October 6, 2000 "We're happy we could destroy (your factory) so much and cause you so much damage," read the graffiti on a white wall of a burnt cotton factory in Ali Gidir in western Eritrea. It was a message from Ethiopian soldiers. They had demolished cotton factories in Eritrea in a massive sabotage campaign. The mainstay of the Eritrean industry was reduced to dust and more than 500 million yen was lost in a country whose per capita GNP is only 30,000 yen. Having lost homes to destructions by Ethiopians, most citizens of the town had fled to the neighboring Sudan, some 50 kilometers away. Eritrea, a tiny nation in east Africa, became independent from Ethiopia in 1993. The two neighbors got along initially, but a border conflict broke out in the Eritrean territory in May 1998 over the ill-defined borderline, a negative legacy of the colonial rule by Italy. The border war killed about 100,000 people in total and forced one million citizens of Eritrea, or about one-third of its population, to flee to safer places at home and abroad. The two countries finally agreed to a ceasefire in June and a U.N.-led program to facilitate repatriation of the refugees has started. On July 30, 117 trucks carried 851 families home from Sudan. Aden Osman, one of the 3,614 repatriated refugees, said he took shelter at a refugee camp in Sudan with his six family members. "Life at the camp was hell. We were not given enough food or tents to sleep in. The sun was scorching mercilessly. My house may have been destroyed, but I can't wait to go back home. I want to work my one-hectare fields. I want to regain my peaceful life." It is likely, however, to be quite a while before all the refugees return to their old lives. A U.N. report released on September 20 said that only 50,000 of Eritrea's 400,000 internal refugees have managed to return to their communities so far. On September 15, the U.N. Security Council decided to send 4,200-strong peacekeeping forces to the border area. Troops dispatched by China, Canada and 17 other countries will start monitoring the ceasefire. Concern remains, however, that more twists and turns may lie ahead. When the rainy season is over in fall, the water level of the river along the border declines considerably. That makes the border much easier to cross, potentially setting the stage, as some say, for a renewed conflict between the two nations. (Published in SHUKAN ASAHI, October 13, 2000)