Ethnicity and conflict generation in Ethiopia: some problems of Ethino-Regional Federalism

Conflict studies are a burgeoning new filed of academic research, reflecting the persistence of communal disputes and violernt confrontations in the postmodern world. Indeed, in the social sciences, notably political science, sociology and social anthropology, the interest ion disputes, violence, and war and their attempted mediation or resolution has perhaps never been greater. Theoretical advances ae being made in the understanding of the interlocking factors of ideology, cultural representation, social inequality and material interests that generae conflict (see Brass 1997; Horowitz 1985, 2001; Tilly 2003; Broch-Due 2005). Although the policy impact of conflict studies as an academic field is limited, largely due to the non-receptivity of policy circles and the power struggles preventing their implementation, the relevance of the general insights attained is obvious. These insights relate to 'resource competition', persistent inequalities in socio-political systems, patterns of humiliation and abuse of minorities, and the politicisation of religion. In the past decade or so, students of the Horn of Africa, and of Ethiopia in particular, could not escape this new trend of conflict studies. Political, communal and ethnic tensions are rampant as Ethiopia struggles to develop a post-imperial society that has deal with diversity, deep-seated political conflict, and entrenched inequality inherited from the past. The post-2005 election crisis in the country has made it clear again that violence or the treat thereof remains an important idiom of politics and of group relations. To many, this is something of a puzzle after the advent of a new government in 1991 under the aegis of the rural insurgent movement Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that ended the long civil war, promising a solution to the 'national question' in Ethiopia and a defusion of ethnic and regional tensions. The TPLF fought an ethno-regional liberation war from 1975 to 1991. In 1990, it broadened into the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (or EPRDF, a coalition of parallel parties to represent other parts of Ethiopia), and later enlarged its programme nationwide with the ambition of creating a renewed, 'revolutionary-democratic' state, with more rights to be accorded to neglected minorities and language groups, and aiming for a decentralised, ethno-linguistically-based federation instead of an enforced unitary state. This was held in due course to solve the 'national question', that is, the