What do we know about Walaa Bet Ghiorgis: A historic meeting or a fiasco

What do we know about the «Party of Love of Country (PLC)» - Mahber Figri Hager and Walaa Bet Ghiorghis: Was there a Walaa after all? Was it a historic meeting or a fiasco? This note is an attempt to give a summary

According to Jordan Gebre-Medhin, after the defeat of Italy, Eritrean intellectuals of the time met regularly to discuss the future of the country and in 1941 formed the PLC. At the founding congress, the following were elected to head the Party: Gebre-Meskel Woldu, President; Abdul Kadir Kebire, vice president; and Haregot Abbay (only one from the nobility), general secretary. Among the Central Committee members were: Wolde-Ab Wolde-Mariam, Ibrahim Sultan, Mesgina Gebre-Egzi, Mohamed Omer Kadi and Berhanu Ahmedin, The PLC represented a new emerging class and the leadership reflected a cross-section of the Eritrean society. During the first few years, Ethiopia had no connection with Eritrean groups except with Orthodox Church. The traditional ruling classes were not organized then.

Prior to Ethiopian decolonization in 1944, Ethiopia’s interests in Eritrea was represented by Abuna Markos, Head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church, but with British rule, the Ethiopian state acted vigorously in Eritrea. By then there were over 100,000 Eritreans in Ethiopia some of whom were brought as technicians and administrators with the Italian invasion. They were highly trained by the standards of Ethiopia,  in 1944 the Ethiopian Government mobilized those Eritreans and formed the “Society for the Unification of Eritrea and Ethiopia” (SUEE) in Ethiopia. Thus the Ethiopian state had laid the cornerstone of the Eritrean Unionist Party. In 1946 Ethiopia sent a security officer as Ethiopian Liaison Officer in Eritrea. As the interests of Abuna Markos was opposed to the PLC, the Church made concerted effort to discredit the organization. The pro-Ethiopian advance made by SUEE and Abuna Markos in Kebessa was challenged in the eastern part of Akle Guzai by an independence movement led by Ras Tsemma Asberom and his son Abraha Tessema.The SUEE succeeded to split the PLC into 2 factions: Unionist (Gebre-Meskel Woldu and Omer kadi) and pro-independence (Ibrahim Sultan and Woldeab).

During that period, with the help of Ethiopia, Unionist terrorist youth targeted Muslims in general, Jeberti shops, Arab shops and property and the Muslim-Christian hostility reached a climax. Thus the Muslim-Christian hostility, the split of the PLC, the ongoing confusion in the administrative apparatus of rural society (traditional rulers were losing authority) made the Eritrean people look hopelessly divided, weak and disorganized. It was an attempt to reverse this trend the idea of the Walaa was conceived.

The Walaa (Nov 1946 & how Ethiopia & fundamentalist Unionists killed it)

The idea of the Walaa was a brain child of Wolde-Ab. He approached the leader of pro-Ethiopian faction of the PLC, Gebre-Meskel Woldu to open a dialogue between the two factions with the hope to establish a united front. Gebre-Meskel agreed so the planning started. The lowland politicians and Ibrahim Sultan endorsed the Walaa but refrained from participating in it. Also missing in the discussions were the traditional rulers. Thus the Eritrean intellectuals began to meet and formulated a 12 point agreement. The lowland politicians were contacted only the agreement was formulated. Ibrahim Sultan asked why they were not consulted during the formative period. The response he got was “We had neither the time nor the manpower to chase and locate nomads to inform them about Walaa meetings. This is especially true since we know little about pastoralist season movements.” Ethiopia was kept in the dark during those negotiations. Jordan states one of the greatest weakness of the dislocated, urbanised intellegensia was the lack of direct and organisational link with the masses. This was true about the kebessa politicians. This lack of link weakened  the Walaa initiatives. The end result of the 12 point agreement required Ethiopia to recognize an autonomous Eritrea with all democratic rights, including freedom of press, language, religion and right to form political parties. 

Gebre-Meskel Woldu was elected as the official representative and chair of the Walaa agreement. When Ethiopia knew about the Walaa, they worked fully to abort it for they wanted nothing less than full union. The Ethiopian agent in Ethiopia Col. Negga mobilised Unionist notables to abort the meeting. Tedla Bairu played a major role to sabotage the meeting. Ethiopia instructed its Eritrean agents to attend the meeting and fail it. The day the Walaa was opened, the meeting was tense and far from conciliatory and peaceful. The official representatives of the PLC independence faction was led by Hassen Ali, Berhanu Ahmedin, Omer Safig, Tsehaye Abraha, Gebre-Meskel Baraki, Abraha Tessema and Wolde-Ab who took their seats. The newy assembled Unionist faction who were Hadgu Gillagaber, Hagos Berhe, Demsas Wolde-Michael and Tedla Bairu came late. They were followed by the now defeated Gebre-Meskel Woldu and his disgraced compatriots of the 12-point agreement. In addition a number of youth and hooligan elements supporters of Col. Nega came to the conference visibly armed.

After the opening ceremony, the pro-Ethiopia group moved to the table the agreed upon agenda. A combination of threat, intimidation and force was used to achieve this end. The first to speak was Demsas Wolde-Michael who appealed to the pro-independence faction to come to their senses to renounce their infantile dreams of autonomous Eritrea and to unite with Ethiopia, Tedla Bairu endorsed that and made personal attacks on Wolde-Ab. Gebre-Meskel Woldu feeling defeat endorsed the proposal, too. It was clear he was forced to change his position. With his reversal of his stand, the ideals of the Walaa came to an end.

Ibrahim Sultan, who refused to join the planning of the Walaa, but nevertheless attended the meeting at Bet Ghirgis, condemned “This Christain conspiracy that sold Eritrea to the wolf,” and vowed to found an organ that would fight Abyssinian Great Tradition treachery. In December 1946 he helped establish the Muslim League of Eritrea. The Jeberti, Saho, and Massawa intellectuals who felt betrayed by the Christian politicians withdrew from Kebessa politics, Led by Berhau Ahmedin, they joined Ibrahim Sultan in founding the Muslim League.

While the Christian pro-independence leaders within PLC were to wander without political focus. While they resented the compromise of Eritrean national politics by founding of the religiously based Muslim League, they were unable to come with working alternatives.

In the end, the disruption of the Walaa by Ethiopia and its loyal unionists brought the fragmentation of Eritrean politics and thus several parties emerged.
-----------------------------------------------------------


The most significant if unintended outcome of the Bayt Ghiorgis fiasco was the emergence of the Muslim League (ML). Evoking the impetus provided by developments around the Bayt Ghiorgis gathering, Ibrahim Sultan, the principal organizer and leader of the Muslim League, later recounted: ‘I sat patiently for hours listening to the interminable bickering [between Tedla Bairu, Waldeab Waldemariam and their supporters]. When I finally lost patience and got up to leave, blatta Demsas insisted that I take the floor arguing that the Muslims had not been heard from yet.’He agreed to do so reluctantly, suggesting that if the organizers were genuinely interested in having a national conference they should annul the meeting and call for a new, more representative gathering. But ‘my plea was met with derision so I left and retired to my office where I prepared a draft of what would eventually become the core programme of the Muslim League’. The centerpiece of the draft programme was a call for Eritrean independence, and after sharing it with other Muslim bilingual intellectuals and notables in Asmara, including Abdulkadir Kebire, Hajj Suleiman and Dejjach Hassan Ali, the draft programme was distributed at the Friday prayers in all the main mosques of the country
------------
Source: Culture and agency in a colonial public sphere: religion and the anti-colonial imagination in 1940s Eritrea by Fouad Mekk