Getz #7, Part II

By Donald N. Levine

Whence this dramatic reversal of Tigrayan sentiment, from champions of historic Ethiopia to debunkers of its reality? The story begins following the Liberation from Italian rule in 1942. The Tigrayan populace was stressed due to population pressures on increasingly infertile land. Nearly a third of Tigrayans migrated to other parts of the country. Their strained condition was severely exacerbated by impossibly heavy tax burdens, which the IEG refused to adjust. Indeed, the attitude of the central government seemed dismissive toward Tigray. It was clear that Shoa, the center of imperial rule since Minelik, and Eritrea, the returned province that Ethiopia sought to woo, were the major beneficiaries of the national budget. This grated on a people who had long played a central role in the Ethiopian political landscape.

These resentments boiled over in March 1943 when people from many parts of the province rose up in a rebellion (Tigr. woyane ) against the Imperial Ethiopian Government that lasted for five months. In response, Emperor Haile Selassie I had RAF planes drop payloads of bombs against Tigrayan villagers (as he did when he was confronted with peasant uprisings in other parts of the country, such as Gojjam). That planted the seeds of a smouldering antagonism that was fueled when the Government’s strict Amharization policy procued a ban against using the Tigrinya language in 1970.

It did not seem that things would improve under the Derg. Two days after they deposed the Emperor, a group of Tigrayans met in a café in Addis to plant the seeds of a Tigrayan opposition movement, taking the name Woyane–signifying a popular rebellion against outside oppression-as their logo. Derg policies reinforced their grievances. For example, the Derg forbade Tigrayans used to go to other parts of the country to work, a common basis for earning income that they would bring home to support their families and invest in their farms. This plunged Tigrayans ever more deeply into poverty and hopelessness, and gave the incipient TPLF movement important support from the very beginning.

“In my high school class in Agame,” one TPLF veteran of the early 1980s told me, “80% of the students supported TPLF, the rest were for EPRP.” This groundswell of sentiment led in two directions, however. One group (TLF) wanted to press the claims of a greater Tigray (Tigray-Tigrini), uniting Tigrinya-speakers from Eritrea with the province. The other group organized itself politically and ideologically through the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray. It conjoined the principle of class struggle with that of self-determination of nationalities. Like other radicals of the day, they appropriated the myth that Ethiopia was the invention of Minelik in order to legitimate the independence of Eritrea, and the principle of self-determination within Ethiopia.

This ethno-Marxist sentiment drove the most ambitious elements of the TPLF movement. It led those who took political control of the TPLF to turn against Tigrayan political elements who did not support Eritrean independence. Before long that led, evidence suggests, to a policy of liquidating those elements. Tigray became, survivors of those horrific years aver, a “killing field.” According to many reports, which must be investigated further by future historians, Tigrayan civilians were slaughtered right and left–in many cases following gruesome torture, according to eye witnesses. Rumors of mass graves in the surroundings of Ghinem in Welkait Tsegede as well as in other parts of Tigray, if confirmed, would support such reports.

Like many idealistic youth of their generation, the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray felt empowered by the seductive morsels of Marxian ideology–unaware of the wise pronouncements of the young Marx himself that communism like other narrow doctrines was a dangerous “dogmatic abstraction.”

Coupled with the new dogmatic abstraction about Ethiopia as an invention of Minilek, it became a heady brew that induced the committed TPLF ethno-Marxists to murder great numbers of civilians and to perpetrate slanders against Amharas and Ethiopian patriots. One veteran of those killings confesses that when he told another, early in the fighting “the number of people we have killed thus far has reached 10,000,” his comrade replied: “So what, Red China had to kill a million people in order to become victorious.” Attitudes of that sort, be it noted, were shared by other Ethiopian revolutionaries of the time.

It is possible, then, that accusations of genocide against Medsfin Wolde Mariam and other defendants may reflect something else. They may represent a wish to disavow the crimes against Tigrayans which the TPLF in its days of struggle felt it had to commit. The current leadership has changed a good deal since those impassioned days. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had strenuously disavowed the tenets of his early ideological commitments as early as 1990, arguing that what he wanted was a chance for the peoples of Ethiopia to decide their fate from the bottom up, not from the top down. The EPRDF has given up most of the doctrines of Leninism and insists that it wants to move Ethiopia in the direction of democratization. In recent months it has taken steps toward reforming parliamentary procedures, press legislation, and the Election Board. The nationalist sentiments evoked by the 1998-2000 campaign against Eritrea produced some recognition that behere etyopiya was not so fictitious after all. The old warriors may regret the misery they caused in their determined rise to power. They now insist that they want to get beyond a politics of violence.

There is much that they and the whole country can do to accomplish that. The Government commands the allegiance of cadres of Agazi troops–uncompassionate, socially isolated cadres who owe their existence to the TPLF, and who can be mobilized in an instant to inflict terrible cruelties behind the scenes. For the former TPLF leadership to embrace Ethiopian nationhood fully it will do well to insist on an impartial and transparent investigation of the actions of its security forces–at Dedessa, in Tigray, and in the streets and alleys of Addis Ababa. The current Government of Ethiopia demands that those currently indicted be held accountable for any crimes they committed by inciting illegal actions against the Ethiopian state, if such can be proven in court––even though, on the question of incitement to ethnic violence, it is doubtful that there can be credible evidence to convict the CUD leaders. Beyond that, the Government must also be vigilant in monitoring excesses of ethnic vilification. In Tigray since the election, a few people circulate the warning, “Amharotch temelsu seltan intehizu iqetleke iyu naya’aharte sheate amat qalsi behama yiteref”–if the Amhara return to power, they will kill you all and your seventeen-year struggle will have been in vain.” Surely that is something that can be discouraged.

Decades of suffering from destructive political conflicts can be ended, especially now that Ethiopia’s security is threatened on all borders. It should now be possible again to view Adwa, not as a symbol of irrendentist particularism but once again as the triumph of multiethnic Ethiopianism, when 100,000 troops from dozens of ethnic groups fought together behind every important chief from all over the country–Ras Alula, Ras Mengesha, and Ras Sibhat of Tigray; Dejazmatch Bahta of Akale Guzae; Wag Shum Guangul of Lasta; Ras Mikael of Wallo; Negus Takla-Haymanot of Gojjam; Ras Gobena and Dejazmatch Balcha of the Mecha Oromo; Ras Wele of the Yejju Oromo; Fitawrari Tekla of Wollega; Ras Makonnen of Harar; as well as Ras Gebeyehu (who died fighting at Adwa) and Ras Abate of Shoa. Minister Fisseha Ashgedom, an early TPLF loyalist, talks proudly now of the role his grandfather Dejazmatch Tessema played in the battle of Adwa. The Adwa victory became and remains the most outstanding symbol of what, a half-century later, a British colonel would describe as the “mysterious magnetism” that holds Ethiopia together. This is a magnetism that will outlast the petty particularisms and personal ambitions that became so virulent under the ethno-Marxist ideologues of the 1970s and 1980s.

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TO my readers:

As noted in my introduction to Part I, “Portions of this piece might open old wounds. Please consider my point of view: that these old wounds were never properly healed and continue to spill toxins into Ethiopia’s body politic today.

Please know, also, that in this as in all previous Getzotch, I do not claim to have the absolute truth. That is never a proper claim to be made by scholars in general and in particular for anyone rash enough to make statements about Ethiopia.”

The full series can be accessed at www.eineps.org/forum.