A new war in Africa

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Missiles have hit the area of two city airports in the Amhara region, next to the runaway Ethiopian state of Tigray, where the central government forces are fighting regional separatists.

The Ethiopian government has declared the Tigray People's Liberation Front a rebel insurgency, while TPLF insists the central government does not represent the Tigray people. In September, the Front organised its own regional elections in the Tigray state, ignoring the central government.

Earlier this month president Abiy Ahmed launched a military assault against the Front. The conflict was drowned in blood, and Amnesty International reports that hundreds of people have been stabbed and chopped to death. There is no clarity so far about the perpetrators, but witnesses claim it was the TPLF. The president has also confirmed that government troops have discovered corpses of soldiers who were tied up and executed in cold blood.

The government claims they have eliminated about 500 insurgents, and air strikes have begun since last week. Many observers are concerned that the Tigray conflict could engulf Ethiopia's vast multitude of ethnic groups into a full-out civil war.

The UN insists that both sides should provide a humanitarian corridor into Tigray, and guarantee the safety of the civilian population fleeing the fighting.

The government's military operation has driven 17 thousand people out of the Tigray state, many of them fleeing to the neighboring Sudan. UN estimates indicate that more than 2 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian help.

The air strikes and the ground battles between Addis Ababa and the TPLF have claimed hundreds of lives, made hundreds of thousands homeless, and re-ignited ethnic tensions and divisions that have put president Abiy's prerogatives in question. Just to remind, he is famous for being Africa's youngest leader, and last year he won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace with Eritrea.



But why is Tigray so important? Well, it's located in the extreme north of Ethiopia, and is one of the 10 semi-autonomous states comprising the Ethiopian federation (based on the principle of ethnic self-determination). It borders on the Sudan to the west, and Eritrea to the north, and is dominated by the Tigray people (6% of Ethiopia's population).

In 1975, the TPLF fought the military Marxist junta of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was ultimately deposed in 1991. Since then, the Front has dominated in the coalition that has ruled Ethiopia - until the election of president Abiy Ahmed (himself of the largest ethnic group in the country, the Oromo) in 2018.

The Tigray people have a central place in the Ethiopian federal army, and they were most active in the 1998/2000 war with Eritrea. The end of that conflict was brokered by the president in 2018.

Since his inauguration, the Tigrays have complained that president Abiy has gradually cleansed all institutions of their representatives, through corrupt processes and intentional changes in the federal security forces. In 2019 the TPLF became de facto opposition, as they refused to approve the merging of all ruling coalition parties into a single Prosperity Party.

In September, the Tigray region staged their own regional elections, openly challenging the central government, which had postponed all elections for 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Addis Ababa instantly declared the regional government in Tigray illegal, which in turn rejected the president's jurisdiction over their region. On November 4 Abiy accused the TPLF of having crossed the "red line" when they attacked two federal military bases in the Tigray region. this prompted a military response by the central government. In turn, the TPLF accused the president that this was a false-flag designed to justify his intervention.

As for the capacity of the two sides, reports say the Tigray side has about a quarter of a million troops at their disposal, which means this could become a prolonged and very bloody conflict. Abiy is clearly determined to remove the regional authorities there, while vowing to keep the conflict confined to the Tigray region. But this is hardly a realistic scenario, since the neighboring Amhara region has had long-lasting territorial quarrels with Tigray, and is now moving to support the government forces.

If the conflict is not resolved soon, it could not only devastate Ethiopia, but also affect the entire Horn of Africa. Ethiopia's neighbors, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and the Sudan, could suffer as collateral - not only because of the refugee pressure, but also because Eritrea could be tempted to use the opportunity and set old scores with the TPLF.

What's more, the Ethiopian army has an important role in Somalia, where they are keeping the radical Islamists of Ash-Shabab in check. The whole conflict is a major setback for the president's effort for democratic reform, and his peace efforts in the region in a more general context, and it could easily disturb the fragile balance of powers in one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world, and set a domino effect that in the worst-case scenario could plunge a significant portion of Africa into chaos.