Signs point to a war breaking out in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has accused Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki of sending troops deep into Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Afwerki has denounced those allegations as a false pretense for an Ethiopian invasion. The Trump State Department is urging Ethiopia to settle tensions before a regional war erupts, with Iranian and Yemeni asymmetric deterrence in the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea continuing to bleed the U.S. and its allies of capital, and fears a conflict in Eritrea, which is positioned opposite of Yemen along the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, would be another blow to the any sort of stability needed by Western financial institutions and markets.
Eritrea, with its deepwater ports long prized for their centrality to global commerce, has a long history of colonial interference. In the late-19th century, Italy attempted to establish a settler colony in Eritrea and saw its attempt to advance southward into present-day Ethiopia crushed by Emperor Menelik II’s army. The British established their own military administration in Eritrea in 1941, which ended in 1952 when UN Resolution 617 established Eritrea as a federation under the Ethiopian Crown.
Federated Eritrea had its own assembly and flag, and adopted Arabic and Tigrinya as its official languages. But over the decade, the expansionist aims of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie grew. His regime was one of the U.S. most important allies, offering a bulwark against the rise of Third World liberation movements. Selassie allowed the U.S. to operate Kagnew Station, a large military surveillance installation housing thousands of American troops in the Eritrean capital of Asmara. The Ethiopian Empire slowly imposed more of its might onto autonomous Eritrea, culminating in its 1962 annexation, which began a since-estranged relationship between the two countries.
It is rare for the Horn of Africa to make headlines in western media. When I saw Ethiopia and Eritrea were trudging toward a new confrontation, my first thought was to reach out to Beniam Awash, a researcher and sociologist. When I was an undergraduate student, our advisory meetings would often lead to hours-long derailments into geopolitics and history. Born in Tigray, Professor Awash recently started a Substack covering political and economic developments in the Horn of Africa. I asked him to expound on the history of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations to better understand our current moment. Below are excerpts of our four-hour conversation.
Nathan Sommer: In a recent article for your Substack Hatata, you describe the escalating situation in Tigray. The Ethiopian Army took Tigray’s capital Mekelle on October 3rd, while reports of Eritrean troops in Tigray raises concerns over a regional war erupting. Before we come back to the present, though, I wanted to talk about the origins of Ethiopian-Eritrean antagonism. Let’s start with the 1962 annexation – how did Eritreans feel about joining Ethiopia as a province and losing their autonomous status?
Prof. Beniam Awash: Almost unanimously, highlanders wanted to join. They were Christian and they shared the same cultural space. As soon as they were part of the Ethiopian Empire, they could go anywhere in Ethiopia, and they did, and they were very successful in acquiring jobs and being part of the military hierarchy, the political hierarchy. Lowland Eritrean communities, especially Muslim pastoral and agro-pastoral groups, feared that annexation would subordinate them to a Christian imperial state.
NS: In what context did you then see the emergence of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF)?
BA: The reason the ELF was first to start the liberation fight was because they were lowlanders. They’re culturally non-highlanders, and they’re also Muslim. And in the Ethiopian Empire, at that time, you had discrimination against Muslims, whether they were Eritrean or Ethiopian Muslims. Discrimination exposed itself through lack of access to jobs in the formal market where the state is in control, and they could be easily targeted for land dispossession. And you have examples of that. For instance, Dutch Tobacco in the very large Awash Valley on Afar pastoralist land. These are seasonal grazing and watering lands that were appropriated and handed to foreign capital by Selassie’s imperialist state.
NS: It makes a lot of sense that the most repressed social group would be the most active in the liberation fight. Why then did the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the current ruling party of Eritrea, form as a splinter group to the ELF?
BA: The EPLF is interesting because it represents from within the ELF a more progressive, secular and inclusive movement or tendency. The ELF had its membership from the Muslim population, and because of that, most of the Highlanders – 50% of the population – would not participate in it. And the other aspect: it was conservative, and the EPLF was Marxist, essentially. It’s in that context that I think the EPLF was much more successful to then create a broad-based movement, If you look at the EPLF, it was Muslim, it was Christian, it was petty bourgeois, it was peasants as well, both in the lowlands and the highlands.
NS: Let’s now go to when Selassie’s government was toppled in 1974 by popular uprisings across the country. The emerging ruling government, the Derg, called itself Marxist-Leninist and preached religious equality. Why was the EPLF not interested in integrating itself, federalizing itself within Ethiopia? I mean, they were both Marxist movements, right?
BA: So, the first leader of the Derg [Aman Andom] was actually Eritrean. And the reason he was assassinated was because the most radical components of the Derg did not want a peaceful compromise with Eritrea. The radical wing viewed the issue of Eritrea as one of attempted secession. They saw it as a province, just like any other province. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – you also have the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) – these groups were also seen simply as secessionists not associated with any grievances. It was never understood as having its own sort of context. The original issue was that a compromise that had been worked out was then destroyed in 1962, and Eritrea was no longer. The people in Eritrea were no longer able to exercise self-determination. The key impediments were the radicals within the Derg. They were tutored and socialized in the imperial mindset. They didn’t see Eritrea as a federal unit that had a special status, and that in the 1960s, that special status was canceled.
NS: How did Ethiopia respond to other groups also seeking self-rule during this period, like the movements in Bale, Gojjam, Tigray, etc.?
BA: The Ethiopian constitution, or the laws in Ethiopia, had to be very clear that it was not considered a prisoner of nations, that this was not a get out of jail card for everybody.
NS: That would destroy the country
BA: I think then you don’t even have a country. It’d be like signing a fragmentation. But think of Ethiopia as a civilizational state. It was never with fixed boundaries, and the experience of living within the Ethiopian empire is determined by the way in which one finds himself as either part of the center or the periphery. Those that are part of the periphery, they also have a national consciousness that looked at the imperial element as a backward polity. Selassie, late in his period, tried to reform. It was just too late. So, for quite some time, the key question was the nationality question. But the Derg, they dealt with the nationality question, and what they did was they first moved to the Chinese. The Chinese also had a nationality question, and it’s very interesting to see. Can you create a state that has some level of legitimacy, that is not liberal? So the Derg was experimenting, but they still had that tendency, unfortunately, to not accommodate many ethnic minority groups.
NS: I’m interested in that period from 1974 to ‘77 or ‘78 where the Derg is actively consolidating itself and shaping the new Ethiopia. It seems this would have been the perfect opportunity for,a Federation where they could have granted more autonomy to regions like Eritrea and the Ogaden.
BA: When Eritrea had that special status, the highland community was willing, as you see, to accommodate a federal arrangement. After 1974, when you had the equality of Muslims and Christians, there could have also been a way of recruiting and accommodating lowlanders. The antagonism between the highland and lowland communities regarding the canceled federation could’ve been addressed. But it just wasn’t.
NS: I think of Fidel Castro’s proposal to create an anti-imperialist federation of states in the Horn – Ethiopia, Somalia, South Yemen, Djibouti, an autonomous Ogaden and Eritrea. Imagine the possibilities of a unified socialist bloc controlling the Red Sea.
BA: [Chuckles] Oh my god, it would have changed history.
NS: Yeah, for sure. Later in the Derg era, the U.S. and Arab reactionary states threw support behind the TPLF and EPLF. Both groups were advocates of, well, a form of socialism though, right? I’m curious why they would want nominally socialist movements controlling the Red Sea?
BA: I think the destruction of the socialist government in Ethiopia required supporting the EPLF and the TPLF. Even though they were liberation fronts and espousing some sort of Marxist ideology, I would say the TPLF less so, but nevertheless they were both leftist.
NS: It reminds me of Syria, with Western support for rebels that would destabilize Assad’s anti-Western regime. Their support for Rojava, for instance, which called itself socialist.
BA: Absolutely. So the EPLF kind of helped to destabilize the Ethiopian project. I mean, it was the same reason they supported the Somalis and [Somali President] Siad Barre to invade.
NS: The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition dominated by the TPLF, took power in the early 1990s. TPLF Chairman Menes Zelawi became prime minister of Ethiopia. Did they capitulate to U.S. interests?
BA: When they came to power, the TPLF had to have several meetings to convince the U.S. administration that they would be willing to play ball. And in fact, they presented themselves as pragmatic, and the interlocutor for them on their behalf was [former CIA Agent and National Security Council official] Paul Henze, who lived in Ethiopia. [The TPLF] became problematic later on, in the 2010s, but earlier on, it was considered acceptable.
NS: The relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea was relatively smooth during the early 1990s. In the late 1990s, a brutal war broke out between the two countries that displaced hundreds of thousands and killed tens of thousands of civilians. How did this happen?
BA: An inability to have a sustained economic transformation in Eritrea was one of the major reasons for the war in 1998, which was mislabeled a border war. It was about access to the Ethiopian market. If you look at development in 1995, ‘96, ‘97, there was this frustration and inability to engage in accumulation. They wanted to have a national bourgeoise. But I would say they lost out to the TPLF, who were engaging in primitive accumulation. They used the Ethiopian state to create a new class, a bourgeois class. [The TPLF], within a generation, had billionaires. The war really was a war of accumulation. And because it took an ethnicized form, and because they were small in number, it created huge dissatisfaction.
NS: Abiy Ahmed Ali became Ethiopia’s prime minister in 2018 and disbanded the EPRDF. His rise had a lot to do with curbing the influence of the TPLF. I know he’s also ethnically Oroma, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, who were sidelined during the TPLF’s time in power. Who is Prime Minister Abiy, and what does his group represent?
BA: The new group in power came from very humble backgrounds. They’re not even petty bourgeoise, right? They’re lumpenproletariat. And so their drive is to become a national bourgeoise. And the TPLF is a threat, not just as a political force, but as an existing national bourgeoise. So, along with the EPLF, there are three national bourgeoises stuck in this dance.
NS: Is Abiy western-backed? What are his politics?
BA: He literally said ‘I will die for America’ in an interview. I mean, you can’t make it up. He’s very reactionary. He said “I was passing information to the Americans while at the Information Network Security Agency (INSA),” Ethiopia’s equivalent to the NSA, he said that publicly! Not even Mobutu would have said that.” [laughs]
NS: Wow. So why did the most recent war in 2020 occur between the TPLF and this surprising partnership between Afwerki’s Eritrea and Abiy’s Ethiopia?
BA: Back in 2020, you had this war break out. Actually it was highly planned. For both the EPLF and Ethiopians, the TPLF was a threat. For the Eritreans, there were two reasons for the war. One, they blamed the sanctions, the inability to accumulate, on the TPLF, which I think to a certain extent they’re right. The second reason is state formation. The EPLF feared ethnic communities would leave for Ethiopia if it looked prosperous.
NS: So in the 2020 war, the EPLF was worried about, for instance, Tigrinya speakers migrating across the border to Tigray because of economic prosperity?
BA: Yeah. And Abiy’s government wanted to become a national bourgeoise without any challenge or threat. So the TPLF needed to be eliminated in the Ethiopian context for Abiy to accomplish this.
NS: Let’s jump to the present moment, where Eritrea is now reportedly partnering with the TPLF. How did such bitter enemies from the 2020-22 war become allies.
BA: The EPLF was documented engaging in horrific crimes against humanity and various human rights violations in Tigray. The Amhara militias did, the Ethiopian army did, the TPLF engaged in these crimes. Many people haven’t forgotten, but the TPLF and EPLF now is an alliance of convenience. The falling out between EPLF and Abiy’s government came in three moments. One, [in 2022], the TPLF were holed up in Mekele and the promise was to crush them. A huge city like Mekele could not be taken without massive civilian casualties. So, Abiy decided without informing the Eritreans, to withdraw. The second moment was the Pretoria Agreement. The U.S. forced the TPLF to South Africa and said, ‘Okay, sign this paper.’ This was problematic because it did not include Eritreans in that discussion. Third, the Abiy government started talking about the Red Sea, and started to develop a navy. For a landlocked country. The only thing we do know is, from the Ethiopian side, they have beaten a drum regarding territorial acquisition, to restore Ethiopia’s historic coastlines.
NS: Historically, the Horn has had foreign powers use its conflicts as proxy wars for access to resources, ports, etc. Are there foreign powers involved right now?
BA: So in the Horn of Africa, you have vassals, but the only exception is Eritrea. It’s a problematic government, but it’s a sovereign state. The way it has survived is by engaging in alliance forming – with Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, even Saudi Arabia, which they’re doing right now. Meanwhile, the Ethiopians and the UAE have a common interest. Ethiopia, for instance, is supporting the UAE in its attempts to grab land and assemble proxies in southern Yemen, and the UAE plays an important role in funding Ethiopian politics. From the Eritrean perspective, it’s also a UAE project to take over their ports. A few years back, the Eritreans kicked out the UAE from Assab port, and they want it back.
NS: Back inside Ethiopia’s domestic situation, I wanted to ask your take on the Tsimdo alliance (officially the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Coalition for Survival), the coalition of opposition groups to Abiy that include the TPLF, Oromo Liberation Army, and other organizations representing ethnic minority groups.
BA: Tsimdo includes several organizations that do not have a common perspective about the way Ethiopia should be constructed. In some cases, they’re very antagonistic. I see a promise, but lots of Ethiopians are skeptics because of the unethical nature of Ethiopian politics of the last five years. But there’s a real desire for reconciliation between communities in the north and Eritreans. There’s a real desire, and it’s expressed in moments such as when Abiy and Isaias [Afwerki] had a reconciliation between the two countries for the first time in 20 years. You saw huge celebrations from most Eritreans and Ethiopians, on the border, the diaspora, everywhere. There were incredible feelings of love.
