by Seyoum Hameso
The alarming political situation and crisis in Africa draws the concerns and attentions of both the media and scholarship. The books reviewed here raise crucial problems in African polity.
With out doubt conditions throughout the continent are grave; all the more so countries in the Horn face complex problems. In a brief discussion paper, Patrick Gilkes and Martin Plaut offer an outsider’s view of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The authors have been involved, at different levels, in the analysis of political undercurrents in the region. Patrick Gilkes has spent six years teaching at secondary school and at the university 1960s and early 1970s. He also conducted two years research on Ethiopia. He is the author of the ‘Dying Lion, Feudalism and Modernisation in Ethiopia’, published in 1974. His research work on Ethiopian polity has caused him expulsion from the country in 1972 on grounds of ‘involvement in political affairs’. Later on he became the head of the Somali section of the BBC World Service. Martin Plaut also works for the BBC. The attempt is a timely effort, as the BBC’s interest in extensively covering the crises, to make sense of what many observers dubbed as a ‘senseless war’. In their inventory of possible causes, the authors see a troubled history of differing national aspirations in the respective areas.
For Eritrea the experience of Italian colonialism, the federal arrangement with Ethiopia (1950), and its dissolution (1962) created conditions necessary for national aspiration and realisation for a separate state identity (1991). However such inspiration is not shared by a group of people south of the river Mereb where for much of this century borders were rarely the issue though Italy, the then colonial power, and the king of Abyssinia made different treaties in 1901, 1902 and 1908.
The current war is described as one of borders, the causes, and now the consequences, of the crises are undoubtedly complex. According to the authors, some of the explanations range from history of Ethiopia, to the troubled relations of the Eritrean and Tigrean liberation fronts, and different memories of national identification. During their struggles that took decades, the two movements opted for different forms of identity. The physiology of the societies and the methods of social mobilisation in part explained this. Having Maoist orientation and a homogenous peasantry for
mobilisation, the TPLF had a simpler task than the EPLF which faced ethnic and religious diversity. Ideological differences were put off until after victory over the common enemy, the
derg. Not for long, however. As the EPLF chose the path of independent statehood, the TPLF opted for owning the falling
derg state. After victory, the authors argued, the EPLF formed a centralised state. The same could be said of the
TPLF/EPRDF despite the rhetoric of federalism and a token right to national self-determination. And ‘neither government has, in practice, tolerated much in the way of dissent’ (p.12).
The rest of the differences causing the war situation remain a matter of debate. One line of argument is the familiar Ethiopianist discourse of personalising state relations to leaders in person where the basic polity relies on personal rule. Recourse is made to relations between the two leaders which remained informal even after the formalisation of Eritrean independence in 1993. As to immediate actions, mention is made of the introduction of the nakfa, Eritrean national currency which cannot be said to cause the war, as it is merely the consummation of national independence. The views from the warring parties do not reflect the entire picture, either.
What is certain is that the consequences of the war are more pronounced than the causes. Trade links were curtailed and the use of ports were abandoned. War was declared; then came all the things of war: air bombardments, vicious fighting, cannon-foddering, deportations and displacement of hundreds of thousands, a spending spree of millions of dollars on the acquisition of modern weaponry, vitriolic propaganda, and so on.
The authors also mention the economic, human and regional consequences of the war. Finally they touch upon the peace efforts by different countries which came to naught. The authors see no prospects for the region if the ultimate aim of the war is mutual destruction.
There is hardly anything that is particularly fresh or revealingly new in the book except a summary account of what is already in the public media. The attempt at a speedy approach of journalism to a conflict that still betrays speculative certainty. What is conspicuously absent is a perspective that explains the socio-political background, particularly in Ethiopia, leading to the conflict. The authors are well aware that the TPLF is a minority regime that does not pass for democracy. The political tension that has been building up since the TPLF seized power by suppressing popular demands is one that guarantees impending crises, and the unexpected war between once close allies is just one. The authors could have dwelt on the political and administrative structures, not to mention economic policies of the TPLF/EPRDF government that assured hugely skewed expansionist and hegemonic project. The building and expansion of Tigray in different directions, often to the extent of expanding to other people's territories is bound to lead to conflict, wherever it emerges. Similar issues could have been examined on the Eritrean side. That kind of critical approach of internal dynamic is lacking in the book.[]
Seyoum Hameso
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