Ethiopia; The hell on earth, history of the tigray conflict

 

The hell on earth in the XX Century

The evolution of the Ethiopian state, one of the oldest in the world located in the Horn of Africa, was historically marked by the interplay of ethnic, regional and religious factors that sometimes acted in harmony and sometimes in conflict. 

In the last century, neither Emperor Haile Selassie's "national integration policy" nor the Dergue military regime's "Ethiopia First" slogan, which hybridised Ethiopian nationalism with Marxism, helped stem the rising tide of ethno-nationalist rebellion. 

The Emperor's regime faced ethno-national and regional armed movements in Tigray (1942-43), Bale (1963-68), Gojjam (1967) and Eritrea since the early 1960s. While it successfully suppressed the first three, the Eritrean movement was intractable, mainly due to external support that the others were unable to acquire. 

The Dergue also had to contend with another wave of ethno-national movements, some of them "inherited" from the time of the previous regime and which eventually led to its demise in 1991. Both regimes collapsed in the face of a sustained onslaught of national liberation movements, mainly ethnic-based, and to some extent of the forces of change at the centre. 

One of the ethno-nationalist movements that spearheaded the revolt against the military regime from 1975 to 1991 was the Tigray People's Liberation Front on which we will focus because it is directly related to the current and historical events of interest to us and happening in the Tigray region.  The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), in its beginnings started as a small guerrilla that grew to become the base of the government of Ethiopia, it should be noted that the Tigray region is smaller in population in relation to the others but still it has had great political and cultural influence. 

In its early days the TPLF was based on an ethno-nationalist consciousness generated by the accumulated grievances of Tigrayans against successive central governments in Ethiopia. An association of Tigrayan elites, the Tigrayan National Organisation (TNO), based in the cities, paved the way for the formation of the TPLF. 

The TPLF began its struggle to secure "self-determination" for the Tigray region within the Ethiopian political system. Embarking on its armed struggle with a hybrid ideology, blending ethno-nationalism with Marxism, in 1975, the Tigray People's Liberation Front launched a protracted rebellion against the military government. 

The conflict exacerbated a disastrous drought and famine between 1984 and 1985, which the government attempted to alleviate by forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of peasants to well-watered regions in the south and west.  An international outcry led to the suspension of this programme, but by then it had resulted in the deaths of some 100,000 people, and hundreds of thousands more sought refuge from civil war and famine in Sudan and Djibouti. 

The severity of the Ethiopian famine and hunger crisis of the 1980s must be emphasised as one of the worst humanitarian events of the 20th century, prompting a global response to bring food assistance and save lives.  The food shortages and famine crisis in Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985 resulted in approximately 1 million deaths from famine, according to the United Nations. 

This famine was defined as a catastrophe that, above all, attracted the world's attention. In late 1984, donors rushed relief supplies to the worst affected areas in the north of the country in a relief operation on an unprecedented scale.  Thousands of people were dying every week, with the impact of the drought compounded by the Marxist regime's denial of the severity of the famine and the fact that the region was engulfed in civil war.  One aid official described it as "hell on earth", a famine from which the world is still learning because it was brutal and required international cooperation to stop the death.

During the famine and with nearly 8 million people in Ethiopia considered at risk of starvation, appeals were launched for 1.3 million metric tons of food, plus millions of dollars in other emergency relief supplies. The response was tremendous. More than 60 organisations will directly administer the relief aid, receiving donations from 36 different governments and countless private individuals and organisations. In response to the crisis, the US Government launched the largest emergency relief effort in history. The US government's response was all the more remarkable because US development assistance to Ethiopia had ceased in 1979 and by 1984 there was no aid office in Ethiopia. 

During this famine the war continued in Ethiopia and although there had previously been a number of ethno-nationalist movements of one form or another that rose up to challenge the Ethiopian state, none of them were able to break the backbone of the central state. 

In 1991, after a protracted sixteen-year war, the ethno-nationalist TPLF finally managed to seize power in the Ethiopian state, with a number of local and external factors contributing to its success. Among the local factors we can see how they built a large and disciplined army that defeated not only rival liberation fronts, but also the military government itself, one of the strongest in Africa. 

Their victory resulted in the replacement of an Amhara-dominated government with one led by Tigray leaders, a source of continuing conflict throughout the 1990s. Another source of conflict was disagreement over border demarcation between Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea, with both countries claiming areas in Tigray. 

Conflict over this issue and over ethnic, racial and political issues persist into the 21st century and remain the causes of division and war among the people of this Horn of Africa country.