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Assefaw is an avid student of U.S. Army Medical Corps practices during the Viet Nam War. "The Americans had helicopters, of course, and we don't," he says. "But we still manage to get casualties from the field to surgery in twelve hours, compared with eight hours for the Americans in Viet Nam. And of the casualties who make it to a hospital, our mortality rate is 25 per 1,000, compared with 20 per 1,000 for the Americans."
The constant air bombardment is probably the major cause of casualties. It also shapes practically every aspect of life behind E.P.L.F. lines. Unless skies are overcast, vehicles are not permitted to move during the day. Trucks or jeeps are hidden beneath nearly every acacia tree. Antiaircraft guns are on constant alert. Every rebel building is covered with vines and tree branches; * some permanent structures have 2-ft.-thick stone walls that can withstand barrages of shrapnel. Civilians are regularly lectured on how to wipe burning napalm jelly from their skin.
The refugee camps are more difficult to hide and defend. This fall the Ethiopians struck at nine camps, killing 66 civilians. At Solomuna camp, home to 7,000 Eritreans, including 500 children in an orphanage, Ethiopian MiGs dropped 20 bombs in one day last September. Nine people were killed, including six children, and 23 were wounded. Solomuna's residents now rise before dawn and climb into narrow ravines, where they spend the day huddled under rock overhangs. The sound of a distant MiG one morning instantly silenced several hundred chattering children, as all peered skyward. Ghiday Haile, 33, sat under a rock ledge holding her four-year-old son. "Women who were friends of mine died in the attack," she recalled. "I will never again spend the sunlight hours in that camp."
But even the night can be perilous. Late one evening an Ethiopian plane, probably a Soviet-made An-12, unleashed a payload of bombs and flares near the camp, lighting up the sky for miles around. The brilliant display, which the Eritreans call the "Christmas tree," fell harmlessly into the mountains. But ERA workers report that the night raids frighten refugees for miles around. "What the Ethiopians want," says one, "is to scare our people into leaving these camps and force them to cross into Sudan or into government- controlled camps."
Financial support for the rebels comes from some 500,000 Eritreans living overseas. The U.S. and other Western governments have not backed the E.P.L.F., in part because some of the group's leaders are Marxists. In addition, like many African countries, they are reluctant to support what some see as a secessionist movement. Says a U.S. State Department official: "(Such) support establishes precedents that could prove explosive all around the continent." Rebel leaders, however, have long insisted that the U.S. and the West have a responsibility to back Eritrean independence. They point out that in 1962 Haile Selassie asserted Addis Ababa's control over Eritrea in violation of a 1950 U.N. resolution that called for Eritrean political autonomy. "We base our case on that U.N. resolution," says Sebhat. "And we want the Americans and the West to act according to their promises at the U.N." The prospect remains unlikely. But the rebels believe more strongly than ever that it is a key to ultimate victory.