Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered the army to respond to attacks on a federal defense camp by forces linked to the governing party in the northern Tigray region, as the central government struggles to end ethnic violence shaking Africa’s second-most populous country.
“The red line is crossed,” Abiy said in a Facebook post early Wednesday. “Our Defense Forces, under the command of the Command Post, have been ordered to carry out their mission to save the country.”
Abiy Ahmed Ali in 2019.
Photographer: Erik Valestrand/Getty Images
Ethiopian government officials this week accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, once the pre-eminent power broker in national politics, of supporting a militia group, the Oromo Liberation Front-Shane, that it accuses of a massacre that killed at least 32 people. The TPLF has denied involvement. On Tuesday, members of the nation’s House of Representatives called for the designation of the TPLF and the OLF-Shane as terrorist groups.
Conflict Deepens
Relations between Tigray and Ahmed’s government have been strained since he took office in 2018 and sidelined the TPLF. Parliament last month ordered the Treasury to halt direct budgetary support to the Tigray regional administration for defying an order to postpone regional elections. Tigray’s leaders said the witholding of funding was unconstitutional and tantamount to a declaration of war.
“The standoff could trigger a damaging conflict that may even rip the Ethiopian state asunder,” Crisis Group warned on Friday. Tensions were further exacerbated last week when the federal government attempted to reshuffle the military leadership stationed on the Eritrean border, where a considerable number of troops are based.
While the upper house of Ethiopia’s parliament warned that a military intervention against Tigray could be justified, Abiy has said he wouldn’t resort to force to quash dissent.
Ethiopia, which is divided into ten ethnically based and politically autonomous regions, has seen sporadic conflict since Abiy took power in 2018 and began opening up the country’s once tightly regulated political space. He welcomed rebel groups and opposition members and released hundreds of political prisoners, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
But violence increased in recent months following the killing of Hachalu Hundessa, a songwriter and activist from the Oromia region, the nation’s largest and most populous, and home to the capital Addis Ababa. In September, unidentified gunmen in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of western Ethiopia killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds.
Another dozen civilians were killed in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region in October, and several others lost their lives in the Afar region in the same month, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
With Abiy ordering the military to intervene, phone lines and the internet were cut off in Tigray as of 1 a.m. local time, according to Netblocks, which tracks Internet disruptions globally. TPLF officials could not immediately be reached by phone for comment.
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November 04, 2020 at 07:13AM
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