Read entire article:.. Regional risks
Both sides of the conflict are heavily armed. The national army has redeployed troops to Tigray from across Ethiopia amid concerns about the loyalty of the Northern Command, which constitutes a large proportion of the country’s overall number of troops.
Tigray’s regional forces and local militias are thought to number up to 250,000 between them – many of them experienced veterans from past conflicts against the Derg and Eritrea.
Analysts fear sustained conflict could spread to other regions of Ethiopia such as Amhara, which has a longstanding claim to territories in western Tigray, and whose regional forces and militias are supporting the federal government’s offensive.
If the Ethiopian government and army is weakened by the TPLF, opposition groups in other regions could also be emboldened. The risk is particularly high in Abiy’s home region of Oromia, where separatist rebels are fighting for independence.
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A full-scale civil war could draw in Eritrea, whose president, Isaias Afwerki, has grown increasingly close to Addis Ababa since the two sides agreed to an historic rapprochement in 2018 that won Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tensions between Asmara and the TPLF stretch back to 1998, when the Tigrayan party led Ethiopia into war with Eritrea over a disputed border area. Tens of thousands died in the violence.
Debretsion Gebremichael, the president of Tigray, said on Tuesday that Eritrea had already begun sending troops over the border, though Asmara denied the claim.
Eastern parts of Sudan, which border Tigray, could see tensions between pro-Eritrean Sudanese groups and those with tighter relations with Tigray, according to the International Crisis Group.
Another concern is that the Ethiopian soldiers who constitute a large part of the African Union regional peacekeeping mission fighting al-Shabab jihadists in Somalia could be distracted by the war effort back home.
In an interview with TNH, Ethiopian analyst Mehari Tadele called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a national dialogue. “To reject dialogue is to endorse endless war as a solution to a political problem,” Tadele said.
The African Union also called for a ceasefire on Tuesday, though few analysts are expecting an imminent negotiated solution to the crisis, given Addis Ababa’s determination to remove the TPFL leadership.
Woldemariam, the 54-year-old from Tigray, said the conflict was stirring up bad memories in his head of Ethiopia’s past wars: “I feel like I am reliving my own youth... and seeing it passed on to the next generation.”
(Additional reporting from Mohammed Amin in Khartoum, and from Philip Kleinfeld in Bamako.)
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