SUMMARY
The struggle for self-determination for the Afar region in Ethiopia has been pursued by two different groups – ALF and ARDUF. The former launched its armed struggle in 1975 in response to the ruling military junta’s policy of nationalising all land; something that the nomadic Afars were strongly opposed to. After the junta was ousted in 1991 the country was turned into an ethnically based federation. However, discontent with the actual implementation of the new constitution led to a new phase in the conflict, this time involving ARDUF. The conflict has been inactive since 1997.
IN DEPTH
Background to the conflict
For further background information on Ethiopia, see the Ethiopia conflict description.
The Afar is a pastoral nomadic people who reside in the area where the borders of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somali meet. The Afar in Ethiopia number around three million and inhabit the northern part of the countrys barren and climatically hostile eastern- and south-eastern lowlands. This region is one of the poorest and least developed in Ethiopia, continuously neglected by national development efforts.
The country was ruled by a secession of emperors until 1974, when the last emperor Haile Selassie was ousted in a military coup. He was replaced by a pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist military junta, the "Derg", led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. The Derg imposed a socialist system, which, among other things meant that the ownership of land was transferred to the state. This reform was vehemently opposed by the nomadic Afars, since it was at odds with the groups ownership principle, which sees land as a communal property. Fearing the confiscation of the Afar land, the Afar leader and Sultan of Awsa, Ali Mirrah, was subsequently brought in to conflict with the new regime and in early June 1975 a military force was dispatched to arrest him. Mirrah was able to flee to neighbouring Djibouti, however, where he created the Afar Liberation Movement (ALF).
ALF’s armed struggle
After the Afar leader and Sultan of Awsa, Ali Mirrah, fled into exile he created the Afar Liberation Movement (ALF). On 3 June 1975, the group declared an armed struggle against the Derg – the military government – to defend the Afar people and their land. Led militarily by the sultan’s son Hanafari Mirrah, the group launched a series of coordinated attacks on military targets in the region. The army swiftly responded by launching an offensive that targeted both ALF and the civilian Afar population. Indiscriminate use of tanks and artillery bombarded led to more than 1000 civilian deaths.
Apart from attacking ALF militarily, another government strategy was to give some leading Afar positions within the administration and to grant the region a level of autonomy. Further serving to create a divide in the Afar population, the government also gave large amounts of weapons to an Afar group led by Habib Mohamed Yahyo, whose family had been in conflict with the Mirrahs for generations over the Sultanate of Awsa. These tactics prevented ALF from becoming a major military threat to the regime, even though the latter was weakened by no less than six different conflicts fought around the country in the 1970s and 1980s.
During these years of turmoil, ALF cooperated with many other nationalities who claimed to be oppressed by the military junta. They also launched the occasional joint attack with TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front), one of the main rebel groups in the country, fighting to overthrow the government (see the section on the “Ethiopia” conflict). When the conflict against the Derg came to an end, ALF joined the victorious EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) coalition, which included TPLF, in negotiations at both the May 1991 London Conference and the July 1991 Addis Ababa Conference. During the latter a transitional charter was drafted, establishing a federal system. ALF subsequently became a member of the transitional government and participated in the 1992 regional elections. Even if ALF has remained vehemently anti the central government since the end of this phase of the conflict, the group has not pursued an armed struggle since 1991.
The emergence of ARDUF
After the ousting of the military junta in 1992, the former Afar rebel group ALF (Afar Liberation Front) joined the political life of the country and did not revert back to armed conflict. However, by the mid-1990s another Afar based rebel group appeared. There are numerous explanations for Afar armed mobilization during the 1990s, but two reasons are more commonly cited than others when it comes to ARDUFs (Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front) formation and initiation of armed struggle. The first one has to do with the division of the Afar territory through the creation of the Eritrean state in 1993. The Afar population, which was already divided between three states, was by this move split up even further. Another consequence of Eritreas independence was that Afar pastoral movements within traditional territories were restricted, due to the closed border.
The second commonly cited reason is the disappointment large parts of the Afar population felt over the implementation of the new constitution. This constitution created a controversial structure of ethnically based federalism, which, in practice, provided little real power for the regional states, which had been created after the fall of the military regime. The government that seized power after the fall of the military junta was mainly based in the TPLF (Tigary People’s Liberation Front) rebel group, which had its main support base in the Tigray population. Since this group only constitutes around 10 % of the total population, the government’s popular support was relatively weak. Subsequently, while advocating federalism, the government strived to influence politics in the regional states by creating loyal surrogate parties. In the Afar case, this meant that they worked to weaken the ALF and instead strengthen the pro-government APDO (Afar Peoples Democratic Organization), spawning popular discontent in the region. At the time of its foundation, ARDUF was said to be fighting for a federal or confederal Afar state. It was furthermore clearly stated that the group was committed, to a protracted armed struggle to achieve this goal. The subsequent conflict was mainly characterised by low-intensity fighting. The rebellion manifest itself in sporadic attacks on government military forces and officials, as well as in competition for control over the salt trade in the As Ale and Dalul areas, where both ARDUF and the government collected a salt tax from trade caravans. Pitched battles were rare, but did occur occasionally. However, in April 1996 the conflict escalated as government air and ground forces swept the area, aiming to deprive the rebels of their base of support, displacing numerous Afars from their homes in the process. It is difficult for the armed forces to distinguish between the guerrillas and the civilian population, which lead to indiscriminate behaviour from the former. This, together with a general popular disaffection with the government, provided ARDUF with much needed popular support.
Attempts at a negotiated settlement
There were numerous attempts to initiate a dialogue between ARDUF and the government, but this proved to be difficult. The few rounds of negotiations that actually took place yielded little success. In 1997, ARDUF demanded the release of a number of its leaders, the reduction of the number of government troops in the Afar region and an end to EPRDF's control over the Afar regional administration through its surrogate APDO party, to take part in any serious negotiations. Many months were spent trying to remove these obstacles, and talks were eventually held. In August the ARDUF former deputy Secretary-General, Muhyudin Maftak Kedir, and the chairman of the Afar region, Ismael Ali Sirro, signed an agreement. The agreement can be interpreted as a ceasefire, where ARDUF undertook to continue political activities without armed operation and the regional state agreed to the integration of former ARDUF guerrillas. This only seems to count for one faction of ARDUF though, as Mohamooda Gaas, speaking in the name of the ARDUF executive committee, opposed the agreement, claiming that it was a manipulation by the Ethiopian government. Nevertheless, the conflict terminated due to low activity and has not been active from 1997 and onward.
