In the future, external
threats on the internal security of Ethiopia will have more to do
with the long-distance manipulation of internal ethnical conflicts
than with conventional warfare. Because of the ethnic diversity of
its population, the Ethiopian government cannot make do with a
simple consensual good-neighbor diplomacy, but must enter into all
sorts of wheeling and dealing with local ethnic players in order to
prevent them from becoming the instruments of destabilization
operations stirred up covertly by rival states. In spite of the
problems with the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea
(UNMEE) which brought Addis Ababa to request the removal of Patrick
Cammaert, the Dutch general in command of the UN troops, the
Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict is more likely to end in a verbal war
than in renewed hostilities. It is the same with Sudan, whose vice
president Ali Osman Mohamed Taha recently visited Ethiopia – a
prelude to President Hassan Omar al Beshir's official visit to Addis
Ababa on May 20 – has brought closer the former enemies of the
1990s.
But the signs of diplomatic
rapprochement hide more complex and less reassuring realities, since
none of Ethiopia's neighbors is really on a friendly basis with the
country. All can take advantage of more or less large-scale local
ethnic conflicts to destabilize Addis Ababa without even the need to
intervene directly. One recent example is the strike of truck
drivers linking Djibouti to Addis Ababa (ION 993). With the murder
of two drivers in early April during a fight between Ethiopian Afar
and Somali-Issans, who clashed in the region separating Gadamaitu
from Giwane, 5,800 trucks remained immobile for days around Awash,
which caused a shortage of diesel fuel in Addis Ababa. In the
meantime, battles continued to grow because the Oromo of the Kireyou
and Ito tribes, who also feel threatened by the northwestern advance
of the Issas, have joined forces with the Afar to fight them off. As
it happens, the Ethiopian Issa are covertly supported by certain
circles in Djibouti.
In the same vein, regarding
the agitation that developed in Wollega with regards to the Oromo
Liberation Front (OLF) in early April, one did not have to search
far to find the hand of the Eritreans who had flown the Oromo
fighters as far as the southern Sudan regions, on the border with
Ethiopia and in the grip of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (ION
995). Needing Eritrea to put pressure on Khartoum, the SPLA's John
Garang had given the nod to serve as relay for the OLF fighters
shipped in by Asmara. And so it turns out that the Ethiopian
government's alliance with its Sudanese counterpart is hardly worth
much, since Khartoum is not the entity which controls the border
regions of Illubabor which the OLF rebels filtered through. It is
not even certain that Khartoum wishes for the OLF to be reined in,
even if the Islamic régime, contrary to what it was doing five
years ago, does not go as far to provide direct help to the
Ethiopian rebels. Also, when they reflect upon the long term,
certain sectors in the Ethiopian halls of power consider that the
?friendship? with Khartoum is a tactical and temporary
normalization, rather than a profound strategic reorientation. On
the other hand, the OLF agitation, which has been active in
southwestern Ethiopia, has dropped somewhat in Borana country, on
the border with Kenya, where it had become very bloody last year.
The reason being, at least partly, that the Nairobi government
collaborated with Addis Ababa to fight against the Oromo guerillas'
movements on the Kenyan side of the border. Similarly, the
activities of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in Ogaden
were slowly brought down in size thanks to collaboration, both in
the Somali region of Ethiopia and on the other side of the Somalia
border, between Ethiopia and the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) and
the militia of the warlord Mohamed Saïd Hersi aka ?Morgan? whom the
Ethiopians helped to launch an offensive into Gedo, Somalia, this
week.