Gambela (city)
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Gambela
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Gambela (
Gambela is important because bridges over both the Openo and the Jajjaba are located in that city. The
History
Gambela was founded because of its location on the Baro, a tributary of the Nile, which was seen by both the British and Ethiopia as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other goods from the fertile Ethiopian Highlands to Sudan and Egypt.
British concession (1902–1956)
Emperor
A shipping service run by
According to Bahru Zewde, British interest in the concession was due, in part, to the attraction of "tapping the allegedly fabulous commercial potential of Western Ethiopia and drawing the whole region into the economic orbit of the Sudan", but also intended "to be a brilliant British countermove to avert the virtual commercial hegemony in Ethiopia that the
The British did have to cope with the Ethiopian governors of Sayo and Gore, who showed a keen interest in the money to be made in the cross-border trade.[3] A small detachment of troops from the nominal condominium of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was posted to Gambela to maintain order and security within the concession and defend it from outside interests in what was still a largely lawless country, following numerous Egyptian, Islamist, British and Italian interventions, and a consequent breakdown of civil authority, over the previous decades.
The Regent Ras Tafari (the later Emperor
The British Concession was not directly affected by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 but when Italian East Africa was formally established in 1936, the Ethiopian concession was deemed to have lapsed. The shipping service suspended and the steamer, together with the British resident, left Gambela on 14 October. With the river traffic now gone, the Italians provided an alternative link for the town, by building a further road from Gambela, this one to Nekemte, between 1936 and 1940. Gambela was taken from the Italians by the 2/6 King's African Rifles on 3 February 1941.[5] The property of the British buildings were reported to have been respected and left intact during the peacetime and wartime Italian administration. The original Resident returned, but the Concession was no longer distinctive, as the whole country remained under British administration, the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), for a number of years, until sufficient Ethiopian administrators had been trained.
Lij Tewodros, a son of
A new Anglo-Ethiopian treaty was signed on 19 December 1944 which virtually eliminated British privileges, but the Gambela enclave continued. The Ethiopian government gradually increased its control over the enclave: outlawing the
Recent history
The port was closed during the
The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front announced on 27 May 1991 that they had gained control of Gambela.[5]
On 13 December 2003, in an apparent reprisal for a series of ambushes of highlander civilians, 30 Ethiopian soldiers and highlander civilians launched a brutal attack on Gambela's Anuak population. Human Rights Watch has estimated that 424 people were killed.[6] An armed Anuak group (which John Young speculates is the Gambela People's Liberation Movement) attacked a prison in the capital 30 October 2005, freeing inmates, and killing the police commissioner.[7]
In March 2012, a bus was attacked, with 19 people on board being shot dead.[8]
Demographics
Based on the 2007 Census conducted by the
According to the 1994 national census, its total population was 18,263 of whom 9852 were males and 8411 were females. The ethnic breakdown was 33.8%
Notes
- ^ "Population Size by Sex, Area and Density by Region, Zone and Wereda: July 2022" (PDF). statsethiopia.gov.et. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
- ^ Richard Pankhurst, An Economic History of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie University Press, 1968), p. 304
- ^ Bahru Zewde, "An Overview and Assessment of Gambella Trade (1904-1935)", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 20 (1987), pp. 75-94
- ^ Pankhurst, Economic History, pp. 290f
- ^ a b c d "Local History in Ethiopia" Archived 2008-02-27 at the Wayback Machine The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 29 January 2008)
- ^ "Ethiopia: Targeting the Anuak: The December 2003 Massacre". www.hrw.org. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
- ^ Young, Armed Groups along Sudan's Eastern Frontier: An overview and analysis Archived 2012-03-16 at the Wayback Machine (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007), p. 41
- ^ "Gunmen kill 19 on Ethiopian bus in Gambella region". BBC News. 2012-03-12. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
- ^ Census 2007 Tables: Gambela Region Archived November 14, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Tables 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, and 3.4.
- ^ The 1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia: Results for Gambela Region, vol.1 Archived November 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Table 2.17
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