Revolution, civil wars, and guerilla warfare wracked Ethiopia during three turbulent decades at the end of the twentieth century. This book is a pioneering study of the military history and political ...significance of this crucial Horn of Africa region during that period. Drawing on new archival materials and interviews, Gebru Tareke illuminates the conflicts, comparing them to the Russian and Iranian revolutions in terms of regional impact.
Writing in vigorous and accessible prose, Tareke brings to life the leading personalities in the domestic political struggles, strategies of the warring parties, international actors, and key battles. He demonstrates how the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam lacked imagination in responding to crises and alienated the peasantry by destroying human and material resources. And he describes the delicate balance of persuasion and force with which northern insurgents mobilized the peasantry and triumphed. The book sheds invaluable light not only on modern Ethiopia but also on post-colonial state formation and insurrectionary politics worldwide.
EVALATING THE ROOTS OF VIOLENCE TAREKE, GEBRU
Journal of African history,
11/2012, Letnik:
53, Številka:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
In the persistently contested areas adjoining the highlands and lowlands from the Gibe in the south to the Red Sea in the north, trading, slaving, hunting, and banditry converged with competitive ...local and inter-regional politics to generate incessant conflicts, which too often had devastating repercussions on the productive communities of cultivators and nomadic-pastoralists. Reid glosses over such fundamental issues as factors of production, social relations, class conflicts, state formation, and social transformation. Reid is, of course, keenly aware of the socioeconomic changes that Italian colonialism endangered: industrial and urban growth, which gave rise to a tiny but robust middle-class, a labor force, and 'a vibrant press' without which national consciousness was improbable.
The Red Terror in Ethiopia Tareke, Gebru
Journal of developing societies,
06/2008, Letnik:
24, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article was inspired by Arno Mayer's magisterial work on the French and Russian revolutions. It is Mayer's thesis that two social forces with irreconcilable political views and objectives fought ...to the finish in both revolutions. Violence and terror were inevitable. In Ethiopia, the deadly conflict that metamorphosed into the Red Terror was not between conservative and radical forces, but between two modern political organizations which shared the same ideology and strategic goals – but used different tactics. Terror, the article argues, was avoidable. The intent is not to test the validity of Mayer's theory, but to show the peculiarity of the Ethiopian experience.
This article was inspired by Arno Mayer's magisterial work on the French and Russian revolutions. It is Mayer's thesis that two social forces with irreconcilable political views and objectives fought ...to the finish in both revolutions. Violence and terror were inevitable. In Ethiopia, the deadly conflict that metamorphosed into the Red Terror was not between conservative and radical forces, but between two modern political organizations which shared the same ideology and strategic goals - but used different tactics. Terror, the article argues, was avoidable. The intent is not to test the validity of Mayer's theory, but to show the peculiarity of the Ethiopian experience. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright 2008.
Revolution and war were twin causes of the grand-scale militarization of the Ethiopian state. The social consequences of the changes were felt more sharply among the agrarian population, the largest ...segment of society. The revolutionary government’s fixation on winning the wars required the mobilization of resources on a vast scale. Military imperatives dictated agrarian policies and the state’s exploitative relationship with the peasantry. No village or community escaped the never-ending demands for men and resources. Even if the new structures of power and the coercive economic policies did not directly help the insurgencies, they sufficiently eroded the relationship between the
Selecting benchmark dates as beginnings or endings of long and complex historical processes can be arbitrary, often faulty. But if we were to choosetheevent that both foreshadowed and inspired the ...generation that catalyzed the Ethiopian Revolution, it certainly would be the aborted coup d’état of 1960. That event set in motion a decade of political protest against monarchical absolutism that did not abate until the more momentous upheaval of 1974. What transpired in that year, of course, was not imagined by the conspirators of December 1960.
Thirty years after his coronation as king of kings of Ethiopia and
Ogaden Tareke, Gebru
The Ethiopian Revolution,
06/2009
Book Chapter
Revolutions almost invariably encourage external meddling that seeks either to smother or to shield them. They cause sudden dramatic shifts in interstate relations, in wider international alliances, ...and in regional power balances. During one of the tenser periods of the cold war, the world witnessed two such episodes in the span of three years in the Indian Ocean littoral: Somalia’s aggression against revolutionary Ethiopia in 1977, followed by Iraq’s invasion of revolutionary Iran in 1980. The outcomes were starkly different. With resources to match those of its enemy and with the duplicitous help of the United States, Baathist Iraq was
By 1980, Ethiopia was gripped in escalating civil wars. After a series of punitive expeditions had failed to suppress them, the government organised large-scale operations in the early 1980s against ...the insurgencies in the eastern and northern territories. The operations seemed to have been informed by what is called ‘total strategy’. Although the emphasis was on the coercive component, the state also used psychological and economic incentives. The results were mixed. The eastern rebels were defeated more easily because they were factious. The northern campaign failed because of the rebels' staunchness and the terrain's unsuitability. In a cold test of wills, the Eritrean fighters not only held the offensive to a stalemate, but also went on to win total military victory. Same strategy, different outcomes: this suggests that no single counter-insurgency strategy can always have the same results as it is influenced by numerous factors that may vary from one place to another.
Within a period of just a year during the late 1980s, the Ethiopian Revolutionary or ‘Red’ Army suffered serious defeat in both Eritrea and Tigray. Although numerically and technically superior to ...its opponents, dissension in the army's ranks, political meddling from Addis Ababa, loss of will, and the remarkable skill and determination of its opponents prevented it from achieving victory. Two years after its humiliating defeat in Tigray, the army collapsed, and the military regime it had sustained disappeared. Eritrea succeeded in declaring its independence and the Tigrayan rebels seized power in Ethiopia. This article demonstrates that the Eritrean and Tigrayan forces ultimately won because they had grass-roots support and because they were able to back each other militarily and politically. In the meantime, the dictatorship in Addis Ababa was losing popular support as its ‘citizens’ were no longer willing to make the sacrifices that were necessary to continue the struggle. Only by considering these points can we appreciate why Africa's second-largest army was annihilated or, conversely, why the insurgents triumphed, for their success was not inevitable.
