The Ethnicization of the Ethiopian State
Part I
By Ayenew Ashagre
[Feb 1996 Ethiopian Review]
For centuries, Ethiopian society has been afflicted by an intermittent succession of autocratic and repressive political rule. The collapse of Haile Selassie’s regime in 1974 had promised the end of that cyclical tragedy. A military one, whose atrocities eclipsed those of its predecessors, succeeded it. When Colonel Mengistu’s regime crumbled in 1991, the hope for an end to that age-old affliction was rearoused only to be dashed again by the country’s current rulers.
In the country’s long history, ascension to power has often been through brutal force. Each regional or “ethnic” lord would fight for supremacy and eventual hegemony over the territories of other lords. The manner of Haile Selassie’s fall had seemed to put an end to that. His regime was replaced by Colonel Mengistu’s that, garbing itself in the slogans of Marxism, turned out to be perhaps the most repressive in the country’s recorded history. Mengistu’s government also collapsed under the pressure of regional wars and the popular resistance engendered by its own policies of repression and divisiveness. The current government of Meles Zenawi replaced it which, again in the name of democracy and justice, has become so repressive and blatantly divisive that it seems headed toward tearing the society apart. Despite what Meles Zenawi is telling the outside world, for most Ethiopians it is becoming clear that what is happening in the country is the reenactment of that centuries-old tragedy. A century after King Menelik of Shoa is said to have cunningly got rid of Emperor Yohannes IV, the latter’s grandchildren from Tigray are now attempting to regain, as much by force and terror as by deception, the hegemony that they believe had once belonged to their ethnic group.
The aim here is to show that (1) often ethnic politics, defined in its broadest sense, has characterized Ethiopia’s political history, (2) the present leaders, though purporting to redress past ethnic injustice and inequality, are attempting to regain the hegemony they believe had once belonged to their ethnic group, (3) the opposition groups’ incoherence, lack of direction, and factionalism has rendered them incapable of gaining and sustaining popular support, and (4) under the circumstances now prevailing in the country, neither the present leadership’s desire to impose its minority will on the Ethiopian peoples nor the opposition groups’ goal of ensuring the genuine democratization of the society are likely to materialize. If the country is to be saved from plunging again into violent discord, both those currently in power and those in the opposition must summon the will to reexamine themselves critically and relate with each other with honesty and in a spirit of compromise.
Definition of Terms
Before proceeding any further, clarifying two problems central to an understanding of recent developments in Ethiopia may be necessary. The first of these relates to the definition of such terms as “ethnic group” and “ethnicity.” The second concerns the historical perspectives implied by each of two possible characterizations of recent events in Ethiopia.
Depending on one’s understanding of Ethiopian history, what is currently happening in the country could be characterized in either of two ways, namely, ‘the ethnicization of Ethiopian politics’ or ‘the politicization of ethnicity in Ethiopia’. Here some clarification of how the concepts “ethnic group”, “ethnicity”, and “politicized ethnicity” are used. Following Joseph Rothschild (Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework, 1981), these terms will be used in the broadest sense possible, without restricting, for instance, what is meant by the term “ethnic group” to any particular marker-criteria. This and other related terms will be used to refer to groups that use either or any combination of linguistic, tribal, regional, or religious marker-criteria to define their identities. This should save us from unproductive debates over what these terms mean, since, in the words of Rothschild, “ethnic identification and allegiance may attach themselves to any of such criteria, and ethnicity does not exist as an entity totally separate from themnor can they be declared to be necessarily separate from it. Thus, it is pointless to search for the supposed essence of ethnicity apart from these several criteria as it is myopic to declare any of them exempt from ethnopolitical signification.”
How, then, may one characterize the current “changes” in Ethiopian politics? Is what is happening in Ethiopia today the politicization of ethnicity or the ethnicization of politics? This is not a mere tautological question, since each characterization may imply specific assumptions regarding the history of ethnic power relations in Ethiopian society. The first may imply that ethnic relations in Ethiopia have been without any sustained ethnic conflict over resources, including political power, and that the current rhetoric for ethnic self-determination is no more than an attempt by ambitious elites of the many ethnic groups to create ethnopolitical consciousness that did not exist earlier. On the other hand, the second may denote the unquestioning acceptance of politicized ethnicity throughout Ethiopian history. Furthermore, this latter perception of Ethiopian history may imply that what is being done now is the simple official sanctioning of what was hitherto declared taboo, because it was, if not irrational, at least unpatriotic.
Both have relevance to the understanding of what is happening in Ethiopia, but neither seems to portray the whole truth. To say that the politicization of ethnicity in Ethiopia is a recent phenomenon is to deny the fact that Ethiopian history has been fraught with ethnic conflicts that clearly show the long history of ethnic consciousness and politicization, though these conflicts and the ethnic consciousness on which they were based may have been discontinuous, superficial or restricted to a few groups. On the other hand, to claim that political life in Ethiopia has always been ethnicized is to deny the fact that a process of assimilation and integration, whether imposed or spontaneous, has been going on over generations, resulting in the gradual emergence of what Donald Levine (Greater Ethiopia) has called “pan- Ethiopian culture traits” and that even today many such groups have yet to acquire rudimentary ethnopolitical consciousness and solidarity.
Ethnic Diversity & History of Ethnic Relations
Having made these remarks, describing briefly the ethnic composition and history of ethnic relations may be necessary for understanding the current sociopolitical situation in the country. Whichever marker-criteria we adopt as the ‘essence’ of ethnicity, present-day Ethiopia will emerge as a complex, heterogenous society. Without pretending to be exhaustive, a mere inventory of the religions, subsistence systems, and languages found within the borders of the country will show clearly this diversity and complexity.
Take religion, for instance. Orthodox Christianity and Islam are the two major ones, each claiming more than a third of the country’s population as its followers. Other belief systems claiming varying proportions of the population as their followers include a variety of localized religions, Judaism, and other Christian faiths such as Catholicism and Protestantism. Similarly, while the majority of the people may be sedentary cultivators, there are significant population groups, from most linguistic and religious groups, following nomadic pastoral, agro-pastoral, and a combination of these and other ways of subsistence.
No where is this complex diversity more clearly shown than with respect to language. The exact number of languages spoken in the country is still not known, but two of the four basic African language stocks, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan, and more than seventy of the languages spoken in modern Africa are found in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages are grouped under the three language families of Ethio-Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic, each consisting of 12, 25, and 18 languages respectively, while the Ethiopian Nilo-Saharan languages are often grouped under four language sub-families, namely, East Sudanic, Berta, Kunama, and Koman with a total of another 18 or so languages. This puts the estimated total number of languages spoken in present-day Ethiopia to more than seventy. Kunama, Tigre, Bilen, Saho, and Barea are now in Eritrea which has become a separate state. This decreases the total number of Semitic and Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in the rest of Ethiopia, but without significantly affecting the country’s linguistic diversity and complexity.
Considerable overlap exists in the spatial distribution, linguistic affiliation, and the belief and subsistence systems of the country’s population. Both Muslims and Christians are found in most regions, among all major linguistic groups, and among groups practicing a variety of subsistence systems. The followers of Ethiopian Judaism live in the midst of Orthodox Christian, Semitic speakers, while followers of indigenous beliefs live dispersed along the border with Sudan stretching from the north to the south. Nevertheless, at the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of this overlap, some generalizations can be made: the followers of Orthodox Christianity, who are largely sedentary cultivators, are concentrated among speakers of Ethio-Semitic languages, especially the Amhara and Tigray in the north and northwestern highlands; Muslims are mainly Cushitic speakers, particularly the Afar, Somali, and Oromo found in the eastern part of the country where they subsist largely on nomadic pastoralism; those following indigenous beliefs are often speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages and live along the Ethio-Sudan border, largely depending on livestock raising; the followers of Ethiopian Judaism are the Felasha and Qimant, two small, formerly Cushitic-speaking groups in the northwestern highlands where they have been leading a life of sedentary cultivation; and while the followers of the Protestant faith are mainly the Cushitic-speaking, sedentary Oromo of Wellega, the followers of Roman Catholicism are predominantly Semitic speakers in Eritrea in the north.
A similar overlap exists among the various religions themselves. In the centuries that followed the introduction of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into the area, these belief systems have interacted with one another as well as with local belief systems. As a result, neither of these religions has remained its original self. Christianity and Islam were superimposed on indigenous beliefs and since power was often in the hands of the followers of the former two religions, more so in the hands of Orthodox Christians, the latter were perhaps the ones that lost most of their original self. Yet, both Orthodox Christianity and Islam in Ethiopia have incorporated so much of the indigenous beliefs that they too have become rather unique.
It is clear that there can be no doubt about the cultural diversity of Ethiopian society. Nor can there be any doubt about the intricate overlap that exists among the various criteria defining that diversity. This overlap has been the outcome of centuries of interaction, in peace and war, among the various linguistic and religious groups as well as among those with different systems of subsistence. In short, the Ethiopia many of us have known has been a society struggling toward unity in diversity.
History of Ethnic Relations
Students of Ethiopian history often begin their accounts of Ethiopian history from the first millennium B.C. when Semitic immigrants are said to have established the Aksumite kingdom in present-day Tigray. Since then and especially from the introduction of Christianity in the fourth century and the rise of Islam in the seventh, relations among the peoples within the Aksumite kingdom and those of the adjacent areas have been both competitive and cooperative. The Aksumite kingdom expanded, incorporating and subjugating its neighbors, while facilitating trade and commerce among the different peoples it brought under its control. Aksum’s expansion was brought to a halt by the rise of Islam whose introduction into Aksumite areas seems to have further intensified the struggle for dominance among the various peoples around it. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the Cushitic Agew marched from the south and defeated the Aksumites, eventually establishing the Zagwe Dynasty that lasted for over a century. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, an Amhara- Tigray coalition under the leadership of King Yekunno Amlak defeated the Agew.
The restored ‘Solomonid Dynasty’, as it became known, began a long-drawn military and religious campaign against Muslims and followers of indigenous religions around it. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Ahmed Gragn of the Sultanate of Adal overrun the Christian Kingdom. The Christian king, Gelawdios, and his Portuguese allies defeated Gragn in 1542. Not much later, the Yejju Oromo in the south ransacked the northern kingdom and for a while power seemed to have passed over to the Cushitic Oromo. They settled among the people they conquered, resulting in the literal hybridization of peoples and their cultures.
After four centuries of wandering, the Ethiopian capital was established at Gonder in northern Ethiopia and, for about a century afterwards, the country fell into internal strife with each regional lord attempting to control central power. This was achieved by Emperor Theodros (1855-1868), an Amhara from the Gonder area, who made a successful though short-lived attempt to bring the many fiefdoms under his control. Emperor Yohannes (1872-1889) of Tigray took over upon Theodros’ self-inflicted death. Yohannes continued his predecessor’s attempt to expand the empire, but he too died before realizing his ambition. The task of accomplishing Theodros’ and Yohannes’ ambition fell on Emperor Menelik (1890-1913), a Shoan Amhara, who succeeded in greatly expanding the empire through conquests of the peoples of the east, south and southwest. Though it was Haile Selassie (1930-1974) who completed the creation of modern Ethiopia by attempting to consolidate control over what Menelik had created, it is Menelik who is rightly credited (or condemned) for creating the Ethiopia we have known until the fall of the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974-1991) four years ago.
Both Menelik and Haile Selassie laid down the bases for a process that eventually challenged and caused the end of the latter’s regime. Menelik began modernizing his empire, introducing Western education and setting up other institutions of modernization. Haile Selassie continued the process with greater zeal, resulting in the emergence of a generation that began to question and challenge the legitimacy of his rule and that of the Ethiopian empire-state. Haile Selassie’s alleged annexation of Eritrea led to the formation of liberation movements in Eritrea. The Ogaden Somali, inspired and encouraged by the Somali Republic’s dream of a Greater Somalia, also started to pose a serious threat to the centralizing and autocratic ambitions of Haile Selassie. Other regions also began to have their own spontaneous peasant revolts against what they rightly perceived to be an increasingly oppressive and centralizing government. Unable to organize freely and engage in peaceful political activity, many young Ethiopians from nearly all ethnic groups either created their own “liberation” movements or joined those that were already formed. Soon, Haile Selassie’s government had to contend with a plethora of ethnic and nonethnic liberation movements.
Haile Selassie’s fall had promised the resolution of the many contradictions in Ethiopian society, including ethnic and regional inequalities. Unfortunately, the military junta that came to power after him became even more committed to the preservation and strengthening of the state and the ruthless suppression of dissent. Undoubtedly, the military government did carry out radical reforms that undermined and eventually destroyed the highly exploitative, agrarian relations that had hitherto prevailed. However, in the long-run, even these radical reforms were used to support the drive to destroy what were seen as the main obstacles to the goal of creating an even more centralized, Marxist state. These perceived obstacles were primarily the many liberation movements, ethnic and nonethnic, from Haile Selassie’s time as well as new ones that sprouted up under the very eyes of the military regime itself.
The drive to destroy the opposition groups soon came to include any dissent, organized or not. As often happens under such repressive circumstances, the attempt to destroy the opposition further strengthened the latter, while also creating the conditions necessary for the emergence of new ones. Among the newer opposition organizations that came into being during the years of the military regime was the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) which later created the coalition that became known as the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Despite the arrogant claim of TPLF leaders that they alone brought about the fall of the military government in May 1991, it was undoubtedly the outcome of the struggles waged by the people as a whole, either under the leadership of their respective political organizations or independently of them.
From the above sketchy outline of Ethiopian history, it is clear that the Ethiopian empire of Menelik, Haile Selassie, and Mengistu was the result of centuries of intense competition for the control of resources among the various peoples both within and outside the borders of present-day Ethiopia. As much as these competitions and conflicts have so often seemed to tear the various peoples apart, they have also been instrumental in bringing about the development of shared traits and historical experiences. Even so, none of the country’s rulers could create the bases for strong solidarity and unity among the different sociocultural groups in the country. The policies and actions of these seemingly different regimes have been quite similarly geared toward centralization, the creation of a homogenous population through the imposition of Amhara-Tigray culture (language, religion, and outlook), and the suppression of dissent. Given the lack of other strong, binding factors and in light of years of ethnic oppression, ethnicity continued to provide the basis for political cleavage and solidarity. Indeed, according to Rothschild, even if such alternative binders were available, the “ethnic chord,” often seems stronger, because of “its capacity to arouse and to engage the most intense, deep, and private emotional sentiments.”
Though the current sociopolitical changes in Ethiopia may appear to signal a radical departure from the past, these may not be any more than a continuation of what has characterized ethnic relations in the country’s history, namely, intense rivalry and conflict among various ethnic groups for the control of commonly valued natural, sociocultural, and political resources. In that history, too, the ability to gain such control did change hands among at least five main groups: the Semitic-speaking Tigray, the Cushitic Agew, the Semitic-speaking Amhara, the Muslim Cushites of the Sultanate of Adal, and the Cushitic-speaking Oromo of Yejju. Of these and over the centuries, the Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups seem to have had greater success in sustaining their control for longer periods than any of the others. Having stayed in the hands of an essentially Amhara elite for a little over a century, state power now appears to be passing over to that of an age-old rival, the Tigray. Though simplistic, the observation that Yohannes’ grandchildren have finally become as cunning as Menelik had been in undoing Tigrean hegemony a century ago may have some basis. For lack of space, we cannot go into the details and validity of the story on which this observation is based except to point out that Menelik and his advisors are said to have successfully intrigued to set up Yohannes against the Mahadists at Metema where he died in battle, thereby enabling Menelik to declare himself the new emperor. The official recognition of the previously suppressed right of the various ethnic groups to struggle for equity, justice, and self-determination does appear a radical departure from the past. But then, herein may lie the cunning, albeit out-dated, of Yohannes’ grandchildren. By seeming to stand for the fulfillment of these otherwise popular demands of the many hitherto oppressed ethnic groups, the current leaders are now engaged in sowing ethnic discord with the hope of regaining and consolidating their ethnic group’s dominance. Unfortunately for Meles Zenawi and his ethnic supporters, the past few years have shown that such archaic tactics of divide and rule have been rendered dysfunctional by decades of political consciousness generated by the similar tactics of Haile Selassie and Mengistu.
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Ayenew Ashagre is a guest professor, Institut für Ethnologie und Afrika-Studien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany.