EVIL DAYS - Human Rights Watch

EVIL DAYS

30 YEARS OF WAR AND FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

An Africa Watch Report

September 1991

1522 K Sreet NW, Suite 910

Washington, DC 20005-1202

Tel: (202) 371-6592

Fax: (212) 371-0124

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Tel: (071) 378-8008

Fax: (071) 378-8029

CONTENTS

Preface

Glossary of Acronyms

page

i

vi

Maps

Introduction

vii

1

1. Background to War and Famine in Ethiopia

2. Scorched Earth in Eritrea, 1961-77

19

39

3. Rebellion and Famine in the North under Haile Selassie

4. Insurrection and Invasion in the Southeast, 1962-78

55

65

5. The Secret Wars to Crush the Southeast, 1978-84

6. The Red Terror

80

101

7. Total War in Eritrea, 1978-84

8. Counter-Insurgency and Famine in Tigray and its Borderlands, 1980-84

131

9. "Economic War" on the Peasants and Famine

10. War and the Use of Relief as a Weapon in Eritrea, 1984-88

175

11. Starving Tigray, 1984-88

12. Resettlement

13. Villagization, 1984-90

14. The Road to Asmara: Eritrea, 1988-91

15. Armed Decision: The North, 1988-91

16. The Politics of Relief, 1989-91

17. The Rage of Numbers: Mengistu's Soldiers

18. Wars within Wars: The Western and Southwestern Lowlands

313

19. Divide and Misrule: The East, 1984-91

20. Western Policy towards Ethiopia

Africa Watch's Recommendations

112

155

194

210

229

235

252

274

288

344

355

375

PREFACE

This report was initially planned at a time when it was not possible for Africa Watch to

undertake research in government-held areas of Ethiopia, and access to rebel-held areas had not

yet been obtained. Primary research consisted of interviews with refugees and other Ethiopians

abroad. After the fall of the Mengistu government, access is now possible, and extensive

research in all parts of Ethiopia would be able to paint a much more detailed picture of the

abuses associated with the war. However, for reasons of time, that research remains to be done.

This should be the task of an investigative commission set up by the new government.

Instead, the report relies heavily on secondary sources, including relief workers,

journalists, and others who have travelled to Ethiopia or who have talked to Ethiopians. As a

result, there are many blank areas: whole campaigns, particularly in the south, have scarcely

been documented at all in this report. Another result is that in some cases the incidents reported

cannot be fully cross-checked with independent sources. Where reported by sources known to

be generally reliable, such incidents have been included. The source and status of information

that has not been independently verified has been indicated.

Previous reports on human rights abuses in Ethiopia which have been compiled without

visits to government-held areas have been subject to criticism, chiefly from defenders of the

previous government, that such sources are wholly biased and unreliable. On these grounds a

1

highly critical report by Cultural Survival on the government's resettlement program was

2

dismissed by Professor Richard Pankhurst and Mr Kurt Jansson, head of the UN famine relief

3

operation in Ethiopia. As shown in chapter 12, those dismissals were premature.

In compiling this report, Africa Watch has used as extensive a range of sources as

possible. Between 1978 and 1988, the Ethiopian government denied the existence of the war

altogether, and at no time did it allow independent access to the war zones. There is virtually no

reliable information available about human rights abuses associated with the war from official

Ethiopian sources. The Ethiopian government displayed an unhealthy obsession with statistics,

and ostensibly-precise numbers for damage to property and "affected populations" form the

greater part of its assessment of the impact of the wars and famines. Given that the government

consistently overlooked the existence of a million people in Tigray, and invented half a million

returning refugees who did not exist, such figures must be treated with caution.

1

Cultural Survival (Jason W. Clay and Bonnie K. Holcombe), Politics and the Ethiopian Famine 1984-1985,

Cambridge, Mass., 1985.

2

Richard Pankhurst, "The Ethiopian Famine: Cultural Survival's Report Assessed," Anthropology Today, 2.3,

June 1986, pp. 4-5.

3

Kurt Jansson, Michael Harris and Angela Penrose, The Ethiopian Famine, London, 1987, p. 26.

Concerning famine, Africa Watch has made extensive use of official documents, aid

agency reports and the research undertaken by Ethiopian and foreign scholars working in

government-held areas. In many cases it is necessary to "read between the lines" as these

scholars were anxious not to endanger their sources, careers, liberty or lives by telling the truth

in plain words.

A significant part of the information contained in this report originates from the reports,

newspaper articles, diaries and testimonies of foreign visitors to areas controlled by the rebel

fronts, principally the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigrayan People's

Liberation Front (TPLF, which after January 1989 was the leading member of the Ethiopian

People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, EPRDF). Though these fronts gave greater access to

the war zones, that access was never unrestricted. Visitors were usually accompanied by armed

guards, primarily to protect them from government saboteurs, but which also identified them

with the relevant front. The information obtained is therefore less than ideally independent.

However, no visitor -- including those who were unsympathetic to the fronts and subsequently

wrote critical reports of their activities -- has made a substantial criticism of his or her access to

the civilian population, or come away with the belief that the people he or she spoke to were

4

influenced by the presence of EPLF or TPLF-EPRDF representatives. Consequently, some of

this information has been used, after careful scrutiny and cross-checking.

Much of the information obtained by visitors to rebel-held areas consists of eye-witness

accounts of atrocities and their aftermath; this is not subject to the same problems of potential

distortion.

Other information originates from refugees. In refugee camps, independent access to

civilians is possible. Refugee testimony cannot be regarded as distorted simply because the

refugee has made a political statement by fleeing his or her country; neither of course can it be

used uncritically. In addition, contrary to the allegations of some defenders of the government,

many refugees (particularly in the late 1980s) fled to neighboring countries precisely because

they were unsympathetic to the rebel fronts. For example, most of the refugees who arrived in

Sudan from Eritrea in 1988/9 were not supporters of the EPLF: displaced civilians who

supported the EPLF had remained behind in relief camps run by the EPLF and the Eritrean

Relief Association.

The EPLF and TPLF-EPRDF also displayed an abiding preoccupation with numbers.

These may or may not have been more accurate than government figures. On the rare occasions

when these figures have been alluded to, their origin and our view of their reliability has been

4

The designation TPLF-EPRDF is intended to encompass the TPLF from its inception up until the formation of

the EPRDF, and the EPRDF thereafter.

ii

noted.

This report covers abuses by all sides. Where documented, abuses by the rebel fronts

have been included as well as those committed by the government. However, the great majority

of abuses against civilians, and actions leading to famine, were committed by the government.

The fronts certainly had authoritarian political structures and tolerated little dissent in their own

ranks, but -- like the government's crackdown on the institutions of civil society -- such abuses

fall outside the scope of this report.

The relative paucity of rebel abuses noted in these pages is not a matter of the absence of

reliable sources of critical information on the activities of the fronts. All the fronts have their

dissenters, who are fiercely critical of certain of their actions and policies. These people have

provided information on some abuses by the fronts, but generally agree that the treatment of

civilians and prisoners of war has been good, even exemplary. These critics include refugees

interviewed in Sudan.

This report does not seek to justify or condemn the decision by rebel fronts to engage in

armed struggle, nor the decision by the government to respond with military action. Africa

Watch's mandate does not extend to directly promoting peace. Instead the focus is on the

manner in which the wars were fought.

iii

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