By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #61 for Tuesday, May 23, 2000

Ethiopia Is Becoming Africa's First Modern Empire

In March 1995 I was in Makele, northeastern Ethiopa, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Tigreyan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) as a guest of the Ethiopian government. Seated some 15 feet from my seat were Meles Zenawi, and Isaias Afwerki, then as now the two top leaders respectively of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Their small children were playing around their chairs while we all were waiting for a film documentary on the Tigreyan victory against the Ethiopian "red dictator" Haile Mariyam Mengistu to begin. As befitted close comrades in their common liberation struggle they talked animatedly to each other. They spoke in their shared mother language, Tigrinya, a Semitic language similar to Hebrew and Arabic.

Now deep hatred divides the two. Each hurls epithets, "murderer" for example, against the other as they earlier did together against Mengistu. Since the renewed upsurge of war in mid-May thousands of Eritrean soldiers and civilians have been killed and maimed by Ethiopian forces. In February 1995 when returning to Eritrea's capital Asmara from the Red Sea port of Massawa I saw a huge village inhabited by thousands of soldiers maimed by Ethiopians during the previous 30 years the Eritreans had been fighting for their independence.

Ethiopian soldiers too have died and been mained by the thousands in this latest outbreak of war. I went to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in March 1995. There I saw the war maimed among the hordes of beggars with outstretched hands. It won't be long until the current maimed join the old maimed. No wonder that the moment he heard that Ethiopian troops had attacked UN General Secretary Kofi Annan called the war "stupid."

Tigreyans, on both sides of the border, have a unique history. To the northwest of Makele is the ancient city of Aksum. From the 1st to the 7th century the Axum empire was the most powerful and prosperous in Africa. It dominated the lucrative Red Sea trade.

In the early 600's the influence of Christian Axum in Mecca was fast rising. Its Bible was written in the Semitic Ge'ez language, from which Tigreyan is descended. At that time the Meccan Arabs had no written script. But suddenly the Prophet Muhammad appeared. Soon his divine revelations were written down in the new Arabic script. And Arab warriors clenching Koran and sword fanned out over Africa and Asia. Not only did the mighty Eastern Roman and Persian Sassanian empires disintegrate but so also Axum.

Until the 1880s Ethiopia had withdrawn from history. Coptic Christianity with its monastic traditions looked to eternity, not reality. It was encroaching European imperialism that finally drove the Ethiopians to action. A dynamic new monarch took power and named himself Menelik II. Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, lived 3000 years earlier.

Menelik II was a strong leader. In 1896 his armies defeated the Italians, the first time Africans halted the seemingly unstoppable waves of European imperialism. Yet he also ceded a strip of territory then given the Greek name Eritrea to the Italians. Menelik II also founded a new capital, called Addis Ababa, in the center of the country.

These three moves not only gave security and independence to Ethiopia but also a chance to learn about the modern world through the Italians. So deep has Italian influence gone in Eritrea that even today Italian is still widely spoken. But Italian culture influenced Ethiopia as well.

Menelik II also aroused memories of Axum among the new educated class of young Ethiopians. When Mussolini transported Axum's 100 feet tall obelisk to Rome those memories began to burn bright. In 1963 Addis Ababa became the permanent headquarters of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). When Mengistu seized power in 1977 he allied himself with the Soviet Union and Cuba. With Soviet arms and Cuban soldiers he felt Ethiopia was fast becoming the great power in the Horn of Africa.

When I interviewed Meles Zenawi he said Ethiopia is not only an African but a Middle Eastern power. That is what Axum was 1500 years earlier. In 1991 Mengistu fell from power and Eritrea gained its independence. Tigreyans were in power in both countries. Until 1998 it seemed that Meles Zenawi was concentrating on decentralizing power in Ethiopia, fostering development and politically stabilizing the country. Isaias Afwerki instead began showing his power in the Red Sea. He occupied several Yemeni islands and formed close ties to Israel.

Until late 1997 Eritrea used the Ethiopian birr as its national currency. Suddenly Isaias Afwerki banned the birr and introduced a new currency called the nakfa. Suddenly all cross-border trade had to be denominated in hard currency. What likely impelled him to this act was the realization that Eritrea was floundering. The challenge to Yemen failed. Virtually everything for sale from food to automobiles was imported. The rocky terrain made agriculture difficult and the rich fishing resources were exploited by others.

Meles Zenawi regarded his former comrade's acts as a violation of the sacred memory of Axum. War was inevitable and came in 1998. And, after a brief truce, it has now returned again. Ethiopian forces have taken the major town of Barentu. It's likely that Washington may have quietly written off Eritrea as a lost cause.

What the world could soon see is the emergence of Ethiopia as East Africa's great power. For many Ethiopians that would be a revival of the ancient Axum Empire.