I Didn't Do It for You (46 page)

14
Author's interview

15
‘Stavropoulos', Box 67, S-0466-0128, 1963, UN Archives

Chapter 9 The Gold Cadillac Site

1
John Rasmuson,
A History of Kagnew Station and American Forces in Eritrea
, Public Affairs Office, 1973, p 40

2
Author's interview

3
Anthony Cave Brown,
Bodyguard of Lies
, WH Allen and Co, 1977, p 357

4
Harold G Marcus,
The Politics of Empire: Ethiopia, Great Britain and the United States 1941–1974
, The Red Sea Press, 1995, p 84

5
US Senate Hearing before the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, August 4, 5 and 6, 1976, p 36

6
Evelyn Waugh,
Waugh in Abyssinia
, Penguin, 1986

7
John Spencer,
Ethiopia at Bay
, Reference Publications, 1984, p 161

8
US Senate Hearing, p 26; John Spencer told the subcommittee: ‘The
United States had indicated to the Ethiopian Government in advance of the December, 1950 Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, that once Ethiopia re-assumed sovereignty over Eritrea, it (the US) would want to conclude an agreement by which the United States would take over the large communications center there, just outside Asmara.'

9
Bereket Habte Selassie,
Eritrea and the United Nations
, The Red Sea Press, 1989, p 37

10
Author's interview

11
History has exposed the absurdity of this thesis. The current Eritrean government enjoys excellent relations with the Israelis, with whom it feels it has a great deal in common

12
Author's interview

13
Tom Farer, author of
War Clouds on the Horn of Africa
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1979; ‘I don't think it makes any difference at all to Western strategic interests, which include Israeli interests, whether or not there is an independent Eritrea which is oriented toward the Arab world,' he testified before the US Senate Hearing in 1976

14
The Politics of Empire
, p 104

15
Author's interview

16
Haile Selassie did not forgive the Crown Prince for meekly falling in with the coup plotters' plans. Asked why he had not designated Asfa Wossen as heir to the throne, the Emperor is reported to have replied: ‘Why should We? He has already been on the Throne!'
Ethiopia at Bay
, p 317

17
The Politics of Empire
, p 135

18
ibid, p 153

19
ibid, p 178

20
Terrence Lyons, ‘Great Powers and Conflict Reduction in the Horn of Africa',
Cooperative Security: Reducing Third World Wars
, (ed, I William Zartman and Victor A Kremenyuk), Syracuse University Press, 1995 p 245;
see also
Terrence Lyons, ‘The United States and Ethiopia: The Politics of a Patron–Client Relationship',
Northeast African Studies
, vol 8, nos 2–3, 1986

21
Bahru Zewde,
A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855–1991
, James Currey Ltd, 1991, p 186.

22
Author's interview

Chapter 10 Blow Jobs, Bugging and Beer

1
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in this chapter come from author's interviews

2
Stroppy American behaviour appears to have been a long-running feature of life in Kagnew. In January 1957, the base was the scene of perhaps the NSA's only strike, triggered by servicemen's unhappiness over new regulations. James Bamford,
Body of Secrets: How America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ eavesdrop on the world
, Arrow Books, 2002, p 161

3
Victor Marchetti and John Marks,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
, Jonathan Cape, 1974, p 226

4
US Defence Department news release, January 1964

5
John Hallahan on www.topsecretsi.com

6
Bizarrely, Kagnew radio's pop hits–the Doors, the Beach Boys, Procol Harum–were to end up as musical accompaniment to life in the EPLF trenches. They were taped off the station by appreciative Eritrean students, who took the cassettes with them into the Sahel

7
Website address: www.kagnewstation.com

8
Alex de Waal,
Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia
, Human Rights Watch, 1991, p 44

Chapter 11 Death of the Lion

1
Amina Habte Negassi, ‘The Massacre of Besik-Dira and Ona', paper presented at the First International Conference on Eritrean Studies, July 2001, University of Asmara

2
Ethiopia at Bay
, p 335

3
New York Times
, 1974

4
Ethiopia at Bay
, p 335

5
Author's interview

Chapter 12 Of Bicycles and Thieves

1
Not his real name

2
This was the assassination that Tzadu Bahtu, who played the part of lookout, served time for. Tortured for 55 days, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison as an accomplice but escaped during the Sembel operation

3
Dan Connell recounts this story in detail in
Against All Odds–A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution
, The Red Sea Press, 1997, pp 10–11

Chapter 13 The End of the Affair

1
Marina Ottaway,
Soviet and American Influence in the Horn of Africa
, Praeger Publishers, 1982, p 100

2
National Security Decision Memorandum 231, August 14, 1973

3
Paul Henze, ‘Arming the Horn 1960–1980', Wilson Center Working Paper No 43, Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution, December 1982
In
Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union
(Croom Helm, 1986), David Korn says Washington approved a $100m military programme for 1974–5, which compared with the annual $10m normally granted Haile Selassie. ‘Altogether from 1974 to 1977 the United States supplied Ethiopia with approximately $180m in arms, in dollar value approximately one and a half times more than everything it had furnished up to 1974.'

4
Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union
, p 8

5
Author's interview

6
Evil Days
, p 50

7
Basil Burwood-Taylor was held by the EPLF in a mountain ravine for four months. Like so many kidnap victims in Eritrea, he retains surprisingly fond memories of his ordeal. ‘In retrospect, being kidnapped was a wonderful experience,' he told me. He returned to Asmara in 1998 and shared a drink with one of his former abductors. ‘There are no hard feelings. They know they are always welcome in my house.'

8
Yohannes Okbazghi,
Eritrea, a Pawn in World Politics
, University of Florida Press, 1991, p 229; ‘United States policy toward Ethiopia', American Foreign Policy Basis Documents 1977–1980, doc 662, p 1233

9
Against All Odds
, p 23

10
Author's interview

11
Robert G Patman,
The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa: the Diplomacy of Intervention and Disengagement
, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p 274; Y. Bochkarev, ‘What a Hope!',
New Times
, 20, 1986, pp 16–17

12
For more on the disastrously mixed messages Washington sent Somalia during this key period in which it was gearing up to invade the Ogaden, see
One Hundred Years of American–Ethiopian Relations
by David H Shinn, former ambassador to Addis; see also,
Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union

13
Author's interview

14
Author's interview

Chapter 14 The Green, Green Grass of Home

1
All quotes come from author's interviews. Ex-Fighters find talking about themselves awkward. A few of those I spoke to were happy to be identified; most, while having nothing to hide, felt deeply uncomfortable with the notion. Rather than use some names and omit others, I therefore decided to keep all contributions to this section anonymous

Chapter 15 Arms and the Man

1
Author's interview

2
Author's interview

3
Marina Ottaway,
Soviet and American Influence in the Horn of Africa
, Praeger Publishers, 1982, p 67

4
Oleg Gordievsky and Christopher Andrew,
KGB. The inside story of its foreign operations from Lenin to Gorbachev 1941–1990
, Hodder and Stoughton, 1990

5
My calculation is a very conservative one. It is based on annual figures from ‘World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers', compiled by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Since these exclude the amount the Soviet Union spent on military advisers and training, and arms exports from Warsaw Pact nations made with Moscow's blessing, the real sums for Soviet military support are far larger than those given

6
Author's interview

7
Author's interview

8
Riccardo Orizio,
Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators
, Secker and Warburg, 2003

9
‘World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers'

10
Robert G Patman, ‘Soviet–Ethiopian Relations: The Horn of Dilemma', chapter 5 of ‘Troubled Friendships: Moscow's Third
World Ventures', edited by Margot Light, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993, p 115

11
Robert G Patman,
The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa: the Diplomacy of Intervention and Disengagement,
p 277

12
M Volkov, ‘Militarisation versus Development',
Asia and Africa Today
, no 5, 1987, p 9

13
Talk of the Devil

14
Lev Zaikov, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, September 10, 1987

15
‘World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers'

16
16 Author's interview

Chapter 16 ‘Where are our socks?'

1
The reporter, Alemseged Tesfai, later became a respected Eritrean historian and playwright. His account of the battle of Afabet is to be found in
Two Weeks in the Trenches
, The Red Sea Press, 2002

2
Author's interview

3
The EPLF tank man whose accurate shot had brought the convoy grinding to a halt at Ad Shirum was fêted as a hero, but he did not enjoy his status long. During the Massawa campaign, he bent too quickly to reload the tank's gun and his head received the full impact of the recoil, killing him

4
Author's interview

5
The three Soviet advisers were released in March 1991, after Moscow acceded to EPLF demands that it remove its ships from the Dahlak Islands and stop airlifting supplies to Asmara. Interpreter Alexander Kuvaldin, who now lives in Minsk, told me he spent his time in captivity giving EPLF fighters English lessons and teaching them how to drink shots ‘Russian-style'. Being held prisoner had left him with some psychological problems, he said, ‘but when I look back I don't remember any bad things from that time'.

6
Author's interview

7
For a detailed account of the Ethiopian army's failings in this period,
see
Gebru Tareke, ‘From Af Abet to Shire: the Defeat and Demise of Ethiopia's Red Army 1988–89',
Journal of Modern African Studies
, vol 42, 2, June 2004

8
Harold G Marcus,
A History of Ethiopia
, University of California Press, 1994, p 213

9
Author's interview

10
Author's interview. Varennikov later took part in the abortive August 1991 attempt to unseat Gorbachev. Exonerated for his role in the attempted coup, he has now entered Russian politics