Institute For Peace and Security Studies Ipss The Role of Peasant Militia in Maintaining Local Peace: The Case of Ahferom and Merebleke Woreda Administrations in Tigray Regional State
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Date
2020-06
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Addis Ababa Unversity
Abstract
This study aims at examining the role of local peasant militia in maintaining local peace in
two wereda administrations of the Tigray National Regional State, namely Ahferom and
Mereb Leke in the central zone of the region. Field data were gathered through key informant
interview and focus group discussions. As the findings of the study show, the peasant militia
is a vital force, which plays irreplaceable role in maintaining local peace in the Tigray
National Regional State, in both war and peace times. As it was the case during the Ethiopia Eritrea war, in times of war, in the absence of the regular army, the militia force plays the
role of defending the country from external and internal threats. The militia force also plays
a supporting role in terms of facilitating logistics flows, collecting military information, and
evacuating wounded soldiers from the war zone to safe areas where they would find medical
treatment. In peace times, in collaboration with the police and other stakeholders like the
mass-based associations, the peasant militia plays a vital role in maintaining local peace
through preventing crimes in their locality. They also protect public and private investment
infrastructures and projects, without which local development could not be materialized.
However, although the militia force is an important force to maintain local peace and
stability, it has critical problems, which would constrain to effectively accomplish its
activities. The first problem is that the peasant militia are serving without any payment. The
second problem is the process of selection to join militia is not rigorous enough.
Consequently, it is common to see individual persons who do not actually fulfill the required
criteria are selected and armed to become militia by the local administration. Therefore, the
findings of the study suggest that to ease the challenges that would limit the effectiveness of
the militia as a guarantor of local peace, the Regional Government should first, provide a
mechanism that would enable the militia member find economic benefits that would
compensate the time they invest in maintaining local peace. Second, the local administrations
and concerned bodies of the Regional Government should strictly follow up whether the
recruitment procedures are dully implementing.
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Keywords
Peasant Militia, Armed mass, “Weyanay”, Revolutionary, Agitprop, and Rebellion