Ethiopia-When The War Ends

When the War Ends Ethiopia Alemetu, pregnant, was trying desperately to fall asleep when the men from the rebel Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) came for her. Held hostage for four weeks in an abandoned school in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, she was beaten with a horsewhip and suspended upside-down from a tree for hours. To release her, the rebels asked for a ransom of 110,000 birr (about $1,900). That’s almost double what the average person in Ethiopia earns in a year. As the Guardian reported, her family tried valiantly to raise the funds – but also had to pay almost as much to free her uncle, a local farmer. Meanwhile, after they paid, the rebel group – which says it is trying to get independence for the region – set fire to her home. Alemetu’s experience is part of the kidnappings and general lawlessness that have become the norm in Ethiopia in the wake of a civil war that ended two years ago. In March, for example, 16-year-old schoolgirl Mahlet Teklay was kidnapped in the northern regional state of Tigray. When her parents couldn’t pay the $51,800 ransom, the kidnappers killed her. And last month, three public buses carrying at least 167 passengers were traveling to the capital Addis Ababa, bringing students home for the summer holidays from Debark University in the Amhara region, Deutsche Welle reported. Gunmen hijacked the buses and demanded thousands of dollars in ransom for the victims. Many are still being held. “It is very rare to find a family who has not been affected by kidnapping,” Alemetu told the Guardian after being released. “The government has no control.” Once only occurring in certain areas of Western Oromia where the OLA operates, kidnappings have spread to war-torn Tigray, Amhara and elsewhere in the country outside of the capital. They have also moved from being political to more financial – where once only officials and government employees were targeted, now no one is spared, wrote the Africa Defense Forum. The government of Abiy Ahmed Ali, Ethiopia’s prime minister, does not talk much about the kidnapping “pandemic.” Instead, it touts its so-called successes in ending the war in Tigray, and turns the focus on the economy, specifically how it has attracted donors and investors, observers said. For example, in July, the president, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, announced a series of market-friendly reforms including the floating of its currency, intended to open the doors to a $3.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, wrote Africa Confidential. Abiy is hoping to turn the page on the war and signal to investors and donors that Ethiopia is back in business. But that’s wishful thinking, says the Hill. Already, since his float of the currency, the dirr has lost 60 percent of its value against the dollar, with prices rising so fast that restaurant menus no longer list them, ABC News wrote. Even though the war with Tigray ended officially in 2022, fighting continues there – but also in Oromia and also in Amhara, where government troops battle regional militias known as the Fano. The fighting threatens to turn into another civil war, wrote Foreign Policy. Meanwhile, talks with both rebel groups have gone nowhere. If anything, the violence is becoming more entrenched, not just in these regions but elsewhere, too, wrote the Economist: “It’s metastasizing,” a Western diplomat told the magazine. “It’s quite, quite terrifying.” It’s not just kidnappings; murders and rapes are spiraling, too, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect wrote. “We have heard repeated stories about women being gang raped – being raped by one person is starting to be perceived as trivial,” Birhan Gebrekirstos, a lecturer at Mekelle University in Tigray, told the New Humanitarian, “we’re getting used to these stories.” Part of the reason for the violence is that the rebel groups need money, wrote the Institute for Security Studies. Another is that the government has weak control over some regions. Instead, security forces often participate in the violence, or collaborate, even cut deals with the bandits. And it’s become a buyer’s choice of which rebel groups to join because there are few opportunities for the young in the country, which has been in the throes of an economic crisis for years. In some places, the situation is so dire, that famine looms, according to the International Rescue Committee. Abiy is missing the point, said Al Jazeera. Investors are not interested in a country where lawlessness and corruption are out of control. Foreign and local businesses there are already being stymied when trying to move goods and workers, or seeing their workers kidnapped. Africa Intelligence reported in June that France-based Meridiam’s $2 billion geothermal project in Oromia is being abandoned because of insecurity. Meanwhile, Abiy wants to attract high-paying tourists, recently meeting with the head of hotel giant, Marriot. But no visitor wants to visit a country where the possibility of being kidnapped is so high, say analysts. Meanwhile, the instability of the country is dragging the entire Horn of Africa into it. In recent months, “Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has stirred up new tensions with neighboring Somalia, become entangled in Sudan’s civil war (on the rebel’s side), and even made threatening gestures toward Eritrea, which had been Abiy’s ally in the Tigrayan war,” Foreign Affairs magazine wrote. “Meanwhile, the government’s primary foreign patron, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has been funneling arms and money to Ethiopia, as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been doing the same to Eritrea, Somalia, and the Sudanese Armed Forces, threatening to drag the region into a proxy conflict.” Share this story