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The Berhale camp in Ethiopia’s Afar Regional State. DAN CONNELL Caught in the Crossfire of Climate and Politics The Eritrean Afars in Ethiopia Dan Connell onscription into the army or other government service Eritrea is a diverse society, roughly half-Christian and for years on end, fear of detention and torture for real or half-Muslim from nine distinct ethno-linguistic groups, Cimagined transgressions with no legal recourse, no prospect and its leadership is relentlessly secular. But Christian of schooling or meaningful work, and no personal freedom: The Tigrinya speakers dominate both the political sphere and reasons Afar refugees in eastern Ethiopia gave for fleeing their the economy under a regime derived almost exclusively from homeland often echoed those I had heard from their countrymen the army that won Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in interviews I conducted in 19 countries over the last two years. in the early 1990s, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, But most I spoke with had another grievance—disempowerment whose core leadership came largely from the Tigrinya heart- and discrimination based on their ethnicity and culture. land. EPLF veterans control all the top government posts under the front’s former commander, who has refused to Dan Connell is a contributing editor of Middle East Report and vice chair of MERIP’s board of directors. He is working on a book about Eritrean refugees. Part one of this implement a constitution drafted in the 1990s or to hold series on Eritrean Afars appeared in MER 276 (Fall 2015). national elections. MIDDLE EAST REPORT 277 ■ WINTER 2015 41 The Afars are Sunni Muslims, but religion is not central to their service the next year so he fled that summer. “My life was not status, at least not in a doctrinal sense—the regime has jailed far in my hands after tenth grade,” he told me. more Christians for banned religious practices than they have But it was not just the prospect of national service that Muslims, banning all denominations it could not control. Only triggered his flight. Ali said he had been alienated from the four denominations, which have a long history in the country, government since the 1998 arrest of 48 prominent Afar elders are legal: Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, Evangelical accused of being pro-Ethiopia. The idea of serving this regime Lutheran and Sunni Muslim. But all media are state-run, no was too much to bear, but he still longs for the chance to go non-governmental organizations or social movements are allowed, home again if things change there. Now 31, he lives in the and either the state or the ruling party—now called the People’s Assaita camp, close to Ethiopia’s border with Djibouti, where Front for Democracy and Justice—hold controlling interests in he survives on UN rations and occasional day labor. “I never all large-scale enterprises and agricultural schemes. The upshot is forget Assab,” he said, recalling the once bustling port where that if you are outside the EPLF/PFDJ core, you are by default he was born and raised. “If there was some hope, I would go marginalized. And the Afars are the quintessential outsiders. back. Why would anyone live here?” A tightly knit, insular society with a strong warrior tradition, Ethiopia’s Afar Regional State, one of nine created under its the Afars inhabit an area that extends from southern Eritrea policy of “ethnic federalism,” is among the country’s poorest into Djibouti and Ethiopia in one of the harshest environments and least populated, with some 1.6 million people spread across in East Africa. Over the centuries, most eked out a living from 270,000 square kilometers, all but 13 percent of them in rural pastoralism, though some on the Red Sea coast lived from areas. Much of it is desert at or below sea level. Over 90 percent fishing and regional trade. Life was always precarious, which of the inhabitants are Afars, by far the largest concentration no doubt made the Afars that much more determined to hold in a region whose total Afar population is around 2 million, onto what they had—and to who they were. including 100,000 in Eritrea and 300,000 in Djibouti. And for the most part, they succeeded, maintaining tradi- The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees tional forms of social organization and administration despite (UNHCR) in Ethiopia counted nearly 29,000 Afar refugees the imposition of artificial borders and repeated efforts by in this state at the start of 2015, but more crossed the border outside powers, including imperial Ethiopia, to subdue them. without registering to live within the local Afar community, as They also kept their distance from the liberation fronts within became clear on walking tours of the towns of Assaita, Semera Eritrea, which left them with little representation at the center and Loggiya clustered along the Addis Ababa-Djibouti highway of power when the EPLF formed a new government in 1991 where my guide repeatedly hailed people he knew from Eritrea. and set out to re-engineer the society in its image. Some had been in Ethiopia for decades, but most came in the One aspect of EPLF’s nation-building project was the last ten to 15 years. denigration of pastoralism as a mode of economic life, coupled Nearly all the camp residents are ethnic Afars, as Ethiopia with ever tighter limits on fishing and trade, as the front transports refugees from other ethnic groups to camps in the sought to consolidate control over resources. Another was the northern Tigray Regional State and relocates Afars who enter replacement of traditional forms of clan administration with Ethiopia to one of two camps here—Berahle or Assaita— a top-down model of appointed leaders. Perhaps the most regardless of where they enter the country. Because many Afar sweeping, though, was the requirement that all young Afars, refugees come with families and settle in the camps or towns men and unmarried women, train with the army and then with others from their place of origin, fewer move on to other enroll in national service, often at great distances from families destination countries than refugees of other social backgrounds, and communities that relied on them for survival. That service many of whom fled as individuals. became indefinite after a 1998–2000 border war with Ethiopia With the degree of autonomy the Afars enjoy here, the sheer that ended with a shaky truce and has yet to be resolved. size of their population, and the cultural and political limits on Under conditions of permanent mobilization, Afar insularity Afars in Eritrea and Djibouti, the Afar State has become not became itself a source of mistrust, and the relationship between only a primary destination for Afar refugees but also the base for state authorities and the population came more and more to contemporary Afar nationalism and the headquarters for the resemble that of colonizer and colonized. largest Afar political movement, the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO), the only indigenous organization of The Underserved Afar Camps any consequence with a presence in the region. Meanwhile, the Afar region has an outsize importance for Ali Ahmed’s story was typical. When he was a child, his father Ethiopia, despite its poverty and harsh environment, due to had worked as a small merchant, but during the border war its strategic location, bordering on Djibouti, through which trade ground to a halt, leaving the family destitute. Ali had Ethiopia has access to the Red Sea, and on Eritrea and Somalia, only finished tenth grade by 2006 at the age of 22 because he where Ethiopia has fought major wars and which have served had taken time off to support the family and only attended as bases for Ethiopian opposition groups. And the Afar region school part-time, but he knew he would be called to national appears to sit on significant mineral deposits. 42 MIDDLE EAST REPORT 277 ■ WINTER 2015 All of which makes it surprising that the Afar refugees service as an organizer for the party-sponsored youth union and appear to fall off the radar for most international aid agencies. in the Afar administration. But after he refused to withdraw Assaita and Berahle are, like all refugee camps in Ethiopia, from Assab during the border war when most highlanders in administered by the country’s refugee authority, known as the city fled—“I was born in Assab—I would never leave”—he ARRA, and supplied by UNHCR, which supports limited was accused of “accepting” a potential Ethiopian occupation social and educational programming there. The Norwegian if the city had fallen (which it did not), and he was jailed. He Refugee Council has supported some construction, but neither said he was sent to a prison near the Assab oil refinery and the Council nor the International Rescue Committee, the two kept there for five years, beaten frequently and repeatedly most active NGOs in other camps, has an active presence in called a traitor for not leaving his post with the other officials. those for the Afar. Nor do any other European or American Upon his release, he used personal connections to get a boat NGOs. There are primary schools and sports for older children, to Yemen and left immediately, settling in the small Yemeni but most of the adult refugees are idle and have few prospects port of Mukha, where he found work with local fishers and of steady work. It is, for most of them, the end of the line. did day labor. His family soon followed.