This article explores the health service provided by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) during the Eritrean Liberation War, and its political dimensions and implications. The EPLF used healthcare to define itself politically against its rivals and to penetrate communities. It aimed to incorporate population groups into the struggle, to inculcate EPLF ideology, and to transform the national community. EPLF practitioners were most successful when they cooperated with existing structures of power. The progressive, dynamic, and transformative nature of the healthcare system is inextricable from the coercion sometimes used to achieve the ideals of the EPLF, and the way in which healthcare became an instrument of biopolitical control.
