The Ethiopian threat
Anthony Mockler So the Ethiopian Empire has survived. It is beginning to-look as if 'the time of troubles', the traditionally chaotic period that follows the death or disability of any great Emperor during which the Empire inevitably tends to disintegrate, is over. After the death of Menelik the Europeans achieved peace by setting the young Ras Tafari, the future Haile Selassie, on the throne. This time it is the Russians and the Cubans who have confirmed the bloodstained Mengistu as his apparently definitive successor. The rival 'Ras' — in the modern context General Aman Andom, General Teferi Sante and Lt-Colonel Atnafu Abate — have been , eliminated more brutally and finally than ever Haile Selassie dealt with his rivals, from Lij Yasu to Ras Hailu. The titles may have changed — vanished indeed — but the principle remains: a centralised autocracy faced continuously with internal dissidence but imperialistic in its ambitions, always ready to expand, never to contract.
The Somalis. have now, it seems, been dealt with. Yet again, as so often before in Ethiopian history, a wave of Muslim invaders from the lowlands in the east has been repulsed — and this time with less trouble and more decisively than seemed possible only a few months ago. For if almost a third of the Somali army was wiped out at the Battle of Jijiga — the most unreported, unphotographed, untelevised and Indeed unobserved battle on such a scale in recent years — then that is that. Though the Western Somali Liberation Front may defiantly proclaim its desire to fight on, the evidence that scores of thousands of refugees from the Ogaden have poured across the frontier into Somalia and the newly-independent Republic of Djibouti, is more convincing. The Ogaden risks becoming another Empty Quarter, for the Ethiopian reprisals on such wretched inhabitants as remain are likely to be ferocious.
Next on the list comes Eritrea. Ever since the Italian conquest the Eritreans have always posed a problem for the Empire. At the battle of Adowa in 1896 Menelik, on the insistence of his Ras, had every Eritrean prisoner who had fought on the Italian side amputated of his left hand and right foot as a traitor to the Empire; that is the attitude that still persists. In the eyes of the Ethiopians, Eritreans in arms will always be rebels and Eritrea always an integral part of their state — far more so than the Ogaden. Haile Selassie used wiles to entice the autonomous province to give up its autonomy. His successors will use crushing force, for they have managed to preserve what was essential: control of the provincial capital, Asmara, and of the port of Massawa. The reconquest of the rest of the territory will be bloody, protracted and never complete; but it is hard to see, given continuing Russian and Cuban support, how it can fail.
What then? The next target must be Djibouti itself, the control of which has always been an Ethiopian aim and which, rather than the barren Ogaden, is inevitably the real prize in any Somali-Ethiopian war. Both sides have claimed Djibouti as part of their natural territory; both with a certain justification. And no doubt the Ethiopians would have absorbed it in these past few weeks — had it not been for the continuing French military presence. The Ethiopians must have been waiting for the outcome of the recent French elections with greater interest than many of the French; for, had the left come to power, then the 4,000 remaining troops would almost certainly have been withdrawn. As it is, France remains as guarantor of the tiny city-state's 'independence'. This means that the absorption of Djibouti will not, from the Ethiopian point of view, be an easy task. There can be no swift invasion; the probable strategy is a succession of attempts (which may fail) to stir up such intercommunal feuding between the Afars and the Issas that the place becomes ungovernable and the French quit. And at the same time any feeble Somali protest can be dealt with by the continual threat of inva sion. For the Ethiopians have manoeuvred very astutely. They have not — not yet — invaded Somalia, but they have announced that no ceasefire is possible till the Somalis withdraw not just their troops, which is done, but their claims to the Ogaden, which no Somali leader will ever do. In other words the latent state of war between Ethiopia and Somalia continues — and the Ethiopians have a casus he'll which they may invoke at any moment to blow the embers up into flames once again. My own view is that there will now be a long pause, of at least seireral months, till the next round; but a next round there will certainlY be, in which the crushing of the Somalis will be completed.
The Ethiopians have always been a proud, vindictive and warlike race. Their morale, now that their recent humiliations have been so satisfactorily avenged, must be very high and will soon, when the Eritreans are blown back into the hills, be higher still. They will, thanks to their suppliers and allies, have the most powerful, most
battle-hardened, most experienced army in black Africa. It may be that the real civil war in the heartlands of Ethiopia is still to come; for the bloodthirsty excesses of the Rea Terror (so horrifyingly described last week in The Times) are breeding hatred as well as fear; and, whatever the benefits of the Revolution in the southern Galla lands, the highlanders of Goj jam, Tigre and above 0 of Beghemder will at some stage have their challenge to stake out. But, as long as the Russians and Cubans are there to give the military tyranny their support and the West does little or nothing, the counter.' revolution when it comes stands little serious chance of success.
And, out of all this welter of blood, what will emerge? Very possibly an expansionist Soviet state that will play the same role in Africa as the USSR played sixty years ago In Europe. The parallels are only too obvious. a centuries-old Empire of outdated struetures overthrown, the physical liquidation of its former ruling and landowning class' the emergence, after a period of turmoil, of undisputed control by a military-political, dictatorship of the left, the crushing 01 internal rebellion and external aggression, the Church subdued, the peasantry enrolled, incessant indoctrination, growing self-confidence, a new revolutionary Wel' lectual ferment — for the Ethiopians are certainly no less intelligent than the Russians — the settlement of the 'nationalities' Pr°b. lem, and increasing military might. Adnin, tedly much of this is just a hypothesis; but II is a hypothesis that no doubt the Russians, the Cubans and those members of the Der:, gue who remain alive are considering. M. if they are doing so, then so, with opPosite intent, should the West. It cannot be ot the West's interests to have a new and pow: erful, if miniature, Soviet state emerging,rn of ■tss
Africa, linked by the very nature
experience and by the very condition of !t survival in close and permanent ties to its predecessor and paradigm in Europe.
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