Ethiopia: the last two frontiers, by John Markakis, Woodbridge, James Currey, 2011, xvi + 382 pp., £40.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781847010339
Drawing on the experience of Western Europe, Charles Tilly theorised, ‘war made the state, and the state made war’ (1975, p. 42). In another book, Coercion, capital and European states: AD 990–1992 (1992) Tilly further observed that the single most important driver of state formation in western European history was the activity of war-making. This activity invariably entailed destruction and construction. The historical formation of the Ethiopian state has been forged through unremitting war and destruction. Markakis examines the history of the Ethiopian state from its inception and generalises that Ethiopia has never been at peace with itself or its neighbours. Drawing some useful insights from the notion that the state makes war and is made by war and on his own intimate knowledge of the region's political history, Markakis undertakes a deep foray into the history of the Ethiopian state.
Since the task of building a nation state was considered paramount by the Abyssinian ‘empire’ builders, this goal superseded everything else and consequently justified any means, including the use of gruesome violence. Markakis states that the assumption that ‘force is the midwife in the birth of a state’ is validated by the Ethiopian experience, and furthermore: ‘Warfare is the crimson red that runs uninterruptedly throughout its long history’ (p. 3). He argues that the employment of violence in the process of ‘national state building’ is by no means unique to Ethiopia as this was the norm in the construction of national states in western Europe and elsewhere in the world, but he justifiably questions the extent to which ‘violence is the most effective means to this end in the 21st century’. One of the reasons violent conflict has been blighting the Horn is that the states in the region, unlike in the rest of the continent, have failed to embrace the colonial boundaries. ‘Why did the colonial dispensation not survive in this corner of Africa?’ (p. 6). In his view, ‘part of the answer lies with Ethiopia, a country involved directly or indirectly in nearly all the conflicts in the region during the post-colonial era’ (p. 6; emphasis added).
Ethiopia: The last two frontiers is a culmination of more than 40 years of scholarship. Markakis has developed an intimate knowledge and understanding of the multiplicity of the interwoven factors that have been blighting the lives and wrecking long-standing livelihoods of millions of peoples inhabiting the drought-prone, fragile and poverty-stricken peripheries of the Horn under different guises. The most ill-famed of these has been the elusive and hard-to-achieve goal of building a centralised nation state inhabited by a homogenous people on the ruins of the pre-existing mosaic of indigenous states, cultures and contrasting ways of life.
Ethiopia for some reason has always been enthralling and consequently never failed to attract the attention of many political historians. However, unlike Markakis and a few others, what seems to captivate many is the mythology that surrounds the historiography of the so-called ancient Abyssinian/Christian civilisation anchored at the centre. Whilst most Ethiopianists have been trying to understand and explain Ethiopia from the central perspective, Markakis's point of departure is, and has always been, the interface between the centre and the subjugated peripheries inhabited by millions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists whose relationship with the centre has been based on conquest, destruction, exploitation, cultural denigration and exclusion from power of decision-making.
The principal organising concepts of the book are what Markakis refers to as centre–periphery. Not only does the ‘centre’ monopolise power, but it also occupies a hegemonic position in the structure of the state. In contrast, the ‘periphery’ occupies a marginal position and is excluded from state power. The corollary is that the periphery is denied access to state resources, and its own resources are appropriated by the state and transferred to the ‘centre’ (p. 7).
The single most important preoccupation that has been shaping and defining the relationship between the centre and the periphery since the mid-nineteenth century to the present has been what Markakis refers to as the Abyssinians' obsession with the ‘elusive’ goal of forging a ‘nation state’. The incessant struggle to establish a ‘nation state’ which was first initiated by Emperor Theodros in the mid-nineteenth century, continued by Emperor Yohannes and intensified by Emperor Menelik as well as Emperor Haile Selassie, remains far from being accomplished and the quest continues unabated. The fierce resistance to expansion has been haunting every ruler in the country, including the Derg and the incumbents, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Markakis states that at the heart of the violent conflicts in the Horn of Africa lies ‘Ethiopia's pursuit of the nation-state in the teeth of manifold opposition’ (p. 6). The opportunity cost of this pursuit has been astronomical and as a result every other effort, including the tasks of economic and social development, as well as poverty reduction have been either overlooked or stifled. The employment of violence as an instrument of building a nation state was not unique to the Ethiopian experience. What seems to be unique is rather the inability of the centre to construct a centralised nation state in spite of more than a century of uninterrupted carnage.
Markakis insightfully observes that although the means they used and the end they sought were identical with those of European colonial powers, notwithstanding the fact that the ‘empire builders’ called Ethiopia an ‘empire’ they did not see expansion as a conquest but rather as a means of recovering territories lost in the past (p. 6). The same argument was used to incorporate Eritrea into the ‘Ethiopian Empire’. In fact, Markakis states that Ethiopia gained access to the sea after the United Nations federated Eritrea into Ethiopia in 1952 for the first time in its history. This historical fact notwithstanding, the common argument among Ethiopian nationalists and those who have not yet reconciled with the idea of Eritrean independence is they will not rest peacefully until they have recovered Ethiopia's historical right of access to ‘its’ sea.
Markakis states that the process of territorial expansion was facilitated by the centre's possession of superior weaponry, successful creation of auxiliary or subordinate elites in the conquered territories who faithfully implemented the decisions of the elite at the centre and more importantly resettlement of large numbers of immigrants from the land-hungry centre to the highland periphery. Markakis sees the highland immigrants that accompanied the expansionist military expeditions as privileged by virtue of sharing the Abyssinian identity (p. 8). Although the imperial regime more or less succeeded in integrating the highland periphery (first frontier) into the centre, the cost of integrating the lowlands inhabited by pastoralists proved far beyond the financial means of the imperial regime. In comparison to the temperate climate in the centre, the weather conditions in the lowlands were severe and discouraged the highlanders from colonising them. In addition, the lowlands were also infested with malaria. All these factors discouraged the colonialists from moving farther into the lowlands. As a result, the lowlands were neglected and abject poverty and incessant conflicts over resources prevailed. The failure of the centre to incorporate the lowlands was an indication of the failure of nation state construction project.
Markakis outlines three critical phases in the process of state building in Ethiopia beginning, as seen earlier from the last quarter of the nineteenth century marked by large-scale southward migration of Abyssinians from the land-hungry centre. The second phase refers to the military regime (1974–1991) and the third phase to the incumbent regime which took over power in 1991 and introduced federalism.
The military regime introduced socialism and as a result, the project of Absynnianistion of the populations in the conquered territories was formally abandoned and Ethiopian unity was said to be achieved on the basis of social class rather than ethnicity. Inasmuch as Emperor Menelik and Emperor Haile Selassie needed auxiliary elites to rule the highland and lowland peripheries, the military regime also needed peripheral elite in the form of socialist cadres from the peripheries who implemented decisions and policies of the ruling elite in the centre. However, in spite of the rhetoric, the locus of power still remained in the centre: ‘The socialist state brought the lowland periphery under greater direct control from the centre than it had been under the previous regime’ (p. 226). Although the nationalisation of land brought to an end the process of unmitigated land grabbing by investors and migrants from the land-hungry parts of the country, the military junta ruled the country with an iron fist for 17 years. However, over that period the wars in Eritrea, Tigray, the areas inhabited by the Oromos, Somalis, Afar and others, as well as the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellite states brought the Derg to its knees and the regime ‘crumbled like a house of cards’ in May 1991.
The Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) established the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) by bringing together former prisoners of war in Eritrea and Tigray, as well as other small organisations opposed to the Derg. The single most important question that confronted the leaders of the EPRDF was how to hold the war-torn and conflict-ridden country together. They realised that force alone would not do the trick as this had proved disastrous before. Instead, ethnic federalism was adopted which gave the different nationalities the right to administer themselves within their own defined territories. Markakis argues that the decision taken at the Democratic and Peaceful Transition Conference of July 1991 concerning the introduction of federalism was made in haste without properly realising the ‘gravity of the issue’ (p. 232). Every objection raised against the proposed system was ‘brusquely overruled by the chair’ and stood no chance of being heard. This was exacerbated by the fact that the sponsors, the EPRDF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) were the majority (p. 233).
The establishment of a federal arrangement on the basis of ethnic identity implies that the different ethnic groups live in geographically distinct areas, which was not the case in Ethiopia. As we saw earlier, hundreds of thousands of people had moved southwards and settled in the highland peripheries inhabited by other culture groups. The immigrants, including the Neftegna (Abyssinian landlords) in the conquered territories, did not settle in spatially segregated places. They joined pre-existing settlements. The mixed settlement patterns and the social and economic interactions that took place over a century meant that there was a substantial degree of fluidity and integration. Undeterred by the mixed settlement pattern and driven by ideological dogma and deeply embedded self-interest, the leaders of the TPLF under the guise of the EPRDF pushed forward to undo the pre-existing tenuous unity of the different cultural groups. I was a student at Haile Selassie University in the end of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. With the exception of the Eritreans, all other students identified themselves as nothing else but as Ethiopians and nearly all, including many of those who were from Tigray, communicated with each other in Amharic. The extent to which the destruction of the unitary state is justifiable by the newly acquired right of the different ethnic groups to administer their own affairs is a moot point. Nevertheless, rhetoric notwithstanding, the locus of power still remains in the centre with the balance of power tipping in favour of the Tigreans at the expense of the traditional Amhara hegemony.
Notwithstanding the formal rejection of the unitary model of the state, however, there are studies to show that the federalist state is highly centralised (Gudina 2003, Fiseha 2006). This critical observation is even born out by Markakis's findings, as he states:
as commonly perceived, federalism is a system that facilitates diversity in government. That is far from obvious in the case of Ethiopia, where a rigidly uniform system is imposed that does not allow the slightest departure from the prototype designed in Addis Ababa. In fact, attempts to do so are regarded as subversive. (p. 242)
Markakis is scathing with regard to the EPRDF's bleak record of intolerance of alternative political points of view and this, inter alia, stems from their strong sense of ‘infallibility.’ Like its predecessors, the EPRDF uses brute force to suppress its opponents and to stay in power. In regard to this, Markakis observes, ‘In practice, the EPRDF's contempt for its political opponents translates into denying them the space needed to function effectively.’ He further comments that ‘the ruling front makes full use of the state machinery and resources, including its monopoly of mass media and instruments of repression to relentlessly and ruthlessly harass them’ (p. 250). The EPRDF government's records on civil society organisations is equally dismal. This is reflected in the systematic dismantling of organisations that had an impeccable track record, such as the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU) and the Ethiopian Teachers' Association (ETA). The same fate also befell other civil society organisations such as the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), the Human Rights League and the Ogaden Human Rights Committee (p. 252). There was also crackdown on the private press whose works were stifled by various means, including imprisonment of journalists (p. 253). The government's anti-civil society stance finally culminated in the policy introduced in 2009 which ‘barred foreign organisations from involvement in the fields of human rights and conflict’ (p. 254). The term ‘foreign’ referred to non-governmental organisations that received more than 10% of their funds from abroad or who lacked Ethiopian citizens on their boards of directors.
Land constitutes the single most important resource on which the livelihoods of over 85% of the Ethiopian population depend. In the highland and lowland peripheries, the dependence on land and other resources associated with it represent the only means of survival. For pastoralists and indigenous peoples in the lowlands, land is not only a source of livelihood but also a source of identity. In these areas loss of access to land means loss of way of life. Although formally the constitution entrusted the administration of land to the kilil (regions), the right to allocate land to investors – including to foreigners – reverted to the federal government. Those at the helm of power in the federal government are sedentarists who consider pastoralism an obsolete mode of production that uses land prodigally and creates and perpetuates poverty and above all stands in the way of the state's need to allocate land to an economic activity where return is highest. Historically, the elite in the centre always considered the pastoral lands as ‘no man's land’ readily available for alternative use. There is no evidence to suggest that the dominant perception of the EPRDF is any different from the sedentarist perspective. The federal government is engaged in large-scale dam construction and leasing of extensive tracts of land to foreign investors to grow cash crops rather than food crops in the context of complete absence of land-use policy. Markakis argues that in the past, the centre was content with exercising a token measure of power in the lowland periphery. The centre has now realised that the lowlands are endowed with enormous resources, such as minerals, irrigable land for cash crop production and production of hydroelectric power. The development of such economic activities also provides an indispensable source of employment for immigrants from the centre.
Ethiopia: the last two frontiers makes depressing reading regarding the future of the peripheries. Markakis predicts the likely scenario that there will come a time when it will be imperative to ‘open the highland periphery to land-starved Abyssinian peasants from the north. Then the modicum of self-administration allowed to the periphery at present will be revoked, and the centre/periphery relationship will revert to its historical form’ (p. 356; emphasis added. An important question which Markakis deals with at great length but does not answer in an unambiguous manner is whether the centre's quest to forge a nation state is ever achievable. Even though Markakis shows that at the heart of the endless bloodshed and conflicts that have been afflicting Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa lies ‘Ethiopia's pursuit of the nation-state in the teeth of manifold oppression’ at the expense of other competing tasks, the elusive project of constructing a viable nation state still remains far-fetched. The question is whether the project is ever achievable or whether it should be forsaken as being utopian. Ethiopia: the last two frontiers is a great work and a must-read for all people interested in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa's past, present and future.