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The democratic reforms of the Nobel Peace Prize have led the country to ethnic cleansing and a humanitarian crisis.
Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed has mobilized troops amid the armed conflict that broke out two weeks ago.
The northern state of Tigray rebelled against democratic reforms and the beginning of the dismantling of the antiquated system of authoritarian federalism.
The war has every possibility of prolonging itself, crossing the borders of Ethiopia and becoming a problem for the entire region and affecting the entire world. Correspondent.net says the details.
The parties in conflict do not intend to withdraw
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the border conflict with Eritrea. He became the first Ethiopian to receive the Nobel Prize in history.
“Someone will say that the peace prize was awarded to this person too early, but the Nobel Committee believes that now it is necessary to recognize the merits of Abiy Ahmed and support him,” explained the then chairman of the Nobel Committee, Brit Anderson.
The Nobel Committee highlighted “Ahmed’s efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation and, in particular, his decisive initiative aimed at resolving the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.”
However, on November 3, he went to war, after rebels from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (NPLT), once an important part of the now-opposition ruling coalition, held elections in the state of Tigray. on September 9, 2020 without permission from the central government, which announced voting is illegal.
Tigray is one of the ten states of Ethiopia, located in the extreme north of the country, on the border with Sudan and Eritrea. The region is inhabited by the Christian tiger people (95 percent of the state’s population, or seven percent of the population of all of Ethiopia).
The NPLT, on whom Abiy declared war, was part of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which was a coalition of four ethnic parties.
In December 2019, the prime minister broke up the ruling coalition and transformed it into a multi-ethnic Prosperity Party as part of the democratization of Ethiopia.
The Abiy government also granted amnesty to political prisoners and legalized clandestine opposition parties. In the economy, the new prime minister has drifted away from the socially oriented course of previous leaders toward free markets and neoliberalism.
Abiy also advocates the centralization of the Ethiopian state and the rejection of the system of ethnic federalism, which has existed in the country for 30 years.
The NPLT strongly condemned Abiy’s actions and refused to join the Prosperity Party, declaring the transformation an attack on the constitution. At the same time, the former rebels retained power in Tigray.
In June, the International Crisis Group wrote that the NTF is arming supporters and preparing for war (Ethiopian states have their own armed forces and police). In September, Tigray held local elections, although Addis Ababa ordered to postpone them until 2021 due to the pandemic.
Ethiopia’s parliament voted to sever relations with the state and canceled all subsidies to the region, and the prime minister accused the regional authorities of persecuting minorities in their territory and “state terrorism.”
The Ethiopian government has declared a state of emergency in the Tigray region for a period of six months. There, telephone and Internet communications were cut off.
Regional authorities, in turn, prohibited the movement of Ethiopian troops in Tigray and warned of “proportionate measures” in case of damage to people or property.
Tigray TV claims that the Ethiopian Armed Forces Northern Command has sided with the Tigray government. However, as the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s office told the AP, the reports “do not correspond to reality.”
Now the parties are refusing to enter into a dialogue and experts fear that the conflict will escalate into a true civil war.
The NPLT’s armed forces are known to be superior to government forces. After the end of the 10-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea (for which Prime Minister Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Prize), up to 80 percent of all heavy weapons in the country remain in Tigray.
On November 9, Reuters reported 500 casualties in a clash between government forces and the NFOT. It was noted that they were talking about military personnel.
There were two massacres of civilians in Tigray last week. On 12 November, the human rights organization Amnesty International reported in its report that several hundred local residents of the city of Mai-Kadra had been stabbed and stabbed to death.
According to human rights activists, most of the bodies were found in the city center near the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, as well as on the road leading to the neighboring town of Kumera.
It is reported that those responsible for the massacre have not yet been established, however, according to witness testimony, they were members of the NFOT. And although they deny being involved in this massacre, the prime minister accused the leadership of this organization of mass murder.
On November 15, Reuters reported 34 new civilian casualties. The militants reportedly attacked a bus in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region. The head of the National Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, called the incident “a grim addition to the human sacrifice that we all carry.”
According to Bekele, the death toll is likely to rise as large numbers of seriously injured remain in hospitals. He also asked the country’s authorities to develop a security strategy that prevents further attacks.
In addition, at least three rockets were fired at the Eritrean capital Asmara from the Ethiopian region of Tigray. On the eve of November 14, the Tigray authorities threatened Eritrea with strikes if it assisted the federal authorities in Ethiopia.
According to Reuters, two more missiles hit the Asmara airport. Due to communication problems in the region, the victims and destruction are unknown. Authorities on both sides have yet to comment on the information that emerged.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has already stated that “stability in Ethiopia is important for the entire Horn of Africa region.”
The war in the country could negatively affect other East African countries and even Europe, notes BBC News.
Ethiopia’s eastern neighbor is Somalia. This country entered a civil war 29 years ago and here several thousand Ethiopian soldiers participate in a peacekeeping mission.
If Ethiopia were to withdraw them from Somalia, it could strengthen the local jihadists who control part of its territory and seize power.
Ethiopia’s western neighbor is South Sudan, a country that is one of the poorest in the world. It survived the civil war in 2013-2020, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and some of the refugees found refuge in Ethiopia. The war in Ethiopia increases the threat of the outbreak of inter-ethnic conflicts in this country.
Eritrea is located north of Ethiopia. Its permanent president Isayas Afverki has created an authoritarian regime since 1993, and the country is one of the poorest in the world. Reformer youth flee through Sudan and Libya to Europe, not to serve in the military for several years and not to endure poverty their entire lives.
The destabilization in Ethiopia could threaten the small state of Djibouti, where the military bases of the United States, China, France and Italy are located. Ethiopia’s international trade also passes through this country.
In the event of a full-scale war in Ethiopia, refugee flows may rush to neighboring countries in the region and beyond, to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe.
Already, 600,000 residents of the Tigray region depend on UN food aid, but overall, the country depends on it for seven million people.
Another factor: the confrontation in Ethiopia takes place in the context of this state’s conflict with Egypt and Sudan over the construction of a major Ethiopian Renaissance dam on the Blue Nile River.
A hydroelectric plant on this river should meet Ethiopia’s electricity needs, a large reservoir was created next to the dam, which began to fill up this summer.
Egypt and Sudan, which are located downstream of the Nile, believe that the implementation of the project will lead to a decrease in their water supply and a lack of drinking water and for agriculture.
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