The Year in Review Is Ethiopia the Next Yugoslavia? A country that once seemed to hold great promise for peaceful democratization has descended into conflict. Here\u2019s what could happen next.<\/p>\n
In December 2019, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was in Oslo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize; less than a year later, he was commanding Ethiopian troops in battle against the country\u2019s former dominant party\u2014the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF).<\/p>\n
\n
1. The Ethiopian-Egyptian Water War Has Begun
\nby Ayenat Mersie, Sept. 22<\/p>\n
The war in Tigray has received most of the attention this year\u2014but there is another taking place in cyberspace, as Ayenat Mersie argued in September. As fraught negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile threatened to lead to conflict with downstream countries like Sudan and Egypt, the online war took off\u2014posing concrete problems for traditional diplomacy. \u201c[S]urging nationalist sentiment means that it\u2019s harder for officials to agree to, and for the public to accept, compromise,\u201d Mersie wrote. \u201c[M]uch of the online rhetoric remains maximalist, even rejecting items that have already been unanimously decided \u2026 raising the possibility that the online tensions and attacks may not subside anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. It\u2019s Not Too Late to Stop the Ethiopian Civil War From Becoming a Broader Ethnic Conflict
\nby Florian Bieber and Wondemagegn Tadesse Goshu, Nov. 18<\/p>\n
In January 2019, Florian Bieber and Wondemagegn Tadesse Goshu wrote presciently that Ethiopia could become the next Yugoslavia. In November, as war raged in Tigray, they revisited the issue, arguing that once \u201cviolence becomes a means to address disputes, it is hard to stop, and demands for autonomy quickly escalate toward claims for independence,\u201d likening the current situation to the early days of fragmentation in Tito\u2019s Yugoslavia and offering recommendations for a constitutional way out.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian soldiers and thousands of mourners attend the official state funeral of Ethiopia\u2019s late prime minister, Meles Zenawi, in Addis Ababa on Sept. 2, 2012.Mulugeta Ayene\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
3. Tigray\u2019s War Against Ethiopia Isn\u2019t About Autonomy. It\u2019s About Economic Power.
\nby Kassahun Melesse, Nov. 19<\/p>\n
When conflict broke out in Tigray on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, many outside observers assumed it was a battle over autonomy between the country\u2019s ousted old regime and Abiy\u2019s new government. Kassahun Melesse argued that, in fact, the TPLF\u2019s goals had much more to do with maintaining control of the economy. \u201c[W]hat\u2019s at the heart of the ongoing conflict are Abiy\u2019s economic and political reforms and the unrelenting pace at which they were unveiled\u2014moves that TPLF leaders perceive as unacceptably threatening to the economic and political dominance they have long enjoyed and the considerable influence they still wield across Ethiopia,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
4. Ethiopia\u2019s Government and the TPLF Leadership Are Not Morally Equivalent
\nby Hailemariam Desalegn, Nov. 24<\/p>\n
In late November, Ethiopia\u2019s most recent former prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, took to these pages to criticize some of his former colleagues in government from the once dominant TPLF\u2014referring to the group\u2019s leadership as \u201cnothing more than a criminal enterprise\u201d while taking the international community to task for \u201cthe assumption of moral equivalence\u201d between the two sides. Equating the TPLF and the Ethiopian government would, he wrote, lead \u201cforeign governments to adopt an attitude of false balance and bothsidesism. Facts and details regarding the true nature of conflicts and the forces igniting and driving them are frequently lost in international efforts to broker peace deals that often crumble as soon as they have been signed.\u201d<\/p>\n
5. The War in Tigray Is a Fight Over Ethiopia\u2019s Past\u2014and Future
\nby Teferi Mergo, Dec. 18<\/p>\n
The war in Tigray is merely the latest battle in a long-running conflict over history and memory, Teferi Mergo argued this month. \u201cBy and large, the Tigray war is part of the same debate that has plagued Ethiopia since its foundation as an empire state: whether Ethiopia is an exceptional country that ought to be governed in a more centralized manner or one that needs to be ruled as a decentralized polity,\u201d he wrote. And in order to resolve the conflict, Mergo insisted, the incoming U.S. administration must eschew short-term thinking and instead \u201cuse this historical opening to rebalance its foreign policy toward the country, with the view of serving as an impartial arbiter of the conflicts between the two sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
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