A country with a once glorious history, which has for centuries been the cradle of civilisation in Eastern Africa, and has played host to various exiled communities, today’s Ethiopia is struggling with its internal economic and political issues, and seemingly engaging its neighbours in endless conflicts in a bid to maintain its internal cohesion vis-à-vis external enemies.
Known as Punt to ancient Egyptians who established trade lines with the country 3500 years ago, Ethiopia’s weight in history is heavy and its influence on the destiny of the region, whether as an Empire, a trading partner, or as the keeper of the sources of the Nile, is wide - good or bad.
Fast forward to modern day Ethiopia, which has gone, in 50 years, from an Empire, to a communist mono-party state, to a “federal parliamentary republic with a dominant-party system” to quote the Economist.
The communist era, which ushered the beginning of the Ethiopian Civil war in 1974, was also characterised by the government-led Red Terror campaign which may have killed up to 500,000 persons (according to Amnesty International) also saw famines, forced deportations, and the use of hunger as a weapon.
The civil war only ended in 1991, amidst widespread famine (remember the 1985 Live Aid concert? It was raising funds for Ethiopia...) unleashing the dormant national conflicts that seemed to have been bubbling under the surface - and sometimes taking part in - the civil war.
Rather far away, another country’s communist regime was also falling apart, leading to civil strife. 1991 was the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, with the secession of the Slovenia and Croatia, followed shortly thereafter by Macedonia and Bosnia-i-Herzegovina.
Without entertaining the same dreams of grandeur that Milošević did, Ethiopia was nothing less of a wannabe regional power trying to cash in on a long expired strength.
Take Eritrea, for instance. Under Ethiopian rule, Eritreans were mistreated and were the target of all sorts of discrimination. Education in all local languages was banned. The war of Independence began in 1961, and the military victory that brought the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front to control the whole territory in 1991 was followed by a self-determination referendum in 1993. Atrocities committed by the Ethiopian forces - which included mass murders of whole villages, destructions of places of worship (mainly in the Muslim areas), and even the use of anti-personnel gas and napalm - do not fail to remind us of Bosnia.
A wounded Ethiopia, embarrassed by the loss of the war and of its access to the sea, provoked the Ethiopian-Eritrean War in 1998. Two years later, little had changed on the ground - besides each country losing tens of thousands persons and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another confirmation of Ethiopia’s regional claims is in Ogaden. This Somali-inhabited Eregion, also known as “Western Somalia”, was awarded to Ethiopia by the victorious Allies in 1948. The 1977-78 Ogaden war, where the secessionist ‘Western Somali Liberation Front’ was joined by Somalia and where Ethiopia was joined by Cuba, South Yemen, and the Soviet Union failed to solve the problem and Ethiopia maintained control of the province.
The Ogaden conflict picked up last year, and is still raging. Referred to as “Ethiopia’s Dirty War” by Human Rights Watch, it has seen various human rights violations, including gang rapes, public ‘demonstration killings’, and burned villages; and saw the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontières expelled from the region by Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s full-fledged intervention in the Somali civil-war in 2006 is the next level in Addis Ababa’s hegemonic scheme in East Africa.
The motives are complex, and start from American pressure (or the sight of American brownie points) to expanding regional influence, to maintaining an external national unified target to divert attention from local problems (you know, extreme poverty and hunger and stuff?). Too long a debate to expose here, but the result of it is that Ethiopia has had combat troops engaged in a neighbouring country for 2 years, has helped topple a proto-government which seemed to be capable to restore order in Somalia after almost two decades of chaos (thereby negating its own claims that it was going in ‘to secure itself’ - try to do that with a dozen militias fighting next door rather than a strong government).
While the parallels with Serbia are unavoidable, there are nevertheless many differences. The nationalistic rhetoric, for instance, has never been a particularly big thing. There is an underlying religious aspect of the conflict(s), particularly with the Ogaden and Somalia being populated by Muslims, but it is only implicit and generally quite secondary.
The series of civil wars aimed at ensuring the territorial integrity of a larger Ethiopia, with control of minerals and access to the sea, seems like an ingrained national policy than the wet dreams of a Milošević. And that’s scarier, because it means that peace doesn’t depend on the removal of the Madman in power but on the change of the national foreign policy fundamentals.
Ethiopia's threat must be contained. It's quite about time we started realising that.
(photo picked up on a random website, not mine. I'm yet to go to Eastern Africa...)
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