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Muferiat Kamil tends to view regional special forces as unconstitutional in nature. An extensive discussion between political leaders is important for the sake of a united Ethiopia, as she sees it.
Muferiat Kamil, Minister of Peace. (Photo: EBC video screenshot)borkena
December 7, 2020
Regional Special Forces have been operating in Ethiopia’s ethnic regions for more than a decade. And the federal government now seems to be concerned about that.
According to a report by the Ethiopian Reporter on Sunday, the Minister of Peace, Muferiat Kamil, has expressed the opinion that a broad and extensive discussion is necessary between political leaders, at different levels of government.
“We have an extensive work and discussion ahead of us because we have the clarity that we have to defend ourselves as a country,” he said.
The minister was explicit that the special forces contravene the constitution.
Regional states have the right to organize their police force, but the forces are not supposed to have what she called a “Defense Force character.”
He was referring to the type of training and weapons that these police forces must have as specified in the constitution.
Regional police forces may have regular police training and essential weaponry for local law enforcement, but no special training and group weapons that are presumed relevant to the Ethiopian Defense Forces. However, almost all regions have special forces.
From reports published by The Ethiopian Reporter, Muferiat seems to think that the issue of special forces has become political and political leaders at different levels need to think about it.
Special Forces were first established in the Somali region of Ethiopia in 2007 with the aim of controlling the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) insurgency in the region.
It is also in the Somali region of Ethiopia that special forces attempted to challenge the Ethiopian Defense Forces. Months after Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018, then-president of the Somali region and TPLF ally Abdi Illey, now in prison, mobilized his special forces in an alleged move to separate the region from the rest of Ethiopia. In the following days, there was a clash between the Ethiopian Defense Forces and the special forces of the Somalia region in various parts of the region, including Jijiga. The result was that the special forces were defeated in a matter of a day or two.
What the Ethiopian government defense forces call a law enforcement campaign in Ethiopia’s Tigray region is essentially similar in character. The regional state of Tigray under the leadership of the TPLF, a party that dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades until it was overthrown in April 2018, has organized 250,000 special forces and militias.
The result was that TPLF challenged the federal government on several occasions, the last of which was in August 2020, when the regional government organized its election against the decision of the House of Representatives of the Ethiopian People and the House of Federations. Worse still, the huge special forces in the region attacked the military bases of the Ethiopian Defense Forces northern command with the aim of taking power by force.
The Ethiopian government had to launch a “law enforcement campaign” and the region’s task force was defeated after three weeks of war, although there are reports of pockets of resistance that the Ethiopian government dismisses as false.
While the Minister of Peace’s position on special forces is something that many Ethiopians seem to support, there are critical voices who claim that it makes no sense without changing the ethnic shape of the federal government structure that has reduced millions of Ethiopians to a second class. citizen, not to mention that it led to ethnically-based attacks and violence.
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