ABIY’S UNDOING
The Tigray conflict has cast a shadow over the Nobel peace prize laureate and Ethiopian prime minister
The descent into genocide in Ethiopia’s Tigray state has besmirched a Nobel peace prize laureate’s reputation — and bedevilled his plans to achieve a workable democracy in a country with deep ethnic cleavages.
Ever since armed units loyal to the Tigrayans launched their assault on government army bases on November 3, the northernmost province has been awash with blood — and irony.
After Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, Tigrayans (a former ethnic elite who ruled Ethiopia for 27 years) saw their influence in the capital wane, national elections postponed until an undeclared date, and their own state elections declared null and void. Now they are battling the federal government, which is being aided by
Amhara state — whose own rulers the Tigrayans ousted in 1991.
The conflict is rapidly putting paid to Abiy’s vision of positioning Ethiopia as Africa’s pharmaceutical and textiles hub.
According to an April report by the World Peace Foundation (WPF), up to 18,000 manufacturing jobs — about a quarter of all manufacturing jobs in Tigray — have been lost to looting and destruction of factories by government forces. Among those plants destroyed by fire are Addis Pharmaceuticals, Ethiopia’s largest pharmaceutical factory, with 3,000 employees, and the Almeda Textiles factory, with 8,000.
The rebel capital of Mekelle, home to many of the wrecked factories, is the site of a 1,000ha industrial park built for apparel, textiles, food processing and assembly plants. It was to be a centrepiece of the state’s plan to build 10-million square metres of factory floor by 2025. (Mekelle is connected to the port of Djibouti by rail, offering an export link.)
All those gains seem lost, and not just through the physical destruction of war. Addis Ababa has also frozen the assets of the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray — a conglomerate of more than 30 companies and a leading investor in manufacturing in the region.
Then, in a move that provoked a charge by the WPF that it is using starvation as a weapon, Addis froze microloans to 450,000 Tigrayan farmers — 40% of rural families. This, in the midst of a crisis in which 4.5million Tigrayans are in desperate need of food aid, says the UN, and the country is on the brink of famine, according to the Famine Early Warning System Network.
Matthew Sugrue, Save the Children’s team leader in Tigray, tells the FM that “87% of health-care facilities are damaged and not operational”. He emphasises the urgent need for donor aid for health care, protections against sexual abuse, and food, as “mothers [are] not able to produce enough breast milk because they haven’t eaten”.
All sides have been accused of war crimes. US President Joe Biden has called Abiy’s war “ethnic cleansing”. Addis Ababa rejects the term, calling the conflict a mere law enforcement action.
Back in May 2019, when the FM assessed the first year of Abiy’s presidency, Ethiopia specialist Prof Kjetil Tronvoll of Oslo Analytica warned that the biggest threat to stability lay in the country’s ethnic faultlines, ingrained by the federation of nine ethnic states, each with its own militia.
Tigray’s armed militia numbered 250,000 prior to the outbreak of hostilities, against a federal army of just 162,000. Though the federals delivered a crushing blow to the rebels by capturing Mekelle on November
28, the conflict is far from over.
The surviving militia are vowing to fight on and have withdrawn to the eastern escarpment, where mountain ranges soar over 4,000m. And a conflict that Russia, China and India told the UN was “internal” and best left alone has drawn in outside forces.
The depopulation of western Tigray has lured opportunistic Sudanese armed groups into the vacuum, provoking a border clash with Ethiopian forces on December 5. As a result, the Sudanese army and its rapid support forces — ex-Janjaweed militia responsible for genocide in Darfur — briefly invaded.
A United Arab Emirates (UAE) military base at Assab in Eritrea was alleged to have flown Chinese-built hunter-killer drones to target rebels — and, reportedly, civilians. But armed drones expert Wim Zwijnenburg of Dutch peace organisation PAX says there is insufficient proof to confirm the UAE deployment, and the UAE in any event dismantled the Assab drone hangar in February.
Most remarkable, however, is old foe Eritrea entering the fray to help suppress the rebellion, occupying up to 40% of Tigray for several months.
In October 2019, just over a year before the outbreak of war, Abiy was awarded the Nobel peace prize for ending the 20-year conflict with Eritrea. Eighteen months on, he’s squandered a booming economy with 15 years of sustained growth behind it — and the goodwill of the international community — to bring rebels in his own country to heel.