John Markakis

Anatomy of a conflict: Afar & Ise Ethiopia

Bloodshed at Galalu 23 March 2002: Dawn came that day to find a group of about thirty Afar warriors lying in ambush alongside the road to Djibouti. Newly re-surfaced, Ethiopias sole link to the sea cuts a straight dark line through the desiccated Alligedhi plain. No vehicles were on the road at that early hour. Lorry drivers avoid night travel, preferring to spend evenings in the shantytowns that dot the road, where they find food, drink and women for sale. A bridge nearby takes the road over the dry bed of the Galalu, a seasonal stream that brings rainwater from the Asebot Mountains to the south. Rain had not fallen in many months, and the emaciated animals on the plain were herded to the Awash River, the areas only permanent source of water some distance to the west. A single well on the Galalu streambed keeps water throughout the year, a precious resource for pastoralists in this parched land, and a bone of violent contention in times of drought.

Society and state in crisis: what went wrong in Somalia?

The role of foreign assistance was appreciated and discussed at length. However, it was stressed that aid ought to be equitably distributed and directed to the Somali in need. A number of cases of failure were pointed at, where the donor agencies had acted with no or very little contact or consultation with the recipients. Openness and accountability to the final recipient will also increase effectiveness. It was noted that Somaliland has received very little international aid and support.

The Somali in Ethiopia

Persuading the Somali living in Ethiopia to shed their irredentist aspirations and the dream of Greater Somalia was a conspicuous initial success for the regime that came to power in that country in 1991 (see ROAPE 59,1994). Undoubtedly, the disintegration of the Somali state itself had something to do with it. Be that as it may, the Somali apparently accepted the offer of self-government within a decentralized Ethiopian state and plunged enthusiastically into political competition for control of their regional government. They did this in characteristic Somali fashion: each clan produced its own political party, and soon there were more than a dozen. The Ogaden, the dominant clan in the region that traditionally bore its name, was initially represented by two organizations. The veteran Western Somalia Liberation Front (WSLF), founded in the mid-1970s, was now overshadowed by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), formed a decade later by defectors from the WSLF who had exchanged Somali irredentism for Ogaden nationalism and aspired to set up their own state. Two Islamic organizations also made their appearance one representing militant fundamentalism, the other the traditional religious leadership. While both aspired to transcend clan boundaries, their support, as their names indicate, came mainly from the Ogaden clan. The formal name of the first is Ogaden Islamic Union, and of the second Islamic Solidarity Party Western Somalia Ogaden.

The Somali in the new political order of Ethiopia

With the collapse of the mlitary regime which ruled that country between 1974 and 1991, Ethiopia entered a season of political ferment. The collapse signalled the defeat of forces that had dominated Ethiopia throughout this century, and made possible the political self-assertion of subordinate and minority groups. Whether the end result of this process will be a fundamental and historic change in the political life of this country is as yet uncertain. In the meantime, many political organisations have emerged to represent long suppressed population groups, and they are claiming a share of power in a proposed decentralised state structure whose constituent units are ethnically defined. Among them are more than a dozen organisations claiming to represent the Somali people of Ethiopia.

The military state and Ethiopia's path to ‘socialism’

This paper describes the course of Ethiopias revolution since 1974 and the problems inherent in attempting to build socialism from above, through the agency of the military. The collapse of Haile Selassies absolutist empire followed, and encouraged a groundswell of mass demands for the amelioration of numerous class, regional and other experiences of exploitation and oppression. Although these interests were represented within the army that took power, the military state has asserted its primacy over all class forces, and its commitment to a highly centralised Ethiopia against all regional demands. Markakis shows that ‘garrison socialism’ has thus resulted in increasing coercion as attempts at independent class action are crushed, in mounting regional opposition from the peripheries of the old empire — itself often a consequence of frustrated class aspirations — and an intensification of wars against nationalist and separatist movements.

Eritrea's national charter

The Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) held its Third Congress in February 1994. It was an important occasion, a watershed marking the end of the military struggle and the start of the political process to fashion the state of Eritrea. The Congress adopted a National Charter depicting the Fronts vision of Eritreas future, and sought to define the role of the EPLF in it. The Front renamed itself the Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and resolved to become a broadbased political movement, distinct and separate from the state, open to all nationalist Eritreans regardless of social class and political convictions.

The horn of conflict

Nearly twenty years ago, the editorial of ROAPEs first special issue (No. 30, 1984) on the Horn of Africa opened with the sombre comment: ‘Manifold, violent social conflict is the hallmark of contemporary history in the Horn of Africa.’ Civil wars were raging then in Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. The latter two states had fought their second war a few years earlier, and relations between them were extremely hostile. Each was patronised and armed by one of the rival superpowers that were running a cold war sideshow in this corner of African. Not unrelated to conflict, a biblical famine was ravaging the region for the second time within a decade. The editorial of the second ROAPE special issue (No. 70, 1996) on this region observed that some things there had changed for the better. One major conflict had ended when Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia, and both states now had a young, battle-tested and sophisticated leadership avowedly committed to peace and development. Foreign power interference had subsided with the end of the cold war, and a continent-wide wave of democratisation was seen lapping at the borders of the Horn. Interstate relations in the region had improved greatly, ambitious schemes of regional cooperation were envisaged, and demobilisation of armies and guerilla forces was in progress. Added to the expected peace dividend, foreign investment was anticipated to boost development now that socialism, previously the vogue in the region, had given way to the free market. The editorial also noted some things had changed for the worse. Conflict had caused the collapse of the Somali Republic – a first for Africa – and had spread to Djibouti and to parts of northern Sudan. The latter now claimed the dubious distinction of hosting Africas oldest conflict.

War and the politics of identity in Ethiopia: the making of enemies and allies in the Horn of Africa

The nexus of war and state building is a staple theme in Western historiography. Succinctly put by Charles Tilly, the scholar credited with its formulation, ‘war made the state, and the state made war’ (1985, p. 183). That is because waging war requires resources, and extracting them requires organisation and institutions which promote power centralisation and state making. This analysis of state formation refers to the early modern history of Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because state building in that region is linked to the onset of modernity and technological progress, particularly in warfare, this concept has not been tested in Africa. Warfare in precolonial Africa has not shed the ‘primitive’ label stamped on it by colonial historiography. It is not simply crude technology and artless tactics that define it so. It is also the absence of wider strategies and broader aims allegedly lacking in precolonial warfare in Africa, and the implication that it seldom served grand political designs or stimulated social change. While fascinated with the colourful ritual and religious symbolism that attended ‘tribal warfare’, historians found the rest of it meaningless: ‘African war was seen as less the mother of invention than an ongoing process of wanton destruction’ brought to an end by colonialism (Reid 2007, p. 2). This generalisation is challenged recently by Richard Reid in a study of warfare in precolonial eastern Africa – the Great Lakes region and the Ethiopian Plateau – which concludes that warfare there had similar motives and objectives as elsewhere, and that ‘war facilitated social, political, cultural and economic innovation, as well as causing great suffering’ (2007, p. 235). State building at the time did not involve nation building because the concept did not exist then. Later, when the nation state became the universal model, it involved a far more complex and difficult building process that not many modern states have managed to complete successfully. Tronvoll’s study is a variation on the theme of war and nation-state building. It strives to ascertain the impact of war on people’s self-perception, their national identity and loyalty to the state; neither of which is unambiguous or can be taken for granted in many countries, and especially so in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s history conforms closely to the notion of war as the midwife in the birth of states. Dating back to the thirteenth century, Ethiopia’s royal chronicles record the martial achievements of its rulers, and more recently ‘there was no time at which the empire as a whole could have been said to be at peace’ (Clapham 2000, p. 5). These were not ‘tribal skirmishes’, but involved large, wellequipped armies. In the Battle of Adwa (1896) the Ethiopians mustered a force of more than 100,000 to annihilate an Italian invading force of some 20,000. To field an army of this size required a degree of organisation and tactical sophistication which, in this instance at least, out performed a European force sent to colonise Ethiopia.

Resource Conflict in the Horn of Africa

Introduction PART ONE: POPULATION, RESOURCES, FOOD SECURITY Population Regional Resources Country resources Food Security PART TWO: CONFLICT Regional Movements Ethnic and Clan Movements PART THREE: ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY What is Being Done What Can Be Done

Eritrea: The Transitional Period

I had not seen Asmara since the late 1960s, and my first impression on a recent visit in May 1993 was of a city that had changed hardly at all in the interval. The Eritrean nationalists wisely avoided turning Asmara into a battleground, sparing it the wholesale destruction suffered by Massawa in the fighting and subsequent Ethiopian bombing raids. Asmara retains the neatness, orderliness, and quaint charm of the colonial town lovingly built by the Italians in the early years of this century. Fin de siecle buildings, now brightly repainted, give the city an air of tropical cheerfulness. Cheerfulness is also the prevailing mood of its people who are enjoying peace after many years of violent conflict, and are content in the knowledge that the vexed issue of Eritreas future has been settled to their satisfaction.