Issue No. 281

In recent months, the question of 'Afar unity' has resurfaced- and this time on the initiative of the Ethiopian federal government. Today, the Cushitic, predominantly agro-pastoralist people comprise roughly two million and straddle some of the most strategic territory in the Horn of Africa, populating north-eastern Ethiopia, eastern Eritrea, and parts of Djibouti. Marginalised in all three countries where they form a minority, the Afar have long advocated for reestablishing their trifurcated communities under a single flag. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the year, Addis's gaze has returned to Assab in Eritrea as the site for its vague 'sea access' and has subsequently played upon the Afar historical and anthropological claims to the Eritrean territory on the Red Sea. Having first surfaced in late 2023, PM Abiy Ahmed, as well as senior Ethiopian generals, at the recent Prosperity Party Executive Committee meeting in mid-April again advocated for Afar unity. 

Though Ethiopian officials may have quietened their public clamouring for war with Eritrea, it is still on the cards, and the question of Afar unity appears to be the latest dubious pretext to potentially justify an invasion of Assab. Both Asmara and Addis have long sought to appropriate Afar grievances for their own gain over the years, attempting to tap into the armed ethnic militias to unsettle the peripheral regions in both states. Yet the prospect of Afar unity runs much deeper and cuts across all political strands of the ethnic group, playing upon shared cultural and oral histories. But Addis should be wary of amping up such powerful irredentist and ethnic sentiment amongst the Afar for several reasons, not least its threat to its relationship with Djibouti.

Afar grievances run deep, and understandably so. For centuries, the Afar's Islamic Sultanates profited off the salt and slave trades along the arterial Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with their communities stretching down into modern-day central Ethiopia. But colonial partition under Italian and French rule in the 19th and 20th centuries disrupted this political organisation under the Sultanates, and interfered with their transnational kinship networks, which are split into two main groups known as the Asaimara (Red) and the Adoimara (White). The Afar fared little better in the latter half of the 20th century, being repressed by the Derg regime from Addis.

Following the overthrow of the Derg regime in the early 1990s, the Afar opposed the subsequent campaign for Eritrean independence on the grounds that it would sever the Ethiopian Afar from their Eritrean kin. In 1993, aggrieved Afar formed the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) to forcibly resist independence and advocate for a united region. ARDUF-- and those fighting for Afar unity more broadly-- are still commonly known as the Ugugumo (Revolution) today. Then allies, a coordinated Eritrean-Ethiopian campaign against the group in the mid-1990s laid waste to the Afar communities in which the ARDUF operated, with the Ethiopian military displacing many thousands of people to deliberately depopulate these sparse territories. And the Afar similarly faced intense conflict over the border during the Djiboutian civil war between 1991 and 1994 that ravaged the country. The conflict was fought between the Somali-dominated government backed by the French against the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD) that advocated for the Afar, and partially operated out of Ethiopia. Here, too, the Afar population in Djibouti mourned grievous losses, such as the 'Arhiba Massacre' in 1991, where dozens were killed when government troops opened fire on civilians. Many of these historical wounds remain alive in the collective memory of the Afar.

Meanwhile, in Eritrea, the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) is explicit in its opposition to ethnic mobilisation and insists upon a monolithic national identity. Anything to the contrary– such as Afar unity– is considered subversive, with the community having particularly suffered from Asmara's repressive instincts in turn. Widespread persecution in the form of forced displacement, conscription, arbitrary arrests and suppression of cultural institutions has generated significant discontent amongst the Afar.

In the 1990s and 2000s in Ethiopia, Afar was also excluded from decision-making at the national level under the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), with the Afar National Democratic Party (ANDP) considered an 'affiliate' with the ruling Tigrayan-dominated coalition. Many Afar were subsequently optimistic about the early reforms of the incumbent Abiy government in 2018, hoping that the simmering Afar-Somali boundary conflict would be resolved and that regional politics would open up as well. In turn, the ANDP willingly absorbed itself into the Prosperity Party in 2019. While some have argued that the amalgamation gave the region greater influence within the capital, it has diminished a singular voice for Afar amid the national trend towards centralisation. 

Still, the Tigray war lent some brief political clout to the Afar region, with Afar militias preventing the advance of the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) towards the arterial Addis Ababa-Djibouti highway in mid-2021. While this endeared elements of the Afar political class to the Abiy government, it also catalysed divisions between the southern and northern communities in the  Afar Regional State. In particular, the destructive conflict led to the formation of the Afar Federalist Forces (AFF) by a former president of the Afar administration, with the northern-based group fighting alongside the TDF against the regional and federal governments. Post-war negotiations in mid-2023 led to the transformation of the AFF into a recognised political party, the Afar Federalist Party (AFP), to challenge the dominant Prosperity Party in the region. But much like with several Fano paramilitary groups– now fighting with the federal government– Asmara was also licensed to provide weapons and training to Afar militias, and some of these relationships have endured. Though post-war tensions may have eased, reconstruction of critical infrastructure in Afar, including schools, water, telecommunications, and hospitals, has been limited. And the economic and displacement impact of the raging Fano insurgency in the neighbouring Amhara region has spilt over into Afar.

Despite the national turbulence and insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, Ethiopia has nevertheless ramped up its military preparations to seize Assab in recent months. It has built a drone launching site in the Afar region and is reportedly arming a number of groups opposed to the Eritrean regime, including the Eritrean Afar National Congress. But while Addis has been attempting to develop its relations with possible armed Afar actors, it is being hampered by its own track record of poor governance and the enduring Eritrean ties in the region. Dissatisfaction with the Prosperity Party has been building, particularly over allegations of corruption, nepotism, and marginalisation of traditional elites. This was reflected when Ibrahim Ousman Aliyu– a former head of agriculture development in Afar and associated with the ARDUF– left for Eritrea in mid-April, sending shockwaves through the region's politics. It has further been reported that Aliyu may be attempting to seek military aid from Eritrea, emulating Asmara's backing of the Fano insurgency in the Amhara region. Though the question of Afar unity is a powerful one, and could pull disparate political groups together that exist in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, there remains a degree of resistance to Addis serving as the vehicle to realise this broader aspiration. Further, Asmara is regarded as a more straightforward transactional actor than Addis, able to offer weapons and cash to settle various scores.

Despite these differences, Djibouti is nonetheless spooked by the Ethiopian government's flirting with armed Afar groups, with the country's very existence imperilled by a resurgence of Afar unity claims. Djibouti straddles one of the world's most strategic waterways and hosts Chinese, American, and French military bases, and is nearly entirely comprised of just two broader groups– Somalis from the Dir/Issa and the Afar. Though the Dir/Issa– from which Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh hails– have politically and economically dominated the country, to lose the Afar constituency would arguably compromise the country's existence by reducing it to just its Somali element.

Consequently, it is no surprise that Djibouti has reacted forcefully to Addis's stoking of Afar unity aspirations. In February, the Djiboutian government conducted an airstrike on an armed Afar group operating within Ethiopia, killing several people, including civilians. And in late April, Djibouti began expelling 'illegal' migrants back to Ethiopia, predominantly Oromo, despite opposition from Addis, citing "primarily security and health concerns." Djibouti serves as the last transit stop on the continent before migrants attempt the fraught sea crossing on the Gulf of Aden. Quietly alarmed by the Afar unity proposal, Guelleh's government is wielding one of the few pressure points it has on its far larger southern neighbour by returning Oromo migrants. In late April, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also travelled to Djibouti to hold extensive discussions with Guelleh. A subsequent statement reiterated the Egyptian position that only littoral states-- i.e. not Ethiopia-- should have any say over the governance of the Red Sea.

However, reopening Afar's anthropological claims on the Red Sea zone in Eritrea and parts of Djibouti presents another Pandora's box for Ethiopia's domestic politics as well. It arguably opens the door for those agitating for 'Greater Somalia,' which would incorporate the resource-rich Somali Regional State (SRS), as well as Oromo irredentism and even the pro-independence 'Greater Tigray' movement. Ethiopian officials can hardly protest when those in Somalia discuss establishing a pan-Somali homeland when it is similarly stoking such sentiments regarding the Afar. Playing upon ethnic homelands and contested territories is a slippery slope in the Horn, and it is not clear that Addis has considered the broader implications of its latest gambit. The imperial vision of restoring 'sea access' through the Afar is a dangerous gambit that may well trigger some unforeseen and unwelcome sequelae.