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Ethiopia
girds for war |
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By Martyn Drakard
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Friday, 17 November 2006
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After
decades of drought, famine,
repression and war, Ethiopians are
preparing for more of the same |
Ethiopia, the fabled home of the Queen of
Sheba, is a striking contrast of landscapes.
It
is partly traversed by the Great Rift
Valley, which extends from Lebanon to
Mozambique. Its jagged, lush mountains make
it a kind of huge fortress surrounded by
forbidding desert, which is one reason why
it has been isolated from much outside
influence and has gone its own way. Even the
scramble for Africa in the 19th century by
European colonial powers left it unscathed.
Together with the other countries of the
north-east, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, it
makes up the Horn of Africa. It still holds
fast to its centuries-old ways and is quite
different from east and central Africa --
the Africa as imagined by the outside world
-- which starts on its doorstep.
Ethiopia was evangelised very early –- some
say by St Matthew, the Apostle -- and has
preserved its brand of Coptic Christianity,
with its rock churches, distinctive
religious images, lengthy oriental
ceremonies and a liturgical language, Ge’ez.
The country was the only long-lasting
Christian enclave within Africa until the
era of evangelization began, but is now 50
per cent Muslim. Apart from the Italian
invasion in the 1930s, the country was left
alone under its emperors. The last emperor,
the famous Haile Selassie, the Lion of
Judah, was murdered by the thugs of Mengistu
Haile Mariam, a Soviet-backed puppet who
ousted him and his US supporters, at the
cost of widespread bloodshed. The famine of
the early 1980s, politically motivated and
abetted by a drought, brought
heart-wrenching images of skeletal mothers
and babies to TV sets around the world. And
after that Ethiopia was forgotten again.
Islamic threat
In the last few weeks, however, Ethiopia has
been “technically at war” with neighbouring
Somalia, according to its president, Meles
Zenawi, who has become a pawn in the proxy
war to restrain the terrorist threat to the
West. From a Western point of view, the
current Ethiopian government is a Christian
buffer against aggressive Islamic expansion,
specifically against the radical elements
within the Union of Islamic Courts, which is
effectively in control of Somalia. From a
Muslim point of view, it is “the leader of a
US-backed assault on a Muslim country”,
since Ethiopia is the only country openly
giving strong support to the transitional
Somali government in Baidoa.
This is not the first time that Ethiopia and
Somalia have gone to war. In 1977 Somalia
managed to advance quite far inside Ethiopia
before being turned back. Both were using
tanks given by the Soviet Union. Now, the
conflict could reach much further.
The Somali Islamists are well supplied with
weapons from sympathetic countries in the
region, despite an arms embargo, and by
Ethiopia’s enemy to the north, Eritrea, with
which there has been a long-running border
dispute, which erupted into a two-year war
in 1998.
Ethiopia would be a formidable foe. Its
rapid population explosion -- it now has
nearly 80 million people and by the year
2050 will be one of the 10 largest nations
in the world -- has been accompanied by a
big military build-up. The National Defence
Army has between 120,000 and 150,000 men,
with massive stocks of hardware. This
includes Soviet-made tanks, heavy artillery,
and rocket launchers -- all still in good
condition, according to Jane’s Defence
Weekly. The army has also received training,
logistics, transport and direct sales of
hardware from the United States.
But Ethiopia has its own internal problems,
not least of which is the 30 million-strong
Oromo people. Colonised by King Menelik in
1887, the Oromo still want their territory,
Oromiya, to be liberated. The Oromo
Liberation Front is a powerful force and
carries out a low-key but persistent
guerilla campaign against the national
forces. The Oromo are mainly Muslim.
Further north, another group, the Ogaden
National Liberation Front (ONLF) is pressing
for self-determination, and has sided with
radical Islamists in the past. The Ogaden is
an extensive dry area bordering Somaliland
and Puntland, and home to 4 million
Ethiopian Somalis. Together with half a
dozen other groups, they are taking up arms
against the Zenawi regime, which they find
has gradually become more and more
repressive. In their turn, some Somali
hardliners threaten to create a greater
Somalia, an Islamic emirate, which will
incorporate the Somali parts of Ethiopia and
Kenya.
Zenawi loses his nerve
But hardliners are to be found not only in
Somalia. The Zenawi regime is cracking down
on any perceived form of opposition; it
seems that Soviet-style tactics have not
altogether disappeared. During the late 70s
and early 80s tens of thousands of
Ethiopians, many of them students, were
killed or interned. Zenawi has been a
progressive leader; he reduced poverty,
built schools, health clinics and roads, and
extended the national grid.
But recently he has been losing his nerve.
Last year there were the street protests in
the wake of a disputed general election.
Opposition leaders, journalists, activists
and some professionals were arrested and
some were charged with treason. The treason
trial has become an embarrassment to the
donor countries of the West. Should they
support a repressive regime or should they
leave an ally alone to face an Islamic
onslaught and possibly lose a strategic base
in a hostile region?
A further embarrassment is the independent
commission set up to rule on the killings.
Although the commission members were
appointed by the Government, their findings
turned out to be truly independent. The
majority decided that the government had
used excessive force and claimed that the
president had tried to make them reverse
their decision. According to their findings
nearly 200 people were killed, mainly by
security forces. Many other young people are
said to be in labour camps, which the
Government has vehemently denied.
Now the commission head and his deputy have
fled the country in fear for their lives.
The government is spending more on the
secret police. Email is monitored and
opposition websites have been blocked.
Calendars with pictures of detained
opposition leaders are in wide circulation,
often going for many times their price.
The President could be losing his grip as
well as his nerve, and so is resorting to
extreme measures; and basic human freedoms
are the first to slowly disappear or become
clouded. After the bloodthirsty nightmare of
the Mengistu regime, Ethiopia changed
direction and was making good headway. It
would be a pity if those gains were to be
lost overnight. As experience of many other
states in this region has shown, repression
–- a system to ensure the breeding of an
enemy within -- is not the best way to keep
a country together in the face of a common
enemy from outside.
Martyn Drakard is MercatorNet's African
Contributing Editor. He writes from Nairobi.
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