Messay Kebede
The circumstance behind this paper is the discussion I recently had with three eminent members of the Ethiopian intelligentsia, Aklog Birara, Geletaw Zeleke, and Yonas Biru. The purpose was to review Yonas’s paper titled “Fano’s Military Successes and Political Tragedies.” Hosted and moderated by Reeyot Alemu, the entire discussion was released on YouTube at the address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0tSEll-G30. At one definite point, the discussion veered towards the question of whether the atrocities being committed in the Amhara region by the federal government amount to genocidal acts. The question divided the panel between supporters and skeptics of the accusation of genocide. My position stated that crimes were and are being committed in the Amhara region, but they do not yet rise to the level of genocide. The controversy continued in the comments to the YouTube video, the overwhelming majority endorsing the charge of genocide. In particular, criticizing my position, the comments accused me of missing the true picture and of belittling the horrifying mistreatment of the Amhara people. Given that I did not have the time to clarify my position, I decided to write this paper to set the record straight as to what constitutes genocide, as opposed to other crimes like ethnic cleansing, politicide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc.
Be it noted that the intention of the paper is neither to underestimate the plight of the Amhara people nor to undermine the efforts of those who speak of genocide in order to alert the international community of the brutalities occurring in the region. Rather, my fear is that misuse of the term entails consequences that disfigure the true nature of the war. Indeed, the use of the term “genocide” in a way that is not in line with international standards can backfire. It could be seen as an attempt to deceive the international community, not to mention the fact that war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, etc., are no less crimes than genocide. Another compelling reason behind this paper is that the term “genocide” hides what is really going on in the Amhara region. Indeed, the war is not just between government forces and Fano combatants; it is also an intra-Amhara armed conflict. The term “genocide” does not fit a situation where a part of the Amhara people cooperates with and fights for the government. What is more, the framing of the war as genocide muddles the political nature of the war, with the result that it insulates the cause and the struggle of the Amhara people from the broader longing for change of the Ethiopian people.
The UN Definition of Genocide
The important thing when discussing the issue of genocide is to avoid making magnitude into a defining mark of its essence. Even though genocide is often qualified as the “crime of crimes,” this approach runs the risk of overlooking its specific nature. One reason for privileging magnitude is that the notion of genocide is, in our minds, closely tied up with the Holocaust, not so much because of its specificity as because of the extent of the harm. Yet, for Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who devised the term “genocide” in 1944, the distinctive feature is not magnitude, though it is often part of it. That is why he came up with a definition liable to catalog crimes reproducing the singular nature of the Holocaust. Taking up this idea of specificity, the UN defines genocide as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” In 1948, the UN Genocide Convention ratified genocide as an independent and punishable international crime.
The UN definition attributes two components to genocide: one component is the physical part; the other is the intent. The physical aspect covers the harm caused and the mental damage associated with it. Besides the mass killings of a group and severe physical and mental impairments, genocide includes other acts like rape, torture, destruction of resources necessary for the survival of a group, prevention of reproduction within the group, etc. The intent is the component that delivers the distinct nature of genocide in distinction to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, etc., which also cause extensive physical and mental harm. The definition clearly says that the intent must be to eliminate human beings for the sole and exclusive reason that they are members of a racial, ethnic, or religious group.
Accordingly, for genocide to occur, the violence must target a group of people, not because of this or that reason that genociders find offensive, but simply because they possess this or that group’s identity. True, some form of justification is always provided; the real motive, however, is never the things that the victims have allegedly done, but the conviction that those things are or turned out to be offensive because the victims belong to a specific group identity. Consequently, the UN definition does not count as genocide the systematic persecution of political opponents, social groups with specific ideological beliefs, or social communities like homosexual groups. As horrific and extensive as these persecutions may be, they do not necessarily come under crimes committed because the persecuted belong to a national, ethnic, or religious group.
In addition to excluding the popular identification of genocide with any horrific and large-scale destruction, the narrow UN definition guards against turning it into a quantitative issue. The proof of this is that it restricts genocide to the causing of systematic harm with the intent of eliminating, wholly or partially, a cultural, ethnic, or religious group. In stating that the intended eradication can be total or partial, the definition postulates that genocide is not about the number of people killed or harmed. Rather, it is about harming members of a group because they belong to a specific group that meets the mentioned parameters. The argument that genocide did not take place because a part of the group was spared is thus unacceptable. The size of the part that was not exterminated does not matter; what matters is the intent to destroy the part because it belongs to a specific group.
So defined, it is not surprising that only a few cases of massive and horrendous crimes gathered consensus among the international community as to their genocidal intent and hence their legally prosecutable status. The number contrasts with the accusations of genocide, even by respectable international organizations, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, wherever countries are thorn with conflicts, be they caused by social rebellions or internal or external wars. The determination of intent is all the more difficult because governments or organized groups do not always openly declare their genocidal intent. In the absence of declared intent, the only recourse is often to infer it from deeds, verbal declarations, or written documents. This adds to the difficulty because the inference has to show that genocide is the only reasonable deduction.
The reason for the eagerness to denounce genocide is that the word “genocide” evokes the highest, the most horrific, point of human violence against other humans. As such, it has the power to mobilize the international community, especially Western democracies, the consequence of which could be the implementation of economic sanctions, arms embargo, and even the deployment of military force, both to punish the perpetrators and end the heinous crimes. Likewise, political groups opposing governments inflicting extensive crimes readily cry out for genocide because of the hope that its external as well as internal mobilizing effects would weaken the governments they want to overthrow.
So far, the large consensus reached on the occurrence of genocide includes the Holocaust, the 1994 Rwandan case, and the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916. The crimes committed against the kulaks under Stalin, those perpetrated by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, and by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia have not gathered consensus. Nor did the massacres of Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, the killings by government-backed Arab militias of ethnic African groups in the Darfur region of Western Sudan in 2004, or the expulsion and killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces in 1948. While some people readily speak of these cases as genocides, other people and institutions like the International Criminal Tribunal refrained from doing so. For the latter, the intent in these cases is either political in that it targets political opponents, harbors political goals, or has to do with ethnic cleansing.
Alternatives Terms
What is said so far amply confirms that the narrowness of the UN definition of genocide raises controversy on two important points: 1) the difficulty of proving intent; and 2) the exclusion from the category of genocide of staggering number of crimes despite their horrendous and massive nature. The extent of the controversy goes beyond the popular understanding of genocide; it also opposes historians, political scientists, and legal experts, many of them insisting that massive crimes against political and social groups should be included in the genocidal category of crimes. Understandably, Western governments are reluctant to expand the meaning of genocide because of their fear of having to send troops whenever and wherever in the world massive crimes are committed. There is also the concern that the issue would be so politicized that it will turn, as is often the case already, into partisan alignments if the strict legal parameters are not respected.
The restriction of genocide to specific groups and the difficulty of proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt have compelled scholars, politicians, and activists to look for terms liable to designate and single out massive crimes, especially during military conflicts when governments target civilian populations under cover of war. For instance, the large number of civilians who become victims of aerial bombardments is not labeled as genocide because, arguably, they are collateral damage due to military operations. Calling these bombardments war crimes could help counter this kind of argument.
As the term indicates, war crimes occur in a situation of national or international armed conflicts. They are perceived as violations of international humanitarian law because they are attacks on noncombatants or combatants protected by the Geneva Conventions. Geneva protections include prisoners of war and wounded combatants while the designation of noncombatants comprises members of the civilian population, but also medical personnel, humanitarian workers, religious attendants, etc. The difference between war crime and genocide is clear enough: in the first case, racial, ethnic, or religious features are not the reasons why the victims are targeted. As they happen in the context of armed conflict, war crimes affect diverse people. As such, they violate humanitarian laws and are distinct from crimes targeting specific religious, ethnic, or religious groups.
Another word used to designate systematic and extensive crimes is “crimes against humanity.” The obvious difference with war crimes is that crimes against humanity do not necessarily take place in the context of armed conflicts; they can occur in peaceful times. The term covers attacks against civilian populations and crimes like arbitrary imprisonment, summary execution, extermination, the practice of slavery, sexual violence, torture, etc. Yet, it differs markedly from genocide because the attacks and the crimes are not motivated by the victims’ ethnic, religious, or racial characteristics. Usually, the motive for such crimes is political in nature.
A third term to designate systematic and wide crimes is ethnic cleansing. It relates to actions that forcefully remove or expel a group from a given area, the intent being ethnic homogenization. Because ethnic cleansing is not recognized as a crime by international law, understandably, it raises much controversy, with many scholars and legal experts arguing that it should be classified as genocide. For them, if the expulsion of a certain group from the area harbors the intent of destroying the group, the action fulfills the requirements of genocide. By contrast, other experts counterargue by saying that, since the intent is still not genocidal in the legal sense of the term, the acceptable solution is to place ethnic cleansing in the category of crimes against humanity
Another term to describe systematic and widespread crimes is politicide. In this instance, the intent of the crimes is distinctly not genocidal; it is political in that a particular group of people is attacked, not because of its defining characteristics, but because of its political and ideological beliefs. Repression targets political beliefs and opposition in distinction to the intent of eliminating a group on account of its ethnic, religious, or racial features. Politicide covers many of the cases that were excluded from the category of genocide. Stalin’s crimes against the Kulaks, the Khmer Rouge’s massacres in Cambodia, the Darfur butcheries in the Soudan, and many other similar cases fall under the concept of politicide.
Genocide against the Amhara People: Some Recalcitrant Facts
In the introductory part of this paper, I indicated that many scholars, legal experts, and politicians, mostly of Amhara extraction, readily label the atrocities committed against the Amhara people as genocide. In their eyes, the Amhara are killed, imprisoned, tortured, sexually abused, and their livelihoods destroyed because of their ethnic and religious characteristics. For instance, the Ethiopian Dialogue Forum Board (EDF) distributed a short paper titled “Stop Deliberate and Accelerated Amhara Genocide: Appeal to the International Community and to all Ethiopians,” asserts categorically that genocide is committed against the Amhara. The paper says: “a pre-planned destruction of the Amhara people was set in motion using different methods-mass killings, displacements, and dispossession of Amhara everywhere in the country, the burning of Amhara-majority towns, villages, and places of worship, and the relentless expulsion of Amhara from their homesteads, localities, jobs, and enterprises. The culprits behind this synchronized and recurrent action intended to kill the will of Amhara to live.”
Though the expression “to kill the will of Amhara to live” is not clear, the crimes enumerated by the group have occurred for years and continue in the present with even greater intensity. However, before examining whether the charge of genocide is legally defensible, let us dwell on some recalcitrant facts proper to the Amhara case. One such fact concerns the positioning of combatants in the ongoing war. On the one side, we find Fano rebels who are fighting against the government and its army with the support of a large chunk of the Amhara population; on the other side, we have the federal government and its armed forces, the regional Amhara state, and Amhara militias, all fighting back to crush the uprising. In addition to the Amhara state and militias siding with and supporting the federal government, Amhara politicians and cadre are important members, both in number and leadership, of the ruling Prosperity Party. Add to this the substantial presence in the federal government of Amhara politicians: it ranges from deputy prime minister and important ministerial positions to army senior officers. Since Amhara generals are conducting the war against Fano and the Amhara population and the Amhara regional state works in tandem with the government, what else could one conclude but that the war in the Amhara region has the strong connotation of being a civil war among the Amhara as well. This trait hardly accommodates the scheme of exterminating a specific ethnic group.
It is important to realize that division within the Amhara community is an important factor in the ongoing war. Even as I write, the federal government, with the help of the Amhara regional state, is recruiting and training a new Amhara militia force with the intent of turning the fight into a fight between Amhara. That a part of Amhara youth, no matter what the motive is, whether economic or any other reason, is ready to offer its service to the government is a disturbing fact. At any rate, it shows that division constitutes one of the hurdles standing in Fano’s way to victory, just as is the inability of Fano fighters to come together to form a united front. So that, characterizing the war in terms of Abiy’s government versus Fano, although otherwise in the main correct, is a partial view. It must be completed by adding that the war is also between an Amhara faction and the rest of the Amhara people. As I said in the introduction, the term “genocide” creates the illusion that indiscriminate extermination threatens all and any Amhara while the reality on the ground is that a faction of the Amhara people sticks by and assists the government.
The other recalcitrant fact goes back to the Tigray war. It exposes the inconsistency of those who now cry out “genocide,” given that these same people adamantly denied Tigrayan elites’ claim accusing government troops of genocide against the Tigrayan people. It is not consequential, to say the least, to reject the occurrence of genocide in one case when the atrocities committed in Tigray had a similar objective to those occurring in the Amhara region. Obviously, the Tigrayan accusation of genocide was rejected for two reasons: 1) the deniers considered Tigrayans as enemies of the Amhara; 2) the Tigrayan army engaged in criminal conduct when it invaded the Amhara territory.
Besides, it is not clear why the Ethiopian government, dominated as it appears to be by Oromo nationalists, would want to exterminate the Amhara. The attribution of such an aim forgets that past grievances against Amhara elites drive Oromo nationalists, with the consequence that the need for revenge heavily weighs on their political objectives. In other words, Oromo nationalists want to humiliate those who, they believe, humiliated them in the past. Extermination does not satisfy the need to humiliate; what satisfies it is to dominate in turn the Amhara. In consequence, rather than extermination, the goal of the war is to force the Amhara to submit to the new Oromo order, and this largely explains the use of renegade Amhara elites and militia to counter the Amhara resistance.
Coercing into Submission through Politicide
This last remark brings out the true goal of the war, which is political, as was the case in the armed conflict in Tigray. The fact that Fano groups are fighting back and are inflicting great damage on the Ethiopian army, even to the point of putting the government on the defensive, reinforces the political objective. True, it would be mistaken to deny the occurrence of genocide because the targeted group fights back to protect itself. Since the decisive factor is the intent to eliminate a group because of its identity, the fact that the endangered group counterattacks does not erase the intended objective. However, if the intent to destroy a group because of its characteristics is not present from the get-go, neither the growing intensity of the war nor the mounting number of civilian victims can turn it into a genocide.
The growing human and material damages simply demonstrate the extent to which the government is willing to go to crush the base of support for the Fano insurgents, which support is overwhelmingly provided by the Amhara people. Fano leaders add another explanation when they attribute the intensification of the war and the increasing attacks on civilian targets to the desperation of the federal armed forces. Because the latter gradually realize their inability to prevail, they take on the civilian population out of sheer revenge. All this confirms both the political nature of the war and the federal government’s absolute rejection of a solution through peaceful negotiations, which would imply a give-and-take arrangement. In the eyes of the government, there is only one path: complete surrender; otherwise, the whole region faces far-reaching destruction.
The more resistance scales up, the more the attacks on non-military objectives escalate, and the more the cry for genocide expands and becomes louder. Yet, as long as the intent remains political, none of these quantitative surges transform it into a genocidal intent. I recently read an article written in Amharic justifying the use of the term genocide. It says: “A government that rejects political negotiation will resort to genocide if it cannot obtain what it wants by force” (my translation of “የድርድር ፖለቲካን የማይቀበለው ይህ ኃይል፣ በጉልበት የሚፈልገውን ማግኘት ካልቻለ መጠነ ሰፊ የዘረ ፍጅት እንደሚጀምር ብዙ ማሳያዎች አሉ።”). According to this view, a political goal of domination turns into genocide if it encounters strong resistance. However, for this transformation to occur, the intent must no longer be political. It must clearly assume the aim of exterminating the Amhara ethnic group, whether the group submits or not to the government. I am not ruling out the possibility of extremist Oromo nationalists deciding to exterminate as many Amhara as possible. Such a decision could come if they reach the point of saying: let us kill as many as we can since we cannot defeat them. To all appearances, this point has not been reached yet and does not even seem to be in the cards.
To make the distinction between genocidal and political intent as clear as possible, I ask readers to go back in history, in particular to the time of the institution of slavery. A cursory approach is enough to grasp the rationale behind slavery as a human institution. To simplify matters, let us say that adversarial groups fight against each other, no matter the reason, and the fight ends, as is often the case, with a victorious and a defeated group. The victor now faces a choice: it can decide either to exterminate the defeated group or reduce it to slavery in exchange for sparing its life. The difference between the two intents is unmistakable. The intent to exterminate shows that the victor has no other goal than to erase the defeated group from the surface of the earth. By contrast, the decision to enslave wants to turn military victory into economic and psychological bonuses. In reducing the defeated group to slavery, members of the victorious group become masters who enjoy, not only the free labor of their slaves, but also high social statuses, like nobility.
The example of slavery illuminates the intent of the war being waged against the Amhara people. Atrocities are committed, not to eliminate the group physically, but to bring it to such a level of defeat that the group has no other way out than to submit unconditionally. Just as in the case of slavery, Abiy’s government and his extremist Oromo nationalists are after domination rather than extermination. Driven as they are, as I said earlier, by resentment over past treatments, they pursue a policy of revenge. And what better way is there to assuage the desire for revenge than to humiliate through domination those who, they believe, humiliated them? Just as slave owners yield more returns from slavery than senseless extermination, so too are extremist Oromo nationalists striving for higher social positions and for what they perceive as redemption against past treatments.
All the more reason to hold on to the political intent is that the genocidal interpretation of the war hurts rather than assists the cause of the Amhara people. Indeed, its consequence is that the Amhara group isolates itself from other ethnic groups by presenting itself as a group specifically targeted for extermination. In so doing, it says that it has no common cause with other ethnic groups, that mere survival drives its resistance at a time when non-Amhara groups are precisely gearing for change. In defining the fight exclusively in terms of survival, the questions of forming allies, presenting an inclusive political program, and engaging in ideological confrontations on the future of Ethiopia take a faraway backseat. Instead of taking the leadership of the national quest for social change by presenting an inclusive political agenda, Fano groups turn their cause into an exclusive concern for the safety of the Amhara people. Indeed, whatever is deemed exclusive is by definition insulating, and so excludes others. Moreover, is it surprising if the neglect of the political agenda in favor of the struggle for survival stands in the way of the unification around a political vision of Fano fighters themselves? The focus on survival belittles the need and the sense of building a common house both for Fano fighters and other ethnic groups.
To sum up, how, then, short of genocide, can we best capture the manifold nature of the ongoing atrocities in the Amhara region? The most approximate picture would be the one combining four types of crimes, to wit, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and politicide. As defined before, war crimes occur in a situation of armed conflicts when noncombatants and combatants protected by the Geneva Conventions become targets of attack. Evidently, the frequent use of military drones and aircraft as well as heavy weapons to bomb civilian populations in the Amhara region constitutes war crimes. Likewise, the killings and forceful removals of Amhara peasants from Wollega and other places in Oromia and elsewhere are clear cases of ethnic cleansing. Lastly, torture, sexual assault, mutilation, pillage, cruel mistreatment, etc., which are all acts frequently occurring in the Amhara region, are flagrant crimes against humanity. The fourth type of crime, namely, politicide encompasses the three others and gives the intent, which is the attempt to destroy a political opponent and its base of support. To force submission, the government uses all military means, not only against the combatants but also against the civilian population. If one compares the crimes taking place in the Amhara region to those of Oromia and Tigray, one sees that the crimes are relatively similar, notwithstanding the comparatively high level of the atrocities in the Amhara region. The notable difference, however, is that neither Tigrayans nor Oromo have become victims of ethnic cleansing.
