Starting in 1961, Eritrean insurgents engaged in guerrilla warfare to liberate Eritrea Province from the control of the Ethiopian Empire under Haile Selassie and later the Derg under Mengistu.

As popular dissatisfaction with Ethiopian rule grew, an independence movement emerged under the banner of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in 1961.

Ethiopian imperial army counterinsurgency campaigns against the ELF during the 1960s terrorized the civilian population, leading to greater local support for the insurgency and great international attention being brought to the war.

The British delegation to the United Nations proposed that Eritrea be divided along religious lines with the Christians to Ethiopia and the Muslims to Sudan.

[44] In 1952, the United Nations decided to federate Eritrea to Ethiopia, hoping to reconcile Ethiopian claims of sovereignty and Eritrean aspirations for independence.

The independence struggle can properly be understood as the resistance to the annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia long after the Italians left the territory.

[49] The war started on 1 September 1961 with the Battle of Adal, when Hamid Idris Awate and his companions engaged the occupying Ethiopian Army and police.

The movement enjoyed military aid from various Arab countries as virtually all of its leaders were Muslims from the Beni Amer tribe.

However, it was unable to gain the support of the Christian Eritreans, who perceived it an Islamist movement attempting to turn Eritrea into an Arab Muslim state.

The first group, led by Romodan Mohammed Nur, was made up of Tigre fighters who felt pushed aside by the Beni Amer dominated leadership of the ELF.

The second led by Isaias Afwerki, was composed of Christian fighters who broke off from the ELF in 1969 due to their pro-Arab and Islamist stance.

This shift led to a period of terror in Asmara, with more than 50 individuals killed by the military by the end of 1974, fostering an atmosphere of fear.

To supplement its garrisons, forces were sent on missions to instill fear in the population, including massacres which took place in primarily Muslim parts of Eritrea, including the villages of She'eb, Hirgigo, Elabared, and the town of Om Hajer; massacres also took place in predominantly Christian areas as well.

[48] The advent of these brutal killings of civilians regardless of race, religion, or class was the final straw for many Eritreans who were not involved in the war, and at this point many either fled the country or went to the front lines.

This heavily demoralized the Ethiopian garrisons throughout Eritrea and within the next few months, the EPLF took control of Afabet, Keren, Elabored, and Dekemhare.

[59] In May 1978, using a newly completed airfield in Mekelle in neighboring Tigray, the Ethiopian Air Force began a campaign of saturation bombing of positions in Eritrea held by the ELF and EPLF.

The ground offensive started in July, and in a few weeks captured all the towns that the ELF and EPLF had held in southern and central Eritrea.

However, the EPLF was badly mauled and decided to abandon Keren and the nearby towns, and withdraw to the mountains of Sahel, where the terrain was appropriate for a last stand.

[33] The third offensive took place in January–February 1979, and consisted in a three-pronged attack on Nakfa, the headquarters of Sahel district, where the EPLF had set up its "liberated area" and was beginning to construct defensive lines.

The army Chief of Staff wrote a newspaper article anticipating total victory, entitled: "Days of remnants of secessionist bandits lurking in bushes numbered."

There were some armed clashes between the groups, for instance in August 1980, but large-scale civil war was avoided in part because of military weakness of the ELF.

[48][60] After the comparative lull of 1980–81, 1982 was to be the worst year of war in Eritrea to date, in which the government made an all-out attempt to crush the EPLF.

The forcefully conscripted soldiers in the Ethiopian ranks were used for massive assaults on the EPLF positions around Nakfa, in the hope that sheer weight of numbers would overrun the rebel lines.

Known as the "Stealth Offensive" because of the lack of publicity surrounding it, government forces succeeded in overrunning EPLF lines, but not in inflicting a significant defeat on the rebels.

The government responded by another round of aerial bombardment, and by an offensive launched on 27 October which inflicted heavy casualties on the Eritreans and forced them to retreat back to their original lines.

As insurgencies in Tigray, Wollo and other parts of Ethiopia began to grow worse, the government no longer had the resources to conduct massive offensives in Eritrea and had to focus on other regions as well.

[67][68] In 1991, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had begun advancing towards the capital, forcing Mengistu Haile Mariam to flee the country.

Ashagre Yigletu, Deputy Prime Minister of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE), helped negotiate and signed a November 1989 peace deal with the EPLF in Nairobi, along with Jimmy Carter and Al-Amin Mohamed Seid.

[69][70][71][72] Yigletu also led the Ethiopian government delegations in peace talks with the TPLF leader Meles Zenawi in November 1989 and March 1990 in Rome.

[75] After the end of the Cold War, the United States played a facilitative role in the peace talks in Washington, D.C. during the months leading up to the May 1991 fall of the Mengistu regime.