Could Ethiopia disintegrate? Thinking the unthinkable in the Horn of Africa
A one-time economic tiger and a linchpin of stability in a fragile region, Ethiopia now stands on the brink of disaster. What happened to Africa’s oldest independent country?
Two years ago, Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed spoke movingly about the horrors of war as he accepted the Nobel peace prize for definitively ending conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
“I was a young soldier when war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” he said in Oslo. “There are those who have never seen war but glorify and romanticize it … War is the epitome of hell for all involved. I know because I have been there and back.”
Now, he’s back again and this time he’s the one glorifying blood sacrifice. In November, Abiy left the capital Addis Ababa to direct the fight against rebels from the northern Tigray region in a year-long conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and raised the twin spectres of famine and genocide in Africa’s second-most populous country.
The fatigue-clad Abiy filmed in the scrubland of the Afar region struck a very different tone to the leader who accepted the Nobel. “We won’t flinch backward till we bury the enemy and ensure Ethiopia’s freedom. What we need to see is an Ethiopia that stands by itself, and we will die for it,” he reportedly said.
The war began when Abiy sent troops into Tigray after fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) allegedly attacked military bases after months of mounting political tensions. Although only a small minority of Ethiopia’s 110 million-strong population, Tigrayans dominated Ethiopia’s political life for decades until Abiy, whose parents are from the Oromo and Amhara groups, took office in 2018 and began to sideline TPLF officials.
Former UN emergency coordinator Sir Mark Lowcock says the potential for a total collapse of the Ethiopian state is very real. Negotiations are critical but despite the best efforts of mediators like UN secretary-general António Guterres, US special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, and Nigerian former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who is leading African Union efforts, the requisite trust between the parties is not there.
“The thing I fear most is the total collapse and fragmentation of the country, which would be disastrous and catastrophic for Ethiopia but also for the wider region,” Lowcock said.
Yohannes Woldemariam, an academic specialising in the Horn of Africa who was raised in Ethiopia and now lives in New York, agrees. “If there is an implosion, Ethiopia will not go down by itself. It will take the entire region down,” he said, predicting, for example, chaos in neighbouring Somalia where the Islamist militants of Al Shabaab are still fighting the authorities.
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