Translated material
Hunger War
Evgeniy Pakhomov
The authorities in Addis Ababa and Asmara are repeating the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the previous Ethiopian regime
The authorities in Addis Ababa and Asmara are repeating the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the previous Ethiopian regime
While Eritrean women hold collective prayers for peace, the troops of the two countries are engaged in bloody battles. The death toll is approaching one hundred thousand. (Photo: AP )
“Asseb, zalambessa, badme... When I hear the names of these cities on the news, it seems to me that I have returned fifteen years ago,” a former translator of the mission of Soviet military advisers who provided assistance to Addis Ababa in the 80s told Itogi. the fight against Eritrean separatists. “The fighting is going on there.”
It seems that the same feeling of “déjà vu” arose among the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea: Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki once fought shoulder to shoulder against the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, which was supported by the USSR. In 1993, Eritrea separated from Ethiopia by mutual consent, and the leaders of the two countries declared that they would follow a policy of friendship and mutual assistance. Now yesterday’s allies are fighting against each other with a ferocity that Bloody Mengistu, as they themselves called the former Ethiopian dictator, would envy (see “Itogi” # 28, 1999). And it’s not just that the battles are taking place in the same places as before. Both regimes today use the same methods and make the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the previous regime.
In recent weeks, the Ethiopian army has recaptured the border town of Zalambessa from the Eritreans, captured by them about a year ago, and occupied part of Eritrean territory. Addis Ababa said it had won the war. Here the Eritreans went on the offensive in the area of the city of Tesenei. Attempts to reconcile the two countries have not been successful; peace talks taking place in Algeria through the mediation of the Organization of African Unity, the EU and the US did not bring any results last week. According to expert estimates, during the entire fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, about one hundred thousand people died.
Unlike many other conflicts on the Dark Continent, the Ethiopian-Eritrean feud is neither ethnic nor religious in nature - the majority of the population of both Ethiopia and Eritrea are Christians, and both countries are led by representatives of the Tigrayan people. The official cause of the conflict was a territorial dispute: after the division of a single state, it turned out that the parties read old colonial maps differently and each was sure that the other side had seized part of its lands, in addition, Ethiopia was unhappy that it had lost access to the Red Sea.
Each new escalation of hostilities coincides with the next round of economic crisis in these countries. The war between the neighboring allies began in 1998, after it became clear that the new “democratic” regimes were unable to cope with the chronic economic crisis. When the standard of living became even lower than in the days of socialist Ethiopia, the first shots rang out on the border - Eritrean units occupied a number of “territories illegally occupied by Ethiopians.” When last year the Oromo people in Ethiopia began to actively express dissatisfaction with the fact that the majority of power positions in the country are occupied by representatives of the Tigrayan people, the Ethiopian command moved tanks to the border town of Badme - a new round of war began. The authorities of the two countries are trying to “switch” internal discontent to the external enemy and appeal to the patriotism of their citizens: on the streets of Ethiopia and Eritrea, crowds shouted: “War to a victorious end!” Several tens of thousands of people died in the battles for Badme.
This year, the intensification of military activity comes amid a drought that has hit the Horn of Africa. According to various estimates, more than eight million people suffer from food shortages here today. The current situation brings to mind the terrible drought of the mid-80s, which caused a humanitarian catastrophe and became one of the causes of the crisis that led to the fall of Mengistu. The fact, however, is that the new authorities are acting in the same way as the dictator whose regime they fought against: instead of investing money in the development of the irrigation system of arid areas, Addis Ababa and Asmara are using meager budget funds to buy modern weapons, including combat aircraft of the latest generation - the parties use Russian Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters against each other (according to some reports, they are flown by mercenary pilots from the CIS countries). As the United Nations frantically resolved the issue of humanitarian supplies to the Horn of Africa last month, Ethiopian tanks went on the offensive.
The Ethiopian authorities are solving the drought problem simply: the starving people from the north are being resettled en masse to more prosperous central regions where the Oromos live. This method of fighting hunger was “invented” by Mengistu Haile Mariam in the 80s, but with him the scale of resettlement was more modest. The result was immediate: now the Ethiopian authorities are forced to fight both the Eritrean army and the rebels from the Oromo Liberation Front.
The war and humanitarian aid coming from abroad have become a proven source of income for the authorities of both countries. As the Western press notes, with the escalation of hostilities, the resale of humanitarian aid and fraud with funds allocated for the purchase of weapons have acquired monstrous proportions.
Meanwhile, soldiers in the occupied areas drive peasants out of their homes, and they cannot carry out agricultural work: in June, when the rains fall, the fate of the next harvest is decided. Such tactics will inevitably lead to a new round of hunger. This means a new round of hostilities: “War to the bitter end!”