Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
What will be the future of Ethiopia, but above all, what is happening now in the country and why would the government consider negotiating with the Tplf (Tigray People’s Liberation Front), a party defined by Parliament as a “terrorist organization”?
The internal war between the federal army and the fighters of the Tplf, the former ruling party? A clash that began on November 3, 2020 which saw the premier deploy on opposite sides Abiy Ahmed on the one hand and the political and military forces of the region of the Tigray, Tplf (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) e TSFspecial forces Tigray, on the other. Today the situation seems static, but nothing is resolved and the news of negotiations between the government and the Tplf follow one another, without any confirmation for the moment.
L’Ethiopia it is the second largest country in the‘Africa, with over one hundred million inhabitants. For twenty-seven years from 1991 to 2018, it was ruled by a coalition of parties headed by the Tplf, representative of the minority Tigrinya ethnic group that has kept economic, political and military power in their hands, accumulating great wealth over time. The change comes in 2018 with Abiy Ahmedwhich represents, within the same governing group, the majority Oromo ethnic group.
For the first time at the head of the government there is no Tplf, which will begin shortly after, in 2020, a no-holds-barred civil war. Last July, the balance of the conflict up to that moment in favor of the federal army unexpectedly changed, Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), allied with the Eritrean army, EDF, Amhara special forces, ASF and the group Fanoa militia made up of Amhara volunteers.
Taking many observers by surprise, Abiy Ahmed declares a ceasefire, unilaterally, for humanitarian reasons. A truce to allow, as requested by international agencies, the sending of aid to the exhausted population and to allow farmers not to lose the harvest at the end of the rainy season. These are the formal reasons. A choice, however, judged immediately very dangerous and that will prove to be so. Federal troops and allied troops withdraw from the June 28 Tigray. The next day the Tplfwho scornfully rejects the ceasefire, will celebrate the taking of Mekellecapital of the region, liberated by the federal army.
Thus, at the beginning of the summer instead of peace, a new violent conflict begins, no longer in Tigray, but in the neighboring regions, Amhara And Afar. At first, very little of this situation will leak out. The international press that was able to go to the Tigray it focuses on the numbers that define the one underway in the region as the most serious “humanitarian crisis”. In fact, from the beginning of November 2020 to July 2021 they fled towards the Sudan about 50,000 people, while the internally displaced are more than 1.7 million. If before the conflict about six million inhabitants, one and a half million needed humanitarian assistance, after the conflict the number rises to 5.7 million people. Virtually the entire population of the Tigray.
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