Transcription
Or Ethiopia and Eritrea on the path to war. These two enemies had become allies in order to fight the TPLF. But now, old grievances and new disputes are threatening to revive the conflict.
Over the course of five very tumultuous years, from 2018 to 2023, the dynamics that existed between Ethiopia and Eritrea have veered from hostility to cooperation, and now, it seems ominously, towards the brink of war. The shifting relationship that we were talking about here is something that is deeply intertwined with regional politics and power struggles, primarily revolving around Ethiopia's rather ambitious quest to try and regain access to the Red Sea, which it had lost in 1991 after Eritrea achieved independence.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has consistently blamed, behind closed doors, the TPLF for accepting Eritrea's independence. Abiy has also reportedly blamed Eritrea for derailing the Pretoria peace agreement that was signed between the TPLF and the federal government, that ended Ethiopia's civil war, something in which Eritrea had fought on the government's side against the TPLF.
Last year, on October 3rd of 2023, Ethiopian media would go and air a previously recorded speech by Abiy to Parliament, highlighting the Red Sea's importance for Ethiopia's future in order to either propel it towards greatness or to plunge it into oblivion, as well as stating its ambition to establish a naval base. And for the lot of you that are watching this right now that are probably wondering, "Well, why is that a big deal? Any nation can go and establish a navy." Well, yes, but we are talking about Ethiopia, which, you can see from the map, is a landlocked state. There is only one way to actually get a navy, and that is by having access to the sea first.
How one is going to get access to the sea, though? Well, that really is something that is up to debate. The Red Sea speech that Abiy had given confirms a statement that he had made to businessmen this previous July, that he would get a port either through peace or force, but it didn't matter that it would be obtained. Abiy has described Ethiopia's access to the Red Sea as something that is an inalienable right, something that is based on historical, geographic, human, and economic interconnectedness of the entire region. He also presented different scenarios to try and get a port for his country in order to thwart an upcoming Ethiopian population explosion that would reportedly threaten peace in the region.
And if you're wondering what the details are of the speech that I'm talking about here, and this population explosion and how it threatens peace and stability, what Abiy would go and say is that although Ethiopia has been blessed with many different rivers, with rain, with underground water, that the Ethiopian people themselves are thirsty. And he blamed that thirst on lack of access to the Red Sea. What he would say is that although neighboring countries such as Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia all benefit from the water that is flowing from Ethiopia, they refuse to open talks about Ethiopia's port needs. Which is a little bit of odd phrasing, but there's a whole reason as to why he's arguing like that.
Even if the reasoning itself is pretty flawed, countries that are downstream of a river that goes through other countries are supposed to still have access to that river. It is something that is enshrined in international law. What Abiy would try and equate here is that his country's access to the Red Sea was the same thing as what other countries have in just a basic access to water, like to rivers that the rivers that flow through his country. He's not damning to block them from going down to Somalia or other territories. So why is it that these other countries can stop him from getting access to the Red Sea? Which is definitely, that, that, that's not something that is enshrined or saved with international law. That doesn't make any sense. Like, there's a key territorial difference here, but that's not something that really applies to him, it seems.
I mean, when we are talking about this, one of the things that Abiy seems to suggest is that he reserves the right to control the flow of rivers extending to these countries. Something that Ethiopia did when it unilaterally changed the status quo regarding the use of the Blue Nile by constructing the massive Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or the GERD. This mega project is something that has poisoned, poisoned Ethiopia's relations with Egypt and Sudan, whose economies and lives depend upon this river.
Honestly, that dam is an entire other mega project in and of itself, and that is something that I think that I want to start getting into on this channel with covering different events, both terrible and great. So if you all want to hear a video on that, definitely let me know down in the comment section below, because that is its own massive can of worms right there. But either way, the big problem for Abiy here is that Ethiopia's landlocked situation is simply something that is unacceptable to him.
He would go on to say that his country has now a population of 120 million people, and that this number will reach 150 million in 2030. This large population would, in turn, have difficulty living in a "geographic prison," according to him. And if that language was not strong enough already, the way that he would describe what is going to happen in this prison is that he would say, "Whether you like it or not, the prison will have to blast somewhere." Therefore, a population explosion would usher in an entire new explosion in a new era of conflict, something with these neighboring countries bordering the Red Sea, if they continue to refuse to allow Ethiopia access to said sea.
Trans-military sources now suggest that the country is bracing for a potential war with Ethiopia, as Ethiopian troops are amassing near the Eritrean border in Zalambessa. This is something that is only 100 miles from the Eritrean capital of Asmara. And the Assab front, which includes the Assab port, is something that is only 45 miles from Ethiopia's border, something that would be exceptionally difficult for Eritrea to actually try and defend.
With much of the world now focused on things like Ukraine and also the Israel-Palestine conflict, there is a real chance that Abiy is going to decide to go to war while everyone else is distracted. So then the question in the situation becomes, "Okay, wow, all right, how did we get here? What happened? And also, what is going to happen next?" Well, my friends, in order to understand the dispute that is occurring between Ethiopia and its neighbors, we're going to have to go back into the history of Ethiopia itself, a state that has been long divided among varying different ethnic groups, different religions, and political ideologies, that has constantly resulted in varying types of conflict over the course of history, bubbling up to the surface, something that would often end in a catastrophic manner.
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First off, in order to understand Ethiopia, Eritrea, and their conflict, we're going to need to go back in history and understand that the conflict that is occurring here is not something that is actually new. This is something in which tensions have always existed in this region, at least for the past several hundred years. In some cases, for the tensions that we're going to be talking about here, they've existed for the past several thousand years because the country that we call Ethiopia is something that is both modern and simultaneously ancient.
It is a new state that has risen multiple times out of the ashes of ancient kingdoms, something that has drastically changed and shaped the geopolitical landscape over the years. The story that we are talking about here begins with the Kingdom of Axum, also known as the Axumite Empire. This, my friends, was an ancient kingdom of great importance back in the classical world. It was located in today's northern Ethiopia and is something that flourished from around 80 BC all the way to 825 AD, taking its name from its key city, the capital called Axum. Its strategic location is something that would play a crucial role in the trading routes of the ancient world, particularly those between India and the Roman Empire.
In time, as Axum grew in power and importance, it would go and eclipse its neighbor, the older Kingdom of Kush. And so, when we are talking about this in Ethiopian history, this is arguably the high point of the proto-Ethiopian identity, the point that many people like to hearken back to, much in the same way as people would romanticize stuff for Rome or other things like that in Europe. This right here was the peak of Ethiopia. This was a point where what would later become Ethiopia would have access to the Red Sea, and not only have access, but simultaneously would dominate trade in the region, which of course was then followed by the fall of the empire, which was invaded from outside forces of Islam, and then simultaneously would begin to suffer subsequent internal divisions that would ravage it over time.
And now, look, I know that when I am talking about this, that there is a lot of history that is going to be skipped over out of necessity for this video. This is not a video that is just dedicated to the history of Ethiopia itself, though that is something that is absolutely fascinating. But the reason that all of this is even mentioned in the first place is that this is the forerunner state of Ethiopia. It is something that is hearkened back to. It is something that is the aspiration of Ethiopia to reclaim its ancient sea right, as it sees it.
Though, in actuality, the genuine political justification for the modern state of Ethiopia to want this is something that goes back more to the 19th and 20th century and the Scramble for Africa. I say this because Ethiopia has the distinction of being the only African state in history that managed to successfully avoid being colonized over the course of the 19th century. And among all powers that we could be talking about, honestly, Ethiopia makes the most sense because Ethiopia, my friends, is by far the most mountainous country that is located in Africa, something that is filled with a complex series of valleys, lakes, lowlands, and very tall highlands.
And if you're wondering how high we're talking about here, well, its capital, Addis Ababa, sits at an elevation of almost 8,000 feet above sea level. Which a number of you may not think that that is all that much, but then you have to understand that Addis Ababa is one of only four cities in the world that has a population above a million people and is also at around, like, 8,000 feet in elevation. That generally speaking, doesn't really happen. And so then, when you look at the surroundings of Addis Ababa and realize that there is a buffer of lowlands and just more mountains, you realize that the entire state of Ethiopia is essentially a giant fortress, a giant mountain fortress that is going to be difficult to actually invade and even after invading, hold. And that is something that the people who have invaded into it time and time again have found, much in the same way as the Italians did back in the 19th century when they first tried to conquer Ethiopia, even with superior technology, and failed again.
The First Italo-Ethiopian War is something that I could probably go and create a dedicated video on, but if you want to know what happened, I'll go ahead and give you the short of it now. On March 25th, 1889, the Shoa ruler Menelik II, having already conquered Tigray and Amhara, and with the support of Italy, went and declared himself Emperor of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, as the Europeans would refer to it at the time. Barely a month later, on May 2nd, he signed a treaty of amity with the Italians, which apparently gave them control over Eritrea, the Red Sea coast, the northeast of Ethiopia, all in return for recognition of Menelik's rule of Ethiopia itself.
But the thing is, and this is kind of the problem that ends up happening with a lot of, uh, European colonial powers at the time, is that the, uh, the treaty that ended up being drafted, the Treaty of Wuchale, didn't exactly say the same thing in Italian versus Amharic. Like, the language that the Ethiopians were using there, there were two different treaties that were being utilized for this thing. The Italian variant of the text stated that Ethiopia was going to be a protectorate of Italy, which Menelik then had to discover very soon afterwards. The Ethiopian one, the Amharic version, though, well, that is something that merely stated that Menelik could contact foreign powers and conduct foreign affairs through Italy if he so chose to do so.
Italian diplomats would then go on to claim that the original Amharic text did include the clause, and that the one that Menelik knowingly signed was actually a modified copy of the treaty. So it was actually the Ethiopians' fault in the first place, I guess. Well, either way, now the war was on. And Rome believed that the whole thing wasn't going to be a big deal. They thought that they could send as few as 35,000 soldiers and probably control the entirety of Ethiopia. That it wasn't going to be a big deal. But oh my God, were they going to be proved wrong.
On March 1st, 1896, at the Battle of Adwa, General Oreste Baratieri led 14,500 Italian troops on a poorly organized attack against Menelik's well-armed host of some 100,000 fighters. The Italian lines effectively crumbled, and at noon, retreat was sounded. The emperor would soon retire into Ethiopia to await negotiations, and on October 26th, 1896, he would sign the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which overruled the Treaty of Wuchale.
What Menelik would then subsequently do after achieving peace with the Italians is then subsequently expand his state into territories that had never been under his rule before. Between 1896 and 1906, over a period of around 10 years, Ethiopia would manage to expand to its present size that you see here today. They would take in the highlands, the key river systems, the buffer of low-lying arid zones, as well as the tropical zones, everything that makes Ethiopia what it is today. That was achieved really back during the late 19th, early 20th century.
And so it was then that the failure of the Italians to go and conquer Ethiopia would then secure Ethiopia's right to exist, essentially, for the next 40 years with its current borders, solidifying that as its borders. And also from that, it would cement Ethiopia's legacy as again, the only African state that actually managed to resist and fight off European colonialism. Well, at least the, the, the first time here. Of course, obviously, Ethiopia would then fall during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, prior to World War II, but I digress.
But remember how I said that Ethiopia got to its current size by conquering a series of states? Well, by that logic, ultimately, even though Ethiopia was going to be an independent empire, it was simultaneously always now going to have similar problems to many other African states that were created by virtue of European colonialism. And here's what it is that I mean. All of the mountains that we have been talking about, all the lakes, the rivers, everything that composes Ethiopia itself, this is something that has long divided the country geographically. And by virtue of being so heavily divided, this is something that has made travel significantly more difficult from one part of the empire to the other. This is something that over the course of decades, centuries, or even millennia, has strongly encouraged the development of multiple different ethnic groups and languages over these periods of years, that has made Ethiopia one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world.
And that brings us right back to the point that I was talking about with Ethiopia having the exact same problems as many modern African states that were created out of European colonialism. Things that bring to mind the classic meme of like, "Oh yes, is there a thousand different groups of people here that have hated each other for thousands of years? Well, let's just draw a line on the map and combine them all into one country. Who cares?" Ah, African borders. God, I, I could do an entire series on African borders and just how incredibly screwed up so many of them are. It, it really is a gigantic mess.
Anyway, because of the exact geographical features that we just talked about, Ethiopian leaders have always kind of struggled to keep up with the entirety of the varying different groups that make up Ethiopia itself. You can probably see some of it on the map behind me here, but the majority of Ethiopia is comprised and dominated by nine major ethnic groups, of which can be subdivided into many other smaller groups. And there are, besides that, many other smaller groups within the country itself. These groups can then, in turn, be divided into over 80 different languages that are spoken by all the varying different peoples.
But remember how I said that there were nine major ethnic groups? Really, even among those, only a few of these groups have ever had any real major power within Ethiopia itself over the course of the nation's history. And that is where one of the key problems within Ethiopia lies. You see, over the course of the 19th and 20th century, the country was dominated by the ethnic Amhara. This is something which created a legacy in which the Amharic language is something that is the primary language of Ethiopia today. It is the language that is still typically used by the national government. Now, in most circumstances, that's probably not really going to be a problem. It makes sense that a country should have a language that is the standard for legal documents and such, like, of course, that's something that you should just have. But the problem is that the Amhara, despite being the dominant linguistic group within the government, is simultaneously something that only comprises around 27% of the population. They are, in fact, only the second largest ethnic group within the country, which is a little bit odd.
Then, but okay, who's the largest? Well, the largest would actually be the Oromo, which comprise around 35% of the population. And that is a very big difference from the second, which is Amhara, at around 27% of the population. After that, we have Tigray, which is around another 7% of the population, that is up in the north. And then Somali, which actually composes around a good 6 to 7%, depending upon the numbers that you're looking at. And many other dozen other clans or different groups that comprise of the remaining amount.
On top of being extremely ethnically and linguistically diverse, one simultaneously has to understand that Ethiopia is highly religiously diverse as well. Ethiopia was one of the first countries in the world to officially adopt Christianity, and that is still something that continues today with the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which is followed by roughly 44% of the population. A further 23% of the population follows Protestant Evangelical Christianity, meaning that Christianity comprises around two-thirds of the population, with the remaining one-third mostly following the Islamic faith. Something that, considering what we've talked about already with Ethiopia's history and the invasions and everything else that has occurred, well, that is something that makes sense.
The understandable point of trouble that we typically run into when talking about all these varying different ethnicities, languages, and religions is that largely, the varying different ethnic groups within the country tend to follow one religion or the other. It's usually not much of an even split between them. As an example, the Oromo and Somali people largely follow Islam, which considering where it is they are located, is something that makes sense. While if we look at the north of the map, the Amhara as well as the Tigrayans largely follow the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. And since the Amhara were largely the ones that were in control of Ethiopia for much of its recent history, that in turn meant that the Orthodox view of the Ethiopian state was that it was surrounded by Islamic enemies on all sides. But that is what is really important to note here is that despite only being the second largest ethnic group, the Amhara people that we are talking about has largely been the one to dominate Ethiopia for much of its recent history, and that was going to be the legacy of Imperial Ethiopia.
Fast forward a little bit of time from the expansion that we were talking about in the early 1900s, and in 1930, you had Haile Selassie, an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Amhara, who would go and ascend to the Imperial throne. Funnily enough, his reign was going to end up being long in the end, but simultaneously, it was going to end up being split over two different periods of rule. Simultaneously, he was going to become Ethiopia's final emperor because with the 1930s, I'm sure that a lot of you know already how this kind of goes. Five years after the emperor goes and takes the crown, the Italians decided to invade under Benito Mussolini in 1935, thus kicking off the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
Unlike the first time around, though, there was simply too much of a technological difference for the Ethiopians to truly fight back. Things had advanced drastically over the span of the previous half century. The sheer technological differences of artillery, as well as planes and other methods of attack, such as utilizing gas, meant that largely the Second Italo-Ethiopian War ended up being a one-sided fight that was incredibly brutal. Again, I said it before, I would love to do a video on the First and Second Italo-Ethiopian War, but you all got to let me know if that is something that you even want to see in the first place.
Anyway, following this fairly short and extremely brutal campaign, the Italians would effectively overrun Ethiopia, causing the emperor to flee into exile to Britain. After all of this goes down, Italy would then merge Ethiopia with its pre-existing colonies, thus creating the, um, the very imaginative name of Italian East Africa. I can't exactly say that their naming sense was the best, you know, but I mean, yeah, you did what you had to. It worked. But either way, by now, I'm sure that a lot of us are already aware how things went for Italy back during World War II. The answer was not well. And the grand colonial empire that they wanted to establish and last for a thousand years crumbled very quickly. It just, it simply wasn't meant to be.
At first, things had gone somewhat well for Italy, as when they declared war on Britain and France back in 1940, this very quickly led to them conquering British Somaliland and taking over the territory to unite their East African holdings. But then subsequently, the British would go and then launch their own counter-invasion into the area in 1941, and everything fell apart very quickly for the Italians. This meant that by May of 1941, Haile Selassie, the exiled Ethiopian emperor, would end up returning triumphantly to the capital city of Addis Ababa, and the state was effectively free.
What would follow after this event was massive amounts of feasts and festivities, and the reestablishment of the Solomonic dynasty over control of Ethiopia. Italy would end up disastrously losing the Second World War, and this would result in the loss of all of their former colonies. And in East Africa, this would comprise of the modern-day states of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, all of which would end up under British occupation during this time period.
Now, the important thing that we have to note here is that the British very quickly restored Ethiopia's independence fully, based on their current borders that they had prior to Italy's invasion. So, in other words, even though Ethiopia had done its own little conquering about 30 or 40 years prior, this was still considered to be the natural border of Ethiopia itself, and that is what was going to be established as the standard. And although Haile Selassie was then reinstated as emperor in 1944, in 1945, once the war was actually over, there was a little bit of a controversy to what exactly to do about all of the former states that were controlled by Italy, like what to do about its colonial empire. And so, with the time being, they really chose to do nothing.
The British would continue to occupy the regions until in 1950, when the former Italian Somaliland state would become the UN Trust Territory of Somalia, and weirdly enough, at that time, would be placed back under Italian supervision. Except this time, of course, it was only going to be temporary until it was on its feet to be able to function as an independent state, no longer a colonial state. If you all remember the video that we did on Somalia here this last week, you fast forward another decade, in 1960, this is when Somalia would become independent, and British Somaliland would then also become part of Somalia. And although that would eventually end up in disaster, the bigger, more complex thing, and arguably more controversial thing, was what to do about Eritrea.
You see, my friends, the problem with Eritrea is that Eritrea had been under the control of the Italians significantly longer than anything else. And so there wasn't really an Eritrean state to release, unlike some of the other territories potentially. And in the aftermath of World War II, which was almost immediately followed by the Cold War, with the competition between the United States and the capitalist West versus the Soviet Union and the Communist East, what to do about Europe is something that became a very major question. With the Soviets initially arguing that Eritrea should actually still remain with Italy, and they wanted to support Italy because they believed that the Italians would actually flip communist in the aftermath of World War II, too. Or if that didn't work, then much like North Korea, let the Soviet Union control Eritrea, because surely they could fix it and create a very nice democratic government out of that. I'm sure.
Totally. The people, though, of Eritrea didn't want any of this to happen. And what you saw on the ground was that the majority of Eritreans actually argued for self-determination, to be able to vote for their own independence and actually function as an independent country. But considering what was going on on the geopolitical global scale, that is not necessarily something that the West really wanted to risk. And that is where Emperor Haile Selassie comes back into the picture.
You see, the Emperor of Ethiopia argued that Eritrea was not actually going to be capable of being an independent state. And so instead, Ethiopia should just go and annex Eritrea, let Ethiopia govern it instead. And the West looked at them and thought, "Hey, you know what? That's, uh, sounds like a pretty good idea." But why? Well, the benefits of what we're talking about here are twofold. And mind you, when I say twofold, I mean entirely twofold for Ethiopia and the West. Eritrea is not being considered in any of this whatsoever.
On one hand, by giving Eritrea to Ethiopia, this means that Ethiopia is actually going to be able to get access to the sea, making it able to trade on a much wider level and be more involved with the rest of the world. It would no longer be in a landlocked prison, so to speak. The second thing is that Haile Selassie was the Emperor of Ethiopia. This wasn't just Ethiopia, this was the Ethiopian Empire. It is an autocratic state that naturally speaking was going to be very anti-communist. And that is something that, considering that we're going to be going into the Cold War where it is capitalism versus communism, anything that is anti-communist is something that the West, especially the United States, is going to firmly support.
And so it was then that the United Nations would go and pass Resolution 390A in December of 1950, something that would go into effect only a few years later, in 1952, which would officially join Eritrea and Ethiopia as one country. Now, interestingly enough, when this new country was created from this, it wasn't the Empire of Ethiopia, despite the fact that it was ruled by an emperor. The initial point is that the country was called the Federation of Ethiopia, or specifically, the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, in which Eritrea was a mostly autonomous state that existed within Ethiopia itself. We are talking about autonomy to such a degree that Eritrea would have its own flag, its own police, it would control its own taxes, it would rule over its own administration. Everything about Eritrea effectively functioned as an independent country, with the exception that foreign policy-wise, it was controlled by Ethiopia.
But the federation was not going to last. Over the years, as time would go on, Emperor Haile Selassie continued to try and institute his rule as emperor over the entire country, spending years after years centralizing his power and whittling away the autonomy of the outer regions of the empire. If you recall how we said that Ethiopia was composed of over 80 different languages, the emperor would eventually impose the Amharic language as being the sole official language of Ethiopia, and from this, they would impose that upon Eritrea.
Now, naturally speaking, many parts of the Empire of Ethiopia did not appreciate what was happening with these centralizing control and authority under the emperor. And especially in places like Eritrea and along the outskirts of the country, people were especially unhappy, leading to large amounts of armed insurgents that continuously would wage a war of independence and guerrilla fighting against the government for the next 30 odd years. And mind you, remember the entire time that all this is going on, the Cold War is still in full swing. And so now you have all these different independence groups that are fighting each other across Ethiopia and into all of that, the United States and the Soviet Union and all of them are going to start stepping in.
As an example of what was going on, in exchange for the United States supporting Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea, the emperor had granted the Americans the right to establish a naval base at the coast of Massawa. This being in a location that was a crucial point for trade that was going through the strategic Suez Canal. And naturally speaking, because this is the Cold War and the United States was supporting Ethiopia and Ethiopia was supporting the United States, this meant that one of the key rivals in the region for Ethiopia, Somalia, was going to end up being supported by the Soviet Union.
The thing that would end up kicking off this rivalry and eventually lead to conflict, if you remember the video that we did on Somalia itself, is that a huge portion of the eastern part of Ethiopia, the Ogaden, is actually majority populated by Somali peoples. And so the Soviet Union wanted to support Somalia to be able to chip away at the power of Ethiopia and reclaim the idea of the Greater Somali territory. The thing is, despite Soviet support, this was something that was not really going to come about. Haile Selassie simply had way too much power, being the leader of the only state that had managed to resist European colonialism over the course of the 19th century and being one of the victors in World War II. This meant that the Emperor of Ethiopia had a lot of clout within Africa. And in the aftermath of World War II and widespread decolonization that would occur over the course of the 1960s, this meant that Haile Selassie was going to have even more importance, allowing him to successfully argue that the new Organization of African Unity, that would be created, should have their headquarters established in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.
In 1963, if you're not familiar with that name, then perhaps you're more familiar with its modern iteration, the African Union. This is an entity that still to this day has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. But ironically, Ethiopia was going to change during this time period, and Haile Selassie was not going to end up lasting. By the time that the 1970s rolled around, Haile Selassie was a much older man, and the 82-year-old emperor would eventually be overthrown in 1974 by a coup that would place him with a communist government. The autocratic savior of Ethiopia would then be dead the next year.
And this is where things get really messy with Ethiopia and starts to create a lot of the modern problems that we are seeing today, as though any of the things that I haven't already explained before were creating the modern problems. It, it's all tied together, you know, exactly what it is that I mean. The coup would take place at the hand of a group of 10 junior-level leftist Ethiopian military officers calling themselves the Derg, or the Committee. The person they would end up putting in charge was a military man by the name of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who would essentially be replacing Haile Selassie as a new dictator, who would then try to radically transform the country from a feudal monarchy into a modern communist Marxist-Leninist state, something that they were going to call the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
And oh my God, does everything go to crap immediately. Remember that the Eritrean war for independence was already still going on. Like, this thing had been going since 1961. And with a new government in power, with everything in chaos in the political sphere, Somalia now sees its opportunity to potentially strike and reclaim its territories that were filled with Somali people. So Somalia goes and launches their own invasion in 1976 in order to conquer the majority ethnically Somali territory of the Ogaden.
But the problem is that Ethiopia is no longer an autocratic monarchy that is being supported by the West. It is instead a communist military junta, something that the Soviet Union actually likes. And so, since America is now out of the picture and no longer supporting Ethiopia, that meant that the Soviet Union, seeing a much better opportunity and prize in the form of Ethiopia, decides to switch their support from Somalia and instead support the Ethiopians against the people that they had been funding for literally years prior.
At first, it seemed with all the chaos that was going on that Somalia was going to end up winning. It was on the brink of victory after having gained control of 90% of the territory that it needed to. But then the Ethiopians were able to launch a counteroffensive with the help of newly arrived Soviet arms and a South Yemeni brigade, with billions of dollars of equipment that were being airlifted to the Ethiopians, along with Soviet military advisors, as well as thousands of soldiers who would come over from Fidel Castro's Cuba. By March of 1978, Somali forces were utterly crushed and had been pushed out of the Ogaden.
If you saw the video that I did last week, you would understand that this war went so incredibly badly for Somalia that the resulting loss would end up in a civil war breaking out in Somalia that still technically continues even to this very day. But while Somalia would subsequently fail as a state, that doesn't necessarily mean that Ethiopia was going to be any better in this situation. Ethiopia was definitely not doing hot by this time. When you go and combine the issues that they were facing with the insurgency that were occurring in Eritrea, when you combine it with the horrible management of the communist regime over Ethiopia's agricultural practices, and also with the fact that there was a drought that was going to plunge the entire country into chaos, this was going to result in the death of millions.
Now, I am not going to show any of the images of what it is that I am talking about here because there is a severe chance of demonetization when I talk about this. But anyone who grew up over the '90s that remember a lot of those infomercials or a lot of the charity commercials that were advertising to try and get people to donate to people in Ethiopia, all of that suffering, all that pain, everything that we are talking about comes directly as a result of this time period right here. The drought that would occur between 1983 and 1985 is estimated to have killed over a million people. And the worst numbers in this death toll were going to occur in areas that often times were in act of rebellion against the central government. This, of course, would be in areas like Tigray as well as Eritrea.
Now, of course, when we are talking about this, there are a variety of different reasons why this can occur. As an example, when war breaks out, typically logistically, things become way more challenging. It's harder to transport food, medicine, supplies, things that are necessary in order to maintain a people in a region. And the breakdown of supplies along with a drought means that an area is going to starve. But the people of this region were simultaneously seen as being hostile to the government, and so the government largely just didn't bother helping them whatsoever. Instead, the government would be able to use the drought and the subsequent famine as a political tool by which it could potentially wipe out a thorn in its side. And as a result of this famine being then used as a political tool, this would result in one of the worst death tolls of any famine over the course of the 20th century.
As time would go on, more and more unrest and anger at the communist regime's response to the famine would grow within Ethiopia. And soon, anti-government rebellions like the Tigray People's Liberation Front in the Tigray region, they were allied with varying different insurgents, would begin steadily gaining the upper hand over the course of the '90s. Now, despite the death toll, despite everything that was occurring, technically speaking, the government is still able to hold on, and it's not quite that bad yet. Until the '90s roll around, and something very big happens on the world stage. The Soviet Union collapses.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and from that, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, all of these varying countries across the world that were effectively being propped up by the Soviet Union now have their lifeline cut off. They have no more support. They have nothing that is coming into them. And Ethiopia is one of the key regions in the world that was receiving support from the union. The economic assistance gone, the allied advisors and soldiers from the varying different volunteer states gone. With no more support coming in from the outside, the communist regime within Ethiopia begins to completely utterly collapse. Insurgent forces all across the country start gaining steady ground. And eventually, by May of 1991, the Ethiopian army is entirely pushed out of the region of Eritrea.
As things all across the country begin to collapse, anti-government forces start to approach the capital of Addis Ababa. And realizing that things are not going to go well, Mengistu goes and flees the country and is granted political asylum in Zimbabwe. And it is here that he still resides to this day, despite being in his 80s. In his absence, Ethiopia has found him guilty of genocide, something that is cause for him to be put to death if he ever gets back into the country. But despite repeated requests to have him extradited to the country, Zimbabwe has continuously rejected this and not allowed it.
But either way, out of the collapse of the Ethiopian Empire and subsequently then the collapse of the communist Ethiopian state, what we would instead see is the new Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Now, the new Ethiopia that would come out of this entire mess was something that was going to be divided into 12 distinct regions based off ethnicity, based off language, based off these kind of different factors that creates the modern Ethiopia. And unlike, or I guess weirdly enough, I guess you could say that it's simultaneously similar to what you would see under a feudal monarchy with its own autonomous regions. These states within Ethiopia are all semi-autonomous, with each one of these states being largely controlled by one of the major ethnic groups that exist within Ethiopia, whether it's the Tigrayans, the Amhara, the Oromo, the Somali, etc.
Now, notice when I said here I said 12 autonomous regions. The issue when we were talking about this is that initially, when the new state of Ethiopia was created, the 13th region to be included in this was Eritrea. But Eritrea was not actually going to remain. You see, my friends, since the Tigrayans and the Eritreans had fought together as allies in order to be able to overthrow the communists, the Eritreans now controlled almost the entire territory of Eritrea itself. There wasn't really anything that the Ethiopian government could try and do in order to reinstate its control over Eritrea. And with a new guy who was in charge of things for Ethiopia being this individual, Meles Zenawi, his mother was actually Eritrean. And this is something that gave him a great deal of sympathy, it seems, for the Eritrean plight. Because of this, a referendum on Eritrean independence from Ethiopia was allowed to occur in April of 1993. When this would occur, it was overwhelmingly approved by Eritrean voters, which in turn would lead to Eritrea being formally granted its independence by Addis Ababa the following month, in May, which would result in the first time that Eritrea had been independent in over a century.
Which sounds all well and good, but then the individual who would end up taking over Eritrea after this was, uh, this guy, Isaias Afwerki. And oh my God, is that guy, that, that, that guy's a real piece of work. I'm just, I'm saying this right now, he deserves his own video when talking about African dictators because my God, the man that we are talking about here has continued to remain as Eritrea's president for the last 30 years, even to this very day, maintaining what is still regarded as one of the most extreme totalitarian states in all of Africa, hell, in all of the world.
In the more than 30 years that Isaias has been in power, there has never been an Eritrean constitution. All power is centralized under his command and his command only. There isn't even a legislature to be able to create laws for him. It's just whatever word he says is law. To know just how totalitarian a regime this is, I want you all to understand that there are a number of different metrics that, depending upon the study that you look at, that places Eritrea as worse than North Korea in how it functions as a state, which is why Eritrea in many political circles is actually called the North Korea of Africa. If you all want to see a video on it, definitely let me know.
But just to give you a little bit of a tidbit of what it is that we're talking about here, every single man and woman in the country is supposed to serve an 18-month mandatory conscription service within the Eritrean Armed Forces. But in practice, what ends up happening is that instead of 18 months, the majority of people, or I should say, basically every single person in the country ends up serving an absurdly longer amount of time than just 18 months. There is no actual way for people within the military of Eritrea to get out of the military with no way to get legally discharged. If they try and flee, their families would face severe legal reprisals. An example of one of the things that could potentially happen is that if one soldier flees, his family, his friends, anyone that actually knows him may have their property seized by the state. And with no ability to get themselves discharged, this ultimately means that essentially every single conscript in Eritrea would serve within the military indefinitely. It does not end. You are forever a slave soldier, bound to the state, with the time that you serve being not one of a few months, but rather a few decades. It is estimated that approximately 20% of the country is trapped in this cycle. 20% of the entire country is composed of slave soldiers, like a modern-day Mamluk state of the Egyptians.
Now, okay, that is a lot. But some people are going to wonder, that doesn't just happen immediately overnight. How is it that we get there in the first place? And I'm getting there, trust me.
This well, first off, a military was still necessary because even though Eritrea had just gotten independence from Ethiopia, the new states didn't exactly trust each other very much. Where, yeah, I understand, despite all the fact, you know, civil war and all these horrible things have been occurring, it was still a very amicable referendum that at least got them free in the first place. Yeah, that, the, the lack of trust was still there, but at least relations between the two of them started to warm up over the course of 1993 through 1998, and things started to gradually become better because, really, Ethiopia still needed Eritrea. It needed Eritrea in order to be able to trade any of its goods because with the loss of Eritrea, that meant that Ethiopia was once again back to being landlocked.
Over the course of this time period, Eritrea would continuously grant Ethiopia the ability to use certain ports, such as that of Assab. And Assab, that you can see here, was easily the most important of all ports that Ethiopia could get access to, as more than 70% of all trade that came out of Ethiopia went through Assab.
The issue that they still face, though, is that technically speaking, despite the fact that Eritrea was now going to be an independent state, there was never any real official demarcation of what the official line was going to be for the border between the two states, which is an easy recipe for conflict and disaster. Regions all across the border came into dispute because maps over the course of the previous decades had changed many times, and in the previous century, you're talking about the utilization of older colonial maps that are going to vary depending upon the powers that actually have them, and this, in turn, leads to, well, a lot of different interpretations.
The unfortunate result of these border disputes is that a series of skirmishes would end up breaking out between Ethiopia and Eritrea that would eventually launch into a full-blown war that would last about two years. And we're not talking about a small conflict, no. Both powers would throw pretty much everything that they had at each other over the course of this fight, and it's estimated that over a 100,000 people died directly as a result of it.
By the end of the fighting in summer of 2000, Ethiopia ended up being the one that was in control of all of the disputed territory, and their army was beginning to advance into Eritrea itself. The result of this was international calls for a ceasefire that would end with the United Nations mediating an armistice between Eritrea and Ethiopia with the Algiers Agreement that ended up being signed in December of 2000. Both parties would agree to set up a border commission that would work in collaboration with a permanent court of arbitration that would be based in The Hague and would determine the final legal border between the two countries.
This uneasy peace would then last for around two years, and in April of 2002, the commission would announce their final verdict. From the map that you can see behind me right here, which depending on how it is that I edit this video, this is something that I should probably have up several times. The territory that you can see that is colored in is all territory that has been claimed by respective sides, but the reason that it is colored the way that it is is because the territory that is colored green was claimed by both sides but granted to Eritrea, while the sides that were red were granted to Ethiopia.
The unfortunate thing for Ethiopia in this situation is that the overwhelming majority of the territory that was being fought over, that was being disputed, was just given back to Eritrea, despite the fact that the entirety of the disputed territory was still technically speaking under the control of the Ethiopian army, and that they had fought for years in order to be able to maintain this, had spent thousands upon thousands of lives, how many millions or even billions of dollars worth of goods in order to be able to try and take this, and the UN just said no, no, that's not going to happen.
Naturally speaking, this is not something that was going to be very easily accepted by Ethiopia, and it was made worse because the people that were in charge were from the Tigray People's Liberation Front, with a large section of the territory in this northern region being part of Tigray, so to speak. The government did not want to easily give that up, as that was part of its home territory, as it saw, which meant that any of the findings by the border commission were essentially refused by the Ethiopian government. They just didn't want to do it whatsoever.
The result of this was that Ethiopia just refused to remove its soldiers, keeping them in place and occupying all of the disputed territory. This meant for years there was a state of quasi-war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where to the government of Eritrea, there was a constant worry of what if Ethiopia attacks? What if this happens again? And as a result, it needed to be in constant military readiness, which in turn leads to all those problems that we talked about before, where like 20% of the country ends up serving as effectively slave soldiers because they never knew when it was they were going to be attacked.
For a full 16 years, this is effectively the status quo between the two countries, with neither side being willing to back down at all. It is a state of almost war. No one is allowed to cross the border, and soldiers are constantly on high alert, waiting for something to go down.
Remember how prior to all this, 70% of Ethiopia's trade would end up going through the Assab port? Well, with the state of war and the tension and everything that would exist between them at this time, yeah, naturally speaking, that wasn't going to happen anymore. All access to trade for Ethiopia was completely cut off. They were not allowed to use Eritrea's ports anymore. And so, with those ports cut off, and Somalia simultaneously being trapped in an endless civil war, this meant that the only ability that Ethiopia had to trade with the outside world was to go through Djibouti, as really, this was the only area, this was the only thing that they were actually capable of trading through. And that's it.
And so it was then that this state of almost war would go on for a full 16 years until things would begin to change in 2018 because then it was that we would see the election of a new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. This is the individual that we talked about from the very beginning, and from the beginning of this, he seemed to have pretty much everything going for him, or at least it seems. One of the key interesting things about this guy is that his father was an ethnic Oromo and his mother an ethnic Amhara. So not only is he a combination between the two largest ethnic groups in the country, but simultaneously, he would represent the first ethnic Oromo in Ethiopia's history to actually manage to achieve power over the entire country, which again is interesting considering that the Oromo historically are the largest percentage within Ethiopia itself, but they had never actually managed to achieve power.
And almost immediately, sweeping changes start to occur when this guy comes into power. Within only a few weeks after taking office, he suddenly announces that Ethiopia is actually going to adhere to the results of that 2002 border commission. Abiy immediately pulls the army out of all the territories that the commission had awarded to Eritrea 16 years before, and from this, agrees to transfer all of those territories to Eritrea and signs a formal peace agreement. The war that has been going on between the two countries for the previous two decades was finally over.
When Abiy would go and visit Eritrea in July 2018, both countries would announce an end to the state of war. They agreed to restore diplomatic relations, they agreed to reopen flights to facilitate trade by opening their borders, and this massive peace deal would lead to the reopening of embassies and the resumption of flights between the two countries. It was something that people were ecstatic about. Everything seemed to be going right for him, and he was a hero to the international community. Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 with an emphasis on his role in resolving the border dispute with Eritrea.
And they all lived happily ever after, right? No, no, no. If they did, then one, like, I wouldn't be talking about that because for whatever reason, people don't want me to talk about happy stories. The Nobel euphoria, though, was very short-lived. After a few months, the border was once again closed, and there were still numerous unresolved issues. The agreements that were signed between the two leaders were shrouded in secrecy, and no one knew exactly what was going on.
Fast forward a little bit of time, and the new government in Ethiopia is not exactly popular with the region of Tigray, which I'm not going to go into all the detail of that here, even though I know it's kind of related, but if I go into that too and cover the entire history of the politics there, it's, oh my God, that whole thing is going to take forever. The short of it is that a civil war essentially breaks out within Ethiopia with the Tigray War of Tigray, that is fighting essentially both Eritrea and also Ethiopia at the same time, or rather than Tigray itself, it's the TPLF, the Tigray People's Liberation Front.
Anyway, what would follow this is a slight warming of relations again, at least for a brief amount of time, where Ethiopia and Eritrea would work together in order to be able to fight against the TPLF and launch joint campaigns. The result of that was a large-scale humanitarian crisis that would utterly devastate the region, and a common enemy can make former enemies friends, but the problem is is that once the common enemy goes away, they typically stop being friends.
And so, fast forward a little bit of time, and things go back to exactly what I said at the beginning of this video. Eritrean military sources now suggest that the country is bracing for a potential war with Ethiopia because Ethiopia goes and amasses troops near the Eritrean border in Zalambessa, which is only 100 miles from the capital of Asmara.
When discussing the possibility of what could happen in this conflict, or even if a conflict could break out in the first place, both leaders' characteristics are not good for the situation. They're not good for peace. Both are possibly set to set the stage for calamity. Abiy is known for making paradoxical statements, something where he tries to approach promoting peace while also saying that he could very easily go to war. He's always been keen to try and solve political problems through military means and asserting things through force. He sees himself as being divinely guided in his quest for Ethiopia's glory with the Red Sea and Eritrea playing a pivotal role.
On the other hand, Isaias Afwerki is an autocratic, long-serving, unforgiving dictator, someone with a pension for proxy warfare. If conflict should break out, he may boost support to Amhara militias that are trying to get independence or more autonomy from the government, and also to the Oromo Liberation Army to try and weaken Abiy and Ethiopia itself. Reportedly, one of the things that is already occurring is that Eritrea's president is backing the Amhara region with training and arms.
If war should actually break out between the two countries, Ethiopia might go and focus its military actions on the Assab front, a region that is more suitable for air raids and drone strikes, and it's more remote from the center of Eritrea. Eritrea would also simultaneously face immense logistical challenges in trying to reinforce this region, possibly leading it to try and shift troops from 52 districts that it occupied in Tigray. It is estimated that the Eritrean troops at present have placed nine divisions on border areas they occupy in Tigray, totaling around 40,000 soldiers. These divisions are then reinforced with mechanized forces, which Eritrea has heavily invested in. Eritrea claims it is deployed in areas that are awarded to it by the boundary commission, and it is possible that Eritrea may in turn attack Ethiopia and occupy more territories as a preemptive move, just in order to try and knock them out quickly, just like in 1998.
Some kind of skirmish, some small incident, some accident or miscalculation, anything that is done by either one of the sides can potentially lead to a full-scale war. But if an outbreak of war should occur, this is something that would allow Ethiopia an opportunity to recapture the areas that are under Eritrean occupation or controlled by Amhara militias. Additionally, the residual TPLF forces that remain, about 200,000 of these have not yet been disarmed, as a result, they may attempt to try and regain territories that they believe rightfully belong to them. But either way, both of these countries are not prepared for an all-out war with each other. They simply aren't.
Over the course of the conflict with Tigray, it is estimated that approximately 600,000 people ended up being killed, more than a million people are estimated to have been displaced from this, and post-war recovery is estimated to cost around $20 billion, something that Ethiopia simply does not have. Still though, conflicts have been started for dumber reasons in the past.
Tensions between the two countries were already emerging even amidst their alliance during the Tigray conflict. As an example, in June of 2021, when Abiy was forced to withdraw his troops from Tigray, Eritrean forces were not notified in advance, which ended up costing them lives and causing a lot of friction. Ethiopian military leaders were extremely displeased with the behavior of Eritrean forces, who would often times assert seniority over Ethiopian commanders. This was evident in the establishment of checkpoints where Ethiopian troops had to seek permission from Eritrean commanders to be able to try and pass through.
One of the things that Eritrea also strongly dislikes is Abiy's response to Western pressures, specifically including investigations into war crimes by the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The investigations that were launched would go and implicate the warring parties, including Eritrean forces. Eritrean entities, military figures, and security officials ended up being singled out for sanctions from both the United States as well as the European Union, and meanwhile, when this occurred, Ethiopian entities largely were not subject to similar sanctions.
The rift between the two countries would only further deepen following the signing of a peace agreement with the TPLF and the federal government in November of 2022, in which neither Eritrea nor the leaders of the Amhara region were actually represented. And this situation with the Amhara is incredibly important to this conflict. Both Eritrea and the Amhara militias felt betrayed by Abiy after he went and signed the Pretoria Peace Agreement. They both fought against the TPLF, and they were not happy that it was not completely finished off once and for all.
The Amhara militias control what was called Western Tigray, and thus have direct access to Eritrea. So Eritrea might exploit Amhara resources in order to try and destabilize Ethiopia, while Ethiopia has to block its border with Eritrea in order to try and cut off Eritrean support to the Amhara militias. But the Amhara militias are resolute in holding on to the territories that they retook during the Tigray conflict. The potential return of these regions to the TPLF is perceived as a threat, as it could grant the TPLF access to Sudan, something that Eritrea does not want. This is because Tigray would be able to get direct assistance through Sudan or even attack Eritrea via Sudan.
If war actually broke out between the two, as time went on, going into this past year of 2023, on May 1st, Abiy would issue a public statement regarding the assassination of the head of the Amhara regional branch of his own Prosperity Party by Amhara extremists that were believed to receive support from Eritrea. Abiy sternly warned against what he referred to as "non-Ethiopian forces," likely from this, alluding to Eritrea, urging them to cease their interference in Ethiopia's internal matters and to refrain from destabilizing the nation. He advised them to focus on their own affairs, emphasizing that they already had plenty of challenges to address.
And this statement came on the heels of a reported confrontation Abiy had with a delegation of Eritrean army generals and senior officials who had visited Ethiopia in early April 2023. In that meeting, Abiy had demanded that they refrain from supporting Amhara forces. Meanwhile, in public, Abiy has only been escalating his rhetoric. He was quoted as saying that he would not be limited to reclaiming the port of Assab, but would retake the entire territory of Eritrea.
The military chief of staff of Ethiopia, in an assessment of the conflict within the Amhara region, has purportedly stated that it was necessary to classify Eritrea as an adversary. And in other parts of the country, the Oromia regional president's statement that Irrecha, which is an Oromo festival that is observed near a body of water, would be celebrated next to the banks of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. That is something that would only add fuel to the fire.
Perhaps what we are talking about is merely saber rattling. We don't necessarily know, but everything that we've been seeing with the history of conflict, with the regional wars, with the skirmishes, with everything that has been occurring over the past several decades within this region, all of it indicates that we are on a path to a potential collision course that could result in the entirety of Eastern Africa here resulting in flames. The potential situation that East Africa across the Horn is facing is catastrophic, and the last thing that the Horn of Africa needs after all the trouble that has gone through for the past several decades is a war. But potentially, that is coming, whether they like it or not.
Everyone, thank you very much for watching. This has been Staki with the History of Everything Podcast YouTube channel. I appreciate each and every one of you for watching. If you could like, comment, and subscribe, it really does help me out, particularly with the type of topics that I have to talk about on this channel. It always runs into the risk of, well, you know, YouTube not taking too kindly to it. If you could like, comment, and subscribe, it does help me. And besides that, let me know in the comment section below what it is that we should actually be doing next. Besides that, I appreciate all of you, and I will see you next time. Goodbye, goodbye friends, and thank you.