The civil war that erupted in November 2020 in Ethiopia was a culmination of several overlapping, long-running conflicts. The main conflict involves the nature of the Ethiopian state: whether it should be a unified structure reflecting a singular national identity, or a multiethnic federal system preserving autonomy for regional states. The discrete conflicts involve tensions between the central state and the regional states of Tigray and Oromo; territorial disputes between different ethnic groups; and an old rivalry between the regime of neighboring Eritrea and the ruling party in Tigray. The complex layers of the war make peace all the more elusive.
On the evening of November 3, 2020, Ethiopia once again succumbed to a devastating civil war. The combatants differ over what triggered it. The federal government claims that a surprise attack on its army’s bases in the northern region of Tigray by troops loyal to the regional government sparked the war. The Tigray administration asserts that the strike was an act of self-defense in response to an operation launched earlier that day, when federal authorities flew in a group of commandos to arrest the regional leadership. No matter who fired the first shot, the buildup to war had been ongoing for years as the political cohesion of the central government coalition withered. Some international observers have characterized it as the most pre-announced war in recent African history.
The war has engulfed Tigray Regional State (RS) and deeply affected other regional states, including Amhara, Afar, and to some extent Oromia. The destruction of civilian infrastructure, the displacement of millions of civilians, and a politically motivated blockade of the famine-stricken population of Tigray have led the United Nations to characterize the situation as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis. There are no exact estimates of how many civilians and combatants have perished in the war, but some local sources claim that 50,000 Tigrayan civilians have been killed; others put the number of combatants killed between 100,000 and 200,000. Whatever the actual death toll, the Ethiopian civil war was the world’s largest armed conflict in 2021.
A confounding element in the Ethiopian war is the involvement of a host of belligerent parties. The key conflict pits the alliance of the Tigray Defense Force and the Oromo Liberation Army against Ethiopian federal and regional government troops and militias, irregular Amhara militias, and—not least—the Eritrean Defense Forces. Minor resistance movements and local militia or vigilante groups have allied themselves with one or another of the key belligerents, further complicating efforts to analyze the war, attribute responsibility for war crimes and atrocities, or pursue an overall peace process.
To dissect the dynamics of the overall conflict in Ethiopia, it can be read as four separate civil wars conflated in time and space. These wars have diverse political objectives and involve different belligerent parties, anchored in distinct politico-historical narratives. Each conflict concurrently creates intersecting tactical and strategic alliances among the various combatants.
The main conflict is between the federal government and Tigray, stemming from their opposing visions of what the Ethiopian polity is and how it should be configured—based on either devolved power and regional political autonomy or centralization. The Amhara–Tigray conflict is primarily a territorial war over contested historical homelands. The Eritrea–Tigray conflict may be interpreted as a war of hegemonic domination and the continuation of an earlier conflict between two liberation movements currently in power in Asmara and Mekelle, respectively. Finally, the Oromo–federal government conflict is over political representation in, and affiliation to, the Ethiopian state.
Ethiopia’s tendency to relapse into civil war, as has been observed repeatedly in modern history, is rooted in a complex set of factors arising from its history of statehood, experience of authoritarianism, perceptions of identity, and traditions of political culture. The perennial contested issue involves what “Ethiopia” is and should contain—in other words, how the state should be configured, and what an Ethiopian identity should comprise and invoke. These questions have been debated by politicians, revolutionaries, and researchers for decades.
One should obviously be careful not to essentialize the challenges confronting Ethiopia today. It is nevertheless vital to know about the deep and contested history of this ancient polity in order to understand the current political dynamics that are once again pitting its people against each other.
The Tigrayan Path to Power
Tigray is seen by many as the cradle of Ethiopian civilization. It is the site of the ancient Aksum kingdom, the predecessor state of what would become modern Ethiopia. Tigray thus has always been at the core of the evolving Ethiopian polity. Its ruling elites competed with feudal lords from Gondar Shewa and other Amhara-speaking areas to claim the throne as negus negast—the “king of kings,” emperor of Ethiopia.
The seat of power shifted to the Shewan–Amhara elite at the end of the nineteenth century, followed by a process of centralization of authority during the twentieth century. Tigrayan elites felt marginalized by the imperial court. The reinvigorated modernization and centralization policies implemented by Emperor Haile Selassie I beginning in the early 1940s sparked renewed resistance against the center by the Tigrayan people, manifested in a widespread rebellion (woyane) across the region in 1943.
The introduction of higher education and the evolution of the student movement in the 1960s brought about the growth of an intellectual elite articulating deep-rooted sociopolitical grievances through the ideological doctrines of Marxism-Leninism. Representatives of the Tigrayan student body organized politically into what came to be known as the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1975. They interpreted the problems and contradictions in Ethiopian society as products of the suppression of “nationalities”—the many ethnic groups in the country—by a state reflecting and protecting what were perceived to be the cultural values, historical narratives, and language of one dominant group: the Amhara.
In 1975, just after the overthrow of the emperor and the establishment of the Derg military junta, the TPLF launched an armed struggle against the central government. It was followed by a flurry of other resistance movements. During the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s, Ethiopia experienced a devastating civil war, as several of these mostly ethnic-based political fronts conducted armed struggles for political autonomy, or even secession, from what they viewed as an “Amharized” state.
After assuming territorial control over Tigray in 1989, the TPLF organized the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of ethnic movements including Amhara, Oromo, and southern Ethiopian peoples, to march on Addis Ababa and topple the Derg government. Tigray’s “seventeen years of struggle” culminated with the takeover of central power in Ethiopia in 1991. In consultation with the other movements, most notably the Oromo Liberation Front, the EPRDF replaced the unitary state structure with a multinational (or “ethnic”) federal system, granting, in theory, full political autonomy to the country’s “nations, nationalities, and peoples.”
The Ethiopian constitution of 1995 enshrined a devolved federal state model, whereby initially nine member states were defined according to language and ethnic criteria. The multinational federal system was clearly a form of victor’s justice. No political representatives arguing for the continuation of the unitary state, or any other alternative federal model, were allowed to participate in political discourse after EPRDF’s takeover of power. Despite introducing multiparty democracy and a comprehensive bill of rights, the EPRDF never allowed any political opposition to challenge its grip on power. The strongman Meles Zenawi presided over the coalition government from 1991 until his death in 2012, keeping all opponents at bay.
Although Amhara, Oromo, and southern ethnic parties were constituent members of the EPRDF, the TPLF maintained control of policy development and implementation under the ideological doctrines of “revolutionary democracy” and “democratic centralism.” Widespread human rights abuses and manipulation of elections led, beginning in 2014, to waves of large-scale popular protests against the TPLF/EPRDF regime, which the government was unable to quell. The Oromo youth movement (Qerroo) spearheaded the protests, later joined by the Amhara youth movement (Fano). They called for genuine political representation at the federal and regional levels, regional autonomy, and accountability for human rights abuses and mismanagement including corruption, nepotism, and land-grabbing.
The sustained protests led to disagreements within the EPRDF leadership on how to handle citizens’ demands for political reforms and liberalization, pitting the TPLF core against a new Oromo faction, as well as Amhara representatives. The stalemate eventually compelled Hailemariam Desalegn to step down as party chairman and prime minister to facilitate an end to the internal power struggle. This led to the selection of the Oromo candidate Abiy Ahmed as the new EPRDF chairman and prime minister in April 2018.
Abiy’s Unitary Vision
By apologizing for EPRDF “state terrorism” and human rights abuses and promising a raft of liberal reforms, Abiy immediately became immensely popular across Ethiopia. In his first eight months in power, he initiated a diplomatic dialogue with Eritrea that led to a peace agreement, released thousands of political prisoners, invited exiled opposition leaders and activists to return, and opened space for political pluralism and freedom of expression. These initiatives earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Initially, the TPLF grudgingly accepted losing control of the government coalition. But as the peace process with Eritrea gained momentum during the summer and fall of 2018, Tigrayan representatives in the security, military, and state-owned sectors were being dismissed, while some were arrested and accused of human rights violations and mismanagement. Consequently, an increasingly wary TPLF started to relocate its key officials back to Tigray to concentrate on regional interests, abandoning federal leadership positions. It also began to push back against and obstruct political processes put in motion by the new national government.
Although his elevation to the premiership represented Oromo aspirations for control of the center under the multinational federal system, Abiy soon muted the ethnic discourse of the EPRDF. Instead, he started to emphasize Ethiopian unity and the need to reinvigorate a strong, unified state. Launching the concept of medemer (“synergy” or “addition” in Amharic) as a way forward to reunite a divided society, he stressed the need to be proud of Ethiopiawinet (Ethiopianness)—an all-embracing national identity. Since he used rhetoric harking back to the country’s “glorious past” to explain these concepts, however, the TPLF leadership and other advocates of multinational federalism in Oromia and the south perceived his moves as a drive toward recentralization of power and the restoration of the repressive Amharized state.
On his return to Ethiopia after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Abiy abolished the EPRDF coalition, replacing it in December 2019 with the new, unitary Prosperity Party (PP) to carry forward his vision. All EPRDF coalition partners and affiliated parties in the outlying regions were invited to join the new party. The TPLF declined this invitation. TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael declared that the process establishing the new rulling party was illegal. He alleged that long-held policies and norms had been openly violated by Abiy, whom he accused of undermining the federal system and imperiling the constitution. In a press release, Debretsion asserted that the new ruling clique was planning to “finish off” Tigray. “This is what we call betrayal,” he asserted. “They didn’t only betray us, they have betrayed their people, the poor people; they betrayed the country, and we consider them traitors.”
The rupture of political relations between the TPLF and the PP in late 2019 led to the withdrawal of all TPLF members from federal government positions. Attempts to reconcile the two parties were organized by groups of elders, religious leaders, and civil society representatives. But the ideological contradictions between the new PP policy of enhanced national unity and Ethiopiawinet and the TPLF’s insistence on the multinational federal order and emphasis on ethnic autonomy were too deep to bridge.
Several conflict-triggering events occurred in 2020, including the postponement of national elections and Tigray’s decision to conduct separate regional elections by its own fiat. That, in turn, led to the suspension of federal funding for Tigray, which again spurred the two parties to issue dueling statements of denunciation and derecognition in early October 2020. At that point, there was no turning back from an armed confrontation between a centralizing government and a rebellious Tigrayan leadership.
This political trajectory mirrored earlier patterns during the reigns of Haile Selassie and the Derg. On both sides of the conflict were deep-rooted sentiments of politico-cultural entitlement to power, in the form of either self-rule (woyane) or state control (Ethiopiawinet). This is Ethiopia’s “forever war,” which comes back to haunt every generation.
Amhara Ambitions
The war on Tigray is ostensibly about political control. The federal government’s stated objectives for what started as a “law-enforcement operation” were to arrest the political and military leadership of the regional government and bring the region back under federal control. But from Amhara political actors’ standpoint, the war is broadly interpreted as an attempt to regain what they perceive as lost territories. Western and southern parts of Tigray RS have been reclaimed by arms and are currently being brought under Amhara administration and control.
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