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The Nobel Peace Prize on the warpath
Opposites: Abiy Ahmed with the Nobel Peace Prize and his troops. Bild: cornerstone / watson
A Nobel Peace Prize winner mobilizes and risks military escalation in a region where the great powers struggle to influence. While the world awaited the outcome of the US elections, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent his military to the rebellious Horn of Africa province of Tigray, somewhat unnoticed. The reason given by the 2019 Nobel Prize: The attack on a military base crossed a red line there.
Since then, despite the closure and cut communication channels, bad news has come out of Tigray about massacres, fighting, bombing and displacement. They are hardly independently verifiable. The fact is: thousands have fled to neighboring countries. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, warns: “There is a risk that the situation will get completely out of control and cause many deaths and serious destruction, as well as refugee movements within Ethiopia and across Ethiopia. the borders”.
What Ethiopia initially announced as a short-lived domestic affair has developed a dynamic that threatens to destabilize the entire region. After China, the United States, France and even Taiwan, Russia has secured a strategically important military base in the Gulf of Aden. Surrounded by hotspots like Yemen and Somalia, the Red Sea is about safeguarding interests on one of the world’s most important trade routes. In addition to the United Nations, aid organizations are also warning of a humanitarian catastrophe and the spread of the conflict to neighboring countries.
Rockets were launched from Tigray in the capital of neighboring Eritrea state, Asmara, over the weekend. More airstrikes threaten. Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018 and removed old guard officials from the Tigray TPLF People’s Liberation Front from power during his reform course, has so far been deaf to appeals after the fighting stopped. He is now on a “final offensive.”
In the multi-ethnic state of Ethiopia with its 112 million inhabitants, ethnic tensions and conflicts are nothing new. But the Abiy offensive comes at a time when risks are not lacking in terms of foreign policy. The neighboring countries Sudan and especially Egypt are buried on a gigantic dam with which Ethiopia wants to use the water of the Nile to generate electricity. Both neighbors were already showing their muscles with military maneuvers.
The TPLF and many people in the Tigray province do not feel represented by the central government and would like more autonomy. “People are ready to fight, if necessary with sticks,” announced TPLF chief Debretsion Gebremichael. According to him, the Eritrean armed forces are fighting alongside the Ethiopians, which has yet to be officially confirmed. The TPLF, once the dominant party in the party coalition that ruled Ethiopia with a heavy hand for more than 25 years, sees Eritrea as a legitimate target. Before the negotiations, the central government of Addis Ababa would have to withdraw all troops from the conflict region, demands the head of TPFL. (aeg / sda / dpa)
