Corporate DispatchPro TONIO GALEA
Stoking embers in Ethiopia A year ago, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace after formally ending a two-decade conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. Some weeks ago, the same Prime Minister delivered a televised address to the nation declaring armed action by the state against one of Ethiopia’s own regions, Tigray.
Abiy’s message came after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) mounted an attack on a federal military base last month, evoking scary memories of the civil unrest that swept through the country in the 1980s. Relations between the government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray region in the northernmost tip of Ethiopia have been frosty ever since Abiy came to power in 2018. Until then, the TPLF had been in effective control of the county’s ruling coalition for nearly three decades. Established in 1975 in reaction to the Marxist junta that ran Ethiopia, the TPLF grew into the most powerful armed group in the country leading the popular uprising that eventually overthrew the dictatorship in 1991. The front morphed swiftly into a political party and dominated Ethiopia’s political scene until voters turned to Abiy in the last elections. The TPLF leadership conceded, but the transition has not been smooth. In September this year, the Tigrayan people ignored warnings by the federal government and held regional polls without permission. The Abiy administration responded by cutting direct budgetary support to the region. Tensions have been rising rapidly, causing alarm across the entire Horn of Africa. Trouble in ethnically diverse Ethiopia could quickly 27
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