It’s not every day that a Nobel Peace Prize winner dons a military uniform. But in Ethiopia, we are no longer close to a slippage.
The civil war, which has lasted for a year in the Horn of Africa country, escalated a notch this week, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced his intention to join the front himself to subdue the Tigrayan rebels.
The 45-year-old politician said it was time to “bury the enemy” and “lead the country with sacrifice”. A video released on Saturday shows him on the battlefield, claiming that the army will “destroy” the rebels in Tigray.
IMAGE FROM A VIDEO ON ABIY AHMED’S TWITTER ACCOUNT
Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, in video showing him on the battlefield
This brilliant gesture aims to reverse the course of the war, while the Tigrayan forces were on Friday about a hundred kilometers from Addis Ababa. Their entry into the Ethiopian capital is still uncertain, but the threat is real enough that Western countries, including Canada, the United States and France, are urging their nationals to leave Ethiopia.
This conflict has so far claimed several thousand lives and two million displaced. Half a million people are said to be at risk of starvation, while warning signs of ethnic cleansing multiply.
“It’s very serious,” says Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and Africa specialist at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
At the roots of the conflict
Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending the 10-year hostilities between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea.
But diplomacy does not seem to be on its program in the case of Tigray.
This poor region, located in the far north of the country, represents only 7% of the national mosaic, which is made up of around 80 ethnic groups. But that did not prevent his main party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (FLPT), from asserting itself for 27 years as the main political force in Ethiopia.
PHOTO GIULIA PARAVICINI, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Residents of Tigray walking near burned-out vehicles
This quasi-monopoly ended with the coming to power of Abiy Ahmed in 2018. Coming from the two main ethnic groups of the country (Oromo and Amhara), the young prime minister gradually reduced the influence of the FLPT, which is found marginalized and ended up relegated to opposition.
In August 2020, Abiy Ahmed announced that he was postponing the elections in Ethiopia due to COVID-19. But the FLPT does not see it that way and decides to go ahead with its own regional ballot.
The Prime Minister punishes this dissent by freezing public funds intended for Tigray. On November 4, 2020, he launched an armed offensive on the region, accusing the FLPT of having attacked a federal military base. Supported by the Eritrean army and by military equipment bought from Turkey, it promises a rapid exit from the crisis.
But the conflict gets bogged down and turns into a humanitarian crisis, and massacres, kidnappings, torture and sexual violence against populations have since been reported, as well as a famine in Tigray, which now spills over into the regions of Amhara. and Afar, where the fighting has spread.
On Saturday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Twitter that 79 trucks carrying food aid and equipment had arrived this week in Mekele, capital of Tigray.
An “exalted”
A UN report published in early November hints at possible crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides. But Sabine Planel, a specialist in Ethiopia at the French Institute for Development Research, unhesitatingly denounces the regime’s “genocidal” drift towards the Tigrayans.
Since the declaration of a state of emergency by Abiy Ahmed on November 2, thousands of arbitrary arrests based on ethnicity have reportedly taken place in the country. Many abuses, expulsions and disappearances are reported among the Tigrayan community in Addis Ababa, where armed militias roam the streets.
In recent weeks, we have seen the arrival of the second click of a genocide, where it is the populations among themselves who are eliminated on ethnic criteria.
Sabine Planel, Ethiopia specialist at the French Institute for Development Research
Mme Planel admits that abuses were committed by the Tigrayan army on other populations, including the Afars and Amharas, but she emphasizes that these were never accompanied by a “call for the annihilation” of these communities. .
“Abiy Ahmed, on the contrary, calls for the annihilation of the Tigrayans. He maintains a confusion between a political group [le FLPT] and all the civilian populations, which is totally irresponsible for a ruler. In his declaration of the state of emergency, he describes all Tigrayans as a threat to the nation, ”she said.
According to Roland Marchal, CNRS researcher and expert in African civil wars, this speech reveals the true face of the Ethiopian prime minister, an evangelical Christian on an “existential” crusade for the preservation of national unity.
“He thinks he embodies a Christ-like solution to the Ethiopian drama and for Ethiopian reconciliation. He says we must go to martyrdom. He is a fanatic. A dangerous guy, ”simply summarizes Mr. Marchal.
Disaster scenario
With a dazzling advance in recent weeks, the Tigrayan army, better trained and now supported by Oromo independence groups (east of the country), could reach Addis Ababa in the coming days.
But it is unlikely that the FLPT will settle in the capital, where it would meet the hostility of the population.
What they are looking for is the possibility of governing themselves, whether as part of a redefined federation or a confederation. They will prefer to take advantage of this gain to reverse the balance of power and negotiate their autonomy.
Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation
According to Mme Planel, the scenario of a federal victory is more worrying. Because it implies the maintenance in power of an “undemocratic regime which calls for genocide”.
In an open letter to the British daily Tea Guardian, personalities from the political and academic world, including the former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, on Friday called on the international community to mobilize to avoid the “catastrophe” of a new Rwanda, while the UN, the Union Africa and the United States were intensifying diplomatic efforts to obtain a ceasefire… without success for the moment.
The second country in Africa with 110 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is a key ally of the West in the fight against Islamic terrorism. There are fears of the impacts of the conflict in a fragile region, with unstable countries like Sudan and Somalia.
With Agence France-Presse