SUMMARY
ARDUF (Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity 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 a 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. In 1991, the Derg was overthrown by the EPRDF rebel coalition, which then formed a new government. In a parallel development, the separatists in EPLF declared Eritrea independent from Ethiopia. It was in this context that ARDUF emerged. The group claimed to represent the Afar, an ethnic minority residing in Ethiopia’s socioeconomically marginalized northeastern areas. ARDUF’s primary goal was the creation of a "federal or confederal Afar state" on land that was formerly the autonomous Assab region, plus the eastern parts of Tigray region, the Awash valley, as well as a parts of the Shoa (Baadu) and Wollo (Doka) historical regions.
ARDUF was formed – at least in part - as a consequence of EPLF’s de facto declaration of independence for Eritrea in 1991. The Afar were aggrieved by their ethnic group being divided by yet another national border, as many Afar had ended up in Djibouti following its independence from France in 1977. Another contributing factor behind the formation of ARDUF was dissatisfaction over the new constitution adopted by the EPRDF-led government. While the constitution stipulated a system of ethnic federalism, most of the political power was in practice vested in the Tigray ethnic minority group, which controlled the major faction TPLF within the EPRDF. Consequently, several smaller Afar factions – such as Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Union (ARDUU) - established ARDUF in October 1991 to unite the “historical” Afar lands. This meant that the group also had a stated incompatibility against the newly formed Government of Eritrea; however, the UCDP did not record any clear conflict events involving ARDUF and the Eritrean government.
Mahamooda Gaas led ARDUF, and the group’s fighters was organized into an armed wing called “Ugugumo”; no reliable estimates regarding the group’s cadre strength was found. In 1997, ARDUF suffered from internal fragmentation as a faction loyal to the group’s former deputy secretary general Muhyudin Maftak Kedir signed an agreement with the administration in the Afar region. While Gaas rejected this agreement, ARDUF’s activities subsided considerably after this. One ARDUF faction declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1998, but it was unclear which faction it was. However, the group did not appear to have been completely disbanded.
