The Past of Ethiopia's Present: Unfolding Crises, Cyclical Violence, and Competing Nationalism

Abstract

In the early 2000s, Ethiopia emerged in the world press as Africa's fastest-growing economy. In December 2015, the World Bank reported Ethiopia had “achieved double-digit growth” for twelve years in a row, “making it the fourth fastest-growing [economy] in the world” and also recommended strategies to sustain the “miraculous achievements.”1 As a result, news about Ethiopia's economic growth flooded global news outlets touting Ethiopia's economic success. Beginning in the mid 2010s, scholars specializing in Ethiopian issues, including historians, began to recognize “the economic miracle,” analyzing the economic policies and political projects of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).2 Although the economic success stories are indisputable, the overall strength of EPRDF's Ethiopia, especially under its late leader Meles Zenawi, was not limited to economic progress. Gerard Prunier and Eloi Ficquet sum it up: In the last twenty years, under the leadership of its late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia has been progressively—though reluctantly—normalized. Its bizarre shack-studded capital started to sprout skyscrapers, its Prime Minister rubbed shoulders with top world leaders in a way not seen since Haile Selassie, it started to lay out a giant infrastructural network built by illiterate peasants on the Chinese model, and it began to assert itself as a new regional power which was in the process of developing an original path towards economic growth. Its stated aim was to climb from the level of one of the poorest countries in the world to the level of a small emergent power. And, in many ways, this is where historiography lost track of Ethiopia.3In light of the deep and multifaceted crises that Ethiopia currently faces, the stories of Ethiopia's economic success and its ability to “assert itself as a new regional power” are now obsolete. The statement that historiography, or more appropriately historiographies, “lost track of Ethiopia” seems prescient in the sense that understanding Ethiopia's prior successes may offer little help in understanding the origins of the reversal of fortune for the country. Today, Ethiopia is not an African economic miracle; it has a war-ravaged economy characterized by an enormous budgetary deficit, stalled mega projects, defunct factories, and idled farms owing to lack of fertilizers. Millions are confronting starvation and hundreds of thousands are displaced from homes. Far from being a regional power, Ethiopia is a state seeking military and diplomatic support from its neighbors. The gap between how Ethiopia has been presented—and understood—by international financial institutions, journalistic narratives and, more important, scholarly treatise on one side and the current crises in Ethiopia on the other side, calls for a closer scrutiny of its past and present through fresh nuanced analyses. This collection of articles may not entirely address the subject, but we believe they take a step towards this goal.The modern Ethiopian state is a result of two forces pursuing contradictory political visions. On the one hand are those who claim that they laid the foundations of the state by the close of the nineteenth century, maintained it by “expertly” guiding state functions and now believe they must permanently own and govern the polity. On the other hand, we find those who have been excluded, marginalized, oppressed, and exploited since the founding of the Ethiopian state and hence present determined opposition to the continuation of the project. The interaction and rivalry between these forces, which often seek to reconfigure the state and forge new state-society relationships, has made the history of the period checkered, marked by turbulent turning points accompanied by considerable violence and significant vulnerability that now threatens the very survival of the polity.Some of these turning points are familiar to scholars specializing in issues in Ethiopia's past: the palace coups d’état that removed Lij Iyyasu from power in September 1916, the Italian aggression and disintegration of the Ethiopian empire in 1935–1936, the abortive coups d’état of December 1960, the 1974 revolution and military takeover, the 1991 revolution and the rise to power of the EPRDF. A brief moment of euphoria prevailed when Abiy Ahmed rose to power in April 2018 following the Oromo popular uprising of 2014–2017 and promised a transition to a democratic system—an exercise never seriously attempted or successful in the country's political past. Many hoped to see a quick fix to Ethiopia's deep-seated challenges and sought a rapid and successful political transition from the EPRDF's authoritarian rule to a democratic system. The unfounded enthusiasm emanated from disregarding the country's intractable deep divisions, entrenched political culture, and habits of cyclical violence. The hoped-for transition has failed, dragging the country through a new wave of violence, in particular in Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, Amhara, and a war of genocidal proportion in Tigray.4 The combination of these developments relates to the country's past and represents a serious threat to the survival of the state.In Tigray, the worst form of war, unseen in a generation, revealed itself in shocking atrocities,5 provoking many to call into question the legitimacy of the Ethiopian state. In Oromia, Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party regime has been fighting the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) insurgency, committing multiple atrocities in the process.6 In Benishangul-Gumuz, rival Amhara militias and the federal forces under the Prosperity Party regime have committed multiple forms of atrocities.7 Yet, disgruntled regional security and paramilitary forces in the Amhara region have been involved in bloody violence at various locations in the region.8 All the major forms of violence continue unabated at present, exacerbating the country's economic and human costs. From the viewpoint of the present, many might have lost faith in hopes of progress in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region.Although those who have lost hope in Ethiopia may have adequate reasons, attempting to approach Ethiopia's recent predicaments from diverse perspectives to make the best possible effort to understand them is still relevant. A wise scholar who observed Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa for close to five decades and closely studied the origins of the modern state in Ethiopia, its progress, and its structural flaws, warned in 2011 that for Ethiopia to survive the threats to its survival and resolve its difficulties rooted in historical experiences, the country badly needs to cross its “last two frontiers.”9 Nonetheless, revisionist scholarship committed to examining complexities in the deep past of Ethiopia emerged about four decades ago.10 By diversifying the thematic focus of the past and pursuing innovative methodological approaches, the revisionist works achieved reexamination of themes in the history of imperial Ethiopia, introduced multiple historical perspectives and deemphasized the type of historiography that overemphasized central state institutions and its rulers. Such historical studies provoke sequels in nonhistorical studies interested in the social, economic, and political restructuring Ethiopia has experienced under the EPRDF. Whereas some directly addressed Ethiopia's internal affairs, others pursued a regional approach, emphasizing the nature of Ethiopia's “developmental state,” how its economic policies relate to multinational federal state structure and the political consequences, and how the EPRDF's Ethiopia made significant economic progress.11 Innovative and critical in their approaches, nonetheless these studies may not be sufficient to understand Ethiopia's present challenges. As Ethiopia currently confronts a new set of challenges attracting global attention, fresh scholarship that provides new critical insights appears necessary. With their temporal scope extending to the present, the seven articles in this special issue of Northeast African Studies (NEAS) offer those insights.The articles presented here address various issues and themes from different perspectives; the progress and retreat in state-building projects, the opposition the state encountered (namely Oromo insurgency in the deep and recent past), state crises, and the dynamic role of Ethiopia's digital space. Kjetil Tronvoll's article examines the causes of the EPRDF collapse, scrutinizing internal and external factors where divisions on ideological issues and policy preferences and the multinational federal state structure prevail. He posits that these issues were major factors causing divergence and eventually a split among the EPRDF's constituent parties. While identifying four key factors facilitating the demise of the EPRDF—“disagreements over ideology; disputes over party by-laws, procedures, and practices; contestation over the federal state model; and finally, the surge of ethno-nationalism with intrinsic territorial ambitions”—Tronvoll broadens our understanding of the EPRDF's Ethiopia from inside out.Asebe Regassa's article closely examines Ethiopia's exercise of multinational federalism, highlighting its major challenges and situating the subject within a decolonial body of knowledge. Placing considerable weight on Ethiopia's imperial experience and examining how multiple forms of historical violence contributed to structural weaknesses of the state, Regassa argues that the current debates surrounding the identity of the state in Ethiopia are between the political communities supporting ideals of the right to self-determination enshrined in the country's 1995 Constitution and those aspiring to the reinstatement of the older unitary state model, suggesting that there is a subtle transition from multinational federalism to unitary state model. In the same vein, Gutu Wayessa critically observes the gradual shift to a unitary state organization but analyzes relations between state-building projects and drives for development. Exploring the sudden shift from the EPRDF “developmental state” to the Prosperity Party's “prosperity model” and examining the significance of the multinational federal state structure, Wayessa argues that the PP regime's tendency to reintroduce a unitary state model “is unrealistic and fundamentally shatters the prospect of development.”The voice of the modern Oromo political movements, on a bumpy road but in steady progress since the 1960s, have for a long time been at the margin of Ethiopia's political dispensation, shifting to the center with the rise of the Oromo popular uprising of 2014–2017 and, once again, pushed to the margins with the collapse of the EPRDF and rise of the PP regime. The complexities of contours of its relations with the state and its internal making and, most important, its role in shaping successive political changes can only be adequately understood in the context of the history of Oromo nationalist movements12 and the Ethiopian state's response to its rise and progress. Etana Dinka's chapter provides that historical context. Dinka argues that the popular Oromo uprising of 2014–2017 demonstrated “the peak of decades of struggles for inclusion, recognition, self-rule and equality that has mainly resulted from the Ethiopian state's cyclical violence and rejection of demands for reform.”Likewise, Ezekiel Gebissa presents the rise in the 1960s of two competing and contradictory forms of nationalism, “ethionationalism” and “ethnonationalism,” whose political visions conjoined in shaping the state. Gebissa contends that these two forms of nationalism struggled with each other and failed in their attempts to reconfigure the state in their own images, and that the only way to construct an unwavering statehood in Ethiopia remains the view that Oromo nationalism has articulated for the last five decades. Mebratu Kelecha defines the typology and scrutinizes the objectives and alignment of the Oromo popular uprising that began in 2014, reflecting on its role in the recent attempts at state reconfiguration in Ethiopia. Kelecha's perspectives demonstrate how the Oromo popular uprising was constructed, its approach to building alliances, including with Amhara, and how its ability to gather momentum facilitated and necessitated tactical alliances between the EPRDF constituent parties ensuring the defeat of TPLF-dominated EPRDF. Political rivalries in Ethiopia over the recent years, as in many other places, have navigated beyond the physical terrain, encompassing the digital space where mobilizations on the ground make global connections for protests, especially in the case of the Oromo popular uprising of 2014–2017,13 as well as providing a space where the state carries out surveillance. Kebene Wodajo injects “digitally mediated encounters and configurations that are struggling to produce a specific form of subjectivity” into the discussion. Defining the digital space as not “a neutral and free space,” Wodajo examines the citizens’ right to privacy vis-à-vis expanding state surveillance in the context of the Ethiopian constitution of 1995, suggesting that there is a clear need to redefine privacy rights to enable “self-development” and protect individual and collective rights.As the violence raging in various parts of the country shows little sign of abating, the international community seems concerned about Ethiopia, including worries about the risks of genocide.14 The federal government's security institutions that, over the last three decades, kept the country together with the use of brute force, have become implicated in some of the atrocities.15 Uncertainty about Ethiopia's survival as a polity looms large and reasonably so. Change, of course, and policy shift are matters of urgent need for Ethiopia—things that cannot be achieved without a closer examination of major ills from fresh perspectives. Because some of the most relevant works with a clear understanding of the country's dilemmas were written before the recent turn of events and loss of economic fortunes one may argue that fresh and nuanced analytical work is needed. We hope that the set of articles presented in this special issue offers a part of that fresh analytical perspective.