Eritrea conflict puts Ethiopian prime minister in firing line:
Ethiopian hardliners are itching to tear up colonial map, reports Michela Wrong:
Financial Times (London)
July 17, 1998, Friday

The Ethiopian official's denial came with a polite smile. No, there was no truth to the rumour that Meles Zenawi is under house arrest, he told a press briefing. But the very fact that the question could be voiced of a man who until two months ago seemed one of Africa's most unassailable leaders was indicative of a sea-change.

If the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that exploded in May sent tremors through the international community, threatening a swathe of instability from the Great Lakes to the Horn of Africa, it also threatens repercussions closer to home.

With its 82 ethnic groups, bevy of restless separatist movements and a Tigrayan leadership contemptuously dismissed by the former ruling elite as an "occupying force", Ethiopia looks more vulnerable to an internal shake-up than tiny Eritrea.

So far, say Addis Ababa residents, the instinct has been to rally around the flag. As the military build-up on the frontier continues, students have turned fervent nationalists and opposition parties have cancelled rallies out of solidarity with the government. The expulsion of thousands of Eritreans who had lived in Ethiopia for decades has scarcely triggered a murmur of protest. Encouraging the trend has been some crude, but effective, propaganda. At briefings a government spokeswoman blasts the senseless actions of a crazed dictator - Eritrea's President Isiais Afewerki. Newspapers rail against the "fascists" across the border and television screens images of thousands of militiamen heading for the front.

In the long term, however, the propaganda machine's very effectiveness could pose a problem for the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, exposing fissures in what had seemed an impressively monolithic structure.

Until now the public relations war has largely gone Ethiopia's way, with Addis convincing foreign allies it is the victim of unprovoked aggression.

But if that sympathy is to continue, Eritrea's claim that Ethiopia is secretly bent on redrawing colonial frontiers must appear absurd. And as the war euphoria mounts, many Ethiopians - especially an Amhara bourgeoisie which never forgave the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) for granting Eritrea independence and severing Addis from the sea - nurse precisely that ambition.

"Hidden agenda? There's nothing hidden about it," says an academic. "A lot of Ethiopians think this a god-sent opportunity to prosecute the war to its logical conclusion, seize a Red Sea port, and have nothing more to do with Eritrea. "If it weren't for Meles and this leadership, fighting between the TPLF and EPLF [Eritrean People's Liberation Front] would have broken out as soon as Addis fell. We should have done it in 1991, instead we are doing it now." Viewing realpolitik in terms more reminiscent of the 19th than 20th century, these Ethiopians are particularly suspicious of Mr Meles.

Half-Eritrean, he until recently enjoyed what many regarded as an overly warm friendship with Mr Isiais. The TPLF leadership and army are also both full of hardliners itching for the chance to tear up colonial maps and march to the sea. So Mr Meles is in a quandary. Compromise, and it will be regarded as a signal the Tigrayan minority at the EPRDF's heart has sold out Ethiopia. Act tough, and one of the world's poorest countries faces another costly war. "Meles is treading a very thin line between keeping his hardliner Tigrayans at bay and being an Ethiopian nationalist," says a diplomat.

"If he succeeds he'll emerge the stronger. But there's a danger he'll be used by the TPLF as a scapegoat if things go wrong." Hence the rumours of house arrest. Hence also the speculation about a possible successor, with the name of Seyoum Mesfin, the uncompromising foreign minister, top of the list. In neighbouring Eritrea officials predict more than just a cabinet reshuffle, saying the war, in destroying a bond that helped a northern minority stay in power, heralds the TPLF's demise.

"This is the beginning of the end of the TPLF," says a minister in Asmara. "The country has proved too amorphous, too big for them. They don't have the support of the people and now they've turned against the EPLF, their only friends." They point to the federal constitution introduced in 1994, which split Ethiopia into nine ethnically based provinces. The government's adoption of federalism - paradoxical in the light of its recent reaction to anything smacking of territorial annexation - showed how aware the EPRDF was of the risk of fragmentation.

By dangling the right to secede in front of the provinces, Addis hoped to defuse regional tensions and keep Ethiopia together. But critics say the scheme proved a sham, as locally stationed TPLF cadres maintaining rigid central control.

With separatist aspirations still simmering in Oromiya, Afar and Somali regions, a mass army redeployment to the Eritrean border carries attendant risks. Already there are rumours of separatist representatives being spotted in Asmara, presumably courting Eritrean support. In Addis, such problems look far off. "In the long term there's the potential that certain areas will take advantage of the army's preoccupation," says a political analyst. "But we're not there yet."