After the Ethiopian Empire violated a 1952 UN resolution that guaranteed Eritrea the right to an autonomous government, the ELF was established in 1960 in order to waged an armed struggle for independence.

Under Emperor Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian government banned Eritrean political parties, free press and right to assembly.

Early independence movements can be traced back to 1949, when some Muslims living in Eritrea formed a group that would grow into the Eritrean Liberation Front.

[6] Nonetheless, higher unemployment rates and taxes caused tens of thousands of Eritreans to emigrate to Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

[6] It organized Eritreans clandestinely and played a significant role in awakening nationalists sentiments in urban areas until a major police crackdown.

While the ELM had played a positive role in working towards self-determination, the organization proved incapable of escalating to armed struggle against the Ethiopian Empire.

In addition to military training, Egypt also provided media resources for Eritreans to use to gain support for the independence movement.

[4] Some scholars argue that the Eritrean independence movement was religious in nature: by 1971, the majority of ELF army members were Muslim and the Ethiopian ruling class was Christian.

The Arab League countries such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, and Yemen pledged their support for the ELF in April 1962.

[4] The ELF had purchased rifles that were used during the colonial era, leading them to have Awate initiate the first battle in the Eritrean independence movement.

[4] The September 26, 1961 issue of the Ethiopian newspaper Zemen reported Awate's attacks for the first time, labeling him a bandit and giving the Eritrean liberation struggle public attention.

That, with the combination of the Ethiopian government's discovery and subsequent suppression of the ELM, led to the ELF emerging as the main independence movement in Eritrea.

[11] Selassie remarked that "We thank our people of Eritrea who, guided by a deep sense of patriotism and unity, have labored without crease to bring about this advancement.

[12] This era was also when women also began to play a role in the ELF: they sent messages, obtained weapons, and served as cooks and nurses to the soldiers.

[13] The second zone consisted of Eritrea's northern highlands, which was populated by Muslim nomads and led by Omer Hamed Ezaz.

[13] The fourth zone was the central and southern coast, consisting of Muslim nomads and led by Mohammed Ali Omero.

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and President Nasser of Egypt also worked with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in the early 1960s to ease hostility between the two nations.

[4] Ethiopia first decimated hundreds of villages in Eritrea in early 1967, which caused the Arab countries to suspend their support for the ELF in June 1967.

[4] The ELF experienced significant military victories in the aftermath of the 1969 conference, the most prominent of those being the assassination of Ethiopian General Tshomi Ergetu in late 1970.

Hundreds of women and children died, leading French newspaperman Andre Fontaine of Le Monde to remark that the Ethiopians had successfully destabilized the Eritrean independence movement.

[16] Moreover, internal divisions ensured within the ELF during this time period regarding the tension between Muslims and Christians and Eritrea's interactions with Arab countries.

[16] The PLF was frustrated that the ELF Revolutionary Command failed to maintain the support of many Christian fighters during Ethiopia's counter offensive.

[4] Under the leadership of Osman Saleh Sabbe, Romadan Mohamed Nur, and Isaias Afwerki, the EPLF was formed in August 1973 from the ELF - PLF and other breakaway factions.

[4][6][15] Both men received their guerrilla warfare training in China and implemented stringent policies to quash rebellion movements.

Inspired by Maoist ideology, the EPLF managed the Eritrean People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which was a far left-wing political movement that Nur and Afwerki established in 1971.

Meanwhile, the rise of President Anwar El Sadat in Egypt converted the country to a western Cold War alignment.

Nonetheless, Selassie's fall from power enabled the ELF and the EPLF to put aside their differences and jointly invade Asmara in January 1975.

[10] By the mid-1975, Ethiopia began to fight back against the Eritrean independence movements by using propaganda to counter the Arab countries' notion of a holy war.

Furthermore, as Ethiopia was allied with the Soviets, Egypt provided aid to Eritrean independence movements out of fear of the Nile River being controlled by the USSR.

The liberation movements also forced an Ethiopian retreat after a week of fighting in Asmara, leaving many dead soldiers on the streets unburied.