CAN ETHIOPIA SUSTAIN A PROTRACTED WAR?

                   by Gebremichael Mengistu (Lilo)
 
      (From ERITREA PROFILE, Vol. 5 No. 50 February 20, 1999 )
 
 
Ethiopia's decision to declare war on Eritrea last year was based on the  illusion that the outcome of the war will be determined by the magnitude  of the human and material resources, factors that certainly favour  Ethiopia. Not only was it confident of winning the war, but it thought it could finish it in a matter of weeks, if not days. Failing to realize its objective in the first round of fighting, it started to talk of its capacity to "withstand a long protracted war." But can the Ethiopian
economy really sustain a protracted war?
 
It is true that Ethiopia has a large population, about 20 times that of  Eritrea. Ethiopia may also be blessed with natural resources. But are these factors necessary and sufficient condition to make such a claim? Certainly not. Of course, in any war the quality of the human factor is decisive.
 
Ethiopia, like Eritrea, is a poor country, facing enormous development  challenges. With an income per capita of US$110, it is one of the ten least developed countries in the world. Due to war, recurrent drought and mismanagement, the performance of the Ethiopian economy in the past
three decades could be characterized as poor. In short, Ethiopia has an impoverished and devastated economy, an economy that is heavily dependent on external economic assistance.
 
Agriculture, which is the mainstay of the economy and which provides  livelihood to over 85% of the population, is characterized by low productivity. Owing to the high incidence of drought, agricultural production is erratic; between 1985 and 1997, the country had experienced seven years of drought. In may parts of the country, except for periods of good rains, the level of subsistence has been declining.

Although it may have the potential to be a regional bread-basket,  Ethiopia has yet to achieve food self-sufficiency. Even under normal conditions it has never been able to feed its own people.  A large section of the Ethiopian peasantry lives in abject misery. It is  food insecure and depends for its survival on food aid. In its recent history, there is no time that one can speak of that the country did without food aid. Between 1962 and 1995, Ethiopia received over 1 billion US dollars worth of food aid from the World Food Programme alone. The food aid that Ethiopia obtained from the donor community since 1984/85 constitutes, on the average, 15-20% of the domestic food
supply.
 
The pervasiveness of extreme material deprivation in the country is also  visible in the urban centers, including in the capital, Addis Ababa.  As pointed out earlier, the Ethiopian economy is not only weak, but it  is also heavily dependent on external assistance. It is one of the countries that are suffering from the debt cancer.

Ethiopia receives close to one billion US dollars of assistance, about  15% of its gross national product (GNP), per year form the donor community in the form of loans, grants and food aid. It is the largest recipient of external development assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa both from the European Union (over 2.4 billion US dollars between 1975 and 2000) and the World Bank (690 million dollars in the past five years).
 
The foreign assistance component of Ethiopia's public expenditure is, on  the average, about 30%.  The heavy dependence on foreign aid has made Ethiopia one of the most  heavily indebted eveloping countries. In absolute terms, it is one of the ten most heavily indebted African countries. As of 1996, Ethiopia's external debt was over 10 billion US dollars representing about 150 of
its GNP. About 45% of the country's export earnings goes to debt service payment; unless Ethiopia gets debt relief from the donor community, this ratio will definitely increase in the years to come.
 
Not surprising, all social indicators -- life expectancy, literacy rate,  infant mortality rate, maternal death rate, number of population per physician, etc. -- reflect the country's destitute state of affairs.

The human development index ranking for developing countries which is  calculated using composite variables such as life expectancy, educational achievement and income, places Ethiopia among the ten bottom countries.
 
The above brief description of the state of the Ethiopian economy,  however cursory it may be, makes it abundantly clear that Ethiopia does not have the material basis to wage a protracted war. An obvious conclusion, especially in light of the country's very precarious
political situation.
 
The untenability of Ethiopia's position is evident even to the casual  observer of the Ethiopian reality. But Ethiopia's leaders are persisting on the path of confrontation. They continue to beat the war drum, even when the leadership's folly is leading the country to disaster. The question is why the leaders of backward, impoverished and debt-ridden Ethiopia, flying in the face of reality, have chosen the path of destruction and continue to persist on that path? Why the intransigence?
 
The answer to this fundamental question lies in the thinking and belief  of the Ethiopian leadership. All along, in the calculation of the Ethiopian leadership two factors featured top in its war preparation efforts: (a) the external factor, and (b) propaganda of intimidation.
 
Ethiopia's leaders, knowing that Ethiopia is the darling of the donor  community, expect and believe the donor communities to foot the bill for their reckless military adventure. Ethiopia's ability to violate international instruments and conventions, such as the mass expulsion of
ethnic Eritreans, with impunity has helped to increase its conviction that the international community will bail it out in time of need.
 
The leadership has been unabashedly telling its people that "the  international community will support the military offensive", that "Ethiopia will obtain Substantial external assistance to re-build what may be destroyed in the war."
 
Abay Tsehaye, TPLF Politburo member, in an interview with Radio Tigray  had no shame to tell the Ethiopian people that the government "will solicit assistance for reconstructing what may be destroyed in the war."
 
To have the donor community finance the war against "poor and small"  Eritrea, the Ethiopian government has been scheming to find ways and means to tap international resources. Ethiopia's relief and emergency food aid request for 1999 is a case in point.
 
In the current crop year, Ethiopia had a bumper harvest of 11.7 million  tons. Yet, it is appealing to the donor community for relief and emergency food aid worth hundreds of millions of US dollars. The government is urging "donours to locally purchase sorghum and maize for its food aid programs and the expansion of reserve stock." It is insisting on local purchase with the sole aim of earning badly needed hard currency.
 
Certainly, local purchases are allowed under certain circumstances: If a  country is short of cash, for instance. But subsidizing the Addis Ababa regime through such a scheme at a time when it is spending around 400 million US dollars in its weapons shopping spree can only be considered
scandalous. If the coutry has surplus crop and the wherewithal for its distribution it should be required to care for its needy citizens rather than asking the international community to foot the bill.
 
Lately, Ethiopia's leaders, to extricate themselves from the difficult  position they find themselves in, have been openly calling on the world community to come to their support, a tacit admission that they cannot stand on their own. They have been asking the international community to "bring its influence to bear on Eritrea" and even to sanction Eritrea.
 
In the just concluded second round of fighting, Ethiopia's fighter  planes were manned by mercenary pilots. The use of mercenaries in the war is a glaring demonstration of Ethiopia's extreme dependence on the external factor.
 
On the propaganda front, the Ethiopian leadership believes that by  assuming a posture of military strength and preparedness and brandishing its prowess, it can achieve the following three objectives: (a) black-mail the international community to bring pressure to bear on Eritrea, (b) push the Ethiopian people to support the war, and (c) intimidate Eritrea to succumb to its demand that Eritrea should unilaterally and unconditionally withdraw from Eritrean territories that it has been claiming.
 
The international community may acquiesce to Ethiopia's leaders  blackmailing, and the Ethiopian people may be taken in by their leaders bluff. But it is time they know that Eritrea, come what may, cannot be stampeded by Ethiopia's intimidation or any other pressure to accept any arrangement that cannot bring a lasting and durable solution to the problem at hand.