War in the Horn of Africa

The Yale Library of Military History Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan, Series Editors This page intentionally left blank The Ethiopian Revolution War in the Horn of Africa Gebru Tareke Foreword by Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan Yale University Press New Haven & London Copyright © 2009 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz. Set in Electra and Trajan types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gebru Tareke, 1940– The Ethiopian revolution : war in the Horn of Africa / Gebru Tareke ; foreword by Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan. p. cm. — (Yale library of military history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-14163-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Ethiopia—History—1974– 2. Eritrea—History—Revolution, 1962–1993. 3. Eritrean-Ethiopian War, 1998– 4. Somali-Ethiopian Conflict, 1977–1979. 5. Somali-Ethiopian Conflict, 1979– I. Title. DT387.95.G43 2009 963.07—dc22 2008044346 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). It contains 30 percent postconsumer waste (PCW) and is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). 10987654321 In memory of my parents Widisti Menkir Tareke Mengesha And All those who died for a free, democratic, and secular Ethiopia This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by Donald Kagan & Frederick Kagan ix Preface xiii List of Abbreviations xix Part One THE SPECTER OF REVOLUTION AND WAR / 1 1 Roots and Outcomes of Revolution: A Review / 11 Part Two COMRADES AGAINST COMRADES / 45 2 The Victorious Nationalists: Insurgent Eritrea / 55 3 The Victorious Ethnonationalists: Insurgent Tigray / 76 4 The Vanquished Revolutionary Army: Birth and Evolution / 111 5 The Vanquished Revolutionary Army: Defeat and Demise / 138 Part Three BATTLEFIELD ETHIOPIA / 177 6 Ogaden: “Socialist” Neighbors at War / 182 7 Nakfa: “Even the Mountains Fought” / 218 viii Contents 8 Af Abet: Ethiopia’s Dienbienphu? / 247 9 Shire: “Unexpected Grand Failure” / 262 10 Massawa: The Denouement / 291 11 Conclusions / 311 1998: Postscript 343 Appendixes 351 Notes 355 Bibliography 413 Index 425 Foreword War has been a subject of intense interest from the beginning of literature around the world. Whether it be in the earliest literary work in the Western tradi- tion, Homer’s Iliad, or the Rigvedic hymns of ancient India, people have always been fascinated by this dangerous and challenging phenomenon. Few can fail to be stirred by such questions as: How and why do wars come about? How and why do they end? Why did the winners win and the losers lose? How do leaders make life-and-death decisions? Why do combatants follow orders that put their lives at risk? How do individuals and societies behave in war, and how are they affected by it? Recent events have raised the study of war from one of intellec- tual interest to a matter of vital importance to America and the world. Ordinary citizens must understand war in order to choose their leaders wisely, and leaders must understand it if they are to prevent wars where possible and win them when necessary. This series, therefore, seeks to present the keenest analyses of war in its differ- ent aspects, the sharpest evaluations of political and military decision-making, and descriptive accounts of military activity that illuminate its human elements. It will do so drawing on the full range of military history from ancient times to the present and in every part of the globe in order to make available to the general public readable and accurate scholarly accounts of this most fascinating and dangerous of human activities. Gebru Tareke’s The Ethiopian Revolution is a remarkable work that tells the story of an obscure corner of the world unknown to most Americans, but that is nevertheless bound up in America’s most serious preoccupations. Although the Horn of Africa seems to most a remote and impoverished area notable chiefly ix x Foreword for the suffering of its people, it has played an important role in recent American history, and it is likely to play a significant role in the future of America and the West in general. The humanitarian intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s was undertaken by the George H. W. Bush administration in ignorance of the historical and regional context. As that context imposed itself upon American forces, most notably with the “Blackhawk Down” disaster in Mogadishu in 1993, the Clinton administration chose to leave the region once again to its fate. That withdrawal, cited endlessly by al Qaeda and related Islamist movements, created a global impression of American weakness and fecklessness that persists in some quarters to this day. And ignorance of the region’s history and real importance, of course, led to the deaths of American soldiers in a vain effort. The Ethiopian Revolution is the history of the quarter century that led up to the American disaster in Somalia, but it is much more. It also describes the rise and fall of the Ethiopian socialist dictatorship and its ruler, Mengistu. The collapse of that tyranny in 1991 spawned civil wars and regional conflicts that devastated this already impoverished region and brought into question the very feasibility of maintaining state structures in the Horn of Africa. That devastation coincided with the rise of al Qaeda and the expansion of Iranian efforts to estab- lish links with Islamist extremists in Africa in the 1990s. These effects converged in Sudan, where they remain intertwined. Somalia’s collapse provided fertile ground to al Qaeda affiliates, which took over Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in the first decade of this century. American unwillingness to re-engage in Somalia so soon after the Blackhawk Down disaster led a reviving Ethiopia to invade Somalia and eject its Islamist rulers in 2006. But no one who knows the history of this region at all can imagine that things will now remain stable. The Horn of Africa may be, to borrow a phrase, a “far-off land of which we know little,” but it is nevertheless vital terrain for anyone concerned about Islamist terrorism, to say nothing of humanitarian disasters. The Ethiopian Revolution is required reading for those who wish to understand this complex and important area. But The Ethiopian Revolution would be an important work even if it did not address so critical and so understudied a region. Tareke’s work integrates detailed narratives of conventional military operations and multiple revolutionary wars. It is almost a course in counterinsurgency by itself because of the numer- ous similar yet disparate cases it examines. Tareke narrates the Somali attempt to seize the Ogaden region of Ethiopia in 1977, shortly after Mengistu rose to power in Addis Ababa, noting that the Somali plan included a prepared insurgency within the Ogaden coordinated with a conventional invasion from Soma- lia. He then describes how the Ethiopian revolutionary government, with the ex- Foreword xi traordinary assistance of thousands of Cuban and Soviet advisors and troops, not only defeated the Somali invasion but also suppressed the remaining insurgency using a combination of military and nonmilitary operations and social, political, and humanitarian efforts. But Mengistu became overconfident and launched another major operation in 1982 aimed at subduing the long-simmering insurgency in Eritrea. This attempt led to disaster, as the better-organized and more popular Eritrean insurgency first beat back Ethiopia’s forces and then defeated the Ethiopian army in a series of battles at the end of the 1980s that led ultimately to the fall of the Ethiopian dictatorship and the collapse of the state. Tareke explicitly asks the fascinating question: Why were the Ethiopians so astonishingly successful at counterinsurgency in the Ogaden and so appallingly bad at it in Eritrea only a few years later? His answer is based not only on solid examinations of the spe- cific military capabilities of the Ethiopian forces and their insurgent opponents, but also on a detailed exploration of the differing social, political, and economic situations of these two areas. The Ethiopians misread the nature of the Eritrean insurgency and wrongly assumed that techniques proven in the Ogaden could be transported to the north with little change. And the world changed, too. By the end of the 1980s, Ethiopia’s Soviet and Cuban sponsors had their own prob- lems and much less attention to spare helping Addis Ababa fight its internal wars. Counterinsurgency, like any other kind of war, is an art, not a science, as Tareke shows clearly. Success comes not from divining the correct tactical techniques or systematizing civil-military programs, but from recognizing each insurgency as a unique organism with its own causes, strengths, and weaknesses. That is a lesson that Americans would do well to heed. Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan This page intentionally left blank Preface Happy the nation whose people has not forgotten how to rebel. —R. H. Tawney Happier the nation that uses the recurring tension between the social forces of repression and resistance to expand the boundaries of freedom and justice. Happier still that which utilizes historical memory of collective resistance to mold a more egalitarian and coherent political community. Ethiopia has had movements of popular rebellion, and an inquiry into the most recent and cata- clysmic clash between authoritarian regimes and insurgent forces committed to their eradication has led to this inescapable conclusion: with sufficient popular and external support, the leadership of dedicated and competent fighters, a land suitable for guerrilla warfare, and an incumbent regime whose legitimacy is in jeopardy, revolutionary insurgents are hard to beat.

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