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TThe beginning of the week saw Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, in a role: a forward-thinking statesman, with a vision of peace and prosperity, and a tailored suit. The 44-year-old leader was at the recently modernized Addis Ababa airport to welcome General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, effective leader of neighboring Sudan for a two-day visit that included business discussions and tours of the Ethiopian capital’s skyscrapers. , a seedling nursery and an Industrial park.
The second half of the week saw Abiy in a different light: on national television in a dark bomber jacket to make the shocking announcement that he had ordered troops to respond to an alleged deadly attack on a government military base by of local forces in the country’s Tigray province. .
A day later, senior Ethiopian generals spoke of being “at war” amid reports of artillery duels, while officials in Tigray claimed the planes had bombed parts of their capital.
The contrast between “Abiy in the suit” and the “Abiy bomber jacket” was sharp, as it was between Abiy’s early days in power in 2018, when observers compared the young reformer leader to Nelson Mandela, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev, and the darkest time most troublesome now.
For some, the real Abiy is only now being seen. “You don’t rise through the ranks of the military intelligence and the ruling coalition in Ethiopia and become Mr. Good Guy. It just doesn’t happen, ”said Martin Plaut, a regional expert at the University of London.
“Abiy the reformer’s narrative is overrated,” said Tsedale Lemma, editor-in-chief of the independent magazine. Addis Standard news magazine in the Ethiopian capital. “I’m afraid full-blown authoritarianism is the next step.”
Born in western Ethiopia, Abiy joined the resistance against the brutal Mengistu Haile Mariam regime as a teenager before enlisting in the military. In 1998 he was a radio operator attached to an Ethiopian unit fighting Eritrean forces. When he briefly left his trench to find better antenna reception, his entire unit was wiped out in an artillery strike.
Abiy rose through the ranks of military intelligence, eventually switching from military to academia and earning a doctorate in peace and security studies. After a stint running Ethiopia’s cyber intelligence service, he entered politics and was quickly promoted within the coalition that had ruled the country since Mengistu was deposed in 1991.
Abiy’s surprise appointment as prime minister in 2018 came after months of anti-government protests. His informal style, charisma and energy immediately impressed after decades of opaque and repressive rule. In quick succession, Abiy reorganized his cabinet, fired a number of controversial and hitherto untouchable officials, reached out to hostile neighbors and rivals, lifted media bans, released thousands of political prisoners, ordered the partial privatization of state-owned companies. massive and ended a state of emergency.
He has also tried to attract women, making an unprecedented mention of his wife and mother in his acceptance speech. Surprised visitors spoke of the shelves of books on religion, philosophy and science that filled Abiy’s office and his open door. A personal acquaintance described the new prime minister as “always looking to the future … with a bit of a stubborn attitude towards people who don’t comply.”
There were also hopes for an end, or at least a pause, to the ethnic struggle that was tearing apart the second most populous country on the continent. Abiy’s mix of Christian and Muslim backgrounds, and fluency in three of the country’s main languages, was expected to enable it to bridge communal and sectarian divisions.
He was also the first leader of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic community, the Oromo, who have complained for decades of economic, cultural and political marginalization, and were behind much of the mounting unrest that led to Abiy’s appointment.
No one doubted the challenge. Ethiopia faced a shortage of foreign exchange, growing inequality, lack of employment for large numbers of graduates (at least 70% of the population is under 30 years old), environmental damage and a deep thirst for change. There were also many within the ruling elite who opposed the Abiy project. Two people were killed when, in June 2018, a grenade was thrown at a demonstration to show popular support for reforms in Addis Ababa’s vast Meskel Square.
After the attack, Abiy had advice for her enemies. “Love always wins. Killing others is a defeat. To those who tried to divide us, I want to say that they have not succeeded.”
And he seemed ready to turn those sentiments into reality, concluding a historic peace agreement with Eritrea, thus ending one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts and winning the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In Oslo, he asked “my fellow Ethiopians to come together and help build a country that offers equal justice, equal rights and equal opportunities for all its citizens. ”
But the Nobel may have been a high point. Since then, the problems have multiplied, all compounded by the pandemic. His reforms have allowed old ethnic and other grievances to surface, and led to instability, analysts say, with deadly violence earlier this year leading to a wave of repression. Days after the launch last fall of Abiy’s book outlining his philosophy of national unity, protesters burned copies in the streets. “Abiy has lost most of his support base in Oromia; has left the political order in the South deeply disoriented … and is now in [the] on the edge of the unknown with the people of Tigray, ”Lemma said.
Tigrayan leaders said they were the targets of corruption trials, removed from the highest positions and blamed for the country’s problems. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front refused to join the party created by Abiy to merge elements of the old ruling coalition into a single political organization.
Then the elections scheduled for August were postponed due to Covid. When MPs voted to extend the officials’ terms anyway, Tigrayan leaders went ahead with their own polls. Now each side views the other as illegitimate, and federal judges have ruled that the Abiy government should cut off contact and funding for Tigray.
But the northern province is home to six million people, 5% of Ethiopia’s 109 million people, and is more influential than many other larger regions. It also has a large paramilitary force and a well-trained local militia, while a large part of the federal military personnel and much of its equipment is also based there, a legacy from the war with Eritrea.
It appears that now hostilities have broken out between the Ethiopian and Tigray governments. “Given the strength of the Tigray security forces, [any] the conflict could well be protracted, ”the International Crisis Group said in a recent report.
There is widespread fear about the destabilizing impact of the incipient conflict. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, called on Friday for “an immediate reduction of tensions and a peaceful resolution of the dispute.” “Ethiopia’s stability is important to the entire Horn of Africa region,” Guterres said.
Ahmed Soliman of Chatham House in London said the consequences of a full-blown conflict would be “indescribable” for Ethiopia and East Africa.
“Ethiopia has experienced a difficult transition in recent years, but it remains the diplomatic cornerstone of the region,” he said.
Experts note that it would have been impossible for Abiy to move troops against Tigray if Ethiopia were still at war with Eritrea. Now Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian leader of Eritrea, is friends with Abiy and has no affection for the leaders of Tigray. There are unconfirmed reports of the mobilization of the weak Eritrean army.
The fierce rhetoric from both sides has clouded any hope for a quick end to the confrontation.
Neither side seems willing to give in. “If I say ‘I’m going to crush you’, is there really room for any negotiation?” Said a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa.
