Civiliansbeing detained in mass, UN personnel arrested, a call out to citizens to
protect the capital amid an advance by a warring party, a state of emergency, a
damning report talking of crimes against humanity...
A
year ago, it was assumed that a scrap between Ethiopia's federal government and
a regional government would be relatively short lived, but now, with the
capital Addis Ababa said to be under threat and anger boiling over on all
sides, there are fears the country may slide into ongoing, wide scale conflict.
It
would be a huge setback for a country that in the last few years has been seen
by international diplomats as a success story - an African economic powerhouse,
much of which was brought about with the help of Western development aid.
What happened?
The
roots to the conflict are long and deep, but many observers say it was the
approach taken by Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that provided the spark.
Adem
Abebe, an Ethiopian who is an adviser with the Institute for Democracy and
Electoral Assistance and committee member of the African Network of
Constitutional Lawyers, told Sky News that after he was elected in 2018, Mr
Abiy pushed strongly for change, making several groups in Ethiopia anxious.
At
the same time, he began to use increasingly aggressive rhetoric against those
he perceived as reluctant to change.
It
came after a lengthy period of time during which Tigray's leading political
group the TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front), or their allies, had
controlled Ethiopia.
Mr
Abiy also moved to reform the political coalition that ruled the country, the
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) by merging its
ethnically-oriented sub parties into one, marginalising the Tigrayans.
Dr
Abebe said: "Once [Abiy] came to power, he became very assertive... he
started to claim political power, but also power in the security sector. [Some]
people saw him as a threat, they... rejected him essentially from the very
beginning. Abiy was trying to assert his power and, because at that time it was
the TPLF that had most of the power, it meant [it was the Tigrayans] he had to
take it from."
Complicating
matters was the federal nature of Ethiopia, which meant that Tigray had its own
regional government - run by the TPLF - and its own military, including forces
that had been active in Ethiopia's previous conflicts in recent years.
Dr
Abebe said the mistrust grew to the point that both sides began to arm
themselves for war, with Abiy ramping up the rhetoric further.
Meanwhile,
when elections that Mr Abiy's opponent had hoped would weaken him were
postponed because of COVID-19, leading figures in the TPLF went ahead with a
vote in Tigray anyway, which resulted in the federal government declaring the
regional government "illegal" and refusing to provide it with federal
cash - something the TPLF saw as a "direct attack".
With
tensions ratcheted up, Dr Abebe said it was just a matter of time before
conflict broke out and, in the end, it was the TPLF's forces that attacked
first, hitting a military base containing federal troops from the Ethiopian
National Defence Force (ENDF) on 3 November 2020 and seizing their weapons -
something the TPLF denied was the initial military strike.
Mr
Abiy responded by striking back at the TPLF, with the help of troops from the
Ethiopia's eastern Amhara region - during which a number of atrocities
occurred.
As
the fighting worsened, thousands fled across the border to Sudan. As they did
so, neighbouring Eritrea - with which Mr Abiy had negotiated a 2018 peace deal ending
two decades of a previous war - was sucked into the conflict.
Ethiopia's
federal forces, now allied to Amhara's militia and Eritrea's defence force (the
EDF), struck back and captured Tigray's capital Mekelle at the end of November,
but the explosion of violence came at a huge cost.
The
ongoing tit-for-tat killings and frequent massacres started a chain reaction
that quickly became impossible to rein in.
Dr
Abebe said: "It created a lot of anger... because they attacked soldiers
that were there to protect them against Eritrea... and then... there was a
massacre a day or two after the war started. If you put these two things
together... everybody was out for revenge.
"They
[the Tigrayans] were... defeated quickly in the first few weeks, but the main
leaders and part of the army... only retreated to the desert. Most of the
soldiers... just went to their families until they can regroup."
 |
| Captured Ethiopian soldiers in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray CREDIT: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP |
He
said with anger raging among the Tigrayan community and the fighters hiding amid
a supportive population, it was inevitable that the TPLF's forces, the TDF,
would re-emerge and fight back.
By Sky News
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