Hamid Idris Awate

Who is Hamid Idris Awate?

Hamid Idris Awate was born of Beni-Amer descent in the village of Gerset, in the lowlands between Tessenei and Golluj in what was then Italian Eritrea. Before the independence struggle he was already known locally as an armed shifta (irregular fighter), and in the years after Eritrea's federation with Ethiopia he was persuaded, reportedly by the nationalist Idris Muhammad Adam, to bring his fighters under the banner of the newly founded Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). On 1 September 1961, Awate led a small band of eleven guerrilla fighters in an attack on Ethiopian police and administrative posts in western Eritrea, including one on Mount Adal, in a clash that Eritrean historiography marks as the opening act of the thirty-year Eritrean War of Independence. He was wounded in the fighting and died the following year, in May 1962; to protect the fledgling movement's morale, his companions kept his death secret for roughly four years. Decades later, after Eritrean independence, the government erected a monument at his grave site in 1994. He is remembered across Eritrea as the man who fired the first shot of the armed struggle for independence.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Hamid Idris Awate" · Face2Face Africa, "Hamid Awate: The pioneer of Eritrea's first quest for freedom from Ethiopia" · Wikipedia, "Eritrean Liberation Front"