Explained: Why The Ethiopian Government Has Proclaimed A Six-Month State Of Emergency

The Ethiopian government proclaimed a six-month state of emergency on November 2 after forces from Tigray's northern region claimed to have been capturing territories and considering marching on the capital Addis Ababa, which is some 380 kilometres (235 miles) south of their advanced positions.

The announcement of the emergency came two days after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had asked civilians to take up arms to defend themselves against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (T.P.L.F.), a political party of rebels turned rulers who had governed Ethiopia for nearly three decades.

Residents in Addis Ababa were also advised by authorities to register their firearms and prepare to protect their neighbourhoods.

What led to the current situation?

Ethiopia has multiple regional federations. Precisely, it is made up of 10 regions and two cities that have a substantial amount of autonomy, including regional police and militia. But the regional governments are largely divided along entrenched ethnic lines.

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Now minority Tigray, governed by the T.P.L.F., once had an iron grip over Ethiopia that too for decades with a period of stability and economic growth but at the cost of basic civil and political rights. Eventually, the party's authoritarian rule provoked a popular uprising that ultimately forced Abiy's predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, to resign.

Then came Abiy Ahmed, appointed by the ruling class in 2018 to quell tensions and bring change without upending the old political order. But almost as soon as he became prime minister, Abiy announced the rearrangement of the ruling coalition and broke apart the powerful alliance that the T.P.L.F. established.

He brought in the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Front (EPRDF), which merged four parties - into a single, new Prosperity Party, excluding the T.P.L.F. in the process. This move was seen as a power grab and a ploy to weaken the federation by the Tigray region.

Abiy's push for a new pan-Ethiopian political party sparked fears in some regions that the country's federal system, which grants significant autonomy to ethnically defined states like Tigray, was under threat. Tigray's leaders retreated to their mountainous heartland in the north, where they maintained control over their own regional government.

Tensions between Abiy and leaders from the T.P.L.F. were continually swirling underneath, and it boiled over in September 2020, when the Tigrayans defied Abiy by going ahead with regional parliamentary elections that he had delayed citing the reason of the coronavirus pandemic. The prime minister refused to recognise the results and cut the funding to the T.P.L.F. leadership.

Further, on November 4, 2020, Abiy accused the T.P.L.F. of attacking a federal army base outside Tigray's regional capital Mekelle and attempting to steal its weapons, which resulted in renewed hostilities between the regional and the federal government.

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Mr. Abiy boosted his forces by sending militia fighters from Amhara, a region south of Tigray, into western Tigray, where they were accused of attacking civilians. Then, from the north, troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia's erstwhile foe, surged into Tigray to fight alongside Mr. Abiy's forces.

Mekelle, Tigray's regional capital, and other towns were rapidly taken over by federal soldiers and their allies. The T.P.L.F. and its armed followers, on the other hand, withdrew to rural and hilly areas, drawing Mr. Abiy into a military strife.

In June, the Ethiopian military suffered a huge setback when it was forced to evacuate from Tigray and thousands of its soldiers were taken hostage. It was reported that the Tigrayans allied with other rebel groups, such as the Oromo Liberation Army, and several Ethiopian Army units either disintegrated or retreated.

Finally, earlier this month, Ethiopia has once again announced a state of emergency amidst rebels pushing towards Addis Ababa.

Who are the T.P.L.F. and the Tigrayans?

The T.P.L.F. began as a tiny militia of Tigrayans against Ethiopia's Marxist military rule in the mid-1970s.

The Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups account for more than 60 percent of the population, with Tigrayans accounting for 6 to 7 percent. Despite this, the T.P.L.F. grew to be the country's most powerful rebel group, eventually leading an alliance that overthrew the government in 1991. With the T.P.L.F. at its helm, the rebel alliance became Ethiopia's ruling coalition.

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Meles Zenawi, the leader of T.P.L.F., governed Ethiopia from 1991 to 2012. It was during his tenure that the country emerged as a stable government in a volatile region and experienced tremendous economic growth. In 2006, it dispatched troops into Somalia with American support to combat Islamist militants.

However, at home, the Tigrayan-led government actively suppressed political opponents and limited freedom of expression.

How has this strife affected Abiy's image globally?

At 45, Mr. Abiy is among the youngest leaders in Africa, and in the first years of his rule he excited great hopes for transformational change in Ethiopia. His government welcomed opposition figures home from exile, and released others from prison, including some who had been sentenced to death.

He swept through the region, brokering peace by apologising for the government's past abuses. He appeared to be drawing from his painful past. Further, he introduced a wave of political reforms and announced a shocking peace deal with neighbour and fierce rival Eritrea.

Finally, his international profile soared after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

But Abiy¡¯s reputation soon took a turn for the worse in just a year as he is seen as presiding over a protracted civil war that by many accounts bears the hallmarks of genocide.

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The investigations by the UN and rights groups pointed out that Eritrean troops which had entered Tigray to fight alongside federal forces turned out to be a violent conflict marked by abuses, including rapes.

When conflict broke out with Tigray, experts believed that the Eritrean peace deal had simply served to unite Ethiopia and Eritrea against their mutual adversary, the Tigrayans.

Even the Nobel Peace Prize committee delivered a rare but unspoken condemnation of one of its recipients. As the domestic criticism gained momentum, Aiby has been doing exactly what other leaders in the past have done to suppress the opposing voices like shutting down the internet, arresting journalists, and detaining tens of thousands of protesters and critics. As per the local reports, hundreds of individuals have been killed by security personnel so far.

The aftermath

A year of conflict has left thousands dead, forced more than one million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine, all of this amidst the already ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, there have also been local reports, many confirmed by a U.N.-led investigation, of massacres, widespread sexual violence and other human-rights violations.

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According to the UN refugee agency, the conflict has resulted in more than 25,300 refugees fleeing the Tigray region into Sudan, as fighting spilled beyond Ethiopia's borders and threatened to inflame the Horn of Africa region.

It goes without saying that most of the refugees arriving in Sudan are children and women who walked long distances on rugged terrain to reach safety. They arrive exhausted, hungry and thirsty, having had to cross a river by boat or in some cases by swimming, the reports further added. The river, known as the Tekeze in Ethiopia and the Setit in Sudan, divides the eastern Sudanese areas of Lugdi and Hamdayet.

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