Is Ethiopia Headed For Civil War?

 

ETHIOPIA

No Quarter

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won a Nobel Peace Prize last year for resolving a 20-year conflict with neighboring Eritrea, a nation that split from Ethiopia after a bloody war for independence that began in the late 1990s.

The son of a Christian and Muslim, he apologized for his country’s repressive past. He was viewed as a unifier pursuing massive projects like the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and improving other infrastructure to get the country back on its feet. He was also seen as a reformer, releasing political prisoners and promising justice, open government, inclusion and reconciliation.

But Ahmed is now prosecuting a brutal offensive against the rebels in the country’s semiautonomous northern Tigray region: The military has threatened civilians with “no mercy” if they don’t “save themselves.”

In the exploding conflict, at least 600 civilians have already died, according to Ethiopia’s civil rights commission. It said Tuesday that youth from a local group called Samri aided by local officials and security forces went door to door in the town of Maikadra in western Tigray on Nov. 9 to hunt down members of the Amhara and Wolkait minority groups. After finding them, they stabbed, strangled and hacked people to death with hatchets and machetes in what some are calling a crime against humanity and a war crime.

Now, local leaders, including those in the African Union, are worried the conflict could become a full-blown civil war that could further destabilize the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia’s impoverished neighbors are also struggling to preserve national security, France 24 wrote.

Tigrayan forces have already fired rockets into Eritrea in retaliation for that country’s support of Ahmed, attacks which have sent 40,000 refugees fleeing to Sudan, which can’t handle the influx, noted the Washington Post.

Some are not surprised that conflict erupted – tensions have been brewing since Ahmed took office in 2018 and sidelined the Tigray People’s Liberation Front – the rulers of the small region of mostly ethnic Tigray, six percent of Ethiopia’s 110 million people – which had also dominated all of Ethiopia for 27 years after they toppled the country’s Marxist dictators in 1991, explained the New York Times. But they lost popular support due to corruption, repression of civil rights and crackdowns on dissidents.

In 2018, Ahmed dismantled the long-standing ruling coalition led for years by the TPLF and created the new Prosperity Party. The TPLF opted not to join. And when Ahmed postponed this year’s elections due to coronavirus concerns, Tigrayan officials opposed the move and held their election anyway. Ahmed refused to recognize the results of the September vote and dissolved their legislature. A month later, Ethiopian lawmakers approved a plan to withhold federal funding for Tigray, further inflaming the tensions.

In early November, the government accused Tigrayans of attacking a military base and sent troops to the region, bombing the region soon after to destroy weaponry. Now, Ethiopian forces are advancing on the regional capital of Mekelle, CNN wrote. The rebels, meanwhile, have promised to answer the government troops with “hell.” A showdown looms.

Writing in an op-ed in the New York Times, local journalist Tsedale Lemma blamed Ahmed, who is from the largest ethnic group, the Oromo, for the fighting, saying that when he sidelined the TPLF, he overreached. The Brookings Institution which had hailed Ahmed’s attempt to move the country from a fragile multi-ethnic federation dominated by the Tigray to a more equitable power-sharing system, blamed both sides for the conflict that could hurt a country that is “too big to fail.”

The question, as Al Jazeera pointed out, is whether Ahmed can bring his country back from the brink of a war that will dash much of his progress. But the prime minister is resisting calls for international mediation – and international attention by kicking out the International Crisis Group’s representative in the region and warning the BBC, Reuters and other media outlets about their coverage. He has shut down all communications in Tigray also.

In the end, analysts say, Ahmed wants to bring the rebel leaders to justice to demonstrate the power of the central government. That’s understandable in a country of 10 ethno-regional tribal blocs competing against each other. But if he wins with tanks and bombs, he only shows the power of might over peacemaking. If he loses, Ethiopia squandered its first and best chance at reform, prosperity and peace.