The trouble in Tigray

Ethiopia: Will Tigray reach a conclusion in 2021?

By The Africa Report

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Posted on February 15, 2021 15:28

Ethiopia Deadly Unrest © Nov. 30, 2020, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responds to questions from members of parliament at the prime minister’s office in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, FILE)/WRC102/21001377427487/FILE PHOTO DATED MONDAY, NOV. 30, 2020/2101011138
Nov. 30, 2020, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responds to questions from members of parliament at the prime minister’s office in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, FILE)/WRC102/21001377427487/FILE PHOTO DATED MONDAY, NOV. 30, 2020/2101011138

Relations between Addis Ababa and Ethiopia’s states will shape the course of the year ahead. The country has previous experience in the dangers that an overly centralised government can pose, but its current constitution – with states based on ethnic identity, and ethnic self-determination as a right – has problems of its own.

The 2018 election of Abiy Ahmed as leader of the ruling coalition, and thus as prime minister, changed the country’s ethnic calculus. Abiy is an Oromo, from the country’s largest ethnic group, and his rise signalled the sidelining of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had long dominated the government and armed forces under Meles Zenawi.

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Abiy set up the Prosperity Party to replace the ruling Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front. With attacks on civilians and calls for the break-up of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region, Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism began to crack. Tensions led to war between Tigray and the federal government.

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The federal forces took the Tigray capital of Mekelle in late November, but the fighting does not look to be over. “Part of the

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