Since the 1978 bloodshed at Berahle, TPLF fighters have conducted several
military campaigns in the northern Afarlands. It was the first TPLF attack
against the northern Afar. The armed confrontation between the TPLF
fighters and the Afar of Berahle, popularly known as ’Arba’a ‘Eybi (The
Wednesday War) arose whilst the Afar denied TPLF forces the use of the
Berahle route on their way to Beda to attack the ELF force camped at As’ale.
Fifteen Afar were killed including respected elders like Sheikh Miftah
Kadier, Ahmed Elama Baho, Ali Mohammed Ali and the ten year old boy
Abdu Samed Abdu Aliyu. The second and third major armed confrontations
resulted in casualties on both sides taking place in Berahle, which later led
Afar youth to organise their forces under the name Ugugumo (uprising or
revolution) in 1981. After receiving military training in both the Derg and
ELF fields, various groups of Ugugumo fighters met in Sari’e, a locality in
Berahle and decided to conduct a guerilla attack against the TPLF and EPLF
forces. Since then Ugugumo has never put down its weapons. Thousands of
Afar youths under Ugugumo have lost their life in the struggle against the
two Tigrigna dominated fronts, EPLF and TPLF.
The northern ALF was also a major armed organisation; initially supported
by the Eritrean fronts and mobilized in northern Afar, it later gave a hard time
to the EPLF ally, the Tigray Liberation Movement. Unlike the southern ALF (Ali
Mirah’s), the northern ALF that was later renamed the Afar National Liberation
Front (ANLF) could not accept the EPLF-TPLF’s Eritrean independence formula
that would split the Ethiopian Afar into two different states.
In 1979, the northern ALF was conceived by Sheikh Hussein Ahmed
Mussa, a former ANLM official who left the ANLM as a result of dissatisfaction
with the Derg’s reluctance to respond to the Afar quest of self-administration
despite its promise in the 1976 NDR programme. On 23 March
1983, the northern ALF leaders Sheikh Hussein, Salih Abdilla, Ahmed Ibrahim,
Ahmed Mohammed Wilis and others held a conference in Yemen where
they declared the political programme of the party with the ultimate goal of
restoring the unity of Afar in Ethiopia and sharing appropriate power in the
centre. Since both the northern ALF and the EPLF had a common denominator,
the Derg as a foe, the EPLF offered military and logistical support to the
northern ALF. Later on, at the end of 1980s, the TPLF negotiated with the
northern ALF to persuade them to cooperate with the newly created coalition
of Ethiopian opposition groups. However, as the northern ALF was insisting
that the TPLF forces should not operate inside Afarlands and critically opposed
the separation of the Afar in Eritrea from their brethren in Ethiopia,
the TPLF politicians chose to find another organisation that could be regarded
as the Afar representative in the TPLF-led coalition.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the international order changed dramatically.
The Marxist-Leninist TPLF was in a hurry to immerse itself in
Western ideology and to engage internally in fabricating ‘democratic organisations’
(DOs) of diverse ethnicity in Ethiopia. However, it was difficult for
the TPLF cadres who had an Afar partition plan in their pocket, to form an
Afar ‘DO’ political party among the Afar who demanded full and genuine
regional autonomy. That’s why the TPLF was forced to deal with the ALF of
Sultan Ali Mirah, thereby taking a calculated risk in order to fill the power
vacuum in Afar areas for a short time till the APDO reached ‘manhood’.
After immense manoeuvring and pressure including intimidation, the
TPLF succeeded in bringing the Afar people’s ‘DO’ on the political scene in
the region in 1995. According to some founding members of the Tigray Afar
Democratic Organisation (TADO), who want their names to remain anonymous,
the majority of the former TADO and the now APDO founding members
were Afar kids and youths who were not (yet) capable of grasping the
political situation in the area. Some youth joined the TPLF because they were
attracted by the musical fanfare of the Woyane band. In addition to this,
some Afar girls who wanted to escape from family arranged marriages also
joined the TPLF. There were also a few Afar youth who initially provided
food and information from the Afar villages for the TPLF fighters and later
got promoted to the militia.
Initially the TPLF fighters gathered all those kids and youth in their
camp in Indelo (in Wahadis kebele of Kuneba Woreda) and sent them to ‘Bet
Temeherti Woyane’ (the School of Woyane), located around Tekeze Bridge,
in order to mould them into members of the TPLF. Eventually, younger kids
were transferred to ‘Bet Temeherti Martha’ (Martha School) in Angereb near
the Sudan border, while relatively older ones were sent for military training
to Wer’ei. Later on, in March 1987, when the Ugugumo forces challenged
TPLF’s presence in the Afarland and a series of negotiations with ANLF had
failed, the TPLF leadership decided to upgrade and organise those Afar
youths within TPLF as an Afar organisation by the name TADO. After six
months, the TPLF leadership eliminated the word Tigray from the name of
the organisation and renamed it APDO. However, this could not help to
transform the APDO into a ‘manhood’ party capable of handling the Afar
politics during the 1991 change of regime. The TPLF blamed the APDO for
its lack of success and searched for help and found it in the ALF of Sultan Ali
Mirah. The TPLF was, at this stage, in need of the ALF’s alliance to set foot in
the Afar area, an endeavour that would have been difficult without such
support.
The TPLF never rested on their laurels, they further cleared the path for
the APDO by eliminating potential threats from other rival organisations.
Primarily the Ugugumo leader, Muhyadin Miftah was imprisoned in Djibouti
in August 1995 and handed over to Ethiopia. Subsequently other
54 Yasin Mohammed Yasin
Ugugumo leaders including Hamid Omar, Ali Abdullah, and Ali Mohammed
joined the regional politics led by the APDO. The majority of the leadership
of the northern ALF (renamed as ANLF) also took part in regional politics.
Later on, other parties including the ALF and the ANDM,18 generally all
Afar political organisations formed a coalition party, the ANDP.19
However, putting all political organisations into one basket never
stopped the emergence of ‘new’ parties as was intended. The best example is
the unfinished business regarding Ugugumo. After Muhyadin Miftah’s
handing over to the TPLF-led Ethiopian government he was imprisoned at
Mekele till the TPLF officials reached an agreement with the Ugugumo leadership
on the front to a cease-fire. Accordingly, about 400 fighters disarmed
and returned to their ‘peaceful’ life which brought an end to the first
Ugugumo. Thereafter, Mohamoda Ahmed Gaas, one of the former ANLM
leadership, ex-secretary of the workers party of Ethiopia for Assab Autonomous
Region, a founder of ARDU in Djibouti in July 1991 and an incumbent
State Minister of Culture and Tourism of Ethiopia established a coalition
front with the Ugugumo with the name ARDUF and became its representative
in Europe. Soon after Mohamoda came back to Ethiopia, he succeeded in
disarming the second group of Ugugumo who returned to peaceful lives.
Nevertheless the remaining fighters led by Salih Ali Hudale announced that
there was still another active remnant group of the Ugugumo and accused
Mohamoda of foisting tribalism on the Afar and bartering for their cause for
the sake of position. Later on, Salih Ali Hudale’s group lay down their arms
and established a new political party named the ANRDF, which is a registered
political party in the National Election Board of Ethiopia, on 17 February
2005. But still a fourth group of Ugugumo led by Arab Abdilla Mussa
continues fighting.
A brief look at the Afar resistance to TPLF/
Moderator: Moderators
- Khalid Ali
- SomaliNet Super
- Posts: 32728
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:03 am
- Location: Suldaan Emperior Gacanyarihisa
Re: A brief look at the Afar resistance to TPLF/
Afar is shared by tigray and tigrinya kebesswina people Shabiya and Woyane who are the same qabil. Agreed to share the afars. And the afars were to divided some supported shabia others supported amhara back in the days and went along with tigray taking over. The Afar in Djibouti don't have the number nor the money to put allot of resistance. In the 1990s we crushed the afar rebellion with brute force here in Djibouti And they can't fight again. Afar my friend are like the polish in eastern Europe
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