By Declan Walsh and
Tigrayan fighters led a brutal war through the 1970s and ’80s against a hated Marxist dictator of Ethiopia, whom they eventually toppled in 1991, becoming national heroes. For most of the next three decades, Tigrayans ruled Ethiopia.
But after Abiy Ahmed, a peace-talking young reformer, came to power as prime minister in 2018, he brusquely sidelined Tigray’s leaders. Tensions exploded violently on Nov. 4, as the world was focused on the presidential election in the United States, when Mr. Abiy launched military strikes in Tigray.
Now Tigray is once again at war, fighting the federal government. But this time the risks could be even wider: the potential fracturing of Ethiopia and the upending of the entire Horn of Africa.
The battle pits the nation’s army and Mr. Abiy, an internationally feted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, against the ruling party of Tigray, which commands a large force of well-armed and experienced fighters who know their own mountain terrain well. Already the conflict has escalated at alarming speed with intense fighting that has involved airstrikes and artillery barrages, sent thousands of civilians fleeing across borders — some in boats or even swimming — and led to reports of civilian massacres.
With such intransigent foes, analysts predict a potentially long and bloody fight that is already spilling over Ethiopia’s borders
On Friday, Tigray launched rockets at two airports in neighboring Amhara Province and on Saturday said it had fired a volley of rockets at the main airport in Ethiopia’s neighbor Eritrea, which Tigray accuses of siding with Mr. Abiy.
The rush to war has exacerbated ethnic divisions so badly that on Friday it prompted warnings of potential ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
“The risk of atrocity crimes in Ethiopia remains high,” said Pramila Patten, the United Nations’ acting special adviser for the prevention of genocide, and Karen Smith, the special adviser on protecting civilians, in a joint statement.
Until recently Ethiopia, a close American military ally, was seen as the strategic linchpin of the volatile Horn of Africa. But with its brewing civil war spilling into Eritrea, refugees streaming into Sudan and Ethiopia’s peacekeeping mission to Somalia now under strain because of its domestic turmoil, analysts worry that Ethiopia could destabilize the region.
The dispute between Mr. Abiy and the Tigrayans goes back to the early days of his term as prime minister two years ago.
He moved quickly to shake up the country after decades of stultifying, iron-fisted rule under the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Political prisoners were freed from secret prisons, exiled dissidents were welcomed home and Mr. Abiy promised free elections and press freedom.
Those rapid, wide-ranging reforms, which eventually helped Mr. Abiy win the Nobel Peace Prize, were a pointed repudiation of the Tigrayan old guard. Leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were unceremoniously sidelined and, in some cases, prosecuted for corruption and human rights abuses.
Resentful and angry, the Tigrayan leaders retreated to Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray. The two sides sparred over politics, funding and control of the army. Then in September the Tigrayans openly defied Mr. Abiy and proceeded with regional elections that had been canceled in the rest of Ethiopia because of the pandemic.
But that clash, ostensibly a dispute between Ethiopian elites, was also emblematic of a much wider threat to Mr. Abiy’s authority.
Although Ethiopia is one country, it contains 10 regions, many of them ethnic strongholds that have historically jostled for power. In moving so quickly to liberalize politics in 2018, Mr. Abiy may have inadvertently unleashed pent-up regional frustrations that had been simmering for decades.
Rivalries among ethnic groups like the Oromo, Amhara, Tigray and Somali burst into the open, leading to violent clashes that have increased in frequency and intensity this year, often killing scores of people. With Ethiopia’s shaky federation straining badly, Tigray emerged at the vanguard of a movement pressing for greater autonomy for Ethiopia’s regions.
Mr. Abiy, who started to imprison opponents, pushed for much tighter central control.
“Everyone saw this coming,” said Kjetil Tronvoll, a scholar of Ethiopian politics at Bjorknes University College in Norway. “Both sides felt insecure and started to mobilize troops. It was a clear signal of a civil war in the making.”
Mr. Abiy’s speed in prosecuting the war has sent waves of alarm across the region and dismayed those who once lauded him as a peacemaker.
With phone and internet connections cut off, it’s hard to know exactly what is happening in Tigray. But both sides agree that government warplanes have pounded targets around Mekelle, that some Ethiopian troops were pushed over the border into Eritrea and that the most intense fighting has raged in western Tigray. By Sunday at least 20,000 Ethiopian civilians had fled into Sudan, a refugee stream that the United Nations fears could quickly become a flood. Sudan says it is preparing for up to 200,000 refugees.
There have been accusations of war crimes against both sides, including a massacre reported by Amnesty International in which dozens of villagers were said to have been chopped to death with machetes, possibly by pro-Tigray militiamen.
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