Everything you need to know about the conflict in Ethiopia … The power, the wealth and the biggest loser is the human being (report)

It appears that only the Ethiopian citizen will pay the price of the conflict for influence and wealth, between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, as the conflict approaches its third week.

The spark of the conflict stems from the Corona virus crisis, when the Addis Ababa government postponed national elections and extended the tenure of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the opposition of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. , the largest political movement in the region.

This led the region to challenge the federal government, during local elections last September, when the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front won all seats, while the Ethiopian government declared the result invalid.

Which led to the current situation, where all other governments are considered illegal, and on November 4, the Ethiopian prime minister announced the launch of military operations against the regional government.

But the matter is not so simple, that it is a fight for the date of the elections, but a game of influence that goes back to Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister of Ethiopia in March 2018, when he managed to remove from the political stage to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray, and ended its broadcast of the stage.

Political influence

But the political influence of the Tigrayana ethnic group does not go back a short time, rather it needs us to turn the pages of history and go back 30 years, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray took control of the state in Ethiopia.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front has been the dominant force in Ethiopian politics for nearly 25 years, after it toppled the military government of “Mengetsu Haile Mariam” in 1991 in a long-running armed struggle.

Following the fall of the military government, the former leader of the front, the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, ruled the country with an iron fist until his death in 2012, and was able to empower the Tigrayans in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Army

Many cadres, such as the current director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, graduated from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and all intelligence chiefs and military leaders in the country are from the People’s Liberation Front of Tigray. Tigray or were members of the party’s military wing during the armed struggle against Mingetsu.

As the attack escalated, local authorities called for public mobilization, in defense of themselves against what they described as “flagrant aggression” by the central government.

With the outbreak of the crisis, the Ethiopian government issued arrest warrants for 76 soldiers accused of ties to the Tigray Front.

Religious domination

The hegemony of the Popular Liberation Front of Tigray was not limited to governing, but went beyond including religious life. Since the 1990s, the post of Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has been held by clergymen from Tigrayans, the church that controls 40 million people in the country.

But it was clear for many years that the TPLF’s political dominance could not continue indefinitely, and in 2018 large-scale protests erupted in the Oromo and Amhara regions, home to the country’s two largest ethnic groups, forcing the coalition. led by the RDF. The Ethiopian People’s Liberation Front, which is one of the pillars of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, will replace the then prime minister, “Hailemariam Desalegn”, with the current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who gradually began to neutralize Tigray from the political scene.

A war for autonomy or the economy

On the other hand, others argue that the conflict is not a fight between a central government and a separatist movement, but a fight for wealth and the economy, although Tigray is a small region whose population represents only 6% of the 110 million of Ethiopians, but was able to control the wheels of work. The government of Ethiopia for more than two decades.

In a “Forres Pulse” magazine article titled “Tigray’s war against Ethiopia is not about autonomy, but about economic power”, in which the magazine said that the Tigrayan war is “a battle to control the economy of Ethiopia, its natural resources and the billions of dollars the country receives annually from international donors and lenders. “

The magazine pointed out that Tigray’s political and military power led to the emergence of economic hegemony since it allowed its leaders to exercise total control over the country’s economy, its natural resources and its lands, mainly.

Foreign Policy warned that during the Tigray government, government officials rented land for the benefit of foreign investors, with the objective of agricultural development, and this caused the displacement of indigenous people, especially in the southern part of the country, in the regions of “Benishangul Gumuz “and” Gambella, “according to Human Rights Watch, in January 2011 the Ethiopian government leased 3.6 million hectares of land to foreign investors, an area the size of the Netherlands.

The conflict over Tigray can be summed up as a struggle for political influence and wealth, especially with the economic reforms that Ahmed has adopted since taking power and has made Ethiopia the fastest growing country in Africa.

The economic war began its characteristics when the Attorney General’s Office announced last Tuesday that the government had frozen 34 bank accounts of institutions, due to their links with the Tigray Front and providing them with financial assistance.

The biggest loser is the citizen in the equation

Faced with the escalation of the conflict driven by political and economic objectives, it seems that the Ethiopian citizen is the only one who will pay the price of the conflict for influence and wealth, between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray Liberation Front.

There is a serious shortage of food, fuel and medical supplies in the Tigray region, and roads and airports are closed by decision of the Prime Minister.

Today, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, called for the opening of humanitarian corridors in the Tigray region, and expressed his regret at the refusal of the Ethiopian authorities to any mediation.

Earlier, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a comprehensive investigation into the possibility of war crimes in Ethiopia, following reports of a massacre of civilians in the Tigray region.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has left nearly 2.3 million children in urgent need of assistance, noting that thousands more are at risk in refugee camps.

About 33,000 people crossed the borders from Ethiopia into Sudan, according to UNHCR, and UNHCR expected the number of people displaced from the region to rise to 200,000 in the coming weeks if the conflict continues.

The issue was not limited to the humanitarian catastrophe and the displacement of innocents, but also to a silencing campaign, led by the Addis Ababa government, about which the Ethiopian Human Rights Committee expressed concern.

In the same context, the Addis Ababa Police Commissioner announced last week the arrest of 162 people in possession of firearms and ammunition, on suspicion of supporting the Tigray forces.