Document #1057561
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Author)
The Afars are nomadic people who have
established trade links between Djibouti and Ethiopia. [ External
Affairs, 1 May 1989.] The Afars, also known as the Danakil or
Adalis, constitute approximately 4% of Ethiopia's population, and
are located in the Northeast in the Danakil Depression (refer to
map). [ George Kurian, ed. Encyclopedia of the Third World,
Facts on File, inc., 1987, p. 666.] The majority of the Afars are
Muslim. [ Kurian, p. 668.] The semi-nomadic Saho are a mix of Afar
and Arab stock, and are also Muslims. [ Ibid.] The Afars seek an
autonomous region, including a permanent partition of the port of
Assab. [ Bennett, p. 46.] A major confrontation between the
government and the Afars occurred when the Land Reform Program
instituted in 1975 by the revolutionary government met with
resistance from Afars who interpreted the reforms as a threat to
the traditional land rights of peasants. [ Ibid.] The resistance to
the reforms was confronted with military force by the government
(see below). More recently, the U.S. State Department reported that
"up to 100 civilians may have been massacred by the Eritrean
People's Liberation Front for attempting to prevent the military
recruitment of young Afar tribesmen." [ U.S. Department of State,
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988,
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1989), p.
109.]
No information regarding the AWSA movement
in Ethiopia is available to the IRBDC at this time. In an article
by John Bennett, "The Afars of Eastern Tigray", the autocratic
sultanate of "Aussa" is mentioned, which reportedly has a "sizable
army", [ John Bennett, "The Afars of Eastern Tigray: a Quest for
self-Determination", Horn of Africa, Vol VI, No. 4, 1983, p.
45.] however this spelling conflicts with the information provided
by J. Courteau which indicates that AWSA is an acronym made from
the names of four cities. Two other Afar movements, the Afar
Liberation Front (ALF) and the Afar National Liberation Movement
(ANLM), were active in the mid-seventies. The Afar National
Liberation Movement agitated for an autonomous Afar region, but
after the independence of Djibouti in 1977, the ANLM "held to a
program of a future Afar state as an expansion of Djibouti." [
Bennett, p. 46.] After the Afar Liberation Front resisted the Land
Reforms in 1975 and suffered heavy losses, [ Bennett, p.46.] it
began to harass traffic on the Addis-Assab road and rail links to
Djibouti. In a recent report, the Afar Liberation Front attacked a
military convoy on the Addis-Assab road, destroying 9 military
aircraft and 120 military vehicles. [ "Ethiopia", Africa
Research Bulletin, Vol 26, No.2, 15 March 1989, p. 9190.] The
report also indicated that members of the ALF may now be
cooperating with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.