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At the end of a rutted road winding past acacia trees on the hills and plains of Eritrea's tense border with Ethiopia lies Korokon Camp.
Many who live here fled from Badme - the flashpoint town whose name has become synonymous with the devastating 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war that killed 70,000 people.
All they want now is to go home.
But they say Ethiopia's occupation of Badme despite a ruling that it belongs to Eritrea - combined with the international community's inaction - is preventing them from getting there.
"The world is totally against us," said Gerekidan Gide, a 73-year-old grandfather sitting in the shade of a hut.
"None of them are helping us, even though the court said Badme is for us, for Eritrea," he said, recalling the 22 cattle, 25 goats, and six donkeys lost while escaping the fighting.
At the end of a war viewed by the outside world as a largely futile but devastatingly costly conflict, the two Horn of Africa neighbours agreed to allow an independent commission give them a "final and binding" ruling on the border.
The commission ruled that Badme - a small, dusty town inhabited by nationals from both countries before the war - was part of Eritrea.
But Ethiopia refused to demarcate the border, calling for further dialogue because of the surprise decision to give Badme to Eritrea.
Despite the presence of a large UN border monitoring force, the international community has done little to enforce Ethiopian compliance with the 2002 ruling.
As many as 300,000 out of Eritrea's 3.6 million population are serving in the military. Diplomats estimate that 25 percent of gross domestic product is spent on the military.
Many, if not most, Eritreans link the stagnating economy with border tensions and their perceptions of the international community's bias towards Ethiopia, the regional power.

Copyright Reuters, 2005

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