Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has stopped short of claiming outright victory in the conflict in Tigray but said federal forces have seized control of highly strategic towns in the region amidst an ongoing military showdown with troops loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Abiy said the defence force took control Humera, Axum and Shirao towns of Tigray region in northern Ethiopia in what he called “law enforcement operation” against TPLF leaders whom he accused them of committing treason by attacking north command regiment and massacring non ethnic Tigrayan federal troops.
TPLF leader and president of the Tigray region Deberetsion Geberemichael on Friday told local media that his forces have surrendered to 10,000 federal troops.
He accused the federal government of joining forces with neighboring Eritrea to wage war against the region.
Tigray is one of the 12 federated units of Ethiopia (10 regional states and 2 cities).
Since 1994, the horn of Africa country has been ruled under a system known as “ethnic federalism,” where each of the largest peoples in the country are formed into an ethnically based federal region.
Oromo and Amhara constitute more than 60 percent of the Ethiopian population.
Ethnic Tigrayans number about seven million people and represents about six percent of the over 110 million Ethiopian population.
The Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) was founded in 1975 as a politico-military movement opposing the then communist dictatorship of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The TPLF joined the Eritrean independence fighters in the war that they had been waging against the Ethiopian regime since 1991.
First, the TPLF stated its aim was achieving independence for Tigray; in 1988-89 but the movement somewhat watered down this ambition, and pursued the toppling of Mengistu, which it achieved in 1991.
Having claimed victory in the war, the TPLF took over power in Ethiopia.
From 1991 to 2018 it led a coalition of Ethiopian parties (the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, (EPRDF) that ruled the country.
TPLF leader Meles Zenawi led the Ethiopian government from 1991 until his death in 2012.
The TPLF’s domination of the state apparatus and of important economic sectors caused resentment in other regions of the country, from where Tigrayan nationalists were accused of exploiting the rest of Ethiopia.
However, and despite the war against Eritrea, Meles remained in power, riding on economic growth witnessed in Ethiopia under his rule.
There was stability despite resentment over the suppression of political dissent under him.
In 2018, following a series of popular protests, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn —political heir to Meles— resigned, and was replaced by reformist Abiy Ahmed, despite opposition from the TPLF, which was weakened at the time by internal disputes and some distancing from the other parties of the EPRDF coalition.
Abiy belongs to one of these parties, the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP).
Relations between the TPLF and the rest of the EPRDF soured, particularly after Abiy announced he would be reviewing the system of ethnic federalism and promoting Ethiopian national unity.
The TPLF feared losing its political, economic and military power —and accused Abiy of purging Tigrayans in prominent government positions.
The party also believed the autonomy of the Tigray Regional State would be endangered, and suspected Abiy of planning to impose a new Oromo hegemony in the corridors of power in Addis Ababa.
In 2019, Abiy merged the EPRDF coalition into a single bloc known as the Prosperity Party (PP).
At this point, the TPLF thought it had had enough of this marriage of convenience and refused to become part of the new party.
It viewed the PP as a tool for Ethiopia’s return to the centralist policies of the Haile Selassie and Mengistu eras, away from ethnic federalism that had prevailed over the past three decades.
The Abiy-TPLF row came to a head in 2020, and ultimately morphed into a constitutional crisis.
Using the Covid-19 pandemic as his pretext, Abiy suspended all elections that were supposed to take place in Ethiopia.
The TPLF deemed that decision illegal, and pressed ahead with a regional parliamentary election on 9 September.
This was in open defiance of the federal upper house which postponed national elections until the pandemic was no longer a national health emergency.
Things inevitably reached the boiling point after the Ethiopian federal government ruled that the TPLF’s administration of the Tigray Regional State was illegal.
In October, Addis decided that the annual budget transfer to the Tigray government would be slashed and instead allotted to municipal authorities.
The TPLF government saw this as a “declaration of war.”
The federal government has been accusing TPLF army generals of joining forces with internal and external enemies of the country, instigating violence and clashes between ethnic groups under the guise of religious and ethnic differences in an attempt to destabilize the nation and regain power out of chaos.
According to Muluneh Gebre, the African Press Agency’s man in Addis Ababa, the ongoing fighting is the result of a long running power struggle pitting the central authorities in Addis Ababa and the TPLF as its principal actors.
Prime Minister Ahmed was on record expressing his firm conviction that his government would never enter into a military conflict with TPLF despite provocations.
Abiy changed his mind after the TPLF special force and militia attacked the north command regiment and killed non –Tigriyan speaking federal troops, under the command of serving army generals who gathered in Mekele, capital of Tigray, to avoid possible accountability in Addis Ababa.
MG/abj/APA