Ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia

...Tigrayan and Eritrean guerrilla fronts interrupted their alliance against Menghistu to fight there in 1984-85...

...Phone calls from President Clinton were apparently instrumental in getting Ethiopia and Eritrea to agree to end their air war...

...Some were held for days...

...A similar process of disintegration is thus a real worry...

...At independence, Eritrea claimed the region up to the border drawn by Italy and recognized by imperial Ethiopia...

...The Ethiopian government then began to divert its shipping to Djibouti...

...One was a sixty-four-year-old woman who had lived her entire life in Ethiopia, working as a cleaner in a school...

...On the other hand, crisis conditions have slowed implementation of Eritrea's new Constitution and progress toward democracy...

...diplomatic interventions were largely incompetent and counterproductive, led by an inexperienced political appointee instead of an experienced diplomat...

...Several are disabled veterans of the Ethiopian army...

...Even as the bilateral commission was supposedly working on a resolution to the dispute, the local forces were taking their own actions...

...Nearly all were Ethiopian citizens...

...Often, Ethiopian soldiers have fired weapons and created the semblance of military movement, perhaps hoping that their Eritrean opponents would fire on the refugees making their way across the border...

...Otherwise, however, U.S...

...Perhaps the greatest progress in this direction was made by reformers under Emperor Haile Selassie, especially in the decades just after World War II...

...Ironically, in fact, the current fighting is close to Adua, where in 1896 Ethiopia dealt Italy the most important defeat of any European invader in all of Africa...

...This is an area on the border between Tigray and Eritrea that has long been in dispute...

...They came from towns throughout the central and northern regions of Ethiopia...

...In this case, the most important such audience may be extremists within the Tigray movement itself...

...In May 1998, Ethiopian forces killed three senior Eritrean army officers sent to negotiate, apparently because they refused to disarm at the border claimed by Ethiopia...

...This strong military response gave up the last clear chance to avoid war...

...this should not happen to me...

...Agendas of national development, however, also fueled the communist revolution that toppled the emperor in 1973...

...One retired UN official showed me his official papers...

...However, there were areas within the Eritrean border that Ethiopia continued to administer...

...Ethiopia also issued new maps changing the border between the two countries, and enshrined these on its new currency...

...The Ethiopian authorities picked them up at work, at home, at the market, and at the post office...

...It has refused to allow these to leave by normal routes—that is, by simply taking a plane out of the country—but insisted instead on their forcible deportation...

...One woman was even forced to leave behind her nursing sevenmonthold baby—though since then Ethiopian authorities have declared that this was a mistake and that mother and infant may be reunited...

...Starting in late 1997, possibly in response to pressure from Tigrayan hard-liners, Meles reduced his communications with his Eritrean counterpart, Issayas Afwerki, and began to sanction a more belligerent posture toward Eritrea...

...But it is nonetheless an effort to purge the population of a country on criteria of ethnicity alone...

...She was linked to Eritrea only by the ethnicity of her father, who had died thirty years ago...

...the temperature was over 110° Fahrenheit when the previous 453 refugees arrived in Assab...

...A lawyer of halfEritrean parentage, whose wife was in Asmara working for the U.S...

...Dozens had never visited Eritrea and spoke no Eritrean language...

...In fact, Eritrean authorities are giving each a modest cash allowance (approximately $200 per family) and working with some international support to provide for their health, education, and other needs...

...In addition to Ethiopian citizens of Eritrean descent, the Ethiopian government has imprisoned or expelled most Eritrean nationals who were living or working in Ethiopia...

...50 DISSENT / Winter 1999...

...Meles, whose mother is of Eritrean descent, initially went out of his way to maintain friendly relations with Eritrea...

...But how can this happen in my home...

...Eritrea responded with a strike against the Tigrayan city of Mekelle, where its bombs hit a school full of children, and defeated Ethiopia's army to take Zalembessa, inside Ethiopia...

...Businesspeople suspect that Ethiopians want to take over their companies...

...It met even up to the first conflict in May...

...A forty-seven-year-old woman with a bandaged foot repeated, "I am rich...

...A striking dimension of Ethiopian policy is the separation of parents and children...

...In fact, though the Amhara had dominated through most of Ethiopia's long imperial history, the primary alternative contenders for dynastic power had been Tigrayans and highland Eritreans...

...We should have seen it coming," said the longtime manager of a sugar factory, "but we just couldn't believe it...

...In the short run, the biggest difficulty is simply to house them...

...CRAIG CALHOUN is professor of sociology and history and chair of the department of sociology at New York University...

...When they reached the Mereb River, north of Adua, they were released and told to walk across the border...

...A bilateral commission was established to determine arrangements in the Badme as well as other areas...

...Meles never achieved complete domination over Tigrayan politics, however, and has contended with resurgent ethnic consciousness among DISSENT / Winter 1999 47 Oromo and other long-subordinated peoples and resentment from Amharas used to positions of power and privilege as well as from rivals within the Tigray camp...

...In 1997, Eritrea infuriated Ethiopia by introducing a new currency, changing the local terms of trade...

...One motivating factor may have been Eritrea's embarrassingly quick defeat of the Ethiopian army...

...In addition, it has detained Eritrean students who were studying at the University of Addis Ababa on an exchange program...

...it is a drama played before a complex array of domestic audiences...

...ONE GROUP of 102 deportees was sheltered in a school building in Mendefera when I arrived there in midJuly...

...The Ethiopian government's decision to expel citizens based on their racial or ethnic identities needs to be considered in this light...

...As such it should disturb the international community much more than it has so far...

...48 DISSENT / Winter 1999 Eritrean independence had left Ethiopia landlocked and reliant on Eritrean ports...

...This is a peaceful and mild version of ethnic cleansing, so far without the mass murder and rape characteristic of the disintegration of Yugoslavia...

...Since war broke out, his speeches have become increasingly hostile...

...Eritrea then took Badme by military force, and on multiple fronts quickly routed the Ethiopian army, ending up in control of a sizable swath of Ethiopian territory...

...Rain was a blessing...

...When the expulsions increased in early July, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson issued a condemnation...

...One of Menghistu's policies had been to move large numbers of people from one province to another...

...Not only Eritrean nationals, but lifelong Ethiopian citizens with just one Eritrean parent were expelled, their bank accounts frozen, assets seized...

...At least two were taken from hospitals where they were undergoing treatment...

...In this and other ways, recent Ethiopian history presents all too many opportunities for analogies with Yugoslavia...

...THE WAR in May and June focused mainly on the Badme region...

...others say their neighbors wept when the police took them away...

...This is expressed not just verbally, but in financial donations that have come close to making up for the shortfall in trade...

...DESPITE ECONOMIC crisis, the Eritrean government has welcomed the new arrivals and provided them with support...

...His most recent book is Nationalism (University of Minnesota Press, 1997...

...Some were unable to walk and had to be carried by others...

...This was partly because he recognized the economic interdependence of the countries, partly because Eritrea supported his government (and indeed, Ethiopians of Eritrean descent voted overwhelmingly for it and were encouraged to maintain Ethiopian citizenship and not emigrate in part because of this...

...The hand of the Ethiopian national government seems to have been forced by local advocates of a "Greater Tigray...

...In Eritrea, the war has not had the effect of weakening the government or sowing disunity...

...International mediators have failed largely because they have called for a return to the status quo ante bellum defined in Ethiopia's favor as that which existed on May 5, rather than taking into account the colonial boundary that the Eritreans believe should define the border...

...He did not send these rivals on diplomatic or administrative missions elsewhere, but instead allowed them to return to Tigray, where they regrouped and placed more and more pressure on him...

...This was also the provincial border between the provinces of Tigray and Eritrea when both were ruled from Addis Ababa...

...His last posting had been to war-torn Somalia...

...The government in Addis Ababa represents one wing of the old TPLF, that which chose to pursue power within Ethiopia rather than pursuing national independence for a "greater Tigray" (possibly including part of Eritrea...

...Most report having been held in jails or camps for some time before being sent out of the country...

...Throughout the twentieth century, its leaders have been engaged in projects of trying to forge national unity among the peoples brought together by centuries of empire building...

...Eritrean independence seems to have been a critical factor in destablizing the rest of Ethiopia, and whether and with what levels of violence it can be held together are now crucial questions...

...In the long run, say leaders, these people will be assets to the country...

...Ethiopia had begun to consolidate control in the disputed region, and Eritrean farmers, who had long complained about their treatment by the Tigrayans, began to be forced out...

...The Battle of Adua left Ethiopia independent and forced Italy to withdraw behind the very Eritrean border now subject to dispute...

...Just as a grudging peace returned, the expulsions started...

...New economic grievances reinforce old ethnic resentments and boundary disputes...

...So far, Ethiopia has expelled only about 5 percent to 10 percent of its estimated half million citizens with significant Eritrean ancestry...

...It comes in the wake of fighting along the border between the two countries in May and June, and so is fueled by wartime anxieties...

...Many fear that a collapse of the current government will bring chaos, and perhaps even break up the country...

...Ethiopia is one of the world's most ethnically heterogeneous societies...

...Many had feared, based on what they heard in Ethiopia, that Eritrea was in the midst of famine (which it is not) and that the government was on the verge of collapse...

...DISSENT / Winter 1999 • 49 Expulsion itself generally means a bus trip of several days to a remote border area...

...It drained the country's resources (and considerable Soviet aid) to fight against the Eritrean liberation fronts, ultimately falling from power as Eritrea won its war for independence...

...The newcomers ranged from three-and-ahalf to eighty-one years old...

...More than 175,000 of Eritrea's 2.5 million citizens are now mobilized for military or other national service...

...A well-dressed businessman said he had his passport ready, with visas for Germany and the United States, but the police simply took it...

...Overshadowed by the World Cup and upheaval in Nigeria, the start of a new African refugee crisis attracted little attention...

...Soldiers then deposit the victims in a no-man'sland between the armies that face each other over the border...

...Like the rest of the war of which it is a part, it cannot be understood simply in terms of international factors or the ostensible instrumental goals it might accomplish...

...I have businesses...

...The ensuing government of Haile Mariam Menghistu was extraordinarily ruthless and violent, but nonetheless committed to national unity...

...About two thousand cross the border each week...

...Even the half million or more Eritreans in the diaspora outside Africa, often critics of the government, have joined in support...

...A poor woman cried as she told of children left behind...

...one has died in custody...

...Local government authorities in Ethiopia were charged with identifying the Eritreans in their jurisdictions...

...Agency for International Development, was forced to leave his four children, ages three to fifteen...

...The new government was formed by members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), speakers of Tigrinya like highland Eritreans, alongside whom they had fought against Menghistu...

...In Ethiopia, despite an early rallying around the government, the result of the war seems to be ever-greater divisions among ethnic groups...

...Investment within Ethiopia has flowed heavily toward Tigray...

...Because of the close friendship between the two governments, however, there seemed no rush to delineate the responsibilities...

...many had been born in Ethiopia...

...I go from trouble to trouble," he said...

...it was also a tactic to undercut regional ethnic consciousness...

...The expulsions may also be in part an attempt to focus discontent on apparent external enemies rather than on either economic crisis or the distribution of power and resources domestically...

...On July 19, President Meles said those being deported were spies, many armed...

...They include school teachers, mechanics, shop owners, Catholic priests, and doctors...

...Before the war, however, both countries were enjoying substantial economic growth...

...This was presented partly as a response to drought and agricultural crisis...

...The region is ethnically mixed, and during the war that ended in 1991, the TPLF and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) each ended up in control of some territory inhabited mainly by members of the other group...

...The deportees are disproportionately old and retired...

...Ethiopia's largest ethnic or national group, the Oromo, had been kept subordinate in most of this history, as had numerous others...

...On the contrary, Eritreans are impressively united behind their government and national consciousness has only grown...

...In some cases this means that the refugees must walk several miles before finding anyone to take them in...

...This opened him to attack from both Ethiopian nationalists and Tigrayan extremists...

...others were immediately put on buses...

...Some say neighbors with local grudges reported them as Eritreans...

...It appears that many thousands of Ethiopians of Eritrean descent have been rounded up but not yet "processed" for expulsion...

...Violent ethnic division could be a calamity...

...Ethiopia launched air strikes against the Eritrean capital of Asmara...

...A UN survey reports that 90 percent of refugees left children behind, of whom 15 percent had no one to care for them...

...The Ethiopian Constitution of 1993 was an extraordinary experiment in multicultural democracy, providing for varying levels of autonomy and even rights of secession for the country's many ethnic groups (up to eighty-two by one count...

...President Meles Zenawi, the leader of this faction, formed the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to pursue this agenda...

...At the same time, I met children as young as twelve who had been expelled alone...

...International observers scoff at this, and my own interviews with those expelled confirm their doubts...

...On July 9, President Meles lashed out at her report, asserting that as a sovereign state Ethiopia could deport anyone it chose for any reason, including "if we don't like the color of their eyes...