Ethiopian women at war
Following on from yesterday’s post, I wanted to do a little series on the role of Ethopian women – especially during war! From the earliest days, women were encouraged to participate in mobilization and preparation efforts alongside men. As well as preparing supplies, the also acted as battlefield cheerleaders – encouraging and supporting soldiers to rouse them against the enemy. As laws governing land-tenure usually required at least part-time military service in times of war, widows of male soldiers could also be called upon to perform military duties. Females were traditionally not allowed to inherit land unless the father died before the daughter married or there were no sons in the family. However, women would be able to claim property after serving in military mobilization efforts. Thus, the ability of women to participate militarily initiated change to their otherwise lower societal status. Not all participation in war, however, was voluntary, as is clearly depicted in the following 19th century decree by the leader Ras Gugsa: “One who does not join the army of Gugsa, man and woman, will lose his genital and her breast respectively.” Few allowances were made for women. For example, long military campaigns often entailed marches of up to 20 miles a day, particularly gruelling for pregnant women, or women recovering from childbirth, but they were usually expected to keep up with the men. Women were also expected to carry heavy loads of provisions and supplies. This is a marked difference from the West where until very recently women were not allowed any active duties in a war zone.
One of the earliest known female warriors is Queen Yodit, who fought valiantly
on the battlefield to successful overthrow the powerful Aksumite kingdom. Between
1464 and 1468, under the leadership of King Zere Yaqob, women’s expansion into
political positions became more evident. Historian Richard Pankhurst notes how
Zere Yaqob “established a women’s administration by appointing his daughters
and relatives to key provinces.”
King Zere Yaqob’s wife, Queen Eleni, was another formidable
and astute military strategist, and in 1520 was largely responsible for the
arrival of the Portuguese as one of the first diplomatic missions. Foreseeing
the likelihood of the Turks invading Ethiopia, she proposed a joint attack
strategy to the Portuguese leadership against the Egyptians and the Ottoman
Turks. Her plan worked, and The Turks were defeated.
Following Eleni’s example, Queen Seble Wongel was able
to draw on the help of the Portuguese in defeating Ahmed Gragn’s muslim
expansion into Ethiopia. In February 1543, her army fought at the battle of
Woina Dega where Gragn succumbed to his death.
In the late 17th century, when most women
were confined to the domestic realm, the
number of Ethiopian women participating in war campaigns was rising. Whereas
most war decrees at this time encouraged ALL Ethiopians to fight, in 1691
Emperor Iyasu issued one of the first proclamations to curtail the rapid growth
of women soldiers. However, many male rulers would not have been in power
without the women behind them. Queen
Worqitu is credited with helping Menelik claim his crown, because in 1865 Queen
Worqitu of Wollo granted Menelik a safe route through her territory as the
future monarch successfully escaped from King Tewodros’ prison.
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Perhaps the most famous queen involved in military
affairs is Empress Taitu,, “the Light of Ethiopia” (see yesterdays post!). Historians
have estimated that an average of 20,000 to 30,000 women have participated in her
campaign against the Italians at Adwa alone. While the majority served in non-combative
roles such as food preparation and nursing the wounded, a significant portion
served as soldiers, strategists, advisors, translators, and intelligence
officers. Women from the aristocracy worked alongside maids and servants
thereby breaking norms in class separation.
Depicting the atmosphere during the battle of Adwa in
1896, historian G.F. Berkeley observes: “It’s not an army [it is] an invasion,
the transplanting of the whole people. No one was left behind. While men served
as soldiers they brought along with them their wives who in turn became
involved either as civilian participants or as military combatants. What
rights, titles, honors men claimed for their valor women were able to do the
same”.
Following Taitu’s example, Itege Menen avidly
participated in battles taking places during the ‘Era of the Princes.’ Fighting
against the incursion of the Egyptians, she is said to have had 20,000 soldiers
under her command. Plunged into war, Empress Menen is to have asserted “Women
of the world unite. Demand with one voice that we may be spared the honor of
this useless bloodshed!”
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With the rise of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party,
Italy sought revenge for its humiliation at Taytu’s hand. Photos of Ethiopian girls and women were used to entice
Italian men into joining Mussolini’s army, and they entered Ethiopia singing of
what they would do to Ethiopian women. There are countless women who could (and will) be
posts of their own including: Lekyelesh Beyan, Kebedech Seyoum, Shewareged
Gedle and Qeleme Worq Tiruneh. However, many thousands of women, often forced
to flee to the hills to escape Italian bombing and poison-gas campaigns,
heroically participated in the resistance through underground networks,
guerrilla warfare and intelligence gathering until Italy was defeated again in
1941.
During the Italian occupation, Princess Romanworq
Haile Selassie upheld the tradition of women going to the war and fought
alongside her husband. In the role of translator, she served her country by
accompanying the Emperor to the League of Nations and aiding in Ethiopia’s call
for support from the International Community.
Intelligence work was key in Ethiopia’s gaining the
upper hand against fascist Italy and here too women played a significant role.
Through the establishment of the Central Committee of ‘Wust Arbegnoch’ (Inner
Patriots) women members helped provide soldiers with intelligence information
as well as arms, ammunition, food, clothing, and medicine. Sylvia Pankhurst
also records how the female patriot Shewa Regged had organized an elite
Ethiopian intelligence service to gather more arms while leading the Ethiopian
guerilla fighters to the locale of Addis Alem to defeat an Italian
fortification. Pankhurst recounts Shewa Regged’s resilience in her biography as
follows: “She was captured by the Italians and tortured by them with
electricity to compel her to disclose her accomplices; despite all their
cruelties, she preserved silence.” When someone mentions WW2, I bet 99% of us
picture white men in French trenches – not black women driving back the
Italians!
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However, it was not just foreign foes that Ethiopian
women proved formidable against – they also played a crucial role in the Ethiopian
civil war in the late twentieth century. The Tigray People's Liberation Front
(TPLF), lit. 'Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray') waged a 15-year-long war against the Derg
regime which was overthrown in 1991. With the help of its former ally, the
Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), the TPLF overthrew the dictatorship
of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) and established a new
government on 28 May 1991 that ruled Ethiopia until it was ousted from power by
the federal government in 2018.
Improving the role of women in society was a major
concern of the TPLF from its earliest days, in part because of their liberal
philosophy, but also because the TPLF needed to utilise ALL its supporters against
the Derg. In 1978, the first Women's Mass Associations were established in
Sheraro and Zana, which were among the earliest areas to be liberated. Although women were not at
first welcomed as fighters into the TPLF, by 1983 the Front claimed that
one-third of the fighters were women. It was recognized that the term 'fighter'
referred to a range of positions and not just those involved in military combat.
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However, one should not be overly
idealistic about women’s role in Ethiopian society. As we have seen, elite
women in Ethiopia have long been administrators and warriors. However,
this never translated into any benefit to improve the rights of women, but it
had meant that women could inherit and own property, and act as advisors on
important communal matters.
With the assistance of European
advisors after WW2, women were kept out of the army and politics, even as advisors.
Instead, they were restricted to family and household work of raising children
and cooking.
In the mid-1980s, the TPFL decided to restrict the
number of women recruited as fighters. The TPLF justified this u-turn by
arguing that domestic life was being disrupted because so many women became
fighters. Instead, they argued women would make a better contribution by
looking after the home front and emphasised that women lacked the physical strength
to fight in modern warfare. Thus, the educational levels for becoming a fighter
were raised to five years, ruling out the many women who did not meet this bar.
As TPLF Central Committee member Aregash
acknowledged, for peasant women 'being a fighter is such a liberation for
them', and as a result, the decision to reduce the number of women fighters (unsurprisingly)
'created resentment among the women in the villages'.
It seems likely that the TPLF's decision to restrict the numbers
of women into their ranks was a response to unease in the villages and, more
specifically, the appeals of Tigrayan fathers, and elders of the churches and
mosques. They also ended programmes to teach women how to plough, fearing the repercussions
of challenging religious and social beliefs about women in rural Tigrayan
society.
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However, things are improving. With
a steady increase in female representation in education, they have started to
undertake nursing, teaching and similar other supportive roles. Over the 2018–2019
period, their gradual participation in state politics has been increasing pace.
The role of women in Ethiopian military history will
remain largely untold if their work as non-combatants is not recalled. It is in
this position that the majority of women of the lower class contributed in
strengthening Ethiopia’s defence. While some uplifted the morale of the
fighting contingent through popular battle songs and poetry, others laboured
for the daily nourishment and overall well-being of the soldiers. The record of
Ethiopia’s long-standing independence will be incomplete without the
recognition of thousands of women servants who accompanied women and menfolk of
the aristocracy in battle after battle. Maids and servants were responsible for
the gathering and preparation of food and other administrative roles. James Bruce stresses the diligence of these
women during war expeditions. He writes in earnest: “I know of no country where
the female works so hard... seldom resting till late at night, even at midnight
grinding, and frequently up before cockcrow. Tired from the march, no matter
how late, water must be brought, fuel collected, supper prepared by the
soldiers’ wife..and before daylight, with a huge load, she must march again.”
When not involved in presiding over day-to-day affairs
women helped out in the clearing of roads, digging of trenches, and nursing of
the wounded. During the Italo-Ethiopian war, Princess Tsehay Haile Selassie
helped mobilize women of all classes in efforts to provide gas masks, clothes,
rations and bandages to the civilian population to protect against frequent
Italian air raids and mustard gas attacks.
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I knew virtually nothing of Ethiopian history until last week,
when one fleeting comment to Taytu Beyal caught my attention. Consequently, I discovered
a culture overflowing with strong female characters to write about – I may need
to start another page just for Ethiopian herstory at this rate! And yet,
finding any information on them was a struggle! Wikipedia pages on most of the
Ethiopian wars made no mention of women except as statistics of rapes or
civilian casualties. While of course, women are often victims of war in these ways,
it is also representative of a wider trend of erasing women’s agency from the
story of war, and forcing women – especially women of colour – into the role of
passive victim. This is a great reminder of why we need Black History Month.
Thus, while I usually focus on individuals (and am sure I will do further posts
on many of the individuals mentioned in this series), I wanted to do a special
little interlude to celebrate the power and influence of Ethiopian women that has
been left out of tradition histories. Their achievements ‘helped in the
creation of a one-of-a-kind defense system, which has successfully deterred
foreign aggression not for a few years, but for thousands.’
I would
like to give a special shout out to Tseday Alehegn whose article ‘Queens, Spies
and Servants: A History of Ethiopian Women in Military Affairs’ provided the
main source for this post. You can find the link here.
Also, I
bought the Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
ages ago but never got round to reading it. This tells the story of the female
warriors of the Italio-Ethiopian war and this post has inspired me to finally
read it! I’ll post a review when I’m done for anyone interested x
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