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NEWS ANALYSIS
At approximately 2 a.m. Ethiopian time on Wednesday morning, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took to his Facebook page to make a serious announcement. “The Ethiopian Defense Forces, led by a command post, are tasked with saving the country,” he said. He said the regional government of Tigray, a northern province, was guilty of “crossing a red line” and that Ethiopian troops had been ordered to take action. “I call on Ethiopians to remain calm, be on high alert and support the military effort.”
Several commentators have described this as equivalent to a declaration of war against one of Ethiopia’s own regional states.
About an hour later, still in the early hours of the morning, Abiy appeared on state television. He said the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that rules the Tigray region, was guilty of “treason.” According to Abiy, Tigray regional security forces had stormed Ethiopian military bases in the cities of Mekelle and Dansha, killing and wounding soldiers there.
The Ethiopian Army Northern Command, one of four regional commands, is based in Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigrayan, which is located more than 700 kilometers north of the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. The Tigray regional government has announced the closure of the airspace, according to AFP, and has stated that the Northern Command “will support the people of Tigray and the regional government.”
Tigray is home to about six million of Ethiopia’s 110 million people, and is located in the northeast of the country, along the border with Eritrea.
Tensions between the federal government in Addis Ababa and the regional government in Tigray have escalated for some time and relations have soured considerably in recent months. While this escalation remains shocking, analysts have warned for months that conflict was looming.
Efforts of Mail and tutor contacting the residents of Tigray was unsuccessful as the phone and internet lines were down. Later, Internet service monitoring organization Netblocks revealed that there was a sizable drop in Ethiopia’s internet usage that started about an hour before the prime minister’s announcement. As such, Abiy’s claims remain difficult to authenticate and the region is virtually isolated from the outside world.
BBC journalist Desta Gebremedhin from the BBC’s Tigrigna language department was able to get in touch with a relative in Mekelle. “My cousin in Mekelle could hear the raging shootings,” he said. This indicates that the fighting is taking place in the vicinity of a major urban center.
Despite the prime minister’s claims that his soldiers were ambushed and pushed into war, preparations for the eventual escalation had been made at least days in advance. Large-scale movements of Ethiopian troops targeting northward were reported in recent days. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael announced that his forces were prepared for conflict, stating that “if war is imminent, we are prepared not only to resist but to win.”
A year ago, few could have predicted the events of today, when Ethiopia’s prime minister posed for the cameras in Oslo at the award ceremony after receiving the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Acclaimed for ending two decades of hostility Military with neighboring Eritrea, the 2018 peace deal sparked wild celebrations in both countries and was a rare feel-good story in the often conflict-ravaged region. However, the seeds of conflict with Tigray had already been sown.
A growing gap
Before Abiy’s appointment as prime minister in 2018, the TPLF led a governing coalition that had monopolized power in Ethiopia for 27 years, since its armed wing helped topple Ethiopia’s brutal communist junta in 1991. The coalition was he called the Revolutionary Democracy of the Ethiopian People. Party (EPRDF), and ruled Ethiopia largely unopposed for three decades. This included the 21-year rule of Meles Zenawi, who was himself from Tigray and leader of the TPLF.
But the authoritarian rule of the TPLF-led government precipitated popular protests that began in 2015 and eventually led to upheaval within the ruling coalition. In 2018, Abiy Ahmed, a relatively unknown leader from the Oromia region, and his allies usurped the ruling clique and took control of the EPRDF.
This was bad news for the TPLF. He lost his grip on power in Addis Ababa, and many of his former strongmen were declared persona non grata. and arrested or forced to flee the capital. But he maintained control of his base of operations in Tigray, where he has his armed wing. Initially, it also remained part of the country’s coalition government, but it no longer enjoyed political dominance.
The gap between the TPLF and the Abiy federal government in Addis Ababa widened, and Mekelle officials openly expressed dismay at the decisions made by the federal government. In late 2019, Abiy dissolved the EPRDF and merged its constituent entities into a single party which he called the Party of Prosperity. The TPLF criticized the merger and decided not to join the new party, severing ties with Abiy and his allies, leaving the TPLF out of the national government for the first time in three decades.
Since then, officials from the two sides have exchanged criticism and accusations. Federal government officials accuse the TPLF of trying to assassinate the prime minister at a rally in Addis Ababa in July 2018. A grenade was thrown near a podium where Abiy was addressing a crowd, the blast killing five and injuring more than 140. . Abiy escaped unscathed. TPLF officials, meanwhile, have accused the federal government of discrimination against Tigrayans.
The Tigray elections: the point of no return
In June, Ethiopia’s parliament confirmed that national elections scheduled for August 2020 would be postponed for up to a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision was heavily criticized by opposition critics, with many accusing the prime minister of using the pandemic as an excuse to illegally extend his term. The TPLF in Tigray denounced the decision, calling it “unconstitutional” and declared that it would unilaterally hold its own regional elections as scheduled.
Meanwhile, a war of words broke out: State media regularly broadcast anti-TPLF material to audiences across the country, and the TPLF launched its own line with its own stations. Both sides also held military parades, which were interpreted as thinly veiled attempts to antagonize or intimidate each other.
In addition to the propaganda effort, Abiy’s friendship with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has been controversial. The President of Eritrea hates the TPLF. Their enmity dates back to the 1998-2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia that left 70,000 dead. TPLF officials now accuse Afwerki and Abiy of conspiring to destabilize Tigray. In February, an irate Tigray official accused Eritrea of meddling in Ethiopia’s internal affairs, even threatening to “cut [the president’s] hands ”if the former dictator of Eritrea refused to abstain.
Last month, a televised broadcast showed Abiy giving his Eritrean counterpart a tour of the facilities of the Ethiopian air force base. This only served to exacerbate tensions, which did not improve a few days ago when the Eritrean embassy in Ethiopia mocked Tigray state leaders in a Facebook post, claiming that “the game is over” for them. This led to suggestions that Eritrea could intervene militarily on Abiy’s behalf. The war of words on social media continued with TPLF party official Getachew Reda tweeting on Tuesday his party would prevail over the governments of Addis Ababa and the capital of Eritrea, Asmara, whom it described as “terrorists.”
The regional elections in Tigray eventually took place as scheduled, in defiance of the federal government, with the TPLF overwhelmingly defeating the internal opposition in Tigray. Abiy scoffed at the elections, calling them “hollow”, but stated at the time that he did not intend to send troops to Tigray. Instead, the Ethiopian government declared that it would not recognize the newly elected regional government and retaliated by drastically cutting the budget allocated to the Tigray region.
For his part, Tigray announced that as of October 5, he would consider the Abiy government illegitimate. This is the date Abiy would have ended if the national elections had been carried out as planned.
On October 30, perhaps taking into account potential hostilities, Abiy ordered Brigadier General Jemal Mohammed to assume a position as deputy commander of the Northern Command at his Mekelle base. But the brigadier general never made it to his new office: he was intercepted by officials from the Tigray regional government upon arrival and told to return to Addis Ababa.
Getachew Reda, the adviser to the president of the state of Tigray, later clarified in a cheep that the officer was told to come back because “any appointment after October 5 is unacceptable in Tigray.”
Serious implications
The consequences of the conflict between Addis and Tigray are already being felt in the rest of the country. On Sunday, 54 Amhara civilians were brutally massacred on a school grounds in Oromia. The Ethiopian government immediately accused the TPLF of being involved in the massacre, although it has yet to present evidence. The killings came a day after Ethiopian soldiers based in the district suddenly left the region on Saturday, leaving residents at the mercy of armed militants. Some reports suggest those soldiers were heading toward Tigray, lending weight to claims that the war was planned well in advance and was not triggered by incidents that took place Tuesday night.
These reports are difficult to confirm. Given internet shutdowns in the region where war is suspected and the government’s increasingly weak tolerance for independent journalism, verifying what has happened in the last few hours in Tigray is virtually impossible.
Neither party has listened to calls from both the African Union and the European Union to initiate a dialogue to alleviate the situation.
One of the world’s poorest countries, already struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic and grappling with deadly outbreaks of community violence, is now on the warpath.
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