Re: Ethiopian history and politics, part one: From the Solomonic dynasties tothe Battle of Adwa

["Ghebremichael Woldeselassie" <ghebremichael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Your last posts are excellent material Louis, but leave out the peculiar
position of Eritrea, which is the keystone to post-revolutionary events in
the Horn.  As you say, history leaves its mark, and this is an interesting
case.

Eritrea is shaped like an axe, with a long handle extending down the Red Sea
coast that separates Danakil from Ethiopia, and now precludes direct access
to the Red Sea for the whole of Ethiopia.  (Some would say that it is also
like Michael Gorbachev's birthmark!).  It never fell under the full control
of the Amhara, nor the land-tenure systems of gult and rist.  Travelling
across the border from Tigray to Eritrea in the highlands presents a great
surprise.  While the people look the same, and have the same religion and
language (we can tell the difference only from the accent), the way they
live is very different.  Apart from the main towns in Tigray, very many
people there live in farmsteads dotted around the country - a result of the
division of land among ristegnas.  Even though the land is identical in
highland Eritrea, most rural people live in hundreds of villages and
hamlets, often on prominent hills.  The farmland surrounds these villages.
Traditionally land was communally owned (although the PFDJ/EPLF government
placed all under state control in 1995, with usufructory rights similar to
those established by the Derg in Ethiopia) and was divided among families in
a cycle of several years.  This meant that no family farmed the same land
continuously - for some time it will have better land, for others not so
good,  Naturally, this means a fundamental cultural difference between
highland Eritreans and their 'cousins' in Tigray, in particular that an
individual family is to some extent protected from shortages by
semi-communal living.  In Tigray, the risks are higher, and this partly
explained the disastrous effects of famine there in 1973-4 and 1984-5.
Eritrean land tenure bred an arrogance (good-bad!) and backward people there
call we Tigrayans 'agame' or beggars, because periodically poor people in
our region were reduced to that.  During the war against the Derg, thousands
of Tigrayan women and children fled to Eritrea, eking out a living by
begging and prostitution.  The EPLF/PFDJ dealt with these unfortunates by
simply exporting them back to Tigray in 1992-3.

How is it that this sharp division among the same people came about?  The
Axumite kingdom was founded by Semitic colonisers from across the Red Sea,
and encompassed much of highland Eritrea, with its capital at Axum in
Tigray.  However, its economic heart was the port of Adulis on the Red Sea
in the Gulf of Zula, which exposed it to a far greater contact with the
outside world than the southern highlands of Ethiopia; like Djibouti and
Somalia it experienced contacts with Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, Persia and
the Ottoman Empire.  Becoming Christian in the 4th century, the later
expansion of Islam saw it fade, until the destruction of Adulis in the 8th
century (possibly by earthquake, possibly by a great flood from the
highlands).  The Axumites contracted southwards, Eritrea coming under the
control of the nomadic Beja from Egypt, then a loose association of highland
potentates, known as the Rulers of the Sea (Bahri Negassi), with coastal
control in the hands of first the Ottoman Empire, and then with the
connivance of the British, into Egyptian hands in the 1870s.  This shifting
power and waves of incomers made such a small region a complex mosaic.
Maybe the village-dominated semi-communal way of life is a relic from the
Axumites, but more likely it was a necessity for defence and
self-sufficiency.  (Eritreans of the highland parts are known by their
native village, wherever they live, and are well known for fierce rivalry)
Whatever, by the time of the Italian colonization in 1890, there was no such
entity as Eritrea, and it was not part of the Amhara Empire.  What united
its people was the experience of Italian colonization for 50 years.  This
brought a universal racism, but unprecedented levels of economic growth and
education.. The 10 year British Mandate from 1942-52 brought, to a limited
extent, a form of electoral democracy completely absent from Ethiopia
itself.  Though a creation of imperialism, Eritrea experienced enormous
gains compared with the rest of Ethiopia.

After Word War 2, Eritrea became a pawn in the Cold War, the Soviet Union
supporting its outright independence (ironic considering their role in
supporting the Derg's disastrous attempt to bring it under full Ethiopian
control after 1974) while the US and Britain realised its strategic
importance in global communications (the Kagnew communications and
electronic spy base in Asmara was the relay to Diego Garcia in the Indian
Ocean, as part of a world-wide network)  In 1950, the UN General Assembly
resolved a compromise of "an autonomous unit, federated with Ethiopia (A
British pawn) under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian crown", but with a
constitution "based on the principle of democratic government".  Nothing
could be more contradictory, but this was to the rejoicing of most
Eritreans.  The British handed over power in September 1952, with Haile
Selassie appointing his son-in-law as governor-general (supposedly a
ceremonial figure like those in the British Commonwealth).

Within weeks the contradiction between a fledgling bourgeois democracy and
the feudalism of Addis Ababa became apparent with a wave of arrests and
assassinations in Asmara, and the fleeing to exile of prominent Eritrean
figures.  An Assembly was constituted by direct male suffrage in the cities
and towns, and of rural delegates appointed by regional electoral colleges,
but its life was uneasy.  It comprised a great range of political opinion -
the Pro-Italia favouring continued protectorate status under Italy, as in
part of Somalia, Eritrean nationalists ( a divided majority), the Arabita
(Muslim oriented) and The Ethiopian Unionist Party.  Internal division
allowed increasing manipulation by Addis, culminating in a rigged majority
vote in 1959 for the replacement of ragged Eritrean laws by the Ethiopian
penal code.  Wave after wave of demonstrations and general strikes failed to
halt this erosion, and by decree, the chief of administration abolished the
federation, Eritrea being physically annexed to become a mere province of
Ethiopia in November 1962.

While sporadic armed opposition to the Italian rule followed colonisation in
1890, a coherent Eritrean nationalist force did not appear until after its
annexation by Addis.  The Eritrean Liberation Front, formed in 1960, began a
guerrilla struggle that lasted for 12 years againsst Haile Selassie, a large
section of the Ethiopian army being engaged in suppressing the revolt with
great brutality.  The ELF accommodated to ethnic and religious differences
in diverse Eritrea, maintaining different policies in different areas.  The
internal struggle among  Eritrean nationalists is a long and complex one,
but the EPLF emerged as the unifying force with a firm non-sectarian and
socialist policy.  By 1984 it was the only significant force in the field.
However, in 1987 it merged with the ELF-Central Leadership at its Second
Congress, and from then on diluted and finally liquidated any socialist
programme.  Its central aim was the creation of independent Eritrean state.

Relations between EPLF and the main force opposed to the Derg in Ethiopia,
the TPLF, were never easy.  The TPLF was highland, Tigrigna dominated, and
not for a separate Tigrayan entity.  An independent Eritrea would cut off
all access to the Red Sea, so a large faction in TPLF was anti Eritrean
independence.  However, the TPLF supply lines were controlled by EPLF, and
in any case the latter was by far the largest force in the field, and the
best armed, mainly by capture of Soviet weaponry from the huge Derg army in
Eritrea.  By 1990, when the only parts of Eritrea remaining in Derg hands
being Asmara and Keren, the EPLF had reached stalemate - Mengistu held half
a million Eritreans as hostages in those cities, threatening to annihilate
all if the EPLF mounted an offensive.  At that point, arms and fighters were
diverted to Tigray by the EPLF, strengthening the hand of the faction around
Meles Zenawi which was neutral on the question of Eritrean independence.  It
was Eritrean arms that allowed the TPLF, now allied with the Oromo and Afar
liberation movements in the EPRDF, to rapidly take Addis in May 1991.

This is the decisive point for subsequent history.  Eritrea was a region
without any resources, devastated by 30 years of war, and from which every
useful piece of industrial plant had been removed by the Derg.  Economically
it could not survive without assistance from the new regime in Addis.  The
TPLF-dominated government, was regionalist in nature, bent on restoring some
of the Axumite glory to Tigray by a massive programme of rural and
industrial development.  To do that, without a revolt in the rest of
Ethiopia, the needed materials had to come in through the Eritrean ports,
dominantly Massawa.  The EPLF was overwhelmingly the strongest military
force in the region, so an accomodation had to be reached.  Instead of
launching its own currency on independence - there was nothing to support
that - Eritrea accepted the birr as its currency.  But more than that, it
was given freedom to set exchange rates differently from those in Addis, but
semi-clandestinely.  It adopted a rate between the official one in Addis and
that (at least 20% lower) in Jiddah.  That was the central item in the
economic collaboration between Addis and Asmara.  As well as the profits
arising from smuggling of Ethiopian export commodities across the border,
Eritrea had an assured income from port dues, both at Massawa for Tigrayan
imports, and at Assab for trade involving southern Ethiopia.

This was nothing less than criminal on both parts, albeit understandable
from the Eritrean standpoint (today, PFDJ spokespersons rationalise this
parasitism as a means of war reparations from Ethiopia).  However, such
manipulation of worthless paper could not last.  With the launch of the
Eritrean new currency (the nacfa) in 1997, on the basis of the foreign
exchange accumulated from the parasitism, the clandestine alliance was at an
end.  Meles faction lost power in all but name, to be replaced by the
anti-Eritrean faction of the TPLF, who could not regain Eritrea, but
conspired to capture a sizeable part of southern, central Eritrea, now known
to have large gold reserves, as well as untilled but highly fertile soils,
and to restore the Red Sea port of Assab as the main port for the rest of
Ethiopia.  In a sense the game is up for the EPRDF, now that the economic
conspiracy that exploited the rest of Ethiopia is widely known.  Yet they
cannot beat the Eritrean defenders.  The war is a stalemate, and any
rational solution - such as the creation of Assab as a freeport, or even its
return to Ethiopia, or just a withdrawal to previous boundaries - would
unleash huge unrest in the rest of Ethiopia and the fall of the EPRDF.  From
our standpoint, it is a war of jingoism.  But there is as yet no other
political force in Ethiopia capable of holding the country together.

What should be clear from this account of Eritrean issue, is that its
independence is not some kind of balkanisation, but rather a unique
emergence of a unity where none existed before, out of the efforts of those
people who came together in common struggle against many oppressors.  We
support its existence, but are strongly critical of its regime's
opportunistic politics that have both created an increasingly inept regime
here, and exploited ordinary people throughout the most of Ethiopia.  Its
emergence must be accepted in any future for the Horn.  Its fate is bound up
with the rest.

Tsegai for all

A happy New Year and Millennium to all

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