ERITREA: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND THE LOGIC OF PROTRACTED STRUGGLE

Abstract

OPPOSITION to Ethiopia's military regime has increasingly taken the form of national movements against Amhara domination. This became particularly evident after the Dergue (military council) had crushed independent trade unions in 1975 and suppressed petty bourgeois socialist parties in 1976 (EPRP) and 1977 (AESM). The statist rule of the Dergue brought to the surface many of the national contradictions inherent under the previous regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. A centralization of the Ethiopian empire, begun by Selassie's predecessor, Menelik, had confirmed the dominance of an Amhara nationality over subject peoples such as the Somalis in the Ogaden, Oromos in the southern region, Afars in the north-east, and the Tigrinya and other national groups in the north. The emergence of an absolutist state and an attendant development of capitalism also created new political forces based on new social classes. It was activity by these classes, principally a small working class and a larger petty bourgeoisie, which resulted in the overthrow of Haile Selassie and the ancien regime in 1974. The lack of adequate political organization of these classes, however, led to the revolution being carried through by the army; and subsequent moves by the Dergue against any potential for independent class action resulted in a predominance of nationalist currents. There was an intensification of armed resistance and revolt by such groups as the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and the Tigrai People's Liberation Front (TPLF); and in the summer of 1980 there were moves by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and TPLF to create a united popular front against the Dergue, which could include the OLF and other opposition forces. The demands of these liberation movements vary from different degrees of local autonomy to, in the case of the EPLF, independence. It is the latter case of the Eritrean national-democratic revolution which concerns us in this paper, and it is that revolution's transformation from a petty bourgeois nationalism to socialism which marks it off from some of the other national movements in Ethiopia. The Eritrean revolution has a specific history which, first, makes its claim to national status more concrete and, second, makes transformation to socialism more complete. In discussing these two aspects of Eritrea's national movement, we use part of Amilcar Cabral's theoretical framework, particularly his analysis of the role of Michael Johnson teaches politics at the University of Sussex and Trish Johnson is currently on the staff of the Catholic Institute of International Relations in London.