Ethiopia: the national and international questions

ETHIOPIA: THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS 18 Ethiopia is unique in Africa in never having been colonised by a Buropean power. While colonialism was ploughing over the multifarious modes of production in most of Africa to form a Eumpean back garden, Ethiopia pursued an autonomous economic development more akin to classic European feudalism. In an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, these feudal productive relations were to remain numerically predominant until the Derg's land reform. The political hierarchy corresponded to this social structure - a pyramid with its topmost point in Addis Ababa, reaching down through the local feudal lords to the peasant mass. The absence of colonialism determined this political structure as well, and established the coordinates of the national question which is at the root of the present conflict.. In most of Africa the tendency has been for tribal differences to be softened in the quest for "national" unity against the colonial The model has been one of oppressor. amalgamation of the various ethnic groupings. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has seen the assimilation of the myriad tribal elites by the expansive Amharas. The Christian religion and the Amharic language have been the main centralising ideologies, the cultural tribute which all vassal lords had to pay. And these were imposed at the point of the sword, culminating in the conquest of the Yohannes and Menelik, the two great nineteenth century Amhara emperors. Ethiopia first This imperial Ethiopian ideology, has been taken over wholesale by the post-1974 goverrments. The main anti- imperial slogan of February 1974 was "Ethiopia Tikden" - Ethiopia First! The social origin of the military rulers has alot to do with it With the exception of Mengistu - the first non Hamatic ruler . they have the background one would expect of imperial servants. More to the point, the very character of their "revolution" forces them to resort to the same imperial ideology of national mobilisation. The most accurate descrip tion of the Derg is Jacobin. Ethiopia differs from many neo-colonial countries in never having mobilised the population or any section of it in a struggle against imperialism. Instead the Derg is a radical pourgeols denocratic al and semi-feudal landed class. The Derg did not begin this process. But tensions within the imperial regime throughout the 1960s testify to the incap acity of the old hierarchy, still dominated by the warlords and ancien regime functionaries, to carry out even the basic measures of land reform. The immovability of theold regime was rooted in the chronic weakness and underdevelopment of the bourgeoisie. For, although not colonised, Ethiopia still suffered from all the distortions and underdevelopment imposed by the world imperialist economy. revolution In that sene, peous he Jacobin a ogy holds good to the extent that the agents of this revolution - the militarywere obliged to mobilise the population on the basis of national reconstruction. And that necessarily meant the denial of national rights to groupings within the Ethiopian state. Where the anology breaks down is that the weakness of the bourgeoisie and the fragility of the state apparatus meant that the mass mobilisation took on a different character from the classic European bourgeois revolutions or the more standard models of the third world military regimes. The upsurge which finally did away with Haile Selassie was not initiated by the military but by the action of the masses themselves. Despite repeated attempts to damp down that struggle the Derg has nevertheless been forced to accomodate to it by repeated shifts to the left. This explains the unusual political pluralism of Ethiopia. It is a strange military dictatorship which tolerates (however unwillingly) organisations which call for a return to civilian rule and oppose the Derg's nationality policy. Of course, that freedom is closely circumscribed. I'he Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party has remained underground and the Meison, the largest of the remaining groups felt it politic to do like wise last summer. But the problem for the Derg is that as long as it relies on a phenomenal degreee of mass mobilisation through the kebeles (urban committees) and peasant committees, as well as the use of the peasant armies to supplement conventional forces, it has, to a certain extent, to accomodate to the political forces that represent the masses at that level. There is no democracy, bourgeois or proletarian, since leadership remains with the military. The "Marxist-Lenin ist" groups must take their share of the blame for that. They range from the Seded (Mengistu's party) which hails the Derg as a proletarian leadership, to groups like Meison, which characterise the Derg as petit bourgeois. The label is accurate enough, but the crucial question is: which class interests does this petit bourgeois formation serve? The suppression of democracy, the refusal to rely on independent mass mob- ¡lisation, the retention of the bourgeois state apparatus and the maintenance of the economic status quo in the capitalist sphere all point to the answer. So, most strikingly, does the Derg's policy in the national question. Eritrea As in most such cases, you can choose between two versions of Eritrean history, depending on which side you support. Crudely, the Eritrean nationalists argue that their country was always independent fron Ethiopia until the United Nations voted for the federation of the two in 1950. The Ethiopians argue the reverse: that it was only Italian colonialism which broke Eritrea away from its parent state. Both are distortiona. 19 Now badge, 15p plus 10p pop, from: Africa In Strugglo, 328/9 Upper Street, London N1: cheques/p.o. payable to " A.I.S. ' Eritrea is composed of eight different tribal and linguistic groupings, each of which overlaps with another neighbouring state: Ethiopia, Sudan or Djibouti. Similarly there is a clear religious division between the predominantly Muslim coastal strip and the Christian highlands. There is nothing in its ethnic or georraphical make-up to suggest a nation. Under the Axumite kingdom of the first millenium AD Fritrea as a whole was part of what now is Ethiopia. The mountain Tigrayans were to remain at the core of the Abyssinian empire that succeeded it. But the coastal strip became the subject of a series of foreign invasions and prolonged occupations: Turkish, Egyptian and Sudanese. The motive then as now was the trading and strategic advantages of a Red Sea port. These successive occupations explain the distinct religious and social evolution of the coastal strip, though the area regularly changed hands between Abyssinian and successive Arab invaders. Il you believe in "significant historical dates", the present conflict dates from 1869. That was the year of the opening of the Suez Canal - which transforned the strategic significance of the Horn followed by the establishment of the first Italian coaling station on the Eritrean coast. In 1872 a section of the coastal atrip was occupied by the Egyptians under Khedive Ismail, while Britain took over another section in its fight against the Sudanese Mandists. The British offered to hand the territory over to Yohannes, the Ethiopian emperor, in return for military aid against the Mahdi. But after some strange dealings at court, Yohannes' rival Menelik allied with the Italians, Johannes conveniently died, and Menelik came to the throne to hand Eritrea over to the Italians. 20 : invasion The Italians sav Eritrea as a base to launch an attack on Ethiopia as a whole, linking up with its Somali colony and making the Horn an Italian protectorate. Their first bid was in the 1890s when they were roundly defeated at the Battle oi Adowa. The second, successful attempt came in 1935. The invasion plan was important for Eritrea's internal development, since it necessitated the evolution of an infrastructure capable of supporting military operations. Hence the rapid town-building programme as well as the development of more conventional colonial economic forms such as mines and plantations. The British occupation of Eritrea in 1941 signalled further attacks on the living standards of the Eritrean working class, but also their first opportunity for independent organisation. A trade union federation was set up and party political life flourished, though this was centred exclusively on the national question and there was no independent working class party. MASSAWA ASMARA @ Red sea TRE SUDAN Gulf of Aden ASSAB ETHIOPIA * DJIBOUTI wash BERBERA DIRE DAWA • • •JUIGA ADDIS ABABA © ¿HARAR OGADEN ARUSI BALE HARARGHE PROVINCE SIDAMO KENYA MOGADISHU In 1952 the UN resolution for federation with Ethiopia was implemented. Trade unions were banned, along with all political parties except the pro-Ethiopian Unionists, representing the upper strata of the bourgeoisie. US imperialism quickly penetrated the area, both for its strategic value and the fact that it was the only section of Ethiopia which had undergone any substantial development. In 1960 the puppet Eritrean Parliament voted to demote the local goverrment to. advisory status and in 1962 dissolved itself to make way for annexation by Ethiopia. Resistance to Ethiorian occupation began : peacefully and was based primarily on the workers movement. The turning point came with the brutal repression of an economic general strike in 1958. In the early 1960s the Eritrean Liberation Front at thet stage based mainly on the lowland Muslims, began its military actions against the occupying army. The internationalisation of the conflict in the Horn is nothing ner. In the late 1960s US planes were used and napalm used against Eritrean villages and Cuban advisers were brought in to train the ELF. factions In the same period serious factional differences emerged in the ELF leading to the formation of the Eritrean Popular Liberation Front in 1970. From • 1972 until February 1974 there was civil war between the two, ending only with the mass upsurge against Hail: Selassie, in which the Eritrean working class played an important part. The present military situation overwhelmingly favours the nationalists, with the entire countryside and all important towns except Asmara, Massawa and Assab under their control. All reports indicate overwhelming support for Eritrean independence among all sectors of the population. What is less clear is the situation of the nationalist groups themselves. Their relationship has been complicated by the formation of a small "third force" - confusingly known as the Eritrean liberation Front- Peoples Liberation Forceswith strong Arab backing and by a number of splits, mainly from the ELF. Since 1974 there have been a series of unity negotiations between the two major organisations. Each time unity was postponed, until last year it seemed that the was agreement for almost immediate unification. Since then the EPLP has pulled back, rejecting a number of agreed positions and arguing that for the moment unity should not extend beyond exact military and political balance of forces between the two is equally impenetrable. Estimates range from rough parity between the two organisations for soiliers in the field to a strong preponderance for the EPLF. Current westerm thinking, echoed by much of the left, describes the EPLF as the Marxist wing of the Eritrean movement. In fact the programme of both organisation Nationalisations are only is nationalist. envisaged in the context of the national liberation struggle. The EPLF, for example, leaves the question of the expropriation of both foreign and domestic enterprises suitably vague. If anything the ELF programme does not go as far in Providing a role for domestic cevitalism in an independent Iritrea. Our support for Eritrean national selfdetermination has nothing to do with sterile debates about who controlled the coastal strip under the Axumite regime! The important point is that a national political consciousness has been forged creating a framework for the activity of all classes. And, it appears, all classes favour separation. Not only would the secession of Eritrea weaken the Ethiopian bourgeois state; it also provides en indispensable precondition for unity between the workers and peasants of both nations. Such unity has to be based on the voluntary cooperation of the organisations of the masses, not the military imperatives of the capitalist state. Somalis The case of the Ogaden Somalis is in var ious respects both simpler and more complicated. Simpler because the Somalis within Ethiopia constitute a clearly definable group, ethnically identical to the population of Somalia itself. More complicated because it involves the expr ansionist aspirations of another capitalist state. 21 There are something over a million Somalis in Ethiopian territory. The largest group, about half, is the Ogaden Somalis exception of a small proper. with the community of settlers around Jijiga, who tend to be racially mixed, the population is entirely nomadic. As far as it is possible to tell, this majority backs the demand for seccession from Ethiopia and integration into Somalia. The Somali population of Ethiopia has been subject to extreme social discrimination. The feeble attempts of the Ambaras to create an educated pro-Ethiopian elite have backfired, simply providing a petit bourgeois cadre for the nationalist organisation, the West Somali Liberation Front. The Western press has speculated on the economic motives behind the Derg's fanatical desire to hold on to the Ogaden. But the area is arid and uncultivable. There are small mineral deposite around Harar, Jijiga and Diredawa, but hardly enough to go to war over. There has been further speculation that oil is the cause of the dispute. Yet twenty years of prospecting by successive Western oil companies has turned up with nothing. The real reason før the conflict is simpler: the nomads see the national struggle as a way of winning basic political and social rights; the Ethiopian and Somali regimes see it as unavoidable if they are to hold on to their political power. On the Ethiopian side the territorial integrity of the old imperial state is irr evocably broken. Not only the Eritreans, but the Tigres in the north and the Oromos in the south have won considerable tracts away from the Derg. the retention of the Ögaden all the more vital. Siad Barré In Somalia, as President Mohamed Siad Barre readily admits, irredentism is the key to maintaining popular support. Somalia, the only ethnically homogeneous unit in sub-Saharan Africa, was torn apart by the colonialists. In 1965 the former Italian and British colonies were reunited in present 'day Somalia, but the substantial Somali groups in Ethiopia and northern Kenya remained seperate. The idea of a "Greater Somalia" incorporating all these groupings (as well as 22 ' the non-Somali territor of Djibouti was briefly put forward by British ibreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in the 1940s. The imperialists quickly ditched the plan, preferring to maitain stability through the retention of colonial boundaries in post-colonial Africa, but successive Somali dictatorships have gratefully latched onto the idea. For all the rhetoric about "scientific socialism", Somalia remains high up in the unenviable league of backward Muslim Siad Barre's social reforms states. have achieved precious little, the bulk of the population remains nomadic, the barbario practice of clitoridectomy is widespread, and there is a full Muslim menal code. Chest-beating nromises of a "Greater Somalia" are all thrt keens the Siad Barre regine in power. Obviously we cannot subscribe to these absurd Somali nationalist posturings. Our support for self-determination for the Ogaden Somalis is the same as for Exitrean seccession. Without the recognition of that democratic right there is no chance of winning unity between the oppressed masses of the entire Horn of Africa. Derg The Derg, probably under pressure from its Soviet backers, now proposes a diff- "federation" of Etha erent solution, a iopia into a dozen autonomous regions. Before the expulsion of the Russians from Somalia and the beginning of the Ogaden war, the Soviet Union proposed something similar, but extended its "gocialist" federation to the entire Horn with autonomy for Ogaden and Frit rea. Cloaked in pseudo-Leninist chatter about the right to self-determination, this is a last-ditch bid to preserve the unity of the Ethiopian state. Without the right of each nation to determine its own relation to the Ethiopian or Somali state, self-determination becomes a sick joke. It is hardly surprising that the Eritreans and Somalis don't think the Derg's scheme worthy of consideration. As they see it - and they're quite right - it doesn't differ a jot from the imperial "golution" to the national question. In 1956 Haile Selassie made a speech at Gabredare in the Ogaden which could just as easily have come Mengistu: "We are confident that they (the Somalis). will also remember that unity is strength, even as the Eritreans recognised that unity is strength (!) Not only they, but the whole world will recognise that we are united by race, colour, economics, and that we all drink from the same grea! river", OAU The black African states, even the most reactionary, are united in support of "Marxist" Ethiopia. for the central plank of the Organisation of Africar Unity is the recognition of the old colonial boundaries. Never mind that the colonial boundary could easily be used What is on the side of the Eritreans. at stake is the principle which unites the neo-colonial states: the retention of bourgeois state power through the defence of its territorial boundaries. Not only is the principle reactionary; it is plainly iniquitous in a case like Somalia's where colonialism has cut a single nationality into separate parcels. The phenomenon we reperted in "lmost every African country. The OAU policy also provides the rationale for the United States' refusal to intervene directly in the conflict. Nevertheless it is an issue which has opened rifts within the Carter administration. The "Africanist" wing, led by Andrew Young, argues for the minimum of direct imperialist intervention to =llow the African client states to create their own ecuilibrium. But "globrl stretegiste" like national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski nre chefing :t the bit, arg ing that the Soviet intervention in the Horn demands retribution at the level of bilateral relations between the US and the Soviet Union, such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Neither faction is yet prepared to countenance direct military intervention or even an open supply of arme to Somalia at this stage. Other imperialist states are less reticent. West Germany is making little secret of its championship of Somalia, which represents a potential toehold for German imperialism after the cooperation afforded by the Siad Barre regime in the Mogadishu 'anti-terrorist' operation last October. And massive quantities of US arms are reaching Somalia through reactionary Arab states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The conflict has become a weird refraction of the Middle East situation, with states like Libya, South Yemen and Israel lining up behind the Derg. For the conservative Arab regimes the idea is to hold the Red Sea as an Arab shipping lane and to counter Soviet military presence in the Indian Ocean. Israeli realpolit1k demands that it back Ethiopia to counter this threat, while the pro-soviet Arab states are obliged to fall in with their master's designs in this region. Put the most apparently baffling aspect is whether the rapid shift in alliances at the beginning of 1977 will hold fast. In rapid succession Mengistu gained an assurance of Soviet military backing and cut ties with the imperialist powers, while Siad Barre, who had long received Soviet backing, did the opposite. But the US is certainly keeping its options open. Part of its desire not to escalate the conflict can be explained by a wish not to risk a once and for all break with Addis Ababa regime. In February Brzezinski's deputy David Aaron visited Addis with proposals for limiting the war. The apparent Somali decision to pull its troops out of the Ogaden seems to have been the result. But it is inconceivable that the American delegation diant win something in return. The Us probably hopes to exploit the continued fears about the spread of Soviet influence among sections of the Derg. Soviet Union The Soviet Union has similarly not given up hope in Somalia. There is still a pro-Soviet faction within the officer corps and informed sources in Mogadishu confirm the possibility, first rumoured in the Western press, of a pro-soviet coup to get rid of Siad Barre. These manouevres are only explicable if we remember the principles behind Soviet policy in Africa and the neo-colonial world generally, It is guided by the need to extend Soviet influence: primarily political and strategic, secondarily economic. Proletarian revolution would be one way of doing this, but only at the expense of a reversal of the international status quo which would threaten the very 23 basis of the bureaucracy's rule in the Soviet Union. Where such revolutions have occurred - China, Vietnam - it has been because the struggle itself has ruled out any possibility of any middle road between imperialist victory and the overthrow of capitalism. In such cases revolution - albeit deformed and undemocratic - has happened despite, not because of, Soviet influence. The preferred model would be Angola or Mozambique states which remain capitalist while firnly within the Soviet sphere of influence. This cynicism towards the class chayacter of the state explains why it is possible for the Soviet Union to support brutal petit bourgeois regimes in Somalia and Ethiopia, Indifference to the struggle and interests of the masses in those countries means alliances can be shifted at will - yesterday's 'progressive' becomes today's 'reactionary'. Cubans The Cuban role is more complex, if only because the subjective motive for Cuban intervention in Africa remains a distorted proletarian internationalism. Increased economic dependence on the Soviet Union - heightened by disasters like the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest - had its most obvious impact in the abandonment of support for guerilla struggle in Latin America. But the last couple of years have seen the exemplary internationalism of Che Guevara's intervention in the Congo (or military aid to the Eritreans) perverted beyong recognition, as the Cubans have become no more than shock troops of the Soviet Union. The war in the Horn casts important light on the Cuban intervention in Angola. Then the Cubans were universally welcomed by the left - at least emotionallyas the Angolan people's defenders against imperialist military interference. Cuban role was progressive to the that it represented a defence against the South African army. But insofar as it marked a defence of the interests of the Soviet Union and the MPLA against the possibility of proletarian revolution, the Cuban role was counter-revolutionary. 24 The Soviet and Cuban impact in the Horn has been equally baleful. Apart from their defence of a regime with a repressive record which must be the envy of most African states, they have succeeded in driving the nationalist opposition movements into the hands of the imperialists and reactionary Arab regimes. The EPLF refusal to ally with the ELF one set solation can probably be put down to its fear that reactionary Arab backing for the latter could lead to the HPLF's isolation and complete destruction in the future, pro-Arab independent Eritrea. Certainly Soviet support for the Derg has isolated the left within the Eritrean movement (which is not the same thing as the EPL?) and driven the nationalists as a whole to greater dependence on Sudan.