This article was downloaded by: [US Naval Academy] On: 25 June 2013, At: 06:09 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of the Middle East and Africa Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujme20 The Genesis of the Modern Eritrean Struggle (1942–1961) Nikolaos Biziouras Published online: 14 Apr 2013. To cite this article: Nikolaos Biziouras (2013): The Genesis of the Modern Eritrean Struggle (1942–1961), The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 4:1, 21-46 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2013.771419 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. 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Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 4:21–46, 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC # 2013 ISSN: 2152-0844 print=2152-0852 online DOI: 10.1080/21520844.2013.771419 The Genesis of the Modern Eritrean Struggle (1942–1961) NIKOLAOS BIZIOURAS This article shows how the intra-ethnic, elite-level competition for leadership over the Eritrean ethnic mobilization drive interacted with the economic policies that the Amhara imposed on the Eritreans in the imperial era of the Ethiopian state to generate the potential for violent ethnic conflict. The Eritrean ethnic mobi- lization drive turned violent when economically dependent Eritreans prodded their ethnic group leaders into a series of bid- ding wars with each other that made peaceful accommodation with the Amhara leaders of Ethiopia infeasible. To illustrate this argument, this article presents the history of the incorporation of Eritrea into Ethiopia after Eritrea’s decolonization, examines intra- Eritrean divisions and their relationship to the Ethiopian imperial centers, shows how the economic policies that the Ethiopians imposed upon Eritrea impacted the Eritrean ethnic mobilization drive, and then shows how economically dependent Eritreans incentivized rival Eritrean political leaders to engage in bidding wars with respect to the Ethiopian authorities. KEYWORDS Amhara, Eritrea, ethnic mobilization, fractionali- zation, imperial Ethiopia, secession Downloaded by [US Naval Academy] at 06:09 25 June 2013 INTRODUCTION Existing arguments about the emergence of the Eritrean-Amhara ethnic conflict in imperial Ethiopia have stressed a variety of factors. Traditional NIKOLAOS BIZIOURAS is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy. His current research focuses on the political economy of intra- state conflict and the security implications of fragile states. This article solely represents the author’s views and does not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Depart- ment of the Navy, or the Department of Defense. This article is based on a paper that was recognized as the Best Paper–Africa at the 2012 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). 21 22 N. Biziouras approaches have consistently highlighted the long-term ethnic heterogeneity of Ethiopia and its periodic crises in terms of interethnic relations. As such, the country’s collapse into violent interethnic conflict and its reemergence as a coherent, multiethnic entity have assumed a nearly mythic status, and these events are used as powerful examples of the ability of ethnic hetero- geneity to generate interethnic conflict.1 More Eritrea-focused variants of the traditional argument have stressed the significantly high levels of ethno- linguistic and religious fractionalization both within and between Eritrea and Ethiopia.2 For traditional interpretations, Eritrea’s violent confrontation with Ethiopia represents the power of ascriptive identities to determine political action and engender conflict in the context of ethnic and religious heterogeneity. Marxist approaches have stressed the intervening role of ethnicity as conditioning access to resources but without affecting the potential for intra-ethnic group resource allocation that continues to be determined along class lines. As such, the establishment of the modern Ethiopian state was the result of integration into a capitalist international economy driven by the imperial tendencies of the Amhara, the key intermediating ethnic group, which used violence and control over the Ethiopian state to benefit from such an institutional arrangement.3 In the Eritrean context, this meant that the expansion of the capitalist economy and its attendant exploitation happened along ethnic lines, thus increasing the potential for ethnic conflict. As such, Eritrean ethnicity, much like other subnational forms of ethnicity, was pre- sumed to be a direct threat to the notion of a ‘‘Greater Ethiopia’’ that had been painstakingly embedded both within the country and across the region.4 1Harold G. Marcus, A History of Ethiopia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xiv. 2As Haggai Erlich argues, ‘‘Eritrea was a problem that became a conflict, a conflict that became a local tragedy, and a local tragedy that became a pivotal issue in a regional crisis.... The essential problem was a matter of identity’’; Erlich, Ethiopia and the Challenge of Indepen- dence (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986), 1. Similarly, Richard Sherman defined the ‘‘Ethio- Eritrean conflict [as] a national liberation movement by an oppressed people rather than a Downloaded by [US Naval Academy] at 06:09 25 June 2013 simple attempt at secession by a hard-core dissident faction’’; Sherman, ‘‘Center-Periphery Relations in Ethiopia,’’ Horn of Africa 2, no. 2 (1979): xvii. For an analysis of the role that intra-Eritrean divisions played in the Eritrean mobilization drive, see Kjetil Tronvoll, ‘‘Borders of Violence—Boundaries of Identity: Demarcating the Eritrean Nation-State,’’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 6 (1999): 1054–55. For an accurate presentation of the projected and actual links that this conflict has had in terms of religious overtones, see Roy Pateman, ‘‘Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the Middle Eastern Powers: Image and Reality,’’ Northeast African Studies 8, no. 2–3 (1986): 23–39. 3See Mesfin Araya, ‘‘The Eritrean Question: An Alternative Explanation,’’ Journal of Modern African Studies 28, no. 1 (1990): 80; Teshale Tibebu, The Making of Modern Ethiopia 1896–1974 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1995), xxii; and Assafa Jalata, ‘‘Oromo National- ism and Ethiopian Ethnocratic Politics,’’ Horn of Africa 20, no. 1 (1997): 12–13. 4See Ruth Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 24–28. Genesis of the Modern Eritrean Struggle 23 Modernization approaches have stressed the instrumental role of ethnicity in enabling urban-based political entrepreneurs to foment collective action for resource allocation purposes.5 As in other cases of the moderniz- ing, postcolonial African state, this approach contends that the urban-based, interethnic elite, split between the politically dominant ethnic group—in this case, the Amhara—and the competing ethnic group—in this case, the Eritreans—broke down because of insurmountable differences over sharing rules. Institutionalist approaches have stressed the inherent disjuncture between a centralizing state and its peripheral regions.6 As such, the emerg- ence of Eritrean nationalism and its subsequent radicalization into violent ethnic conflict and predatory secessionism were the results of the center’s institutional inability to maintain its control over the peripheral regions.7 More Eritrea-focused variants of this institutionalist approach present the Eritrean ethnic mobilization as the emergence of an anticolonial liberation struggle in the context of the continued colonization and exploitation of the area by the Ethiopian state.8 There are many reasons to disagree with the aforementioned analytical approaches. Empirical findings demonstrate that although ethnic heterogen- eity played an important role in the onset of violent ethnic conflict, it was not 5See John Markakis, Ethiopia: Anatomy of a Traditional Polity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). 6See Christopher Clapham, ‘‘Centralization and Local Response in Southern Ethiopia,’’ African Affairs 74, no. 294 (1975): 73; and Erlich, Ethiopia and the Challenge, 130–32. 7See Sherman, ‘‘Center-Periphery Relations,’’ 37; and Christoper Clapham, Transform- ation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 207. 8See Richard Lobban, ‘‘The Eritrean War: Issues and Implications,’’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 10, no. 2 (1976): 339; David Pool, ‘‘Eritrean Nationalism,’’ in Nationalism & Self Determination