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Part I
Horn of Africa in macro-perspective
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1
Turbulent political developments in the Horn of Africa in the Cold War
The central role of Ethiopia, 1960s to 1980s
Jan Záhořík
Introduction
The Horn of Africa is a specific region in Sub-Saharan Africa as it has witnessed very diverse historical trajectories, external influences, political systems, ethnic clashes, religious hostilities, and/or military coups. The Horn of Africa was affected by colonialism in several ways. As suggested by Kidane Mengisteab, these are primarily the arbitrariness of inter-state boundaries and the fragmentation of the economies.1 The Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is usually considered to have been one of the longest ruling heads of state in the history of Africa. Angelo Del Boca calls him the “patriarch of Africa,”2 while Donald Crummey stresses the emperor’s “personal diplomatic skills,”3 which significantly contributed to the status of Ethiopia as a natural center of African diplomacy and politics.
Similar characteristics which emphasized the emperor’s greatness and fame had their antitheses that were derived from authoritarian rule and the repressive nature of the imperial regime. The dark side of the feudal rule began to appear publicly and internationally, mainly after the failed coup attempt in 1960 that involved several high-ranking military officials. The regime—based on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Amharic language and culture, and the emperor— gave rise to various associations and movements based on religious, ethnic, or socio-cultural roots. These began to challenge the outdated image of Ethiopia as a modernizing country ruled by wise aristocracy. The feudal nature of the countryside divided into the landowners (neftegna) and servants (gäbbar) had its ethnic and religious consequences because the privileged class was formed by the Amharic speaking “Northerners” while the “Southerners” including Muslims were destined to the role of second-class citizens.
Despite all this, we cannot perceive the history of Ethiopia as a clash of two entities as is popular these days. Ethnic or national groups are not “monoliths” and therefore it has to be taken into account that the privileged class was formed only of those Amharic-speaking elites linked to the imperial court, while the rest of Amharic-speaking population lived in the same more or less miserable conditions as their non-Amharic neighbors. Long-lasting order began to be challenged in the 1960s by the existence of associations appealing to cultural, linguistic, and economic equality. The activities of the Oromo Macha-Tulama Association, for instance, caused serious concerns due to possible unification and common political aspirations of all Oromos and Muslims.4
However, it was mainly the student and peasant movements that were protesting against governmental inability to react to a series of devastating famines and which led to demonstrations and uprisings directed against the hegemony of the imperial court and the Orthodox Church. Student leaders blamed religious officials as well as the aristocracy for the underdevelopment of Ethiopia.5 In this chapter, we focus on the Cold War era in the Horn of Africa with the primary focus on Ethiopia as the main hegemonic/centrally located state whose affairs affected the neighboring countries and whose status attracted foreign actors, such both Cold War powers the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Horn of Africa in the context of decolonization
Different regions of Africa witnessed decolonization with various degrees of intensity and outcomes. While French Africa gained independence (with the exception of Guinea and Djibouti) in 1960 according to previously designed plan, British Africa gained independence continuously throughout 1950s and 1960s, and Portuguese Africa had to fight for independence in a bloody war that led to decolonization in the mid-1970s. The Horn of Africa is an exceptional case as it includes Ethiopia and several other countries with various colonial backgrounds (Italian, British, and French). Moreover, the former Italian colony of Eritrea was absorbed by the Ethiopian Empire in 1952. The anti-colonial struggle gained new momentum in the early 1960s when Eritreans began to fight for their independence. From a macro point of view, the Egyptian revolution of 1952 led the USA and Western powers to strengthen their alliances with conservative governments. Thus, the USA increased its military support to Ethiopia in the following years, as a regime change would have been undesirable.6
The decolonization era in the Horn of Africa showed four unresolved problems that were affecting each of the main countries in one way or another. First, it was the land issue (land was owned by the state and the church) that retained Ethiopia in a state of economic backwardness and poverty. Second, in Somalia it was the colonial division of the Somali-speaking people into five different administrations. Third, the colonial heritage of unequal economic development combined with a sentiment of racial superiority of one group over another affected the post-colonial development in the Sudan. Fourth, one of the major issues of the era of decolonization in the Horn of Africa was the border dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia. Due to an absence of legally defined borders between the two entities, the region of Ogaden (what is now South-Eastern Ethiopia) became politically a very sensitive area and a source of clashes and disputes. Since the end of the nineteenth century, several treaties had been signed between Ethiopia and the British Somaliland, while between Ethiopia and Italian Somalia they were delineated even more vaguely.7 This led to the so-called Walwal incident in 1934, which was used to justify the Italian invasion of Ethiopia one year later. Due to the fact that the Somali-speaking people were divided into five states, the chance of unification of all Somalis into one state, Greater Somalia, was far from realistic.
The Eritrean case is much more complicated and deserves closer attention as is discussed in other chapters in this volume. Eritrea had to wait for its independence longer than the rest of Africa as it lost its right to sovereignty soon after the fall of Italian East Africa. The country came under the British Military Administration and then in 1950 the United Nations (UN) declaration opened up the space for incorporation of Eritrea into Ethiopia first in the form of federation, and later as a province within a unitary state. The Eritrean response to the Ethiopian hegemony lacked three things: an organized military struggle, a viable Eritrean identity, and a homogeneous and unified resistance movement. These were the tasks that the nationalist movement had to deal with in the early days of protests against Ethiopia.8 When the Eritrean Liberation Front was founded, it was based in Cairo as a center of nationalism, socialism and anti-colonial resistance.9 Despite the seemingly cordial relations between Haile Selassie and Gamal Abd al-Nasser in the international arena, the Ethiopian government considered Arabs to be a threat due to the fact that Cairo and al-Azhar served as important places especially for Eritrean students who had gained a sense of independence mixed with Islamic thoughts. In Ethiopia itself, Haile Selassie feared an Islamic influence coming from Egypt that might threaten the alleged Christian unity and homogeneity of Ethiopia.10 While the Ethiopian regime treated Muslims like second-class citizens, Nasser was welcomed by them during his visit to Addis Ababa in 1963 with a surprising wave of enthusiasm.11 It was a legitimate threat to the throne as Islam really presented kind of a response to the supremacy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Imperial court. It had gained a particularly wide following, primarily among the Somali and Oromo protesters.12 Generally, Ethiopia’s relations with the Arab world were far from easy. Later, during the Eritrean struggle for independence, Eritrean fighters gained significant support from Iraq and Syria via Sudan. Haile Selassie’s response was to support southern Sudanese rebels fighting against the central government in Khartoum.13
Revolutions in the making
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Horn of Africa was affected by nationalism, socialism, anti-colonialism, and Marxism-Leninism with various degrees of intensity. Those -isms were spreading across the continent and changing the nature of its social and political orders. In Ethiopia, it was mainly the group of young students who were engaged in spreading the word of Marxism-Leninism as a response to the feudal character of the Imperial regime.14 Despite the fact that Haile Selassie tried to view himself as a true modernizer whose intention was to lead the country towards a better future, both outside and inside the country he was observed rather as an obstacle to development. One of the issues that the emperor was unable and perhaps unwilling to solve was the people’s question. Despite the growing nationalist movements in Africa and elsewhere, he was unable to understand the national political integration and treated peripheral peoples as “subjects” rather than citizens.15
No language, cultural, or religious diversity was mentioned by official channels and the Ethiopian government was trying to present itself as a unified and unitary state. Therefore, even the nationalities question was neglected or even totally avoided by the government. It comes as no surprise that the Eritreans, Ogadeni Somalis, and Oromos in various regions began to express their demands throughout the 1960s, especially when it came to social, religious, and regional equality. It was officially forbidden to write, preach, or broadcast in Afaan Oromo or other languages, and the Oromo culture, just like other cultures of the “minorities,” was suppressed. On the other hand, the largely Oromo inhabited regions such as Bale, Sidama, and Kaffa were Ethiopia’s primary resource lands from where coffee was exported to the world.16
In 1969 in Somalia and Sudan, and in 1974 in Ethiopia, military coups swept away the former regimes and changed the shape of the politics in the region significantly. They had been preceded by coups (such as in 1958 in Sudan) and attempted revolutions. In Ethiopia, already in 1960, a coup d’état was organized by military officers but it failed due to the fact that the majority of them remained loyal to the court. On the other hand, these soldiers served as an inspiration to the 1974 generation of revolutionists.17 To understand why these revolutions happened in Somalia and Ethiopia, it is necessary to take a look at the social structure of especially Ethiopia. While in Somalia, the coup occurred more as a political power struggle, in Ethiopia it had a genuine social context that resembled that of Russia prior to the revolution. The causes of the revolution originated in an absolute incapability to reflect the dynamic changes of the 1960s (or better said, since the World War II) that occurred in Africa and the world.18
After 1974, the two African countries that adopted Marxism-Leninism were from the Horn of Africa—Ethiopia and Somalia.19 However, the socialist orientation and close relations with the Soviet Union did not prevent them from dealing with their own yet unresolved issues. One of these was the long-standing problem of borders, and the rise of Pan-Somalism trying to create the “Greater Somalia” that would incorporate all Somali-speaking inhabitants. Pan-Somali ideology had already been contributing to the turbulent developments inside Ethiopia, primarily in the 1960s during the Bale rebellion that included Oromo and Somali peasants—the latter gaining courage from Somalia’s independence.20
When the 1977–1978 Ogaden war broke out, the Soviets were surprised by the fact that the two Marxist regimes were fighting against each other. While until 1974, military stability was maintained by superpower support to Somalia (Soviet Union) and Ethiopia (United States), after 1974 this balance vanished and Ethiopia became a target of intensive military assistance, especially after the Somali invasion, although Gebru Tareke has argued that the Somalis were “poorly equipped to win the protracted war.”21 The Soviets had no interest in Greater Somalia; their desire was to have access to a military base on the coast, so the Ogaden region was far off from their perspective. Thus, the Ogaden war contributed to the change of military alliances and helped the Derg regime to create massive military forces.22 Revolutionary changes and events in Iran and Afghanistan persuaded the United States that some naval and air bases ...
