[ad_1]
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – In the early hours of Wednesday, a Facebook post from Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Office seemed to indicate that several months of growing tension between the federal government and the regional state of Tigray in the north of the country had reached a turning point.
The Facebook post accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of an unprovoked attack on the northern command of the Ethiopian army of attempting to loot their weapons. In response, the prime minister said he had ordered military operations against what he called a “treacherous” group.
Meanwhile, the TPLF has accused the Abiy administration of attempting to destroy Tigray’s right to self-determination and of conspiring with Ethiopia’s northern neighbor Eritrea to organize a military attack.
On Thursday, Tigray regional chairman Debretsion Gebremichael said the region has gained control of all heavy weaponry from the northern command and that the division’s leadership and bases had decided to side with Tigray, an accusation denied by the federal government.
Tensions between the Tigray government and the Addis Ababa federal authorities have risen amid autonomy concerns. [Eduardo Soteras/AFP]
Martin Plaut, a former BBC Africa editor and a veteran observer of politics in the Horn of Africa, said that despite long-standing tensions between the two sides, there were two main reasons why a conflict broke out this week.
“Prime Minister Abiy gradually eroded the system of ethnic federalism that the TPLF had built under Prime Minister Meles (who died in 2012),” Plaut told Al Jazeera. “This threatened their control over the Tigray region. The TPLF resisted, holding elections on September 9 this year, despite Prime Minister Abiy banning this display of regional autonomy.
“Second, Prime Minister Abiy fixed the fences with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern neighbor that borders Tigray directly. Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has a long-standing animosity towards the TPLF. The Tigrayans were threatened with a pincer movement from the south and north and have effectively taken control of their region.
Although the TPLF rules Tigray, it acts as an opposition party at the federal level, with the Abiy Prosperity Party (PP), which was formed in late 2019, controlling the central government and the country’s nine remaining regional states.
With telephone and internet communications lines cut in Tigray, many Ethiopians and analysts rely on media owned by the federal government and Tigray regional government, as well as social media posts by partisan bloggers for information.
Tsedale Lemma, founder and editor-in-chief of Addis Standard, an English publication that reports on domestic and foreign current affairs, agrees that politics is behind the escalation between the federal government and the regional state of Tigray, but says that the outbreak was precipitated by differences over military appointments.
“Fundamentally, the differences (which are) mostly political in nature have been accumulating since Abiy came to power,” he said. “However, it is safe to say that the immediate reason follows the latest army restructuring announced by the federal government and Tigray’s decision to reject new appointments, including the chief of command, to the northern command of the Defense Force of Ethiopia”.
Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjorknes College in Norway and a keen observer of Ethiopian politics for 30 years, says that the establishment of the PP from the ashes of the ruling People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front coalition Ethiopia (EPRDF) and the TPLF’s refusal to enter a centralized party system had fueled mutual animosity, in addition to tensions that had been escalating since Abiy came to power in April 2018.
A system of federalism developed under former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (left) who died in 2012 appears to be collapsing [File: stringer/EPA]
This mutual animosity deepened when the PP-dominated federal legislature postponed national elections scheduled for last August citing the risks of COVID-19, while the regional Tigray administration, which opposed the measure, held its own elections in defiance of the federal government warnings.
Civil war in the making?
Although scant information from the “front lines” around Tigray suggests that military skirmishes have been limited, many Ethiopians are concerned that the country may be entering a phase of destructive civil war reminiscent of the 1970s and 1970s. 1980.
Plaut, while not ruling out this possibility, says that a full-blown civil war is not inevitable.
“This could be the beginning of a civil war, but that is not certain,” he said. “The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but it could escalate, attracting other regions of Ethiopia, while threatening neighboring Sudan and Eritrea.”
While Lemma agrees that a full-blown civil war is not inevitable, he says it is a “real possibility” and could endanger Ethiopia’s own territorial integrity.
“Claiming that it could be the beginning of a civil war depends on whether or not both sides heed the growing international calls to reduce tension and the current confrontation,” he said. “But I can say that both have passed the mutual risk phase, and that should concern us all.
A police officer at a checkpoint during the September Tigray regional elections in Mekele. The election represented a challenge to the authority of Abiy [Eduardo Soteras/AFP]
“The possibility of Ethiopia breaking up is real, but the final verdict depends on two critical outcomes of the current confrontation: first, if the parties opt for a conventional war; and second, in their absence, if they refused to carry out a serious dialogue and negotiation of power as a peaceful solution and continue to maintain a tense status quo ”.
Tronvoll notes that the crisis would be difficult to resolve by military means.
“I do not think that either side can militarily annihilate the other, it is likely that instead it will turn into an unnecessary protracted conflict that in the end would need to find a political solution,” he said.
While the federal government and the TPLF appear to be creeping toward war, with the world distracted by other events, including the US presidential election, there are calls domestically and internationally for both sides to show restraint.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the Ethiopian federal government to restore communications in Tigray, while there are reports of behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to reduce the escalation of the conflict.
For now, many Ethiopians, regardless of their political motivation, watch helplessly, fearful that their country is heading inexorably towards civil war.
[ad_2]
