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The Spiritual Legacy of the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict

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The Spiritual Legacy of the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict THE SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF THE ETHIO-ERITREAN CONFLICT JOACHIM G. PERSOON* INTRODUCTION On the 10th of December 2004 a group of demonstrators gathered outside the Eritrean Embassy in the Hague carrying banners with slogans such as: ‘Freedom of Belief in Eritrea’, and presented a petition with three thousand signatures.1 The demonstration echoed the findings of the US State Depart- ment Annual Report on religious freedom around the world. The Report mentioned a deterioration of the situation in Eritrea and referred to cases of harassment, detention and torture of members of non-sanctioned religious groups.2 The event demonstrated the extent of the tensions generated by the religious policy of the Eritrean government, and the importance of the reli- gious element in the legacy of the Ethio-Eritrean conflict. The phenomenon of multi-ethnic Eritrea that has broken away from multi- ethnic Ethiopia presents a theoretical challenge to current mainstream theo- ries of nation formation.3 Eritrea counts nine ethno-linguistic groups. Its first basis for nationhood is civic identity. ‘The war and the sharing of suffering in struggle have been the very cement of national unity through common * Joachim G. Persoon PhD is an Affiliated Researcher of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In November 2003 he defended a thesis entitled ‘Monks and Cadres in the Land of Prester John: A Multidisciplinary Study of Modern Ethiopian Monas- ticism and its Encounter with Communism’. While doing research for the thesis he vis- ited Eritrea in January 1998, interviewed various people, including the first Patriarch (he was then Archbishop), and visited monasteries in the border area. This journey facilitated gathering material for this paper. 1 D. Gillissen, ‘Drieduizend handtekeningen voor de ambassade, Jubilee Campaign demon- streert tegen opsluiting van Christenen in Eritrea’, Nederlands Dagblad (11 December 2004), p. 2. 2 ‘US Condemns Eritrea over Religion’ Internet site BBC News Africa (23 December 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3343635.stm 3 R. Bereketeab, Eritrea the Making of a Nation 1890-1991. Dissertation University of Uppsala (Uppsala, 1999; published 2000), p. 14. 292 JOACHIM G. PERSOON identity and aspiration.’4 Identity constitutes a cluster of properties, among which religion represents a transcendent element. When the imperative for wartime cooperation ceases to exist religious tensions are likely to rise. A recent conference on the horn of Africa in Paris5 stressed the significance of Ethiopia and Eritrea as key areas in a clash of civilisations. This article inves- tigates how the religious aspect of this clash is related to the Ethio-Eritrean struggle. The fall of the communist dictatorship in 1991, facilitating the achieve- ment of Eritrea’s independence in 1993, apparently heralded an African renais- sance. Yet within a few years a series of dramatic events brought the period of optimism to a close. On the 12th of May 1998, columns of the Eritrean army backed by tanks moved into Badme town and its environs. The bor- der dispute became a ferocious war with much bloodshed6 and the displace- ment of tens of thousands of people. The fratricidal nature of the struggle between two related leaders and former comrades in arms during the fight against the communists shocked the world. The Ethio-Eritrean conflict is usually thought of in political or ethnic terms and rarely it is associated with religion. Both populations share the same major religious groups (even if in different proportions).7 The predominant ethos in both countries is pro- foundly religious. Even after 17 years of communist rule people’s sense of iden- tity and many aspects of their everyday lives are determined by religion. Fur- thermore, religion constitutes one of the most important contexts of public association, and one of the areas that is least subject to government control. The present Ethiopian and Eritrean governments both began as allied regional liberation movements, sharing very similar ideological and political aspirations. Their religious policies reveal the extent to which they moved in different directions, resulting in widely varying developments within the reli- gious sphere in each country. This raises questions as to how religion played 4 G. Kebreab, ‘When Refugees Come Home: The Relationship Between Stayees and Returnees in Post-Conflict Eritrea’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 20 ( 2002), 1, pp. 53-77, on p. 76. 5 Colloque Les nouvelles d’Addis / Les Verts Paris, Assemblée Nationale, Lundi 2 février 2004. 6 Estimates are that about 100,000 people died. 7 Religious statistics are controversial. Estimates for the percentage of Muslims in the Ethiopian population vary from 30 to over 50%; however, there is a general consensus that about 50% of the Eritrean population is Muslim. THE SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF THE ETHIO-ERITREAN CONFLICT 293 a role in the situation leading up to independence, what influence it had on the freedom struggle, and subsequently what was the impact of the border war of 1998. Rather than seeking to document all details, I want to identify the major trends that have characterised spiritual life in the two countries. I do not engage in any kind of value judgement, but will make an attempt to reveal the motivations of the governments and the effects they had on the religious lives of their subjects. ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOXY AND THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION The Ethiopian Orthodox Church became autocephalous by a gradual process. The number of Ethiopian bishops was steadily increased until finally an inde- pendent Holy Synod could be formed and a Patriarch could appointed in the middle of the 20th century. In 1951 Anba Basilius was consecrated Abuna of Ethiopia, and in 1959 he was enthroned as the first Patriarch Catholicus of the Ethiopian Church with the right to consecrate metropolitans and bishops. A real confrontation of religious and secular ideologies occurred after the revolution of 1974, and it initially looked as if organised religion was doomed. However, surprisingly Christian Churches and Islam were able to recreate themselves and displayed a remarkable resilience. Drastic measures such as the confiscation of land impoverished the Orthodox Church but paradoxically freed her of her unpopular feudal trappings, thus endearing her to the masses. Already at an early stage in the revolution different sources were reporting a great public interest in participation in organized religion. This phenomenon was strong enough to provoke specific counter measures: ‘Special treatment is proposed for the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes which have been thrown into a state of fright by the Ethiopian revolution and are flocking to the churches in great numbers. This revival is fast becoming ground for counter-revolution.’8 Atheistic propaganda provoked a religious revival initially more visible in the Orthodox sphere, later revealing itself as an underground movement in evan- gelical circles. Oriental Orthodoxy conceptualises itself as unchanging, but 8 D. Cross, ‘Ethiopian Attack on Evil of Religion’, The Times (London, 15 November 1994), p. 1. 294 JOACHIM G. PERSOON is going through a process of reinventing itself. In practice it accepted for- eign innovations such as Sunday Schools (from Coptic Egypt) and parish councils introduced through WCC funded seminars and crucial for the church’s survival. Under communist rule Ethiopian Orthodoxy developed as a highly polarised form of religion displaying features characteristic of world- wide Orthodoxy, such as a certain degree of fundamentalism and religious nationalism. During the revolutionary project of ‘encaderment’ the Church constituted one of the few alternative spaces for meaningful interaction and individual and group empowerment. It became popular with large sections of the population, as shown by the massive participation in pilgrimage rites at shrines like Kulubi Gabriel. However, the stress on the links between reli- gion and community identity caused tensions in ecumenical relations. There was a sense of canonical territory in which the ‘natural’ religion was ortho- doxy, sometimes leading to violence between religious groups. The Ethiopian communist leadership recognised the religious element in the Eritrean conflict at an early stage. In the late eighties Colonel Mengistu, despite his earlier Leninist rhetoric, nominated his first minister of Religious Affairs. Soon after when he had agreed to divide Eritrea administratively into Muslim and Christian areas, he was not merely trying to buy time. ‘Although the measure was designed to divide and rule, in a sense it was an acknowledgement, albeit belated, of the significance of religion in the Eritrean conflict.’9 BETWEEN OPENNESS AND BELONGING As long as the government continued the trajectory of central state forma- tion, some compromise with the privileged status of the Orthodox Church was required. After 1991 the subversion of a centre-periphery model of state- hood in Ethiopia formed part of the upheavals associated with ‘globalisa- tion’, challenging the special status of the Orthodox community and open- ing up the way for greatly increased foreign competition. Following the introduction of Federal administration Orthodox minorities in certain areas faced persecution and central areas of the Orthodox homeland became eco- nomic backwaters. 9 S. A. Hussien, ‘The Conflict in Eritrea Reconsidered’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 18, (1998) 1, pp. 159-167, on p. 165. THE SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF THE ETHIO-ERITREAN CONFLICT 295 The new élan of the Protestant churches obliged the Orthodox to reorganise and become more competitive in the religious market place. Political alien- ation made the Church into a zealously guarded core symbol of identity. Renewed vitality was evident in widespread projects of church construction.10 A more inclusive way of conceptualising the church encouraged the growth of a multi-ethnic Orthodox identity evident at Orthodox festivals in which ethnic minorities played an important part. The visionary Abuna (Bishop) Gorgorios established a monastery at Zwey to prepare for missionary work in the South, a movement continued by recent developments at Mehur Yesus monastery.
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