War and Poverty in Ethiopia, by Dan Katz – 22 August 2023

Ethiopia has a population of 126mn and is the second most populous state in Africa, behind Nigeria.

The urban population is less than a quarter of the total. The median age is just 19 years old, with a GDP per capita of only $925. Inflation is running at 34% (April 2023).

The Save the Children estimates that over 22mn people face severe food shortages in Ethiopia, and over 4mn children are seriously malnourished. 12mn people in the south, where the rains have failed for the past five years, face famine.

In 2019-20 an enormous plague of locusts devastated Ethiopian agriculture. In 2019 locusts destroyed 350,000tn of cereal crops and more than 1.2mn hectares of pasture. 2020 was even worse (Guardian report, November 2020).

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 immediately ramped up the prices of petrol, grain and fertilisers, all imported by Ethiopia, by 20-30%. The impact of Putin’s ending of the Black Sea grain deal in July 2023 (by which Ukraine had been able to export 32mn tonnes of grain) will also impact on Ethiopia as poor, malnourished populations in the country were recipients of grain bought by the World Food Programme from Ukraine.

However, the worst crisis to hit Ethiopia for decades was the war fought between Tigrayan fighters under the command of the ruling party in the area, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and the army of the Ethiopian federal government, under the command of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, in alliance with the Eritrean army.

The combination of government forces attacking Tigray from the south and Eritrean forces invading from the north led to an effective blockade of Tigray.

The war was fought from November 2020 and did not end until a peace deal brokered by the African Union and signed in South Africa, two years later, on 2 November 2022. Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU’s lead negotiator, estimates that the war killed 600,000 people – more, for example, the numbers killed in 50 years of civil war in Colombia.

Tim Vanden Bempt, an academic from the University of Ghent, thinks 600,000 deaths is probably a roughly accurate figure. He believes “300,000 to 400,000 civilians died during the conflict – from atrocities, starvation and lack of healthcare.” In addition, he suggests unofficial estimates of combatant deaths are probably accurate at 200,000-300,000 (Financial Times, 15 January 2023).

During the war civilian targets, especially in Tigray, were hit, and hunger and rape were used as methods of waging war.

Under the peace deal the TPLF agreed to disarm and demobilise. They claim to have now handed over all their heavy weapons. But, despite the agreement to end the conflict, Eritrean soldiers appear still to be in border regions of Tigray. Eritrea was not a formal part of the AU negotiations or the peace deal.

The Sudanese army used the Tigray conflict for its own ends. In an agreement made with Abiy Ahmed, at the start of the Tigray war, in order to more effectively seal off Tigray, Sudan moved 6,000 troops to the Ethiopian border around a contested area, Al Fashaga. Sudan then began ethnically cleansing the area of Tigrayan farmers and, further south, Amhara farmers. This created problems for Abiy who wanted the border closed to Tigray but needed the backing of the Amhara elite to prosecute the war against Tigray.

From early in the Tigray war Amhara forces overran Western Tigray and began terrorising and ethnically cleansing the area. That western area had been incorporated into the regional Tigray state in the early 1990s, by the Tigray-led Ethiopian regime, which then created a basis for future inter-ethnic conflicts.

The 2007 Ethiopian census recognised over 80 different ethnic groups, the largest being Oromo (34%), Amhara (27%), Tigrayans (6%) and Somali (6%). Approximately two thirds of the population is Christian (Ethiopian Orthodox 44%, with big majorities amongst Tigrayans and Amhara populations) and one third are Muslims (including almost all the Somali population).

The Tigrayan region is in the north, bordering Eritrea; the Amhara are in the northwest of the country, south of the Tigrayan region. The Somalis are in the east, bordering Somalia. And the Oromo majority areas are in the west, centre and southwest of Ethiopia.

With the exception of the Italian fascist occupation of Ethiopia, from 1936-41, Ethiopia was ruled from 1930 to 1974 by Haile Selassie. Selassie presided – weirdly, eccentrically – over a feudalistic state. Selassie federated Ethiopia with Eritrea in 1952, and then annexed Eritrea in 1962 which led to long-running armed resistance.

Selassie was overthrown by the Derg in 1974. The Derg (“Committee”), a viciously authoritarian military-Stalinist grouping, abolished the monarchy and disestablished the Ethiopian Orthodox church, declaring the state “atheist”. The Derg survived, in various forms, using terror, in power until 1991.

The Derg were overthrown by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), an alliance led by the Tigrayan group, the TPLF. Effectively the TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics from 1991 to 2019 through the EPRDF. Key people at the top of the EPRDF were also from a Tigrayan-Stalinist political background, but ruled Ethiopia in a new and different context after the fall of Eastern European Stalinism.

The central figure in the Derg, Mengistu Haile Mariam, unfortunately escaped punishment, having fled to Zimbabwe with his family where he was given asylum and protected, although many other leading officials were eventually jailed for crimes including torture, mass murder and genocide.

The domination of political life by Tigrayans only ended in 2018 when Abiy Ahmed, of Oromo descent, with a background in an Oromo militia and an Oromo political party, and in the army, became leader of the EPRDF. Abiy quickly moved to make peace with President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea (for which he received the Nobel Peace prize in 2019), including handing over the border town of Badme to Eritrea.

Between 1998 and 2000 Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a border war in which 70,000 people died. The state of war only ended in 2018 with the Ethiopian-proposed peace deal. Eritrea is an extraordinarily repressive one-party state, and the misnamed People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDF) is the only political party. In 2021, Reporters Without Borders rated Eritrea as having the worst overall press freedom in the world (in other words, even lower than North Korea). Lack of reliable news an information is compounded by very low internet coverage inside the country.

In 2018 Abiy also released thousands of Ethiopian political prisoners.

Abiy also announced a plan to create an Ethiopian stock exchange and the intention to privatise many state-owned enterprises.

The TPLF leadership denounced these changes. In response Abiy dissolved the EPRDF in November 2019, founding his Prosperity Party, which was a rebranding of the EPRDF with the important exclusion of the TPLF.

From 2019 the Abiy regime has become much more repressive, jailing political opponents and journalists.

The war against Tigray, 2020-2, was part of Abiy’s drive to eliminate ethnic militias which rival the central military which he controls, and to centralise political power.

In April 2023 Abiy ordered that security forces from Ethiopia’s 11 regions be integrated into the police or national army. That provoked a violent backlash.

The 1995 Ethiopian constitution guarantees that “every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.” However, regional boundaries are contested, and populations overlap.

On 4 August the government declared a six-month State of Emergency in Amhara, as Federal forces fought a local militia, the Fano, previously an ally of Abiy’s during the Tigray war. The central government is attempting to disband the Fano and is using airstrikes and heavy artillery. On Sunday 13 August a government plane bombed an Amhara marketplace killing 26 and wounding at least 55 civilians.

Heavy-handed and violent attempts to centralise political power will only bring more misery to Ethiopia. §

Originally published in Workers’ Liberty.

War and Poverty in Ethiopia, by Dan Katz – 22 August 2023

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