Families, friends and dancers wave flags and flowers after the first
commercial flight from Ethiopia to Eritrea in 20 years landed safely in
Asmara on July 18, 2018. PHOTO | COURTESY ERITREA
The first commercial flight from Ethiopia to Eritrea in 20 years
landed safely in Asmara on
Wednesday to be greeted by dancers waving flags and flowers, cementing a stunning rapprochement that has ended a generation of hostility in a matter of days.
Wednesday to be greeted by dancers waving flags and flowers, cementing a stunning rapprochement that has ended a generation of hostility in a matter of days.
As
Ethiopian Airways flight ET 0312 made the momentous switch from
Ethiopian to Eritrean airspace, chief executive Tewolde GebreMariam took
to the on-board intercom to remind the 315 passengers they were part of
history.
“This is the first time that this is
happening in 20 years,” he said, to cheers and applause from passengers
and crew on the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Families
separated from loved ones since the start of a brutal 1998-2000 border
war sat next to dignitaries on the flight, one of two that took off from
Ethiopia on Wednesday morning.
Passenger Senait Tesfaye told Reuters she had not seen her grandmother Abrehet for more than two decades.
Abrehet,
she said, was deported to Eritrea alongside tens of thousands of
Ethiopian residents of Eritrean origin at the start of the conflict.
“We have been longing to see her for all these years,” the 37-year-old said as she cradled her three-month-old son Naby.
“He will now get to spend time with her more than I ever did as a child. Words cannot express the joy we feel as a family.”
Other passengers carried flags and wore t-shirts with slogans celebrating the advent of peace.
The
airline marked the departure of the planes, the other a Boeing 737,
with a message on its Facebook page: “The bird of peace has just flown
to #Asmara #Familyreunion #Ethiopia #Eritrea.”
The two
90-minute flights were the icing on the cake of a peace push by new
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, whose three months in office have
turned politics in his country - Africa’s most populous after Nigeria -
and the wider East African region on its head.
With the
41-year-old former intelligence officer at the helm, the ruling EPRDF
coalition has ended a state of emergency, released political prisoners,
restored phone links and announced plans to open up the economy -
including letting foreigners take stakes in state-run Ethiopian
Airlines.
The airline - which operates Africa’s biggest
fleet - stands to save millions of dollars a year by using Eritrean
airspace instead of taking circuitous routes to some Middle East
destinations, Tewolde told Reuters.
“This is a big occasion for us,” he said.
The importance for ordinary Ethiopians is far greater.
Surafel
Demissie, an Ethiopian priest whose parents died during his childhood,
had never been to Eritrea - the country of his mother’s birth - nor met
any family members.
“God is about to bring us together. Today, God dismantled the wall,” he said.
Abiy’s predecessor as prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, told Reuters on board one of the flights that he felt “heartfelt joy”.
“There has been hatred between us for the last twenty years - now that has been reversed,” he said.
In
his boldest move since coming to power in April, Abiy offered last
month to make peace with Eritrea 20 years after the conflict in which an
estimated 80,000 people died, many of them scythed down by machine-gun
fire in World War One-style trench warfare.
Full-blown
fighting ended in 2000 but troops have faced off ever since, depriving
Ethiopia of access to Red Sea ports and leaving Eritrea to rely on
lengthy military conscription to repel the threat from its giant
neighbour.
Indefinite national service is the main
reason thousands of young Eritrean men flee every month, many making the
perilous journey across the Mediterranean in search of a better life in
Europe.
Acknowledging that the conflict was placing an
unsustainable economic burden on both sides, Abiy has since visited
Asmara and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki reopened his nation’s
embassy in Addis Ababa on Monday.
The countries barred
their citizens from visiting each other during the conflict and
foreigners wanting to travel from one country to the other had to
connect via a third country.
“It is crazily expensive,” said one Kenya-based Eritrean businesswoman
No comments :
Post a Comment