Volume 11 1984 Issue 30

1 Editorial Manifold violent social conflict is the hallmark of contemporary history in the Horn of Africa. Most contributions to this issue of ROAPE unavoidably refer to it, and our first article provides a survey of its militarisation. Though armed struggles began in the early 1960s in Eritrea, Ogaden, northern Kenya and southern Sudan, the world's attention was not caught until 1974, when the quaint imperial regime in Ethiopia was toppled by a class upheaval. The drastic consequences of that event — the military regime it spawned, that not only claimed to be socialist but acted as if it meant it; the massive intervention of the Soviet Union on its behalf; the great escalation of the struggle in Eritrea subsequently; the head-on collision between Ethiopia and Somalia in the Ogaden — all focused international attention on the region, though none of these developments were really novel. Some years earlier, military regimes in the Sudan and Somalia had also laid claim to socialism, though neither the circumstances.nor the consequences were as dramatic as in Ethiopia. Nor was the Soviet Union a newcomer to the region, for it had been Somalia's patron since the early 1960s, and had for a time courted the Sudanese 'socialist' regime. Ethiopia and Somalia had their first bout in the Ogaden in 1963 and have been at daggers drawn ever since. The Eritrean revolution had been gaining momentum throughout the 1960s without however gaining any attention abroad. The collapse of the ancien regime in Ethiopia focused attention on two interlinked elements of social strife that were responsible for it, i.e., national and class conflict. Their conjucture produced a classic revolutionary situation; the sort that invites analysis and post-diction, particularly from intellectuals of the left. Revolutionary situations pose issues that are highly charged and controversial, and the current regional drama in the Horn with Ethiopia at its centre is no exception, as a reading of the contributions to this Issue will make abundantly clear. It is necessary to confront these issues because they involve questions of general concern, such as the nature of social conflict in the post- colonial state, the role of 'radical' military regimes, the invocation of 'socialism' by such regimes and by their opponents, and the significance of the Soviet role in Africa. But the issues give rise in turn to insistent but competing claims for specific political support. In coming to grips with the hard choices that thus have to be made it is necessary to go beyond the rhetoric of the actors' own claims about their cause and beyond the reflexive position-taking based purely on shiboleths, whether of 'self-determination' or 'socialist internationalism' and confront the complex and convoluted realities of the Horn. But at the same time 2 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY socialists must not be so bemused by the complexities in the analysis that they simply retreat into an apathetic fence-sitting in the face of the enormity of the suffering and the historical importance of the events being played out there. It is in this spirit that we offer the various articles in this Issue as contributions to a crucial debate, and one that we hope will spark of further discussion in our columns. Indeed we would welcome pieces that extend the range of this particular debate, wide and contentious though it is. In particular we recognise that we have been less than successful in obtaining contributions more sympathetic to existing regimes and policies, a stance that some on the left are prepared to advocate, we know, especially with regard to the Dergue in Ethiopia. But the realities are such that even those inclined to give 'critical' support are often inhibited from visibly rubbing shoulders in open debate with those opinions dubbed 'treacherous'. In these circumstances we are especially pleased to carry Addis Hiwet's article. Not only does it take issue with views that we have published before and that are articulated in this Issue by Petras and Morley and Keleman in his review article, but it criticises the stances of both the 'nationalists' who oppose the Addis Ababa regime and the two strands of the Ethiopian left active in the late 1970s. His call for a critical rethink by all on the left is particularly apt, coming as it does from the author whose book sparked off much of the debate on these issues, as Gebre- Medhin reminds us, some ten years ago. The Dialectics of Class and Nation The movements that are at the forefront of the present conflicts style themselves 'nationalist' and are inspired by the vision of a state of their own, or at least, a loosely structured one that can accommodate their aspiration for autonomy. Their constituencies do not compromise nationalities in any conventional sense of the term. The Eritrean and Southern Sudanese movements to cite the largest and most powerful, are regional in scope and address themselves to a multiplicity of ethnic groups. What distinguishes these regions and unites the groups that inhabit them is the common perception of material deprivation and social discrimination, sustained and compounded by political oppression. This is the perception that everywhere gave birth to African nationalism sans nation in the anti-colonial phase. Dissident nationalism directed against the post-colonial state is born of the same perception, since deprivation and oppression have scarcely lessened in the contemporary era. Material deprivation is the legacy of uneven development in the past which remains unredeemed, and in the case of the pastoralists has been exacerbated by current trends. Or, as in the case of urban Eritrea, it can be the result of recent backsliding from a relatively advanced position. Whatever the case, it is perceived to be directly related at present to the political emasculation of such groups and regions in the post-colonial state, a state often tightly controlled by a dominant ethnic group or groups. Social and cultural discrimination are the outcome of an enforced process of national integration promoted by the state, which embodies the culture of the group that dominates it; Amhara in Ethiopia, Arab in the Sudan. Political oppression is required to stifle opposition to such narrowly based regimes which apparently lack the capacity to manage dissent through other methods — this at least is the view advanced about Ethiopia in handling Eritrea by Petras and Morley and Gebre-Medhin in their articles. EDITORIAL 3 Viable dissident nationalist movements incorporate different ethnic groups and social classes, whose mutual differences and contradictions are transcended and submerged by the common perception of victimisation in and by a state controlled by others. They seek to escape this condition in a state of their own, or, at least, to recover political leverage in the existing state through regional autonomy. The latter, for example, is the goal of the Tigray movement in Ethiopia. On the other hand, the Somali in the Ethiopian Ogaden and the northeastern province of Kenya seek salvation in unity with their kinsmen across the border in the Somali Republic. The lead in the formation of these movements is usually taken by the intelligentsia, the only group possessed of the political and organisational skills required for the purpose. To sustain themselves such movements need the willing participation of popular groups; peasants, nomads, workers and traders. They are the ones to provide the manpower and logistical support required to offset the technological advantage of the state. Without discounting the influence of so- called subjective factors, such as language and religion, it can be safely assumed that the response of various classes to the appeal of dissident nationalism is conditioned in the long run by perceptions of their own material position. Hence, the class factor is central to the chemistry of the conflict. This conclusion is not lost on some of the movements: the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, Gebre- Medhin shows us, base their strategies for land reform and mobilisation on a sophisticated class analysis; the class dimension also figures in the approach of the TPLF to famine measures in Tigray, according to Bennet's Briefing. Indeed these nationalist movements are, arguably among the few in Africa that base a liberation strategy on an analysis of class rather than an undifferentiated appeal to 'nation' or the 'people'. One group that can easily be overlooked in any analysis are the pastoralists who make up a large part of the Horn's population and are heavily involved in all the main confrontations. Formerly the masters of the lowlands, they are now on the verge of extinction, having lost their best riverain pastures to commercial agriculture and much of the rest to persistent drought. For them the conflict in all its guises is an elemental struggle for survival. It pits them basically against the sedentary based state which regards the rootless pastoral mode of existence as incompatible with 'development' and with its own existence. While they join various revolutionary movements and fight under assorted banners (ethnic, religious, nationalist), the pastoralists essentially follow their instinct of self- preservation, which may range them against kinsmen, neighbours and co- religionists. Such volatility ensures that the pastoralists have no real champions, not even in the movements they join in order to oppose the post-colonial state, who often are equally determined to see them 'settled' in the state of the future. Only the anthropologists have taken up their cause, which probably is proof that the pastoralists' 'fate is sealed'. Meanwhile they remain a major, if ill-understood, factor in the many-sided conflict, a factor which mocks attempts to analyse the conflict just in terms of familiar variables, such as ethnicity and nationalism, not to mention conventional notions of class.

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