Quick Review: Makonnen Araya

Negotiating A Lion’s Share of Freedom:
Adventures of an Idealist Caught up in Ethiopian Civil War
A Memoir
By Makonnen Araya
Self-published paperback; 2010; 248pp.

This was a quick, entertaining, though not particularly uplifting read. It's the memoir of the author's time as a member of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Army, the guerrilla wing of the EPRP, in rural northern Ethiopia 1977–1979.

It's quite a tale of hardship and determination that really undercuts romantic notions of what it's like to be a guerrilla. As I just read in volume two of Kiflu Tadesse's The Generation, the EPRA was set up to be a long-term project of armed struggle as the EPRP was gradually eliminated by the military government from Ethiopia's cities. Young students, workers, and even lawyers like author Makonnen Araya, targeted for assassination by the military for being “anarchists,” sought refuge in the hardscrabble liberated areas of several northern provinces. Unfortunately, the EPRA found itself in conflict not only with the military government and its peasant militias, but competing guerrilla groups like the TPLF and EDU; while it did provide refuge for militants fleeing the cities, it didn't seem to morph into a serious military threat to the Derg. Although the EPRP leadership had hoped to make a strategic turn to rural guerrilla war, Makonnen here admits that while the EPRA met with some sympathy at first, it was never able to follow up its plans and promises with enough military power to make a viable difference for Ethiopian peasants unhappy with the Derg.

The story recounted is mostly not one of military confrontation but of survival and a somewhat futile attempt to win over the peasant population to leftist ideals which seemed abstract to the bitterly poor peasants among whom the EPRA operated. His main enemies turn out to be lice, hunger, cheap rubber shoes, and unrelenting weather. But Makonnen relates in great detail his attempt to negotiate escape from Addis Ababa through clandestine channels, his dangerous journey to the EPRA's Tigray base, and then his guerrilla training in an EPRA camp. He recounts two years spent with the guerrillas in the bush, largely living off the land and trying to keep away from government forces. Eventually Makonnen resigns his post and joins the flood of Ethiopian refugees in the borderlands, escaping Ethiopia for Khartoum in the Sudan, where he navigates UN relief, vindictive veterans of the rival, anti-communist EDU militia, and local law enforcement before winning relocation to the US.

It's a really interesting, if sobering, read. Although self-published it is readily available on Amazon.