Eritrean Liberation Front

The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF; ; ; ), colloquially known as Jebha, was the main independence movement in Eritrea which sought Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia during the 1960s and the early 1970s.

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. During 1961, the ELF began the Eritrean War of Independence. Idris Muhammad Adam and other Eritrean intellectuals founded the ELF as a primary Pan Arab movement in Cairo, but the first act of armed resistance was led by Hamid Idris Awate. Over the course of the 1960s, the ELF was able to obtain support from Arab countries such as Egypt and Sudan. However, tensions between Muslims and Christians in the ELF along with the failure of the ELF to ward off Ethiopia's 1967–1968 counter offensive internally fractured the ELF, causing it to split.

By the mid 1970s, the ELF and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), an ideologically Maoist liberation movement, were the key liberation movements in Eritrea. The EPLF ultimately overtook the ELF as the primary Eritrean independence movement by 1977, and the ELF was subsequently defeated in 1981. Provided by Wikipedia