SUMMARY
ALF (Afar Liberation Front) was an armed group active in the Ethiopian Afar territorial conflict. From the 1200s to 1974, Ethiopia was an independent empire that eventually became known as “Abyssinia”; it was one of the few African states that avoided colonization by an European power. Abyssinia was ruled by a succession of Emperors, of which Haile Selassie I was the last one. In September 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by a Marxist-Leninist military junta that later became known as the Provisional Military Council (PMAC); the junta was however most known as the “Derg”, which was a shortened version of its name. The new Derg-led Government of Ethiopia then initiated the implementation of a socialist system, and the purging of opposing elements. Not long after the coup, the Derg began facing an ever increasing number of domestic challengers, both those striving for government power and those with separatist agendas. It was in this context that AFL emerged. The group claimed to represent the Afar, an ethnic minority residing in Ethiopia’s socioeconomically marginalized northeastern areas; AFL’s primary goal was to defend the Afar people and their land from the Derg regime.
During the rule of the Ethiopian emperors, the Afar people had enjoyed a degree of autonomy. However, following the seizure of power by the Marxist-Leninist Derg, this autonomy was revoked. In March 1975, the Derg-led Government of Ethiopia nationalized all land in Ethiopia, which severely aggrieved the Afar, whose land ownership principles was not compatible with nationalization. Awsa Ali Mirrah – one of the Afar’s traditional leaders (“sultans”) – was one of the most staunch opponents against the nationalization process, which put him at odds with the Derg. After an attempt to arrest him, Mirrah fled to Djiboutu where he set up AFL on 3 June 1975. Mirrah led the group until the mid-1980s, when he was replaced by his son, Habib Ali Mirrah. Reliable estimates of ALF’s cadre strength were not possible to determine, and the reported figures ranged from 1000 to 10 000 in 1975-76.
ALF cooperated with several other Ethiopian anti-Derg rebel groups; for example, it received support from Eritrean separatist ELF. While AFL initially refused to cooperate with the left-wing TPLF, the two groups began coordinating their efforts after the latter dropped its territorial claims in the Afar region in 1989.
When the Derg-led Government of Ethiopiawas ousted in 1991, ALF joined the victorious EPRDF rebel coalition at both the May 1991 London and the July 1991 Addis Ababa peace conferences. ALF subsequently became a member of the transitional government and participated in the 1992 regional elections. Even if ALF remained vehemently opposed to the central government, the group remained within constitutional politics and did not resume its armed struggle. In 1999, it was one of several Afar groups – including ARDUF – that merged to create the Afar National Democratic Party (ANDP).
