Ethnic nationalism breaks out in Ethiopia

Wrapped up in a major international crisis over the construction and operation of the giant Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, Ethiopia is now also drawn into an armed civil conflict with the Tigray people, the traditional neighbour and ally of impoverished and closed Eritrea. Even with the beginning of the military offensive by the Ethiopian army. 

The outbreak was foreseeable when the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, of Oromo ethnicity, promoted the dissolution of all the ethnic political groups that had hitherto formed the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in December 2019. Abiy Ahmed's goal was to dilute the Taifas and create a truly new Ethiopian citizenship under a central government and with a truly national sentiment. A process that has been accepted throughout Africa with many difficulties, many wars and much bloodshed. Tribe and ethnicity, as the bases of political and social organisation, are deeply rooted in the multi-secular African culture, so that unification in territories often drawn with rule and carthage in the former chancelleries of European metropolises is considered by those directly affected to be an aggressive external imposition.

The People's Liberation Front of Tigray (FLPT) never willingly accepted its dissolution and corresponding integration into the recently established Abiy Ahmed Prosperity Party. For the Tigrays this was an obvious loss of power and influence. Established in 1974 as a Marxist socialist political party, the FLPT contributed to the fall of the Negus, Emperor Haile Selassie, under whose authority as Lion of Judah it held the country together even under the domination of Mussolini's fascist Italy. 

The fall of the Abyssinian monarchy, which was succeeded by a Provisional Military Administrative Council (Derg), gave rise after numerous revolts to the communist regime of Mengistu Hailé Mariam, who ruled the country with an iron hand and was a faithful ally of the Soviet Union. The explosion of the Soviet Union would also speed up the overthrow of Mengistu, who in 1991 gave way to the multi-ethnic government of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. This movement was always dominated precisely by the Tigray, one of whose leaders, Meles Zenawi, was to be the uninterrupted prime minister of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2012. During that time he made Addis Ababa the third-largest capital in the world after New York and Brussels, with the highest density of diplomats, thanks to his definitive installation as the headquarters of the African Union, while at the same time concluding important financial agreements with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in exchange for renouncing Marxist-Leninist ideology and aligning himself with the liberal democracies. 

Having been relegated to their regional state of Tigray, the former guerrilla fighters have not only systematically disobeyed the Addis Ababa directives but, according to the accusations of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, have been setting up and equipping armed militias, with uniforms suspiciously similar to those of the Eritrean army, country which Ethiopia confronted in a long war, concluded with a peace agreement in 2018, signed by Eritrean President Isaiah Afewerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, for which the latter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. 

Now, the trigger for the civil and ethnic clash in Ethiopia has been the attack by the FLPT on a military base, with the aim of stealing military equipment, an action which would have caused "numerous deaths, injuries and significant material damage". In his televised statement, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Ethiopian Prime Minister pointed out that the FLPT "has crossed the last red line, forcing the federal government into a military confrontation". 

Previously, the resurgent FLPT had staged a genuine coup d'état in its region by holding elections in September, which were disallowed by Addis Ababa, thereby implicitly refusing to recognise the legitimacy of Ethiopia's federal government and parliament and consummating a de facto secession. At the same time, the language used by the Tigray authorities in statements to European media, such as Agence France Press, showed their willingness to "defend" themselves. 

In addition to the emotional ties that bind the Tigrays to their Eritrean neighbours, suspicions are beginning to spread regarding diplomatic manoeuvres that would tend to fuel the civil war, weaken Ethiopia's leader and, as a result, hinder the consummation of the great national project that is the Renaissance Dam, the only cause, according to President Al-Sisi, for which Egypt would engage in war.