“We have to deal with anyone who’s still shooting,” said Getachew Reda, spokesperson for the Tigrayan forces, early this month. “If it takes marching to Addis to silence the guns, we will.”
In fact, Tigray’s army has already covered about a third of the distance to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, since it took back its own provincial capital, Mekelle, in late June.
The fighting has been bloody, for the Ethiopian army is much larger, but the Tigrayan army is more professional and determined. Not only has it liberated all of Tigray except the far west, but it has also seized around one-third of neighbouring Amhara, the province which is the historic core of the Ethiopian empire.
Seven million Tigrayans defeating the army of a country of 110 million people may seem odd, but Ethiopia is a patchwork quilt of different ethnic groups, languages and religions that was held together in the past by a centralized monarchy or dictatorship backed by ruthless military force. Until quite recently, it was Tigray that provided that force.
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