Issue No. 306

Caught Between Three Flags: The Afar Struggle 
 

The Afar have had more than their fair share of grievances. A marginalised minority in three countries today, the Cushitic, largely agro-pastoralist people were once organised into Islamic Sultanates that stretched along the Dankalia coastline, profiting from the wealthy littoral trade of salt and enslaved people on the Red Sea. But Italian, French, and Ethiopian partitioning shattered the image of the 'Great Afar' in the late 19th and 20th centuries, wreaking irreparable havoc on these constellations and interfering with Afar kinship structures—primarily split into the Asaimara (Red) and Adoimara (White) groupings. And tragically, in the decades since, many of the manifold political movements within the Afar —nearly all promoting 'unity' —have been weaponised by vested interests in Addis, Asmara, and Djibouti City in turn. The latest being the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organisation (RSADO), an Eritrean opposition group that, in mid-October, announced that it had graduated a new batch of fighters after a three-month programme in the Afar region.

Understandably, the Afar opposed Eritrean independence, disavowing the latest attempt to splinter the ethnic group by the then-allied Addis EPLF and Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Without genuine consultation, Eritrean independence precipitated the rise of armed movements among the Afar in the years that followed, starting with the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) in 1993. The joint-Ethiopian-Eritrean response to ARDUF, however, was brutal, shattering the hopes of an ethnic federal government in Addis. In particular, scorched-earth military policies against the ARDUF deliberately decimated much of the sparsely populated areas in which the Afar live. At the same time, the Djiboutian civil war between the pro-Afar Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD) and the French-backed Issa-led government raged between 1991 and 1994, leaving several thousand dead. These twin conflicts in particular have left grim scars on the collective conscience of the Afar peoples, and distinct imprints on the tense power-sharing agreements within the Djiboutian political elite today.

As the new realities of life under Isaias Afwerki became clearer in the 1990s, the Afar's historic way of life in the Dankalia was particularly targeted by the nationalisation of fishing assets and the heavy militarisation of the coast. Since then, like the rest of Eritrea, the Afar have been routinely denied rights to self-expression and subjected to forced, indefinite military conscription. So, at the same time as the crackdown on the ARDUF in the mid-1990s, Afar activists—including former EPLF members—also organised to oppose the new centralised Asmara regime in place of Addis. And with the eruption of the 1998-2000 Ethiopian-Eritrean border war, the informal movement formalised into RSADO. In its first charter, led by Ali Osman Ma'ar, the movement called for respect for "religious, cultural and land rights" and the "democratic representation of the Red Sea Afar people." 

In the early 2000s, RSADO consequently aligned with the Eritrean opposition umbrella movement, which included the Eritrean National Salvation Front and the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama. Though never conducting any major incursions, RSADO claimed a series of small-scale intermittent attacks from 2003 onwards on Eritrean military installations near Assab, Tio, and Eddi from the Afar region. But despite tacit acceptance of RSADO due to its antipathy towards Eritrea post-2000, Addis, too, was wary of amplifying Afar irredentism and political mobilisation, maintaining the ruling party in the Afar region as an "affiliate" rather than a core member and diminishing its influence within the capital. Further, though Ethiopia's aortic trade route stretches from Djibouti through the Afar region and heartlands, the peripheral region has never enjoyed the necessary infrastructure development. 

But RSADO suffered a severe blow during the rapprochement between Addis and Asmara, as Ethiopia clamped down on the Eritrean opposition operating in Afar. Yet the dissolution of that alliance post-2022, which led to the calamitous Tigray war, has returned the opposition movement to the fore. Earlier this month, RSADO leader Ibrahim Haroun pledged that with these new armed recruits, purported to be between 300 and 500, the movement is ready to pursue the development of "naval capabilities." The reference to "naval capabilities" speaks not only to RSADO's desire to reunify the Ethiopian Afar with the coast but also hints at Addis's bellicose intent to "restore" sea access via Assab. Though a couple of hundred fighters may be a drop in the water in any highly militarised battle for the Red Sea, Haroun's statement included a telling thanks to "the Afar regional government and the people of Ethiopia." 

Any ambiguity concerning the role of Ethiopia amplifying RSADO's military capacity is now gone, with the exiled insurgent forces enjoying the backing of the Ethiopian state. Satellite imagery from recent months had confirmed a buildup of military activity near Afdera and Mille since late September, with light vehicles mobilised and trenches dug, in line with paramilitary training. It had been clear for some time that Addis has sought to weaponise various anti-Asmara groups, including RSADO and the transnational democratic youth movement Brigade Nhamedu, which hosted its conference in the Ethiopian capital earlier this year. And the Eritrean Islamic Party for Justice and Development and the Eritrean National Salvation Front have released similar statements to RSADO in recent weeks, all calling for a unified resistance movement under a single command. These two latter movements also share historic links with Ethiopian intelligence. 

Nor does the activation of Afar grievances threaten only Asmara and Assab, but Djibouti as well, which has taken cross-border military action against Afar nationalist groups it deems a threat this year. In recent months, Djibouti's tense Afar-Issa relations have been exacerbated by discussions over Guelleh's health and the recent amendments to the national constitution that allow the geriatric leader to serve yet longer in office. The prospect of RSADO developing new military capacities is hardly going to sit easily in Djibouti, such is the close intercommunal linkages between the cross-border Afar. Concerningly, a drone strike in January in Afar region, though Djibouti claimed to have killed FRUD insurgents, was revealed by an investigation by The Continent newspaper to have instead massacred civilians last month. And again, Addis has kept silent, accentuating frustrations within the Afar communities that a deadly foreign intervention has elicited no response. 

Such is the depth and complexity of the stratified politicisation of Afar identity that Asmara, too, is seeking to catalyse relationships it formed with Afar militias —much like the Amhara —during the Tigray war. While the conflict raised the profile of the Afar political elite in Addis due to their militias helping stall the Tigrayan advance towards the Addis-Djibouti highway in 2021, it also accentuated splinters between the northern and southern parts of the region, with other Afar forces siding with the Tigrayans. Though not as severe as in Amhara or Tigray, the impact of the war on the Afar region is still keenly felt, with critical infrastructure still in ruins and distrust of the unpopular ruling Prosperity Party widespread. In particular and somewhat ironically, Asmara is believed to be attempting to stoke resentment over allegations of corruption and the sidelining of the Afar traditional elite. And in mid-April, a well-known Afar politician, Ibrahim Ousman Aliyu, left for Asmara, with reports that the ARDUF-associated figure may be seeking military assistance from Eritrea as well.

In many ways, the history of RSADO has been a bellwether for relations between Addis, Asmara, and Djibouti City. The Afar have been caught time and again in the crosshairs, with their aspirations for reunification or even greater respect repeatedly politicised and denied. It is hard to dismiss the resentments of RSADO towards Eritrea, so long and deep the erasure of Afar history and people has been, but Addis is playing with fire. While Eritrea continues to arm and train Fano militias in Amhara, the development of yet another proxy force —with tensions so high —threatens to prove another diaphanous casus belli for either Addis or Asmara, as well as accentuating tensions within simmering Djibouti. The Afar regional government has few cards to play with Addis, but the mobilisation of these forces threatens to transform Afar into a locus for violent confrontation - propelled by external actors for external interests - yet again.