HORN OF AFRICA: Threat Of Fundamentalism Grips The Region

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 14 1997 (IPS) - The rise of a new Islamic rebel group in Somalia seeking to topple the “Judeo-Christian hegemony” in Ethiopia and Eritrea threatens to bring more conflict to the troubled Horn of African region.

The Oromo-Somali-Afar Liberation Alliance (OSALA) is seeking to establish an Islamic Order in Ethiopia and Eritrea, both with the largest numbers of Christians in the region which stretches from Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, D’jibouti to Somalia.

OSALA views the tiny Red Sea state of Eritrea, which broke away from Ethiopia in 1991 following 30 years of war, as a renegade province which must be brought back to the fold.

“We seek to replace the present minority rule with a government of the majority putting an end to centuries of Christian domination and Judeo-Christian ideological hegemony,” said OSALA chairman Bushra Hussein in a statement made available to IPS Wednesday.

Formed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu on Aug. 31, OSALA comprises the United Oromo People’s Liberation Front (UOPLF), the Oromo Abbo Liberation Front (OALF), the Somali People’s Liberation Front (SPLF), the Oromo People’s Liberation Organisation (OPLO), the Afar People’s Liberation Army (APLA) and the Islamic Union of Western Somalia.

About 48 percent of Ethiopia’s estimated 56 million population is Muslim, 40 percent is Ethiopian Orthodox, and the remaining 12 percent follow traditional African religions. Eritrea’s population, on the other hand, is 50 percent Moslems and 50 percent Christians.

“Since the majority of the people in this region are Moslems, the future constitution must draw heavily from the tenets of Islam,” Hussein argues.

Last year, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a Christian, sent Ethiopian troops across Somalia to “destroy” the bases of the Islamic fundamentalist group ‘al-Itihad al-Islam’ there.

And, Eritrean leader Isaiah Afewerki, also a Christian, has threatened to despatch troops across Sudan to flush out Eritrean fundamentalist groups in that country.

Hassan Abdalla al Turabi, Sudan’s spiritual leader and speaker of Parliament, has warned that Khartoum would not hesitate if invaded by Ethiopia or Eritrea to unleash the “millions” of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees living in the Sudan to destabilise their countries.

Relations are already at such a low ebb that Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda, have cut diplomatic relations with Khartoum for allegedly sheltering militants to destabilise them.

Equally alarmed by the claims of the growing threat of fundamentalism in the region, the United States last year channelled nearly 20 million dollars in U.S. military equipment to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda, each of which reportedly support Sudanese rebel groups.

Wahington’s move to send military equipment came just four years after the United States placed Sudan on its “watch list” of terrorist states. It joined Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Cuba.

OSALA’s formation further worries the Horn’s secular neighbours — Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) and the Central African Republic — because it has promised to add more fuel to the fires of conflict already burning in the region.

“OSALA’s strategy is to conduct three forms of warfare — guerilla, popular uprising and conventional assault — simultaneously to defeat the enemy in the shortest possible time as to minimise destruction to property and suffering of our people,” said Hussein in the seven-page document which announced the organisation’s formation.

The organisation accuses Ethiopia’s “two Semitic brothers”, Amhara and Tigre, of imposing their “Judeo-Christian hegemony” over the country. It says, “the Tigres have always been the least tolerant and the most brutal towards Muslims and other non- Christian peoples”.

“Tigre rulers have always been more vocal expressing their ‘divine’ mission of defending the ‘Christian Island’, reviving the old Axumite epire which their legend has as extending from Yemen to Madagascar and putting an end to the Muslim and Galla threat for good,” he document said.

The Galla, also known as the Oromo, is Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.

The Oromo, who make up about 40 percent of Ethiopia’s population, have fought against both the Amhara and Tigre hegemony. They resumed armed struggle against the Tigre-dominated regime of Zenawi in 1993, two years after the fall of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, an Amhara.

But the main rebel Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has distanced itself from the idea of setting up an Islamic state in Ethiopia.

“We are not a sectarian movement. We are a secular and democratic liberation movement, which transcends religious and ethnic lines, the OLF representative in London, Ali Taha Abdi, told IPS recently.