Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed Ali needs to resolve his differences with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to achieve lasting peace with Eritrea and to decrease risks of separatism in the country. The success of Ethiopia’s peace initiative with Eritrea hinges on stability in Tigray.
Tigray National Regional State is the northernmost of the nine regions (kililat) of Ethiopia. Tigray is the homeland for the Tigrayan, Irob and Kunama peoples. Tigray is also known as Region 1 according to the federal constitution. Its capital and largest city is Mekelle. The region borders on Eritrea, and was at the centre of the 1998 war between the two nations to gain control of the town of Badme from Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Eritrea wants Ethiopia to abide by a UN-backed border commission ruling to hand over the town. But this cannot be achieved without the cooperation of the government in Tigray, as it administers the area. Tigrayans comprise only six percent of Ethiopia’s population of 110 million, but they have had outsized influence in the country since leading the armed struggle that removed the Marxist regime in 1991.
The TPLF played a pivotal role in the overthrow of the Marxist and the drafting of the constitution that gives ethnic groups the right for self-determination and their own state. Although the party has never expressed any desire for Tigray to secede, it has always said this right should be respected.
Its leader, Meles Zenawi, serving as prime minister from 1995 to 2012 – has keenly felt the loss of power under Mr Abiy. It saw the prime minister’s widely welcomed campaign to end human rights abuses and corruption as a victimization of TPLF members, especially after senior military and security officers were either purged or arrested soon after Mr Abiy took office in 2018 following mass protests against the former regime. The TPLF, once a dominant force within the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, remains a bitter critic of Abiy’s leadership.
The TPLF’s influence at the center weakened after Mr Abiy launched the Prosperity Party (PP) – a merger of ethnically-based parties that used to form the ruling coalition. The TPLF refused to join the PP, leaving it without any influence in the federal government for the first time since Marxist rule ended.
As the result, already simmering anti-Tigrayan sentiments have led to violence from barricading roads and forcibly stopping traffic to looting and attacks on Tigrayan homes and businesses in the Amhara and Oromia regions.
The influence of foreign actors in Ethiopian secessionism increases. Somalia’s Secessionist administration allowed Egypt to use Somaliland ports and land to transfer weapons to Tigray Region rebel groups who want to secede from Ethiopia.
Last tensions revolve around the regional Ethiopian government’s decision to press ahead with organizing its own election for the Tigray parliament, in an unprecedented act of defiance against the federal government.
The ruling party in the region, the TPLF announced that elections for a regional parliament would take place despite the federal government and electoral board announcing the postponement of all elections. Since the end of communist rule and up until recently, the TPLF had been in a ruling coalition of ethnically based parties, each in control of their own region in a federal system. So, its disagreement with Mr Abiy is a deep fracture at the very core of power in the country.
Mr Abiy’s allies insist the electoral commission postponed the election because of the outbreak of coronavirus, and not because the prime minister wants to cling to power, as opposition parties argue. They say that he remains a legitimate ruler, as the federal parliament has extended his term for a further 12 months, by when the threat posed by the pandemic would hopefully recede and elections would be held.
The TPLF argued – like opposition groups – that Mr. Abiy’s mandate should end in September as the parliamentary terms come to an end, and the postponement of elections that were supposed to have happened in August, was in breach of the constitution and raised the prospect of Mr. Abiy becoming an “illegitimate” ruler.
Pro-Abiy hardliners, including former army General Kassaye Chemeda, have called for military intervention in Tigray. Federal officials have raised the possibility of retaliating by taking “punitive” action against the Tigray government – for instance, by withholding financial grants, which amount to half of the region’s budget.
However, the regional government warned that any decision to stop or disrupt the regional election is “tantamount to declaration of war”.
After Mr Abiy sacked some of its members from the cabinet, while others resigned, the TPLF has increasingly retreated to its regional headquarters, Mekelle, raising concerns that its ties with the rest of Ethiopia were loosening.
The TPLF could be laying the groundwork for the creation of a breakaway state, with a parliament and government taking office without the blessing of the federal government. It currently controls all the seats in the regional parliament.
The TPLF maintains that it is committed to keeping the region within Ethiopia, but it will defend “self-rule” and oppose what it calls Mr Abiy’s attempt to build a strong “unitary” state. Such statement came a few days after regional security forces – armed with automatic rifles and RPG rocket launchers marched in major cities in Tigray, in a display of military might that intensified worries about armed confrontation. Region security office has declared the Tigray elections illegal, saying that only the national electoral board has the power to organize polls.
A new opposition party, the Tigray Independence Party (TIP), has emerged to contest the regional election. It describes Ethiopia as an “empire”, and says its prime mission is to secure Tigray’s independence. Two other Tigray nationalist parties contesting the poll, Salsay Woyane Tigrai and Baytona, say they want the region to have more autonomy to secure its territorial integrity, promote its language, and preserve its heritage.
Federal and PP officials accused the TPLF of involvement in Hachalu Hundessa’s murder in June this year, a champion of the Oromo ethnic group, the country’s largest, which has long complained of political and economic marginalization. He was also Mr. Abiy’s competitor, who is also Oromo. However, the government arrested powerful Oromo activist Jawar Mohammed and other political leaders, accused them of using the tragic death of Hundessa to incite ethnic violence. The opposition parties in Oromia were protesting the decision of the government to continue in power beyond its mandate at the end of September 2020 and began preparing for resistance. So, Prime-minister Abiy could try to use the Hundessa’s death to strengthen the power within Oromo ethnic group. But the crisis has immense potential for escalation in Oromia.
However, the TPLF responded by saying that the party was being scapegoated for Mr Abiy’s “incompetent rule” and the “mess created by his administration”.
The risks for Ethiopian integrity raised after the killing of Hundessa. About 9,000 people arrests in Ethiopia after deadly clashes followed Hundessa’s killing leading to concerns that Ethiopia could return to the authoritarian rule that the prime minister had promised to end when he took office in 2018.
Formation of Oromo based ethno-nationalist movements that fought for freedom and equality began in the era of Haile Selassie who ruled as Emperor from 1930 to 1974. The political narratives exploited by ethno-nationalist Oromo groups were designed to pit one group against another. In particular, most ethno-nationalists wrongly accused the Amhara people, and the country’s imperial past, for what they refer to as their history of marginalization.
Since he came to power in April 2018, Abiy has attempted to bring ethno-nationalists to the political center. There have been positive responses. For example, members of armed groups returned home at his invitation. But of those who returned, the Oromo Liberation Army refused to disarm.
Mr. Abiy himself is confident that he can hold the nation together, despite the ethnic, religious and political violence that has hit different parts of the country, leaving about two million people homeless since he took office. But key institutions such as parliament and the judiciary, are as weak as they have ever been, giving his confidence under the question. The Tigray’s secession or deepening tensions with Addis-Ababa can trigger violence and mass displacement between the 80 different ethnic groups in Ethiopia, who have disagreements over land and resources.
The current Ethiopian problem is not limited to a dispute between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). It is a national one.
Tensions between the Amhara and Tigray regions are also rising over border disputes, starting from last year, fulfilling worries of clashes in case of Addis-Abeba-Tigray stand-off.
In 2017, an escalation in ethnic clashes in the Oromia and the Somali regions led to a spike in IDPs. This continued into 2018, when clashes between the Oromo and Gedeo ethnic groups displaced approximately 970,000 people in the West Guji and Gedeo zones of neighboring Oromia and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region.
The Wolayta people in the country’s south also have long agitated for a regional state of their own. The claims have become louder since December 2018 when the neighbouring Sidama people secured a referendum to form their own regional state – breaking away from the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional state.
To prevent the escalation, violence and clashes in Ethiopia, Addis-Ababa should take some unilateral confidence building measures: to release all political prisoners, open all media outlets closed by the government and to end the unlimited and unlawful state of emergency.
