Part two
Two groups of the TPLF and two issues of Ethiopia

June 12, 2001

Crises in the TPLF

The democratic and human rights crises from 1977 to 1979

The TPLF had experienced some major internal crises prior to the current one in its history. The assertion that the TPLF had democratically solved previous crises, whereas Meles has resorted to undemocratic measures in the present crisis does not correspond to the truth and leads to the confusion of the root-cause of the present crisis. Surveying the crises can enrich our knowledge of the character of the TPLF, if and only if our analysis is based on facts. For us, as eyewitnesses of the events, the solutions to the real, imagined or fabricated crises show an identical pattern of behaviour of their protagonists. The so called solutions in all the cases ended up producing incriminated victims, intimidated, uncritical and opportunist members and the corresponding aggravation of tyranny.

All the past crises including the current one have the following common factors:
1. They were produced from above and could have been avoided,
2. Meles was directly or indirectly the main or part of the cause for all the crises,
3. Their solutions involved anti democratic methods and victimised members,
4. All enhanced the power of Meles and the opportunist behaviour of the members in the organisation.

Political power in the TPLF was relatively evenly distributed amongst five members of the CC: (Abay Tsehaye head of the political committee, Aregawi Berhe head of the military committee, Sebhat Nega chairman of the TPLF, Gidey Zeratsion deputy chairman of the organisation and to a lesser extent, Seyoum Mesfin, head of the foreign relations committee) and three deputy members (Meles Zenawi, Seye Abraha and Atakelti Qetsela) till 1979. Atsbeha Dagnew who was the only deputy member of the CC prior to the three mentioned above was demoted and later executed by Meles. The deputy members were appointed by the five CC in 1976 and acted as full members until their position was formalised during the TPLF Congress held in 1979.

Rank-and-file-members of the TPLF, as a result of the power distribution and collective leadership amongst the CC, had a room of manoeuvre to relatively freely express their opinions within the organisation. At that time the Sebhat-Meles clique was confined to clandestine preparations to control the leadership. The democratic atmosphere, which held up to late 1977, despite random and arbitrary killings and imprisonment of simple members by the leadership, was totally abolished following the 1977-1979 crisis (branded Hinfishfish- literally chaos and later interpreted as fac-tionalism) in the Organisation.

Since the crisis, as an administrative measure, and not as a root cause was the excuse for unleashing the undemocratic process, it would be of interest to briefly shade some light into it. It all started with a barrage of questions. The two main disturbing questions for the leadership were:

1. Why eight youngsters (some put the number at twelve) who fell into the trap of the leadership that they would be allowed to go home if they wanted to and openly said so, were executed? The youngsters could not bear the hardship like constant mobility, hunger, lice etc. They were collected, as if they were to be sent home after a political education and executed.
2. Why Meles was not punished for cowardice according to the law of the TPLF, for not fulfilling his duty during a military operation at Adwa in 1977 where a fighter called Tekle Gebre Yohannes (Sherifo) was martyred and his body left behind?

These questions were followed by demands for the formation of an inquiry commission to deal with the grievances of the fighters. The leadership, although it recognised the legality of the demands within the Front, ignored the demands for the formation of the commission and refused to discuss the grievances at the level of the whole organisation.

As the crisis was simmering further, the leadership started preparations to call the first congress of the Front. Accordingly, Abay Tsehaye started consulting with commanders and commissars. Abay briefed the participants on the plan of the CC to hold the first congress of the TPLF and asked opinions about the situation of the fighters. The participants tried to convince him of the need for the formation of an inquiry commission to ward off some doubts of the fighters that members of the leadership were committing crimes.

Abay declared that the formation of a commission to deal with the grievances of the fighters would have been possible, had the initiative to call for a congress been taken by the rank-and-file fighters. His answer was so illogical that it meant that the CC, because it took the initiative to call a congress had the privilege to deny the fighters their right to formally present their case. Several veteran members of the Front who heard that Abay was blocking the formation of the inquiry commission did not hesitate to say that what Abay said did not originate from him and that it was all the work of Meles. Most of them did not dare raise the complaints openly, but they explained why Meles should be interested in hindering the formation of the inquiry commission. They also claimed that Meles was aggravating the contradiction between the TPLF and the EPRP by propagating narrow nationalist ideas.

It was obvious that Meles would not like an inquiry commission but it was not convincing that he alone could decide on whether the commission should be formed or not, because he did not have an absolute power at that time. The other members of the leadership had also something to hide or they did not like an inquiry commission out of solidarity with Meles. Every individual full or deputy CC member of the TPLF had the power to pass a death sentence without consulting others. Victims had no right of appeal. As long as they did not expose the person who committed massacre on the youngsters, all members of the leadership decided to defend a criminal at the cost of justice and democracy.

The massacre could have been committed by any one of the leaders according to the practice of the Front. But since the victims were sent to the base, where the prison was located and the political committee in turn controlled the prison, Abay and Meles who headed the committee were the most likely culprits. Abay was under the permanent influence of Meles on many issues. Abay behaved like a gentleman and was respected. He was not rough, but he was being manipulated and used as a mouthpiece by his extremely rough assistant. Opinions and decisions forwarded by Abay or in his alleged interest seemed to get acceptance by other CC members. Meles was collecting power into the hands of Abay and depositing it for himself.

In the course of the preparations for the congress a military committee had to be elected. In the mean time complaints against the CC were taking more momentum. The discussions on the grievances influenced the out come of the elections for the military committee, in such a way that rank-and-file members were democratically elected to the committee while some heads departments were not accepted as representatives by the rank-and-file-members of their units. The leadership drew a lesson never to allow free elections take place.

The meeting of the military committee was chaired by Tewolde W/Mariam (He was not in the CC, but he came to the meeting as a representative of the leadership). The issue of the grievances was excluded from the agenda from the very beginning, even before some delegates arrived. Therefore the tension within the delegates manifested itself either in being fully supportive of or being critical to the leadership, leading into the division of the delegates into two groups, with some exceptions. The arguments revolved around the following points:

1. Whether or not the members of the CC should be accepted en block in the Congress without competition. Among those who were for a new start in an open competition were Aberra Manka (later imprisoned and executed), Teshome Gudo (he escaped before he was imprisoned and he lives in USA.) Ayele /Hayelom (He escaped after he was released from prison. He lives in the USA), Abadi (He committed suicide resisting imprisonment) etc. Those who were for the acceptance of the same old leadership were grouped around Arkebe Enquay, then a unit commissar, later promoted to the CC. A compromise was reached to accept one third of the old leadership without competition.
2. Whether members of the TPLF were to have equal votes or not. According to the supporters of the leadership the CC was to decide the number of delegates that every unit was supposed to send. The criterion of representation was to be according to the quality (it was called Tsereyet which means purity) of the members. Apart from the normalisation of inequality, this system of representation enabled the leadership to manipulate the election of delegates. The other group rejected the idea.
3. How the Preparatory Committee was to be controlled to prevent it from being manipulated by the members of the CC. The Committee was supposed to collect ideas from all members for an agenda, lead discussions on the agenda and supervise the election of delegates for the congress. The fear at the meeting was that, the committee, if controlled by the leadership would be an instrument of the latter. It would manipulate the discussions and elections of delegates as well as inform the CC on members with differing ideas, who would be dealt with as dissenters. Since no agreement could be reached on how to control the committee, Tewolde helped settle the issue by appealing to the delegates to have confidence in each other as comrades.

The meeting of the military committee concluded its mission with the election of the Preparatory Committee.

The TPLF had faced a catastrophic situation when the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) launched an offensive in March 1977. The EDU had overrun a garrison of the government at Humera. It was much better armed (with automatic guns, rocket launchers etc.) and had an overwhelming number of troops compared with the TPLF. The TPLF fighters were much more disciplined and dedicated but not in a position to confront the EDU forces in a conventional fighting. The EDU made a surprise attack on a unit of the TPLF at Sheraro and almost annihilated it and then marched forward and inflicted heavy losses on other units of the TPLF, to the extent that some TPLF units lost most of their combatants including their commanders and commissars.

The actual and feared losses caused mass desertions in the TPLF. Since the overwhelming majority of the TPLF fighters were either peasants or students with only rudimentary training and no experience of fighting, it was not surprising that they run for their life, when many of their comrades fell in combat. Some TPLF Militiamen went over to the EDU and many fighters went to areas held by the Dergue.

However, this situation posed only a temporary threat to the existence of the TPLF for almost two months, between March and May 1977, and came to an end, when the EDU attacked well-armed and entrenched troops of the Dergue at Endaselassie. EDU fighters suffered heavy losses and fled in disarray. The TPLF stabilised itself with the fighters who did not desert it and overcame the EDU in a protracted war till the first quarter of 1978.

The TPLF had become much stronger and experienced after its final victory over the EDU. It had collected many automatic weapons from deserting militias of the Dergue and had ejected the EPRP from Tigray between February and May 1978, while also fighting against the Dergue at the same time. The morale of its members was very high.

Despite the favourable situation, the leadership of the TPLF disseminated the information that those who claimed to have grievances during the previous year were regiona-lists who were out to destroy the organisation by eroding confidence in the leadership. Although the mass desertions were mainly caused by the war with EDU, the leadership tried to associate the desertions with those who expressed grievances. Although the TPLF had no serious problems in 1978, the leadership launched a planned harassment of the members.

The Preparatory committee for the congress, on the orders of the CC went out of its way and started to call meetings with the aim of exposing those members who had expressed grievances. When the leadership launched a campaign to expose the fighters who claimed to have grievances and sent the preparatory committee for this purpose, it practically wreaked havoc amongst the fighters. Some believed what they were told in the cam-paign and were gripped by the fear that the front was threatened in its existence, others rightly saw a desperate intrigue to curtail their rights and defend the culprits to pave the way for their unchallenged election.

Many from those who saw an intrigue tried to leave the Front whenever they saw any possibility. Still others feared that someone would simply implicate them for some thing they did not remember. The-refore exposing someone for every small talk became tantamount to defending the front for some and an expression of loyalty as a sign of innocence for others. Many fighters who were exposed as having said anything inconvenient about the leadership were sent to prison and ne-ver seen thereafter. Since anybody who asked about the whereabouts of the victims was considered as their accomplice nobody asked this question. Nor was the leadership prepared to give any information on such issues.

As a result of this campaign followed by liquidation it became a Tradition in the TPLF not to ask inconvenient questions from down upward, not to talk of opposition. The suspects were during and after the campaign students or “opportunist petty bourgeois” as they were called in the Front. This manipulated Participation of the fighters has officially gone as a de-mocratic participation into the history of the TPLF. A democratic solution would have been an open discussion at an organisational level without intimidation and misuse of administrative measures as well as the formation of an inquiry commission to investigate the criminal malpractice of arbitrary killings. The undemocratic solution instilled fear into the minds of the fighters through naked force, arbitrary measures and exaggerated misinformation. The reaction to the crisis led to the psy-chological conditioning of the fighters not to express their own opi-nion, to monotonously repeat what has already been said from above and to generally mistrust each other, which has been cemented by Stalinist centralism. The official explanation for the passiveness and uncritical behaviour of the non-CC members is that they worship the leadership and cannot imagine that the leadership can make mistakes. This is of course only meant to aggrandise the leaders.

The undemocratic measures taken to solve the stage-managed crisis produced two results: 1) The non-CC members of the TPLF became uncritical towards the leadership, passive and opportunist. 2) Meles, a deputy member of the CC was formally elected to a full membership in the first Congress of the TPLF, held in 1979. These two results have been reinforcing each other up to the present situation.

To be continued

Kahsay Berhe, E-mail: kahsay@gmx.de
Tesfay Atsbeha,

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Further information on this and other similar issues:
• A book by Kahsay Berhe, Ethiopia: Democratisation and Nation-Building - Documentation and Critical Analysis, which will soon be published,
• Can One Accuse a Tyrant in Ethiopia?, 1997, by Kahsay Berhe and Tesfay Atsbeha,
• The National Movement in Tigray: Myths and Realities, February 1991, by Kahsay Berhe,
• Die positiven und negativen Aspekte der TPLF-MLLT, Maerz/April 1990, by Tesfay Atsbeha
• Mystifizierung der Partei zur Glorifizierung einer Person, 1990, by Tesfay Atsbeha,
• Hizbawi Woyane Harnet Tigray: Nabeyn Kemeyn?, March 1989, by Kahsay Berhe,