A return to Ethiopia's future

A quick glance at Ethiopia's history shows that the country's problems have never been solved by bloodbaths. A good example of this can be found in the 1974 civil war, which was precipitated by the rebellion against the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, led by the military man Mengistu Haile Mariam, under whose orders the moderate president of the Provisional Military Administrative Council was assassinated, together with 60 aristocrats and former officials of the former imperial regime, which ended up triggering the period of "Red Terror" directed against the opposition and Ethiopian civil society, which culminated in the arrival of a contingent of Cuban troops to help the Ethiopian army fight the Somali, over the dispute over Oganden territories. 40 years later, the pandemic crisis has created the conditions for a new armed conflict in the Tigray region, northern Ethiopia.  

The pandemic led the federal executive to postpone national elections in August, which was answered by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, holding unilateral elections leading to a split between the two administrations and armed clashes on November 4; the imposition of a state of emergency; and the establishment of an interim administration that effectively dissolved Tigray's autonomy. 

Conflagration fever rose rapidly, increasing the number of casualties in western Tigray, near Sudan and Eritrea. It is obvious that this umpteenth armed crisis has all the potential to break out a second front in the Sahel strip: the risk of Eritrea being swept away is a golden opportunity for the extremist groups that roam the region to try to lead Ethiopia to total collapse in order to create a domino effect reaching the Mauritanian coast and splitting the African continent in two.  

The tangle of belligerent forces is rife with overlapping loyalties and interests of outside actors, which are going to make it very difficult to stop the general confrontation in the making. On the one hand, the Ethiopian National Defence Force has a clear armed superiority on paper, but the headquarters of its Northern Command is under the control of the People's Liberation Front of Tigray, the architect of the defeat of the Marxist-Leninist regime in 1991, which, although it was decimated in Eritrea's war, retains a more than respectable armed force, notably in Mekelle, one of the war aims of Abiy Ahmed Ali's federal government, and whose proximity to Eritrea may jeopardise the 2018 peace agreements, considering the existence of 100,000 Eritrean refugees in the Tigray area.  

Eritrea is precisely one of the countries that may precipitate the rapid international escalation of the crisis, together with Sudan and Egypt, both parties involved in the dispute over the Ethiopian Gerd dam on the Blue Nile.  Indeed, the two countries are engaged in previously planned joint manoeuvres that are facilitating a potential mobilisation against Ethiopia, something which has led Russia and China to issue warnings against any act of hostility against Ethiopia, after Trump opted for a position close to Egyptian interests, whether active or passive, and stently. 

In any case, we cannot ignore the fact that Egypt and Russia share strategic interests in the war in Libya, and it is therefore difficult for Cairo to ignore the admonitions of Moscow, which shares Beijing's interest in stabilising the Horn of Africa as a basis for establishing their own geopolitical presence in the region.   

For the time being, Sudan has closed part of its eastern border at the same time as the Sudanese prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, appealed to Abiy Ahmed Ali to redress the situation. However, some reports indicate that Tigray has established a corridor through which arms and supplies from Sudan are being brought in, in what can be interpreted as a nod to the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which may end badly for the whole region, if Abiy Ahmed Ali is forced to withdraw Ethiopian troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia, which would give wings to the Islamic militia terrorist militia al-Shabaab to create even more destabilisation in Somalia, thereby giving the conflict an Arab dimension: The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been fighting for influence in East Africa for years, and the risk of an indirect war-a relatively low-intensity but de facto perennial gujarat-similar to the Libyan model-will increase as the duration of hostilities forces the intervention of the rival Gulf powers, seems inevitable if Somalia is directly affected. 

There is little doubt that the conflict in Ethiopian territory is unlikely to be resolved in the short term, even if the federal government has high hopes of a major final offensive after the ultimatum to the rebel forces in Tigray. Even if the military actions are successful, Ethiopia's ethnic fabric makes the underlying problems almost intractable. As tends to be the case in Africa, it is a mistake to make extrapolations based on Eurocentric political dynamics; Ethiopian politics is not organised in a cardinally defined left-to-right spectrum for material reasons, but operates within ethnic parameters, which translate into demands for recognition, self-government and active participation in federal affairs.  As these identities cross borders, and given that 80 different ethnic groups (35 percent Oromo, 27 percent Amara, 6 percent Tigrinya and 30 percent heterogeneous minorities) cohabit in Ethiopia, achieving national stability requires a height of vision that neither of the parties to the conflict is willing to demonstrate, which ultimately results in the reaffirmation of the secessionist dynamics that flirt with the balkanisation of the Horn of Africa and the end of Ethiopia as a nation state.   

Therefore, the stabilisation of Ethiopia-and by extension, of the whole surrounding region-is contingent on constitutional reform rather than on a military peace which would only gain time at a high price. There are, however, few reasons for optimism. The possibilities of holding safe, free and fair elections in 2021 are almost non-existent. Unfortunately, the absence of strong global leadership capable of mediating a credible and non-interventionist approach to the underlying problems (facilitating a certain degree of national consensus, which would put a plan for reconciliation and long-term stability in Ethiopia on the table) is an incentive to fish in troubled waters, both inside and outside the country.