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TPLF and
Tigrean Identity politics |
May 25, 2007
Kallacha Dubbi
The TPLF dominated Ethiopian leadership
holds the view that the Eritrean government
plays the most destabilizing role in the
Horn of Africa. The Ethiopian opposition
forces and Eritrea on the other hand believe
that it is the TPLF led Ethiopian government
that is severely destabilizing the region.
And yet the US foreign office is concerned
by a “rising extremism of Islam”, accusation
which rests pointedly at Somalia and perhaps
somehow at the Sudan.
I argue that the TPLF’s politics has been a
source of material, political, community,
and intellectual development of the Tigrean
ethnic class over the last 16 years, and
thus created an identity inequity which has
been the primary source of instability in
the region. The genesis and consequences of
this identity politics vis-à-vis the rest of
Ethiopia have been bashed repeatedly but not
put in an argued perspective of a short
format.
On Eritrea’s role: Eritrea’s role in the
region has often been grossly exaggerated by
promoting the human rights abuse in Eritrea
into the forefront of the regional politics.
Given that Eritrea’s human rights records
are inherent results of the perpetual state
of war in which it is forcedly placed by
Meles, and given that there is no ethnic
cleansing in that country, Meles’ has
clearly tipped the scale of human rights
abuse for the region if not for the world.
No matter how intensely human rights are
abused in Eritrea, these abuses simply do
not constitute a regional agenda capable of
destabilizing the Horn. This is by no means
to argue that Eritrea does not have its
share of human rights burden in satisfying
the mood of an emerging middle class and
rewarding aspirations of a population that
may be growing impatient of life under
perpetual cloud of war, anticipating the
unknown. While legitimately critiquing
Eritrea’s human rights records, one must
bare in mind Eritrea’s unruly neighbor who
has vested interest in making things go
wrong in Eritrea. Simply stated, the
Eritrean has to temporarily choose either a
full blown human rights or compromise its
hard-earned freedom. Here, I am sure I am
opening a Pandora’s Box – a tired debate of
the Eritrean community in the hope that a
complete stranger may offer un-invested view
point. But I know for sure, that Eritrea’s
friendship with the majority of the
Ethiopian population including the oppressed
carries a strategic weight for peace and
prosperity in the region, including the
oppressor.
On Extreme Islam: In the past many writers
have argued that the rise of extreme Islam
in the Horn was a designed panic or a bogus
goat for Ethiopia’s venture into Somalia,
and even more likely, a scheme to facilitate
the US’s recoup in the region. This seems
consistent with the creation of a new U.S.
Africa Command headquarters, AFRICOM, to
coordinate all U.S. military and security
interests throughout the continent. Although
there were extreme Islamic attacks to US
establishments in the Horn, it is simply not
known if these attacks could have
precipitated into a powerhouse capable of
overtaking Somalia and launching precipitous
attacks to US interests there or anywhere.
The US simply chose not to take a risk, no
matter what the cost of siding with an
unpopular regime in Ethiopia would be. So,
there is a funny logic to the US interest in
the Horn – it doesn’t want to place the
Ethiopian opposition on a hopeless bench,
but it also doesn’t want to demote Meles in
which case it would have to deal with
Somalia in person. Thus, the current US
policy in east Africa is a result of the
mishmash of its disapproval of Meles’ abuse
of human rights and its desire to guard what
it perceives as US strategic interest in the
Horn. In this policy, one can clearly read
into the level of neglect the US
demonstrates towards the genesis and
potential impact of the Tigrean hegemony,
the potential destruction of the Ethiopian
state as a consequence, and the critical
role of the TPLF towards this precarious
end. The cost of this destruction could be
much higher than the feared rise of
Islamists in Somalia, which many believe had
orderly manifestations and localized
tendencies.
On the Tigrean hegemony: There is a thesis
among Ethiopian historians that Tigrean
nationalism has been historically
belligerent and more intolerant than the
rest. The Ethiopian historian Bahiru Zewde
writes about the last Tigrean emperor,
Yohannes, as follows: “The Muslims of Wallo
were told to renounce their faith and
embrace Christianity or face confiscation of
their land and property… Thus, two prominent
converts were Muhammad Ali, baptized into
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as Mikael, and
Abba Wataw, who became Hayle-Maryam. Others
confirmed outwardly, praying to the
Christian God in the daytime and to the
Muslim Allah at night. … There was no room
for Islam in his (Yohannes) ideological
world. The thrust of his repression directed
against Wallo forced some of them to flee to
other areas… an Argobba Muslim leader by the
name Sheik Talha fled to the Sudan with his
followers.”
Coming from Tigrean leaders, there is a
parallel to be drawn between Yohannes’
attempt to exterminate Islam from Ethiopia
and Meles’ decision to invade Somalia to
suppress unarmed Islamists emerging in a
country where international embargo has
virtually dried any war machinery.
The TPLF started its guerilla resistance
with a simple motto: initially to create
independent Tigray, but later to free Tigray/Ethiopia
from invidious governance of the Derg, by
running a political ideology that openly
claimed to be more Marxist than the Marxists
who then ruled the country with a vicious
duty to kill. The combination of its leftist
claim through and by which the current
Tigrean-based Ethiopian leadership usurped
power, with its ethnic identity which it
used to galvanize mass support and cleanse
out the EPRP from the Asimba hills of
Tigrean territory, give the TPLF its
ethno-political distinctiveness.
The TPLF’s distinctiveness sharply
contrasted the ethno-political composition
of the Derg; the somewhat inclusive but
Amhara dominated Derg army was suddenly
replaced by an exclusively Tigrean army,
reigning over the entire country. This
unexpected collapse of the sense of Amhara
polity, though camouflaged as Ethiopian,
created a retreated void in the military
role of the rest of Ethiopia, especially the
south whose modest share was in the rise.
Within a growing Tigrean ruling class, this
void was marked by diacritic presence of the
xPDOs whose role simply legitimized Tigrean
supremacy than dilute its pronounced
exclusivity as intended. It was clear Meles
and the TPLF have fussily calculated that
Tigray elites will be assured and guaranteed
of continued rule of Ethiopia so long as
this new army remained exclusively Tigrean,
or so long as its command is not challenged
militarily. The exclusivity of the TPLF army
now turned into “Ethiopian army” has been
morphed the same way as the civic landscape
was morphed - unchallenging and obedient
members of the southern societies were
recruited into the army and kept at low
ranks and also at bay. A few handpicked non-Tigrean
military personnel with little capacity were
appointed as Generals but they were
controlled by Tigrean captains operating
from the same office as the General. The
level of mistrust and the unconventionality
of this military hierarchy are similar to
that of racist South Africa where an
ordinary white soldier gave orders to black
army officers. For this reason, the non-Tigrean
Ethiopian army has low moral, and it can be
safely argued, that there is indeed no
Ethiopian army but Tigrean. A recent
opposition report states that 90% of the
Ethiopian Generals are Tigreans, 80% for the
Colonels. For a Tigrean population
constituting only about 6% of Ethiopia’s
population, this ratio offers a grim reality
of the Ethiopian political perspective.
This passed November the Ethiopian Ministry
of Defense suspended three generals: Maj-Gen
Alemshet Degefe, ex-Ethiopian air force
commander, Brig-Gen Kumer Asfaw and Brig-Gen
Asamenew Tsege. This suspension comes after
the defection of several high ranking
officers including Gen. Kemal Gelchu who
joined the OLF. This has effectively rid the
top army echelon of non-Tigreans unless the
very few left whose loyalty is assured
through their excessive brutality or shared
racketeering.
The TPLF has therefore plainly demonstrated
that it uses Tigrean identity politics as a
tactic – to manipulate the Ethiopian
political power blocks based on
self-identification as an eminent
supra-ethnic group that shall enjoy the
innate of being and becoming above the
crowd. With such manipulation, the TPLF has
effectively marginalized the Tigrean people
who are now perceived to be outside of the
mainstream society. The Tigreo-ethiopian
common basis has broken down, and there seem
to be no real opportunities in the near
sight for peacefully ending this
marginalization.
In a recent brave political gesture, the OLF
created a political platform, the AFD,
partly to facilitate a means by which this
Tigrean marginalization can be put to an
end, and all political forces of the country
be integrated into a mainstream constructive
policy without sabotaging discrete ethnic
cultures or identities. The idea was born
from an authentic concern that Tigrean
intolerance is primarily responsible for
this marginalization, and that the OLF
should take a leading role to change the
mainstream politics of the country to create
a safe bridge of communication or even a
forbearing pluralism, without recourse to
the Tigrean oppressive homogeneity now at
play. Ironically, this constructive proposal
was cause for a split among some Ethiopian
long-distance nationalists, and the TPLF
completely rejected the initiative opting
for a beefed up military offensive against
the OLF instead. The initiative put the
political ideologies of Ethiopia that thrive
with and for a passion to dominate, in the
defensive. It also exposed the tenacity of
some Ethiopian elites to their passion for
ethnic domination.
In a general sense, Tigrean nationalism has
manifested itself as a carrier of the
official state ideology of Ethiopia
expressed along economic, ethnic, or
cultural lines. In fact, it now seems
obvious, that the Tigrean domination of
Ethiopia has intoxicated the Tigrean upper
and middle class transforming its ethnicity
to xenophobic.
The TPLF derives its political legitimacy
from the active participation of Tigreans,
matched by the will of the TPLF to represent
the will of the Tigreans above and beyond
that of the rest. Simply stated, the TPLF is
openly discriminatory in its policy. In the
long run, this discrimination is as
destructive to the Tigrean identity as it is
to the non-Tigreans, a recipe for a
collective demise. The hitherto failure of
the Tigrean scholars and political elites to
see this self-destruction and side with the
ultimate good of the Tigrean population,
should be taken as an inconceivably ill-bred
and short-sighted politics, unfortunately so
common in Ethiopia.
The TPLF has implied and manifested that the
country is a community of Tigreans who
contribute to the maintenance and strength
of the TPLF, and that other ethnic groups or
even the individual exist to contribute to
this Tigrean goal. In the words of
Mussolini: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di
fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato",
meaning "everything in the State, nothing
outside the State, nothing against the
State" – and of course here the state is the
TPLF.
It is also likely that the TPLF will revive
irredentist claims to Eritrea to boost
Ethiopian nationalism and draw aggressive
attention from orthodox Ethiopia to defend
against a perceived Eritrean threat or
simply reclaim a sea outlet for the country.
This will be driven by a will to buy more
political life than a legitimate concern for
Ethiopia. But in the eyes of conservative
Ethiopians, the entire Eritrea, or at least
Asab remains the irredenta, offering a pool
of political backup. The TPLF has
sufficiently proven that it indeed manifests
aggressive irredentist traits by annexing
parts of Gondar and Wallo to Tigrean
territory, and attempting to cut a piece of
Eritrean land which resulted in the death of
70,000 people.
In conclusion, given the extreme nature of
the blatant ethnic inequity perpetuated by
Meles in favor of Tigray, which has put
Tigray and Tigreans in a presently reviled
and potentially liable position, it defies
logic that we do not see mass defiance of
Tigrean elites to the TPLF domination.
Furthermore, the cruel stance of past
Tigrean leadership to Islam should have
demanded caution from Meles in his venture
to Somalia to squash Islam. It also defies
conventional logic that the level of dislike
for the TPLF which is now rampant in and
among Ethiopians goes on virtually ignored
and unnoticed by the TPLF. The widespread
psychological rejection of TPLF as a bad
thing that happened to the country, the
level of popular resistance that seems to be
curing into hate for Tigray, is not sensed
by Tigrean elites – for the sake of Tigreans
if not peace. It is mind-boggling to know
that Meles spends millions of dollars to buy
the support of the US government through
highly placed lobbyists while doing
everything to loose the respect and support
of the entire Ethiopian population. This
Tigrean identity politics, selfish in its
value, vicious in its extent, and shortsited
in its vision, is the primary destabilizing
force in the Horn of Africa.
editorial@ogaden.com
Ogaden Online Editorial
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