Ethiopia’s Troubles Mount

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The troubles keep mounting in Africa’s second most populous state, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. There are insurgencies in parts of the country, and it also faces serious economic troubles.

Its 110 million people are divided by ethnicity and religion into 12 ethno-linguistically based regional states, plus two cities, setting the stage for decades-long disputes over boundaries, self-government, and identity. The three main ethnic groups, theTigray, Oromo, and Amhara, are violently contest how Ethiopia will be shaped.

Church and state have been intertwined since Orthodox Christianity became Ethiopia’s state religion in the year 340, and some two-thirds of its people are Christians. Another one-third practice Islam.

In recent years Ethiopia has seen the rise of ethnically based militias and horrific massacres of civilians, especially along the border between Oromia and Amhara, the two largest and most powerful regions.

During 2020, ethnic and political tensions grew. The first eruption occurred in Tigray province in northern Ethiopia, which started when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power two years earlier, sent in government troops that November, after accusing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking Ethiopian military camps. Eritrean troops also intervened on the government’s side. Prior to this, the Tigrayans had long dominated Ethiopian politics.

Ethiopian federal forces indiscriminately shelled towns and villages while Amhara Special Forces and allied Amhara Fano militias carried out extrajudicial executions in towns across the area. Most Tigrayans belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and their churches were looted, bombed and burned down during the two-year civil war.  Priests were killed and their female relatives gang-raped.

The conflict killed some 600,000 civilians, uprooted more than 1.4 million people, and left hundreds of thousands facing famine. Veterans of relief operations are comparing the crisis to the situation in 1984, when a combination of drought and war caused a famine that killed up to a million people.

The Tigrayan forces and Ethiopia’s central government signed a peace deal on Nov. 2, 2022, ending a conflict that had threatened the integrity of Africa’s second-most-populous nation. But the deal was met with deep suspicion among Amharas as they were excluded from the talks even though the Fano militias and Amhara special forces fought on the side of the federal army.

When the prime minister in August 2023 proposed dismantling the special forces in the regions and integrating them into the federal army to foster ethnic unity, the Fano launched attacks, triggering a state of emergency. Curfews were imposed on the cities of Gondar, Dessie and Debre Birhan to prevent the protests from spiraling out of control, before calm returned. In late September, the Amhara Popular Front, a nationalist group that supports the Fano, denounced “war crimes and crimes against humanity by the regime of Abiy Ahmed.”

While weapons fell silent in Tigray, another conflict flared up in the interior of the country where the Oromo and Amhara, who are Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups, are battling each other, over an old quarrel that began escalating in 2022.

Oromia accounts for around a third of Ethiopia’s citizens, and many are Muslim, evangelical or Protestant rather than Orthodox. The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has been accused of widespread atrocities against Amharas in the region, raising fears that it wants to drive them out. The Oromo and Amhara accuse each other of killing civilians.

“Much of the violence is taking place in the border areas between the two regions, as well as where Amhara and Oromo communities reside as minority groups in other regions,” according to Ahmed Soliman, an expert on the Horn of Africa at Chatham House, the London-based think tank.

For centuries, Ethiopia was dominated by the elites of what is today the northernmost provinces of Tigray and Amhara, while the Oromo have been striving for autonomy for almost as long. The northern elites perceived the Oromo identity and languages as an obstacle to the expansion of Ethiopian national identity.

Most priests in Oromia are from the highlands of Amhara and Tigray, which have traditionally dominated Ethiopian national politics. “Our people do not have opportunities,” explained one Orthodox bishop.

Since the settlement of ethnic Amhara communities in parts of Oromia in the 1970s and 1980s, there have been repeated clashes between the new inhabitants and the Oromo over land and resources. Those clashes have intensified dramatically since Abiy Ahmed’s government took office. He is the first person of Oromo descent to hold that position.

The war in Tigray had created a security vacuum in the rest of the country, which made it possible for the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) to escalate the conflict in Oromia. The region is now Ethiopia’s most unstable. Peace talks between Ethiopia’s government and the rebel group aimed at ending the fighting ended without a deal in November.

Justice minister Gedion Timothewos insists the Ethiopian government is committed to “accountability” and that it is pushing through “transitional justice” while assuring there will not be a “blanket” amnesty.

Abiy Ahmed rose to power advocating pan-Ethiopian unity and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts in bringing the country’s war with neighbouring Eritrea to a formal close. Today, the prime minister is spending $10 billion on a new national palace and more than one billion on the military.