the director for Africa at Lutheran World Relief.
At the main rebel hospital in Orota, near the Eritrean-Sudanese border, stone buildings partially dug into mountainsides house operating rooms and recovery wards. Outside a surgical ward, litter-bound and heavily bandaged fighters wait silently in the cool evening air. Among the more advanced procedures performed by E.P.L.F. surgeons: microsurgery to repair burst eardrums and skin grafts for burn victims. "We are very rich in experience here," says the hospital's chief, Dr. Assefaw Tekeste. "There are not many combat surgeons who are well acquainted with removing both Soviet- and American-made bullets and shrapnel."