Prime
Rooting for peace in Ethiopia
Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- How can a body that represents African solutions to African problems not deal with a conflict in the backyard of its headquarters?
For many of us with some connection and attachment to that historic African nation, Ethiopia, the two-year brutal armed conflict across several regional states in the north, the most pronounced being in Tigray, has been utterly crashing.
In the Pan-African imagination and aspiration, Ethiopia holds a special place. It is not by accident that Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU) was headquartered in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and the OAU successor, the African Union, has sat in the same location since 2002.
Ethiopia is most distinguishable for being the sole African state and nation to have successfully fought and defeated a major European power in the last quarter of the 19 Century when the rest of the continent was effectively conquered and colonised.
The Emperor Menelik II did a rarity of the time: he heroically led his troops to victory against an invading Italian force at the historic battle of Adwa. Decades later, the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, undertook a revenge invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, a successful one to boot and contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Ethiopia was by then an internationally recognised independent state, thus Italy’s invasion was a clear violation of international law and a blatant act of aggression. The defeat of Italy by the Allied Powers in 1941 promptly restored Ethiopian sovereignty.
Ethiopia’s contemporary political development, leading to events that have today attracted so much global interest, actually started in 1974 when the Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, bringing to an end millennia of monarchical rule.
This history cannot be given proper treatment here, and is at any rate the subject of enormous scholarly output, thus it shouldn’t detain us. But it is worth noting that after more than a decade of fighting the military dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who took the reins of power after the end of imperial rule, a coalition of parties and guerrillas under the leadership of Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki entered Addis Ababa and Asmara (Eritrea).
This ushered a new era in the politics of the Horn of Africa. Meles and his political group, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), dominated Ethiopian politics and society until at least Meles’s passing in 2012. But matters started to take a dramatic turn after the 2015 general elections in which ironically the ruling coalition, of which the TPLF was the most important actor, won everything in the national assembly!
Only three years later, in the face of mounting street protests and low-intensity violent conflict, the TPLF lost power in Addis Ababa following the resignation of Prime Minister Haile Mariam Desalegn and the election of Abiy Ahmed from the majority but marginalised Oromo ethnic group.
I was fortuitously in Addis Ababa weeks after Abiy became prime minister. Optimism and euphoria was palpable. It was wildly in the air. There was sense that Ethiopia had entered a new era. The winds of change were blowing hard and sweeping fast.
Not too long before, however, war erupted in Tigray. It later spread to Afar and Amhara regional states. In all, the past two years have been devastating for Ethiopians, especially those in the northern part of the country.
Ethiopia is not just a historically symbolic African state, it is also crucial to how Africa fares and is perceived today given that it is Africa’s second most populous nation and home to the continental body, the AU.
On my last trip to Addis Ababa last Christmas, a lot of media reporting had weeks earlier trumpeted an inevitable fall of the capital and the return of the TPLF to power. I provided here a sketch of the conflict and its underlying contours. The main point was that the failure to manage losing power after three decades (the TPLF), and the inability to exercise wisdom after acquiring power (Premier Abiy and his allies), is essentially what plunged Ethiopia into a horrific and needless war.
The announcement on Wednesday that a truce had been concluded under the auspices of the African Union and its special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and mediator, former Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta is nothing short of encouraging news. We can only hope for the best.
The African Union has been on trial, facing by far the toughest test. How can a body that represents African solutions to African problems not deal with a conflict in the backyard of its headquarters?
Obasanjo has been bereted and denigrated for not doing enough to silence guns and enable a return to normal life in Tigray and neighbouring regional states.
At some point, the TPLF leadership in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, appeared sceptical and suspicious of Obasanjo, but it appears with the involvement of President Kenyatta, peace might be on the horizon. This will be a huge victory for the people of Ethiopia, for Africa and for the African Union. I can only say Godspeed. War is evil. It’s destructive and crippling.
