Ethiopia’s civil war

Ethiopia’s civil war Back to the mountains

G ASHENA The shifting sands of battle can be seen in the fight for a few important towns

Burnt-out tanks and fresh trenches. Makeshift fortifications cobbled out of mountains. In June they returned and routed the Ethiopian army. By November fieldstone. And litter, everywhere, strewn by two armies: bullets, bottles, biscuit wrappers and the muddy pages of a notebook with poetry scrawled in smudged ink.

The fields around Yekaba Terefe’s house in Gashena, a town at a strategic junction in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, bear witness to the twists and turns of the country’s civil war. For the best part of four months dozens of rebels from the neighbouring Tigray region sprawled themselves on mats in her cramped living room, exhausted, angry and hungry. Some, she says, were gentle. Others were brutal. Soon after they arrived in August they murdered her husband, accusing him of passing information to the federal army. Later they stole her crops. Then, in early December, they retreated— killing some of her neighbours as they left.

When your correspondent visited Gashena, the town was back in the hands of federal troops, who marched in its streets or sipped tea in its cafés. Heavy artillery pounded rebel positions as ambulances raced back and forth. Days later it fell to the rebels again.

The pendulum in Ethiopia’s civil war has swung wildly in the year since Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister, sent troops to crush the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (tplf), the party ruling the northern region of Tigray. Just weeks after war broke out Abiy’s troops had taken Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, and the prime minister declared victory. But it was illusory. The Tigrayan forces had merely melted into the they had advanced to within 160km of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and seemed set to storm it. Embassies evacuated staff and urged citizens to leave. This was as far as the tplf got before the pendulum swung back in favour of Abiy’s forces, who recaptured Dessie and Kombolcha on the road to Tigray, as well as Gashena and Lalibela. Abiy’s forces also pushed the Tigrayans out of most of Afar, an eastern region that contains critical road and rail links between Addis Ababa and the port in neighbouring Djibouti. In an echo of his earlier declaration, the prime minister has told several African leaders that the war is all but over. That seems premature. The tplf tried to stand and fight—and suffered losses—in only a few places such as Gashena. Elsewhere its troops reverted to the guerrilla tactics that the tplf had honed in the 1980s when it toppled the Derg, a communist dictatorship. Having conserved its forces, the tplf may be able to inflict bloody damage on Ethiopian troops if they advance through the narrow valleys and mountain passes on the road to Mekelle. And it still seems capable of rapid ripostes such as the recapture of Gashena and Lalibela. Even so, the rebels are on the back foot. Their advance into Amhara and Afar allowed them to build their strength with captured fuel, food and weapons. Yet the tplf failed to break a government blockade of Tigray, which since July has received only 10% of the food needed to prevent famine. With millions at risk of starving, rebel forces cannot afford to bide their time. “The tplf cannot sustain a war if it doesn’t very quickly find a corridor to neighbouring Sudan or Djibouti,” reckons René Lefort, a researcher who has known some of its leaders for decades.

The federal forces, meanwhile, are extending their numerical advantage over the Tigrayans, who make up about 7% of Ethiopia’s 115m people. Before its recapture on December 13th, the streets of Gashena overflowed with a mixture of federal soldiers, Amhara militias and thousands of volunteer fighters known as “Fano” (pictured in Lalibela), whose ranks have been swelled by Abiy’s calls to arms. Their morale was buoyed when Abiy said he would lead the fight himself. Some militiamen are not armed and wear plastic sandals and football shirts, which may be why the tplf seems to have underestimated them. “After one year of fighting it was inevitable that a hardened core of fighters would emerge on a par with the Tigrayans,” notes another veteran foreign researcher.

The Ethiopian army is also growing stronger as it rearms. Since July Abiy is said to have bought drones and other hightech kit from the United Arab Emirates (uae), Turkey, Iran, Israel and China. Air strikes seem to have devastated the Tigrayans’ heavy weaponry, particularly as the tplf descended from the mountains towards the more exposed terrain near the capital. “Drones changed the fight in our favour,” says a senior rulingparty official.

Several dangers loom. One is what Alex Rondos, a former eu special envoy to the Horn of Africa, calls the “Syrianisation” of Ethiopia’s war, asforeign powers meddle in it. Iran and the uae are backing the government, though they detest each other; the Tigrayans may seek help from Sudan and Egypt, which are angry about a dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile. If the tplf were to strike westwards to open a route to Sudan, this could draw in Sudanese troops and inflame a simmering border war between Sudan and Ethiopia.

A more immediate risk is that Abiy, convinced victory is imminent, will decide to push again into Tigray rather than start talks. Officially, at least, such folly is not likely. “We don’t think it is wise to go into Tigray even if we can,” says a rulingparty official. “There is a general realisation that we need a peace plan.” But many in Amhara, in particular, think otherwise. “If the central government negotiates with the tplf, it will be immediately fighting against the rest of Ethiopia,” warns a Fano leader in Gashena. As for the tplf, its goal of removing Abiy remains unchanged. As long as both sides believe they have more to gain from fighting than from talking, the misery of Ethiopia, and of towns like Gashena, will continue. n