Tigray: A Very Central European War

Tigray: A Very Central European War

Tomasz Kamusella
University of St Andrews

Modern Ethiopia

Wars happen, these bloody confrontations between groups of humans. What differs one war from another is the contested object of conflict, be it religion, territory, scarce water or mineral riches. Yet, what is often overlooked is that what groups are ready to fight over is determined by the concept or ideology deployed for creating the group in question. Ostensibly, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was a confrontation between the Holy Roman Empire’s Catholics and Protestants. In reality, the root cause of this genocidal conflict was the idea that a ‘proper’ human group must profess a single religion, that a person cannot profess more than one religion at the same time, and that only ‘our religion is the true religion.’ Hence, the Empire was deemed too small to contain both religious groups, while individuals were hard pressed to choose Catholicism or Protestantism at the pain of expulsion or even death. The uneasy truce of 1648 (from the Eurocentric perspective seen as the beginning of the world’s international relations) resulted in the compromise governed by the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (‘whose realm, their religion’), meaning that the religion of the ruler dictate the religion of his realm’s population.

Modern Ethiopia is a recent creation, despite the fact that the monarchical beginnings of the Ethiopian Empire go back to the 13^th century, while the country’s mythological origins are traced to the union of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba some 3,000 years ago. In the mid-19^th century the loosely connected regions of Abyssinia overlapped with the northern quarter of what today is Ethiopia. Ambitious Emperor Tewodros (1855-1868) subdued the rival warlords and centralized the polity, which prevented its colonization when the imperialist scramble for Africa began, following the Berlin Congress of 1884-1885. On this basis, at the turn of the 20^th century, Emperor Menelik II (1889-1913) embarked on a long series of military conquests that extended the country’s frontiers to where they are nowadays. Abyssinia’s territory increased threefold, and thus modern Ethiopia was created. In 1896 the Ethiopian troops defeated the invading Italian army, reconfirming the state’s independence in the world dominated by Europe’s imperial powers. This Ethiopian victory also gave the Japanese hope that a Western power may be defeated, finally leading to Japan’s victory over the Russian Empire in 1905.

Russia and Ethiopia Compared

The price of Ethiopia’s military prowess was the Great Famine of 1888-1892, when a third of the inhabitants perished. Furthermore, the country was transformed from the rather homogenous and closely-knit Abyssinia of Semitic-speaking Christians into a multiethnic and polyconfessional Ethiopia, where these Christians were brushing sides with Cushitic-speaking Muslims and Omotic-speaking practitioners of non-scriptural (local) religions. The manner of Ethiopia’s expansion reminds one of the rise of the Russian Empire. Muscovy expanded from the Slavophone core of medieval Rus’ south to the areas of Turkic-speaking Muslims and east to Siberia with its Finno-Ugric- and Turkic-speaking practitioners of non-scriptural religions. As a result the realm was overhauled into the Russian Empire. At the turn of the 20^th century, this striking similarity in imperial history between Ethiopia and Russia was not lost on the Tsars government in St Petersburg, who sought an imperially becoming foothold in the Middle East. To this end, also an alliance was attempted with Menelik’s Orthodox Ethiopia.

Imperial Russia’s Orthodox Slavophone core was construed as the (Great) Russians with the regional subgroups of Little Russians (Ukrainians) and White Russians (Belarusians). Likewise, in Ethiopia the Habeshas (or the demographic core of Semitic-speaking Abyssinians) were seen as composed from the Amharas with the regional branches of Tigrayans and Tigreans. In the former country Russian was the imperial language, while Belarusian and Ukrainian were disparaged as mere peasant dialects. In the mid-19^th century Emperor Tewodros made Amharic into the imperial tongue of Ethiopia, while Tigrinya and Tigre were demoted to the status of unimportant dialects of Amharic. Unlike Russian, the closely-knit Belarusian and Ukrainian stem from medieval Ruthenian or the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Similarly, the closely related Tigrinya and Tigre stem from the Ethiopian Church’s high prestige liturgical language of Ge’ez. Yet, the recently created Russian and Amharic are the languages of the biggest and politically dominant groups of population in both empires’ demographic cores. Ranked in accordance with the size of their population, the Russians are followed by the Ukrainians and the Belarusians. Likewise, the Amharas are followed by the Tigrayans and the Tigreans. After the 1993 independence of Eritrea, the Tigreans found themselves in this country, leaving the kindred Tigrayans and Amharas to their own devices in Ethiopia.

Choosing a Modernity

In 1923 Regent Ras (‘Duke’) Tafari Makonnen made sure that Ethiopia became a member state of the League of Nations. In 1930 he ascended the throne as Emperor Haile Selassie. A year later he endowed Ethiopia with its first-ever Constitution of 1931 that was modelled on Japan’s 1889 Imperial Constitution. In this manner Ethiopia chose the Central European model of unitary ethnolinguistic nation-state. It is so, because in turn the Japanese had borrowed their own Constitution from Prussia and Imperial Germany, alongside this type of statehood, in which a language’s speakers (speech community) are seen as a proper nation. On the other hand, speakers of other languages who happen to live in a state of this type are either to leave or assimilate by adopting the imperial-cum-national language. A similar policy of ethnolinguistic unification was pursued in the European part of the Russian Empire from the 1880s. Other languages were banned in favor of Russian that became the sole medium of administration and education.

Interwar Ethiopia was consciously shaped in the form of an ethnolinguistic nation-state-cum-empire for the nation of Amharas, that is, Amharic-speakers. Other Semitic-speakers (that is, the Tigrayans and the Tigreans) were to become Amharas, too, meaning they were to abandon their own languages in favor of Amharic. In the case of the recently conquered Cushitic- and Omotic-speakers at least the land-owning elites of these ethnic groups were to master Amharic for the sake of enforcing imperial will of the Amharic-speaking north on the rest of Ethiopia. Not surprisingly, under the Italian occupation (1936-1941) during World War II, the colonial administration demoted Amharic in favor of Italian and Ethiopia’s other languages, including Tigrinya. Arabic was also encouraged in public use to weaken the ideologically Christian character of Ethiopian politics, in which Muslims had no place.

The British forces helped the Ethiopians defeat and oust the Italian colonial armies. London also facilitated the postwar reconstruction of Ethiopia as an ethnolinguistic nation-state. The broadening of the educational system and the introduction of universities to Ethiopia made the officially overlooked and de facto suppressed speakers of languages other than Amharic and their political movements into an acute question of the country’s politics, the burning issues of alongside land reform and regional self-government. Protests and repeatedly delayed reforms created an explosive situation that erupted in the 1974 Revolution, which ideologically drew on the Soviet ideology of marxism-leninism. The revolutionary government pressed on with land reform but alienated many peasants through forced collectivization (‘villigization’) that generated the Great Famine of 1983-1985 (so eerily similar to the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine). The nationalization of industry, banks and ‘excessive’ real estate decreased the already low output of the Ethiopian economy. Yet, literacy campaigns conducted in as many as 15 of Ethiopia’s languages were a great success. However, the oft-repeated promise of the use of some of these languages in regional and local administration remained unfulfilled. The 1987 Constitution overhauled the country into the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia on the model known from the Soviet bloc. The Constitution pledged ethnolinguistically defined Soviet-style autonomy to communist Ethiopia’s 30 regions, but only five (including Tigray) obtained it.

These five regions were located alongside Ethiopia’s restive eastern frontier with Eritrea and Somalia. This area was often overrun and de facto controlled by ethnolinguistically based anti-communist movements, among them, the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front). The ethnic organizations were fighting against communist Ethiopia from its inception until its fall in 1991. This long Ethiopian Civil War of two decades and a half tipped the scale in favor of ethnic federalism, as invented in Austria-Hungary and perfected in the Soviet Union. In 1989 the militarily successful TPLF convinced other anticommunist groups to form the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) in the final push to oust the communists. After 1991 numerous Tigrayans became members of the postcommunist ruling elite, including TPLF Chairman Meles Zenawi, who ruled Ethiopia as President and Prime Minister between 1991 and his death in 2012.

The TPLF and the other organizations that joined the EPRDF remained unabashedly marxist-leninist in their programs and politics, but in a somewhat Chinese-inflected fashion, that is, with steady encouragement for capitalist economy and entrepreneurship. This economic and political mix also translated into a de facto authoritarian system of rule executed by the TPLF through the EPRDF. However, the pro-market reforms and the actual implementation of ethnic federalism earned the government popularity and broad interethnic support. The 1995 Constitution officially made the country into the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Ethnolinguistically defined federalization was not rapid, but progressed steadily. By 2019 half (that is 40) of Ethiopia’s 80 several recognized ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ had received their autonomous territories of various ranks with administrations run in their ethnic languages. As a result, at present, around nine-tenths of the Ethiopians can use their own languages in administration and education.

Cracks Appear

Meles’s dictatorial rule did not prepare an effective mechanism for power transition in authoritarian-cum-federal Ethiopia. Obviously, Meles hoped to rule longer. Dictators often fail to factor in their own death in the political calculations. Meanwhile, the government’s efforts to meet different groups’ ethnic aspirations made the Oromo elite realize that their Cushitic-speaking nation of Oromos, at 35 million, is the country’s biggest ethnic nation. The Oromos amount to one third of Ethiopia’s entire population, and are much bigger than the traditionally dominant Amharas, who number 20 million. The main bone of contention became the never fully finalized administrative borders that separate the country’s ethnic territories. That is why in Ethiopia maps of this country with such territories are not published as a matter of course. An attempt at broadening the area of the region of Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa at the expense of the surrounding Region of Oromia led, in 2016, to ethnically motivated protests and clashes that left almost 90 casualties and over 800 wounded in their wake. The tensions paved the path for the rise of Abiy Ahmed to power as compromise Prime Minister, not least thanks to his Oromo origin and mixed Muslim-Christian background.

Abiy’s legitimacy was bolstered by the conclusion of the Peace Treaty with Eritrea in 2018. It finally normalized relations between the two countries that two decades ago had waged a bloody border war (1998-2000). Banking on this all-Ethiopian support, Abiy transformed the EPRDF from a supra-organization of ethnic parties into the unitary and ostensibly non-ethnic Prosperity Party (PP). The TPLF dethroned from its informal king-making position in the EPRDF did not join the PP, and withdrew to ‘its’ ethnic Region of Tigray in the north, on the border with Eritrea. Politically, the simmering tension came to head in the summer of 2020. On the pretense of the covid pandemic, Abiy rescheduled the 2020 parliamentary elections to an as yet undetermined date in 2021. Many saw the decision as a ploy to strengthen Abiy’s increasingly dictatorial hold on Ethiopia, as successfully executed through the PP. Out of federal Ethiopia’s 12 regions only Tigray, with its tiny population of 5 million, remained outwith the PP’s direct control. The TPLF disagreed with the delay of the parliamentary elections. Instead, Regional President and TPLF President Debretsion Gebremichael pressed on with the regional elections in Tigray itself, as scheduled, namely, in September 2020. As a result, Tigray’s regional government now deem the federal government as illegitimate and vice versa.

War over Statehood

In November 2020 the federal army attacked Tigray, and supportive Eritrea came to Addis Ababa’s succor. The TPLF forces caught in the Ethiopian-Eritrean pincer withdrew to the mountains. Tens of thousands of civilians fled to Sudan, thousands lost their lives, while over four million face famine. What is the war about? For sure about egos (people do not count). Abiy thinks he is right, while Debretsion must be wrong, and vice versa. Perhaps, Abiy wants to emulate the late Meles and now also Isaias Afwerki, who has ruled Eritrea since 1993, making it into a unitary totalitarian state. But in essence, Abiy (aided by Isaias) and Debretsion fight a war that is not of their making. Their conflict is Central European in its character. Both sides differ in their choice of a Central Europan model of statehood that they prefer. Abiy increasingly sides with the model of unitary nation-state with a single official (national) language, that is, Amharic, despite his Oromo ethnic origin. On the other hand, Debretsion prefers ethnic federalism and more rights for Ethiopia’s ethnolinguistic regions, especially for his native Tigray, up to outright independence, as guaranteed by the 1995 Constitution. In Abiy’s eyes Ethiopia is to be as unitary and indivisible as Poland is. On the other hand, Debretsion perceives Tigray as a kind of wronged Ukraine, which at long last may have a chance to leave the divisible ‘Soviet Union’ of ethnofederal Ethiopia.

At the same time innocent people die, Tigrayans, Amharas, Oromos… They have never heard about Central Europe, its history and ethnolinguistic nations. Unfortunately, modern Central Europe’s divisive politics brushed off onto modern Ethiopia in more ways than one, with hardly anyone noticing in Europe itself. During the short 20^th century the disastrous destruction of the ethnic federation of Austria-Hungary generated numerous casualties and streams of refugees, because they happened to speak a ‘wrong’ language or to profess an ‘incorrect’ religion. Ethnolinguistically homogenous and unitary nation-states built on the ruins of the Dual Monarchy, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Poland, went through their own cycles of forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The history repeated itself when in the wake of the fall of communism, the ethnoterritorial federations of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia split, yielding more ethnolinguistically homogenous and unitary nation-states. I fear that the palpable prospect of a years-long guerilla war in Tigray makes it likely that the ethnic federation of Ethiopia may follow rather into the footsteps of Yugoslavia than of Czechoslovakia, before allowing any aspiring ethnolinguistically homogenous and unitary nation-state (like, Tigray) out of Ethiopia.

March 2021

NB: The essay draws on the recently published monograph Eurasian Empires as Blueprints for Ethiopia: From Ethnolinguistic Nation-State to Multiethnic Federation (Routledge 2021) by Asnake Kefale, Tomasz Kamusella and Christophe Van der Beken. This study in the history of ideas is devoted to the transfer of the Central European models of statehood via Asia to modern Ethiopia.