Prime Minister Abiy. Clearly not worthy of Nobel Peace Prize. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Roman emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. Whether the story is true or not is immaterial. A real modern day African Nero is presently presiding over a once stable and economically vibrant nation which is now hanging by a thread, its very survival as a nation in jeopardy.
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed Ali is using incendiary rhetoric meant to whip up “us versus them” patriotic fervor against the war-torn Tigray region of the country. He’s used terms such as “cancer”, “weeds” and “junta” which have come to be synonymous with Tigrayans. He’s rationalizing the need to destroy them by unleashing an anti-Tigray hatred the likes of which not seen in Africa since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Abiy’s ruling Prosperity Party acolyte, Agegnew Teshager, president of the Amhara regional state, took a cue from his boss and did him one better. Without mincing words he called upon all Amaharas to wipe out Tigrayans whom he characterized as enemies of the Ethiopian and Amhara people. It didn’t occur to him that the defining history of Ethiopia has its origin in Tigray.
The world has witnessed in horror over the past nine months the atrocities committed by Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) soldier and their invited co-invaders, troops of the neighboring Eritrean dictator Isaias Afeworki, Amhara Special Forces, and militia systematically targeting civilians such as in the massacre in Axum. Other measures have included withholding food supplies, cutting off drinking water, electricity, telephone, and banking services. Rape and starvation were used as weapons of war. As a result of the atrocities, close to 70,000 Tigrayans have fled to neighboring Sudan seeking refuge.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) a.k.a Doctors Without Borders, says more than 80% of Tigray’s health infrastructure was deliberately destroyed. Factories were dismantled and farmlands set on fire.
UN agencies, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various international new outlets have characterized these atrocities as war crimes and crimes against humanity. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has declared that “acts of ethnic cleansing” have been committed in Western Tigray.
The ranks of the TPLF guerrilla fighters swelled after the invasion as tens of thousands of young men and women in Tigray fled the cities to join them. A celebrated retired general, Tsadkan Gebretensae, abandoned his thriving private business to join the resistance. He took command of the ragtag group of volunteers and shaped it into a formidable disciplined army that came to be known as Tigray Defense Forces (TDF). This army went on the offensive against Ethiopian and Eritrean troops, capturing major cities in June and kicking out the Ethiopian army and its allies from Tigray.
Abiy’s Prosperity Party acolytes who were appointed to administer Tigray were hastily evacuated from Mekele, the capital, along with high ranking military officers. The remnant of the ENDF fled leaving behind much of their heavy weaponry. Thousands surrendered. It was a humiliating defeat for Abiy of epic proportions.
As remnants of his troops were fleeing and trying to regroup across the border Abiy declared a unilateral ceasefire. Eritreans fled to their side of the border after suffering heavy casualties. An area bordering Eritrea, Amhara region and Sudan in the Western part of Tigray remains controlled by heavily fortified Eritrean and Amhara troops.
TDF forces have taken the war deep into Amhara territory capturing major towns. General Tsadkan says the operation is designed to force the lifting of the blockade of Tigray. In the aftermath of the debacle by the ENDF, Abiy’s government intensified racial profiling of Tigrayans in Addis Ababa and other cities in Ethiopia throwing thousands of ordinary citizens in jail and shuttering their business. The whereabouts of some of them is not known.
Meantime ethnic cleansing in Western Tigray continues and recently Tigrayan bodies have been seen washing down the Tekeze River into Sudan, echoes of Rwanda. The situation in Oromia state, home to the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, while not as dramatic as in Tigray is no less troubling with Western Oromia under what the government calls Command Post–Military occupation under state of emergency–for over two years. As in Tigray, complete communication blackout is in effect. There too, atrocities have been reportedly committed by Ethiopian security forces.
The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the oldest guerrilla movement in Ethiopia, like TPLF, did not agree to join Abiy’s Prosperity Party when it was formed and it and was opposed to the abolition of the Federal constitution and the dismantling of the Federal arrangement.
All regional state presidents who were elected by the people of their respective regional states were summarily replaced by Abiy-appointed Prosperity Party stalwarts. OLF and TPLF, who refused to go along with his Prosperity Party vision of a unitary government, were perceived as enemies and a pliant parliament declared them “terrorist” organizations.
It was the open defiance by TPLF that led Abiy to declare an invasion of Tigray. He euphemistically dubbed the war a “law enforcement operation.” A militant faction of the OLF was forced to pick up arms again as Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and has made significant gains against the central government. Just last week both OLA and TPLF issued a joint statement declaring a military alliance with the purpose of removing Abiy and engaging in a nationwide dialogue to determine the future of Ethiopia.
Abiy accepts Nobel in 2019. Some believe he was already plotting with Eritrea to invade Tigray.
Tigray and Oromia are not the only hot spots. The Somali and the Afar regional states are in a state of war as are Benishangul and Amhara state. Thousands have died in these low intensity wars that has now made Ethiopia a country with the largest number of internally displaced people (IDP).
Abiy’s response has been invariably to send federal troops and security forces loyal to Prosperity Party without addressing the issues. The security situation in Addis Ababa, once considered the safest city in Africa, has deteriorated so much that many diplomatic missions and NGOs are said to be making contingency plans to relocate elsewhere.
The cost of living in Addis has skyrocketed and there is severe cash liquidity problem in the largest bank in the country.
In the midst of the deteriorating political, economic and security situation, PM Abiy was preoccupied with the beautification of the old Emperor Menelik Palace creating a park on the grounds at the cost of $160 million, supposedly a gift from UAE. When President Biden sent the veteran diplomat Jeffrey Feldman as his personal envoy to the Horn of Africa to discuss the crisis in Tigray in May this year, Abiy played the chauffeur taking the special envoy on a four hour sightseeing tour of Addis Ababa including his pride and joy–the park at the old imperial palace. Tigray did not come up in those four hours. It raised some eyebrows.
There is a jarring dissonance here. The PM seemingly living in a bubble of a peaceful rapidly developing and democratic Ethiopia with grand imperial palaces and beautiful gardens under his leadership.
Will Ethiopia survive the current state of anarchy and precipitous fall from grace? The state seems to be drifting rudderless. Some Ethiopian Diaspora commentators are beginning to call it a failed state. Meantime the carnage all over the empire state continues unabated.
Nero could not have done worse in ancient Rome.
Mohammed A. Nurhussein MD, is a retired Ethiopian-born physician.
