Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia - Edinburgh Research Archive

325 Pages·2004·1.53 MB·English

Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia
Sarah Vaughan

PhD
The University of Edinburgh
2003
Summary Table of Contents

Abstract...................................................................................................................................6
Acknowledgements...............................................................................................................7
Acronyms, Glossary and notes on usage and orthography.............................................9
Introduction..........................................................................................................................13
Section One: Setting the scene..........................................................................................27
Chapter I. 1991: Redrawing the empire state....................................................................27
What happened in 1991 and after.....................................................................................27
Competing accounts..........................................................................................................35
Chapter II. Frameworks, perspectives, and constraints..................................................40
Introducing the ‘terrain’ of ‘ethnicity’..................................................................................40
Theorising ethnicity and ethno-nationalism.......................................................................43
Looking again at collectives…...........................................................................................54
Chapter III. Scope and Ambition of the Thesis.................................................................81
Methodological issues.......................................................................................................81
Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia on a constructivist approach...........................................94
Section Two..........................................................................................................................99
Legacies, resources, causes, inventions: historical roots and routes to ‘ethnic
federalism’............................................................................................................................99
Chapter IV. Building and dismantling the traditions of the empire state.....................102
Forging the nexus of ethnicity and access to power........................................................104
Inflaming the nexus: waking after a thousand years.......................................................117
The Ethiopian student movement and the ‘National Question’.......................................127
Chapter V. The protagonists of ethnic mobilisation......................................................146
Context: the Dergue regime.............................................................................................146
The politicisation of ethnicity in the north, and the emergence of the EPRDF................153
Ethnic organisation in the South: Oromia and the OLF...................................................172
Relations between the OLF and TPLF/EPRDF...............................................................178
Section Three. Mapping power and ethnicity in the Federal Democratic Republic....182
Chapter VI. Reworking representation: political mobilisation at the limits of
‘revolutionary democracy’................................................................................................185
‘Un museo di popoli’: animating the exhibits...................................................................186
Coalitions with clan leaders: shifting strategy..................................................................205
Competition in Oromia.....................................................................................................216
Regional capitals and the ‘young turks’...........................................................................222
Chapter VII. Reworking territory: languages, boundaries and budgets.......................228
Harar and Wag Himra: where history brought privilege..................................................229
‘Repacking Pandora’s box’ in the Southern Region........................................................248
Conclusions........................................................................................................................283
Map 1: Internal Administrative Units 1913.......................................................................297
Map 2: Provinces 1935.......................................................................................................297
Map 3: New Internal Administrative Divisions 1935.......................................................297
Map 4: Provinces of Italian East Africa 1940...................................................................297
Map 5: Provinces and Federated Eritrea 1952................................................................297
Map 6: Internal Administrative Units 1963-1987.............................................................297
Map 7: PDRE Administrative & Autonomous Units 1987-1991.....................................297
Map 8: TGE Boundary Commission Map 1991-1992......................................................297
Map 9: FDRE Regions, Zones, and Special weredas, 1999...........................................297
Maps 10a-e: EPRDF Administered FDRE Regions.........................................................297
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................298
Published books and articles...........................................................................................298
Unpublished sources.......................................................................................................316
Official Publications.........................................................................................................321
Publications of Ethiopian Political Organisations.............................................................322

2
Full Table of Contents

Abstract...................................................................................................................................6
Acknowledgements...............................................................................................................7
Acronyms, Glossary and notes on usage and orthography.............................................9
Introduction..........................................................................................................................13
Section One: Setting the scene..........................................................................................27
Chapter I. 1991: Redrawing the empire state....................................................................27
What happened in 1991 and after.....................................................................................27
Co-opting the participants: reconstituting representation?............................................27
EPRDF moves south….............................................................................................30
… and the TGE disintegrates....................................................................................31
Drafting the new ethnic map: reconstituting territory.....................................................33
Competing accounts..........................................................................................................35
The official version: ethnicity as ‘conflict resolution’......................................................36
Counter views: the inevitability of ethnic conflict...........................................................37
Self-determination: an alternative to ‘authoritarian high modernism’?..........................38
Chapter II. Frameworks, perspectives, and constraints..................................................40
Introducing the ‘terrain’ of ‘ethnicity’..................................................................................40
Theorising ethnicity and ethno-nationalism.......................................................................43
Primordial attachment, and ‘assumed’ attachment.......................................................44
Towards a materialist interpretation: locating ‘non-traditional wolves under the tribal
sheepskin’......................................................................................................................46
Focusing on boundaries................................................................................................47
Adjusting to modernity...................................................................................................50
The ‘dialectic of class and tribe’....................................................................................51
Conclusion: the need to transcend the instrumental/primordial dichotomy...................52
Looking again at collectives…...........................................................................................54
The virtues of social construction, and two shortcomings.............................................54
Realist intuitions about ethnicity and ethnic ‘features’...................................................59
Situating the ‘real world’ amidst social construction......................................................62
Real observation.......................................................................................................63
Meaning finitism........................................................................................................64
‘The effect on belief of ‘the facts’’..............................................................................66
Natural and social kinds: self and alter-reference.....................................................67
People as artificial kinds?..........................................................................................68
Social institutions as the basis for beliefs.................................................................69
Human sociability and susceptibility: the ‘proto-normative system’..............................70
Initial Implications for an understanding of ethnicity as a social status.........................72
Actors and interests: reworking instrumentalism for collectives....................................75
Chapter III. Scope and Ambition of the Thesis.................................................................81
Methodological issues.......................................................................................................81
Sources.........................................................................................................................81
Secondary literature..................................................................................................81
Documents and primary literature.............................................................................84
Interviews..................................................................................................................85
Constraints of the approach and methods used...........................................................88
Categories and prominent solutions: ‘interviewing ethnic groups’............................89
Problematising the unit of analysis: non ethnographic deconstruction of the ‘ethnic
group’........................................................................................................................90
A note on terminology...................................................................................................91
Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia on a constructivist approach...........................................94
Criteria vs indicia: emblems and features: ethnic markers............................................94
Language as vehicle and marker of identity.............................................................97
Section Two..........................................................................................................................99
Legacies, resources, causes, inventions: historical roots and routes to ‘ethnic
federalism’............................................................................................................................99
Chapter IV. Building and dismantling the traditions of the empire state.....................102
3
Forging the nexus of ethnicity and access to power........................................................104
On ‘not being an indifferent spectator’: the creation of the empire state.....................104
The empire in the north: ‘identity jilted’........................................................................107
The empire in the south: neftegna, gebbar, and slave................................................110
‘Talking to butterflies’: ancient Abyssinia in the present?...........................................114
Inflaming the nexus: waking after a thousand years.......................................................117
New categories, new experiences: Italian occupation and British administration.......118
Curbing the old regional elite: imperial centralisation…..............................................122
…and bureaucratisation: educating a new elite..........................................................123
The language of instruction.....................................................................................125
Rebellion and regionalism...........................................................................................126
The Ethiopian student movement and the ‘National Question’.......................................127
Radicalisation of the Student Movement.....................................................................131
Evolution of concern with ‘regionalism’.......................................................................133
Explicit discussion of the National Question...............................................................136
Factors associated with the emergence of the nationality issue.................................138
Modernist versus traditionalist dynamics within the Student Movement................138
Ideological influences on the emergence of the national question.........................140
Diaspora politics......................................................................................................141
Eritrea: a precedent for nationalist struggle............................................................143
Chapter V. The protagonists of ethnic mobilisation......................................................146
Context: the Dergue regime.............................................................................................146
Centralisation continued..............................................................................................146
Attitudes to nationalities..............................................................................................149
The politicisation of ethnicity in the north, and the emergence of the EPRDF................153
Tigray’s ‘perennial disaffection’: origins and resource-base of ethno-nationalist
sentiment.....................................................................................................................154
A precedent manufactured: the first weyane...............................................................158
Triggers for nationalist organisation: well-told tales....................................................161
Mobilising and manufacturing ethnic nationalism and the ethnic nation.....................164
From narrow nationalism to fraternal ethnicities-in-arms............................................167
EPRDF ideology and the ‘national question’...............................................................169
Ethnic organisation in the South: Oromia and the OLF...................................................172
Origins of Oromo nationalism......................................................................................172
Obstacles to the development of Oromo nationalist consciousness...........................174
Relations between the OLF and TPLF/EPRDF...............................................................178
Section Three. Mapping power and ethnicity in the Federal Democratic Republic....182
Chapter VI. Reworking representation: political mobilisation at the limits of
‘revolutionary democracy’................................................................................................185
‘Un museo di popoli’: animating the exhibits...................................................................186
EPRDF mobilisation in the SNNPNRS........................................................................186
Class distinctions and political affiliation.....................................................................190
Language and class....................................................................................................193
Imposing legitimacy.....................................................................................................195
Hadiya, Kambatta, and the campaign against the southern coalition.....................196
Konso: the honeymoon and after............................................................................199
One size fits all: limitations on mobilisation ‘from within’.............................................200
Limited local knowledge in Bench Maji...................................................................201
Discussion...................................................................................................................203
Coalitions with clan leaders: shifting strategy..................................................................205
Pastoralists and the state............................................................................................206
Candidates for coalition amongst the Somali…..........................................................208
…and amongst the Afar..............................................................................................211
Discussion...................................................................................................................213
Competition in Oromia.....................................................................................................216
Regional capitals and the ‘young turks’...........................................................................222
Chapter VII. Reworking territory: languages, boundaries and budgets.......................228
Harar and Wag Himra: where history brought privilege..................................................229
4
Harar: the city state.....................................................................................................230
The representative arrangements...........................................................................231
The realpolitikal rationale for ‘positive discrimination’.............................................232
The symbolic value of a prominent Harar...............................................................235
Complications posed by Harar’s multi-ethnic profile...............................................235
The dynamics of ethnicity in Harar..........................................................................237
Waag Himra: rewarding the faithful, or fighting famine?.............................................238
The ‘Special’ Zone..................................................................................................239
Conflicting bases of Waag Himra’s legitimacy........................................................241
Language and ethnicity in Waag.............................................................................243
Agew history and identity in Waag and Lasta.........................................................246
‘Repacking Pandora’s box’ in the Southern Region........................................................248
Simien Omo, Welaiyta, and the WeGaGoDa concoction............................................250
A choice of inherited boundaries.............................................................................251
Welaiyta recalcitrance rallies…...............................................................................252
… with language a catalyst.....................................................................................256
Dominance of urban over rural interests.................................................................258
Silte: peeling off the Gurage label...............................................................................261
Identity differences masked under ‘Gurage ethnicity’.............................................261
The impact of ethnic federalism..............................................................................262
Protracted wrangling...............................................................................................264
Kaffa-Sheka: fragmentation and mixed populations...................................................266
Reinstating Mocha awraja: Shekecho irredentism..................................................268
‘keyi ena tikur’: skin colour, immigration, and the Sheko-Majangir claim...............271
Kafecho-Manja antagonism: ‘minorities’ under ethnic federalism..........................276
Conclusions........................................................................................................................283
Map 1: Internal Administrative Units 1913.......................................................................297
Map 2: Provinces 1935.......................................................................................................297
Map 3: New Internal Administrative Divisions 1935.......................................................297
Map 4: Provinces of Italian East Africa 1940...................................................................297
Map 5: Provinces and Federated Eritrea 1952................................................................297
Map 6: Internal Administrative Units 1963-1987.............................................................297
Map 7: PDRE Administrative & Autonomous Units 1987-1991.....................................297
Map 8: TGE Boundary Commission Map 1991-1992......................................................297
Map 9: FDRE Regions, Zones, and Special weredas, 1999...........................................297
Maps 10a-e: EPRDF Administered FDRE Regions.........................................................297
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................298
Published books and articles...........................................................................................298
Unpublished sources.......................................................................................................316
Official Publications.........................................................................................................321
Publications of Ethiopian Political Organisations.............................................................322
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front...................................................322
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party......................................................................322
Ethiopian Student Movement......................................................................................322
Me’isone (All Ethiopia Socialist Movement)................................................................323
Oromo Liberation Front...............................................................................................323
Tigray People’s Liberation Front.................................................................................324

5
Abstract
This thesis explores why ethnicity was introduced as the basis for the reconstitution
of the Ethiopian state in 1991, examining the politicisation of ethnic identity before
and after the federation of the country’s ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ was
instituted. The establishment of the modern Ethiopian empire state in the nineteenth
century, and the processes of centralisation and bureaucratisation which consolidated
it in the mid twentieth, provide a backdrop to an emerging concern with
‘regionalism’ amongst political circles in the 1960s and 1970s. Ethnicity operated as
both resource and product of the mobilisation by which the major movements of
armed opposition to the military regime of the 1970s and 1980s, later the architects
of ethnic federalism, sought control of the state. Under federalism through the 1990s,
political representation and territorial administration were reorganised in terms of
ethnicity. A stratum of the local elite of each ethnic group was encouraged to form an
ethnic organisation as a platform for executive office. Meanwhile ethnic groups and
their elites responded to these new circumstances in unanticipated but calculative
ways, often radically reviewing and reconstructing not only their sense of collective
interest, but also the very ethnic collectives that would best serve those newly-
perceived interests.

The architects of ethnic federalism are influenced by a Marxist formulation of the
‘National Question’ which incorporates contradictory elements inherent in the notion
of ‘granting self-determination’: the conviction that self-selected communities
respond better to mobilisation ‘from within’, in their own language, by their own
people; and the notion that ethnic groups are susceptible to identification, definition,
and prescription ‘from above’, by a vanguard party applying a checklist of externally
verifiable criteria. These two sets of assumptions correlate with tenets of
instrumentalism and primordialism respectively, which are, as they stand, equally
irreconcilable.

An investigation of theoretical approaches to ethnicity and collective action suggests
that many conflate the ‘real world’ and ‘socially constructed’ referents of the ethnic
profile of an individual (the constituents of the individual state of being an ethnic x),
with the fully constructed collective accomplishment which creates members of an
ethnic group (conferring the social status of being an ethnic x, of which those
referents are markers). Differentiating the two, and exploring the recursive
relationship between them, by means of a consideration of calculative action within
the framework of actors’ categories (emerging from emic knowledge systems) and
shared social institutions (premised, whether their referents are ‘natural’ ‘social’ or
‘artificial’, on collective processes of ‘knowledge construction’), may improve
analysis of the causes and operation of collective action associated with ethnicity and
ethno-nationalism.

Ethnic federalism in Ethiopia offered the prospect of a shift away from the ‘high
modernism’ of that state’s past projects to ‘develop’ its people, apparently in favour
of the collective perspectives of groups of its citizens. The coercive and
developmental imperatives of the state that guided its implementation, however, have
militated against the substantive incorporation of locally determined social
institutions and knowledge.
6
Acknowledgements

This study was supported with a University of Edinburgh Social Science Faculty
Studentship. It has also benefited from the results of a number of related pieces of
research undertaken during periods of suspension of studies, commissioned or
funded by the following organisations: Canadian International Development Agency;
Ireland Aid; Netherlands Organisation for International Development Co-operation;
Royal Netherlands Embassy to Ethiopia; Swedish International Development
Agency, and the Embassy of Sweden to Ethiopia; UK Department for International
Development.

Yiannis Markakis has been consistently generous with his advice, ideas, time, and
inspiration, even when less than convinced by my thoughts. Many of the interviews
on which this thesis draws were conducted during several periods of fieldwork in
which we collaborated: much of the thinking began with grumpy exchanges along
Ethiopia’s rural roads; it flourished in the warmth of a Cretan hospitality in which
Judith, Dion, Charis and Thalia are also implicated. My supervisors Chris Allen and
Paul Nugent remained unflappable during long periods when my studies threatened
to lose the battle against apparently more urgent priorities. Russell Keat, and John
Ravenhill, who inherited that battleground, have read and improved some of my
chapters, and much of my state of mind, in critically helpful ways. I thank them all.

I am grateful to the Department of Political Science and International Relations, and
the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, of Addis Ababa University for hosting my research
in Ethiopia, and in particular to Aklilu Abraham, Asnake Kefale and Tafesse Olika
for letting me loose on their students. Tegegne Teka and Abdel Ghaffar Mohammed
Ahmed were kind enough to provide me with a home at the Organisation for Social
Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, OSSREA, during the early part of
my research. In addition to the library staff at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies,
many others have helped to locate unpublished material. They include: Dr Haile
Michael and the librarians of the Law and Economics Faculties of the Ethiopian Civil
Service College; Assefa Biru and the staff of the National Election Board
Documentation Centre, which houses the collection of the Institute for the Study of
Ethiopian Nationalities; Elsabet, Addis, and Negash Teklu at Walta Information
Centre; Jim Polhemus at USAID, Frank Hawes at CIDA, and Nik Taylor at DfID;
and the library and documentation staff of the InterAfrica Group. I am particularly
grateful to Günther Schröder for permission to reproduce a number of his maps.

Many people have helped me think about Ethiopia and my work, and often they have
been people I was lucky enough to be working alongside. In addition to those many
Ethiopians all over the country who were willing to share their views with me during
interviews, who are not named, I thank particularly Alemayehu Kassa, Ali Moussa
Iye, Andreas Esheté, Aster Hidaru, Berhane Wolde Tensaie, Demissie Girma,
Gebreab Barnabas, Mebrahtu Yohannes, Samuel Assefa, Günther Schröder, Tedros
Hagos, Kjetil Tronvoll, Kirsty Wright, John Young - and Roger Briottet, who has
been supportive of the long process from the beginning, as only he knows how. In
Edinburgh, I have learned important things from excellent teachers. They include
7
Chris Allen, David Bloor, Jonathan Hearn, Ruth Jonathan, Russell Keat, Martin
Kusch, Charles Raab and Irene Rafanell.

I thank Tedros Berhanu and family for logistical genius, as well as for their good
company and hospitality, kindnesses also shown by Kostas Loukeris and Lois
Woestman; my fellow ‘exiles’ in Edinburgh, Vassilis Angouras, Manolis Melissaris
and Demetra Papadopoulos for superb domestic soap, and Evie Athanassiou, Nicos
Labaras, et al. for grand cabaret; Pippa Coutts, Helen Kara, Jo Kinnear, Timnit
Abraha, Tsegaberhan Aberra and Zewdie Andomariam for indomitable girlpower;
Jane Astbury, Fiona Mackay, and Georgie Young for tlc in the final stages; Sally
Francis, always a refuge in extremis; and Richard Freeman, for lots of things, but
primarily because he has made life better.

None of these generous people is responsible for whatever faults you may find in my
writing and thinking.
8
Acronyms, Glossary and notes on usage and orthography

Acronyms
AAU Addis Ababa University
ALF Afar Liberation Front
ANDM Amhara National Democratic Movement (EPRDF)
ANLM Afar National Liberation Movement
APDO Afar People’s Democratic Organisation
BPLM Benishangul People’s Liberation Movement
CC Central Committee
COPWE Commission for the Organisation of the Party of the Workers of
Ethiopia
CSA Central Statistics Authority
EC Ethiopian (Gregorian) Calendar
EDAG Ethiopian Democratic Action Group
EDC Ethiopian Democratic Congress
EDORM Ethiopian Democratic Officers’ Revolutionary Movement
EDU Ethiopian Democratic Union
EHRCO Ethiopian Human Rights Council
ELF Eritrean Liberation Front
ENDP/O Ethiopian National Democratic Party/Organisation
EOC Ethiopian Orthodox Church
EPDM Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (now ANDM)
EPLF Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (now Popular Front for Democracy
and Justice, PFDJ)
EPRP Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party
EPRDF Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
ESLC Ethiopian School Leaving Certificate
ESM Ethiopian Student Movement
ESUNA Ethiopian Student Union in North America
EUS Ethiopian University Service
EUSE Union of Ethiopian Students in Europe
FCSC Federal Civil Service Commission
FDRE Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1995-present)
GPDF Gurage People’s Democratic Front
GPDUP Gurage People’s Revolutionary Democratic Movement
HNA Harari National Assembly (constituent part of HPC)
HNL Harari National League
HNDO Hadiya National Democratic Organisation
HoF House of the Federation
HPC Harari Peoples’ Council
HPR House of People’s Representatives
HSIU Haile Selassie I University
ICRC International Corp of the Red Cross
IFLO Islamic Front for the Liberation of Oromia
IGAD Inter-governmental Authority on Development
ISEN Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities (1980s)
9
Acronyms
KPDO Kambatta People’s Democratic Organisation
MP Member of Parliament
NEB National Election Board
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
NRS National Regional State: official title for the federated units of the
FDRE, also referred to as ‘State’ or ‘Region’, or in Amharic kilil
NUEUS National Union of Ethiopian University Students
OALF Oromo Abo Liberation Front
OAU Organisation of African Unity
OLF Oromo Liberation Front
ONLF Ogaden National Liberation Front
OPDO Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (EPRDF)
PDOs People’s Democratic Organisations
PDRE People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1987-91)
POW Prisoner of War
PMAC Provisional Military Administrative Committee (of the Dergue regime)
PRA Peoples’ Representative Assembly (in Harar NRS, constituent of HPC)
SALF Somali Abo Liberation Front
SEPDC Southern Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Coalition (or hibret)
SEPDF Southern Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Front (EPRDF)
SLM Sidama Liberation Movement
SNNPNRS Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ NRS
SMDUP Sheko-Majangir Democratic Unity Party
SPDP Somali People’s Democratic Party (former Ethiopian Somali
Democratic League, ESDL)
SPLA Sudan People’s Liberation Army
SPO Special Prosecutor’s Office
TGE Transitional Government of Ethiopia (1991-1995)
TLF Tigray Liberation Front
TNO Tigray National Organisation
TPLF Tigray People’s Liberation Front (EPRDF)
UCAA University College of Addis Ababa
UOPLF United Oromo People’s Liberation Front
USUAA University Students’ Union of Addis Ababa
WIC Walta Information Centre
WPE Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (of the Dergue)
WSLF Western Somali Liberation Front

Ethiopian terms *
Afaan (Oromiffa) Lit. ‘tongue’; language
Awraja Imperial sub-provincial district made up of several weredas
Awrajawinet political/sentimental attachment to awraja, sub-ethnic
nationalism
Baito (Tigrigna) Kebele
10