Mekele
Mekele, also spelled Makalle, is in the Tigrayan Highlands in Ethiopia. It is the capital of the Tigray region and has a population of 200,000. Mekele town is located in the northern part of Ethiopia in Tigray National Regional State, Mekele Zone at a distance of 783 km from Addis Ababa. Its location is 13º32’’North latitude and 39º28’ East longitude. Mekele was founded in 1876. Mekele is one of the reform towns in the region and has a city administration, municipality, 7 sub-cities, 33 kebelles and 105 Ketenas. The town has a structural plan which was prepared in 2007.
According to the Central Statistical Authority projection of 2011, the population of the town was 261,168. Out of these 126,917 (48.6%) were males and 134,251 (51.4%) were females. Regarding age distribution 91,409 (35%) are within the age group of 0-15 years, 161,924 (66.4%) within 16-60 years and 7,835 (3%) above 61 years. Average household size in the town is 3.3.
The area of Mekele city is 20,605.11 ha and it is oval shaped town. Its altitude is 2150-2500m above sea level; its mean annual temperature is 11.1-24ºC and mean annual rainfall is 671 mm. The prevailing wind direction is east to west and the principal natural constraints for the physical expansion of the town are the sloppy areas found in the north and east directions.
The town serves as regional administration, trade, education and investment center. There are 512 manufacturing industries, 280 wholesale trades, 7887 retail trades, five fuel stations, nine banks and four branch micro financial institution in the town. The average annual revenue of the municipality within the 2009-2011 period was 68,265,377.00 Birr and the major sources of revenue were taxes, rent and service charges. The major investment opportunities in the town are: manufacturing industry, agro processing industry of honey, social services, hotel and tourism development. Mekele has economic linkages with the surrounding areas, towns in the region and Addis Ababa. The town gets grain products, livestock supply, natural resources (fuel wood, charcoal) and surplus labor from surrounding areas; agricultural inputs as well as manufacturing and commercial products and some construction materials from Addis Ababa while the city serves as market center for surrounding areas.
The town has five inlet/outlet roads connecting it to different weredas in the zone, surrounding zones, towns in the region and Addis Ababa. The distribution of roads as per the type of construction materials shows that 190.85 km are gravel, 55.3 km asphalt, and 60.6 km cobblestone roads. The town gets 24 hours electric supply from the national grid, mobile and fixed telephone lines, and has internet services, and a postal service having 2250 boxes. The main water supply source of the town is potable underground water and distributed through piped network and 94 public taps. The town has open ditches and closed pipes to discharge storm water.
There is daily inter-urban transport service to and from Addis Ababa and other seven major towns. The town has a bus station, freight terminal as well as an airport. There is air flight service to and from Addis Ababa. There are 500 Bajaj and 375 mini bus taxis and 750 horse- drawn carts for giving intra-urban transport service.
Alula Aba Nega International Airport
No military aircraft are based at the Alula Aba Nega International Airport, which is used for forward deployments. This airport is built at the heart of Tigray region, due south east of Mekele city at a distance of 10 Km. This airport was built in the late 1990s to replace an older one located 7 km (4 miles) from Mekele. When the airport first opened, it had one unpaved runway 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) long, with 21 flights to Addis Ababa, 4 to Shire and 2 to Humera.
The airport is named after Alula Aba Nega who was born in Menewe (Tembien). Nega was his favorite horse, following the custom of using "Abba" plus attaching the horse's name to that of a well-known warrior's first name. King John of Ethiopia built for himself the new military capital of Makale on a high rock which commands the country of the Danakili. The several small towns which cluster together in a direction bearing north of the crest of the Abyssinian plateau, and towards Samhara, are visited by caravans on their way to Tsulla (Zoula) and Massowah.
Alula Aba Nega is well known (during the Yohannes Period) for his battles against Italy, the Ottoman Turks, Egypt and the Battle of Adwa (during the Menilik Period). He was a hero soldier of Emperor Yohannes IV. He led the Ethiopian army in the battle fields of Gunda Gundo (1892), Gurae (1883), Sehati (1888) and Deguali (1889). Who led his army and fought heroically against the invading forces of Italy. He participated in the battle of Adua (1896). At one time, he was the chief administrator of Eritrea, which was then part and parcel of Ethiopia, with a radius of 100Kms from the city of Mekele.
On the death of Johannes in battle, 1889, Mar. 11, Menelek proclaimed himself emperor of all Ethiopia. Ras Mangascia attacked Makale, Dec. 20th, was repulsed, but renewed his attack every two or three days, until 1896, Jan. 23, when, the ammunition and rations being short and the water-supply cut off, the garrison under Col. Galliano surrendered, accepting the magnanimous terms offered by Menelek--that they take all their arms and equipment and march out unmolested to rejoin the main body of the Italian army at Adigrat.
Baratieri advanced against the Abyssinians concentrated at Adowa. With about 20,000 men he attacked Menelek's army of 60,000 and was hopelessly defeated, his men throwing away their arms in the precipitate retreat that followed. Menelek released all the Italian prisoners in his hands, and the war was ended. The provisions of the treaty of peace were as follows: an offensive and defensive alliance; the conclusion of a commercial treaty; the annulment of the treaty of Uccialli; Tigré to be made a buffer state under Ras Makonnen.
The airport itself is unremarkable, with a single runway servicing a mid-field civilian passenger terminal and military aircraft parking areas at both ends of the runway. The northern military area includes a large tarmac that could park a few dozen aircraft, seven smallish hangars and a pair of larger aircraft shelters. The much smaller southern military area has a small triangular tarmac for aircraft preparing for takeoff, as well as five aircraft shelters [that are not evidently hardened]. A single probable Su-27 is visible on the northern tarmac in Bing imagery, but no aircraft are in evidence in the later Google imagery.
SAM Site - Masobo / Messebo 13°33'28"N 39°32'53"E / 13.557794, 39.548316
A nice surface to air missile complex is located on a mesa north of the city of Mekele, at a location associated with the placename Masobo [and variants thereof]. At least three launchers for the Soviet S-125 Neva/Pechora [SA-3 GOA] are identifiable. This missiles have an operational range of 25 km. This complex is located about 10km North of the Alula Aga Nega airport. But these SAMs are probably not intended to defend this airport, which is of no particular military importance [if the airport were the object of defense, possibly the SAMs would be stationed at the airport itself, rather than on the other side of town]. Ethiopia does not have a great many such SAMs, so some object of great importance must be the defended object. Close scrutiny of satellite imagery suggests the garrison of the Northern Command is located nearby.
Masobo / Messebo 13°33'28"N 39°32'53"E / 13.557794, 39.548316
A military town, and therefore of regional significance, Mekele also serves as a useful base for the northern Tigray churches. Away from the main tourist trail, Mekele is relatively unknown, with an impressive war memorial celebrating the end of the Derg socialist regime. Mekele is the site of the headquarters of the Northern Command, one of four major geographical commands of the Ethiopian National Defense Force. Most of the troops and officers in this formation are Tigray.
By March 1989, the Ethiopian Army, which had taken huge losses of men, had retreated from the entire province of Tigre, and for the first time in the Government's 14-year fight with the rebels, it evacuated a provincial capital. Makale, the capital of Tigre, was out of Government control. The army, having been pushed back into the provincial capital, Makale, had to abandon even Makale because the Russians had withheld the ammunition and supplies needed to hold on to the town. The government led by President Mengistu Haile Mariam had virtually no chance of fighting its way back into Tigre and reopening its lines of communication with Eritrea unless Russia gives it a great deal more military aid; and Russia almost certainly won't. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front was said to have helped the Tigrean People's Liberation Front to get the government's men out of Tigre.
The Ethiopian army’s Northern Command based in Tigray includes a large number of Tigrayan officers and troops. By some accounts it comprises more than half of the national army’s soldiers and mechanised divisions. Like the TPLF, the Northern Command accrued much of its combat experience from its disproportionate role in the conflict with Eritrea.
On 04 November 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered Ethiopian troops into Tigray in response to a deadly attack on a federal military base in the regional capital, Mekele. Abiy’s administration blames the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the regional government, of authorizing the attack. Abiy spoke of “several martyrs” from the attack on the federal military base in Mekele and vowed to put down “traitorous forces,” including in the well-armed TPLF.
“It seems that large elements of the Northern Command leadership, probably the Tigrayan officers, have sided with the regional government or otherwise come under the regional government command after a forceful takeover, and this includes appropriating heavy weaponry,” said William Davison, an Ethiopia expert at the International Crisis Group.
Not all military bases are created equal. Most of the much vaunted "800 American overseas bases" are in fact little more than a spray of unmanned radio relay towers atop Italian mountains, and small motor pools in Germany that are only staffed during business hours. CONUS American military bases are typically isolated civilian populations, while in Germany military is deployed across innumerable kasernes - an apartment block here, a motor pool down the road, and so forth, blending into the civilian settlement pattern. Even within the US military, the US Navy and US Army have very different ideas as to what constitutes a "base" - the Army may count physically separated facilities as a single base, while the US counts physically contiguous facilities under separate chains of command as discrete bases.
All of this is a round-about introduction to the fact that there is no fixed idea as to what imagery of an Ethiopian military base should look like. The basic components should include at a minimum some identifiable buildings for vehicle storage, troop housing, and administration, and a robust security perimeter is always welcome as an interpretation key. Within the city of Mekele itself there are a number of complexes that might be vehicle storage warehouses, or billeting for troops, and there is no shortage of buildings that might be headquarters. While military utilization of some of these buildings cannot be excluded, none are particularly convincing as part of a military base.
The Masobo SAM site north of Mekele is in close proximity to several warehouse complexes and extensive housing that appear to be the Northern Command cantonment. The clincher is one warehouse complex which features an adjacent driver training range - recently constructed, as it is evident in Google Earth imagery while absent in earlier Bing imagery. Indeed, these buildings are embedded in a settlement complex that is largely separate from Mekele proper. The jumble of vernacular artisanal housing that comprises much of this separate cantonment is difficult to associate with the precision one expects from the military, but is possibly housing for various sorts of support staff and informal camp followers.
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