After well over two years of calamitous war, Ethiopia has appeared to have quietly broken from its 'independence' on Sudan's internationalised conflict. In recent weeks, satellite imagery has confirmed suspicions that an Emirati military training base is being developed in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region in the Mengi district. Rather than the Ethiopian military, however, the facility is believed to be intended to house Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters, the rampaging paramilitary forces in the Sudan war drawn from Darfur. And so, Ethiopia appears to be now willingly-- most likely at the behest of the UAE-- drawn into the morass of competing interests within the region and Gulf that is tearing apart Sudan.
Last week, a dozen historical artefacts collected in the 1920s by then-German envoy to Ethiopia, Franz Weiss, were handed over to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University in a grand ceremony. Among the restituted collection are several items of cultural and historical significance, including two ceremonial crowns, alongside shields and paintings. Hailing their return and pledging to continue seeking the retrieval of other consequential artefacts, Addis's Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa stated that the objects would be accessible to the public and for academic study, calling it a "milestone in safeguarding Ethiopia's cultural heritage."
Sometimes it is better to refrain from commenting, particularly if you are a four-star Ethiopian lieutenant general. This week, a clip of Zewdu Belay, a senior commander within the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF), speaking to hundreds of soldiers has circulated online, sparking widespread controversy. In the video, Belay urges the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), Fano insurgents, and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) to cease their fight against Addis so the Ethiopian military might better prepare for a "major operation" against Assab
With northern Ethiopia and Eritrea teetering on the brink of a return to full-scale conflict, the grim morass that has become Tigrayan politics shows no sign of easing. Recent days have again been dominated by accusations and counter-accusations by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in Mekelle and the deposed Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) leader Getachew Reda from Addis over violent clashes in Southern Tigray
Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Tigray war and the third since the signing of the Pretoria agreement. Five years since Ethiopian federal forces, Amhara militias, and an invading Eritrean army launched a joint offensive that would leave between 300,000 and 600,000 Tigrayans dead and over 120,000 women and girls raped.
The Afar have had more than their fair share of grievances. A marginalised minority in three countries today, the Cushitic, largely agro-pastoralist people were once organised into Islamic Sultanates that stretched along the Dankalia coastline, profiting from the wealthy littoral trade of salt and enslaved people on the Red Sea. But Italian, French, and Ethiopian partitioning shattered the image of the 'Great Afar' in the late 19th and 20th centuries, wreaking irreparable havoc on these constellations and interfering with Afar kinship structures—primarily split into the Asaimara (Red) and Adoimara (White) groupings.
Over two decades after the contested 2004 Oromia-Somali Regional State (SRS) referendum, the restive boundary refuses to fully quiet. The longest internal boundary in Ethiopia, it stretches over 1,400 kilometres down to the Kenyan border and has been the site of intermittent violence for years, peaking between 2017 and 2019. And in mid-July, after a period of relative calm, clashes broke out once again, displacing over 250,000 people in just a couple of months. Coalescing around several intersecting issues, the violence has flared amid unilateral moves from the SRS administration to redraw over a dozen new districts as part of its 'internal' administrative map, regarded as a clear provocation to Oromo nationalists in an attempt to solidify control over disputed territories.
During the 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian war, such were the political and cultural affinities between the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that it was routinely described as 'Brothers at War' by onlookers. In one attempt to "make sense" of how their alliance soured, Kjetil Tronvoll and Tekeste Negash borrowed the phrase for their book's title, outlining the collapse in ties post-Eritrean independence and the resulting bloody inter-state conflict between the two Tigrinya-speaking peoples. Yet barring the 'second front' within the Somali Regional State (SRS), it remained essentially a contained conflict, a pointless war that left tens of thousands dead. Today, however, with war seemingly on the horizon again between Addis and Asmara, the constellation of actors and alliances is markedly different to 1998-2000, and there is little suggestion that any replay of this conflict could be easily contained.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front's (ONLF) attack on the Chinese-operated oil exploration site in Abole in April 2007 was arguably the single most consequential event of the decades-long insurgency. Coming shortly in the wake of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, 65 Ethiopian workers and 9 Chinese engineers were slain in the dawn raid, with the ONLF justifying the attack by arguing that "foreign companies who exploit the wealth of the Ogaden while our people are killed, starved, and displaced are legitimate targets." Nearly two decades later, the reverberations of the attack —and the subsequent government crackdown —are still keenly felt in the peripheral Somali Regional State (SRS).
Yesterday, the head of the UN's atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, stressed the alarming status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on the Dnieper River in Ukraine, which has been without power for several days. Having been seized by the Russian military in 2022, Moscow has repeatedly stoked fears of nuclear fallout-- and the spectre of the Chernobyl disaster-- by cutting off electricity as it has sought to consolidate its hold over the plant.
On Saturday, PM Abiy Ahmed promoted dozens of military officers to senior positions within the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF), rewarding a tranche of loyalists and allies further to cement his grip over the security organs of the state. Four Lt. Generals have been made the rank of full General-- Desta Abiche, Yimer Mekonnen, Alemishet Degfie and Diriba Mekonnen. Two more have been promoted to Lieutenant General, 17 to Major General, and 43 to Brigadier General. Coming shortly after the exit of Central Bank Governor Mamo Mihretu, further changes are still anticipated within diplomatic and political circles by the prime minister in the coming days.
Earlier this year, a clip of an interview with Peter Thiel, a billionaire founder of the US cyber-arms and tech firm Palantir, went viral. In it, he was asked whether he would prefer the human race to endure, and Thiel pauses before stuttering through a half-answer in the affirmative. For those following Thiel and his brand of ultra-conservative Christian politics blended with surreal transhumanist tech-based visions of a future, though undoubtedly creepy, it came as little surprise. But Thiel and his ilk are the ones now directing much of our future, a handful of nearly exclusively white North American men, wealthy, vainglorious and battling out the future of humanity with their egos in the race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data supremacy.
Today, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is finally being inaugurated amid great pomp and fanfare-- and just in time for the Ethiopian New Year. After over a decade in construction and many more in the making, it is a colossal feat of hydroelectric engineering, stretching over a mile wide in the country's western Benishangul-Gumuz region. With African leaders gathered in Ethiopia for the Africa Climate Summit, the symbolism is hard to miss, with PM Abiy Ahmed triumphant in the rapturous celebrations and bonhomie atop the structure. Yet it also comes amid the worst Ethiopia-Egypt relations in years, even while perhaps the most 'dangerous' moment has passed-- the filling of the GERD, with Cairo still furious at Addis's fitful, unilateral approach to negotiations. And with the dam finally complete and supposed to transform Ethiopia's development capacity, the messianic vision of Abiy continues-- with his gaze firmly trained on the Eritrean Port of Assab on the gates of the Red Sea.
At the beginning of August, an overcrowded vessel shepherding dozens of migrants across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen capsized. At least 90 drowned, and dozens more remain missing in the single deadliest incident on the 'Eastern Route' in the past 5 years. And not only were all reported to be Ethiopian, but all Tigrayan. The Tigrayan exodus of youth since the end of the devastating war in November 2022 has been immense, contributing to the 'brain drain' and the region's post-war limbo. The flight has been driven by a host of factors, not least the painful stasis of Tigray and the looming threat of a return to war.
Twelve months into Ethiopia's International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed macro-economic relief and reform programme, the financial outlook is decidedly mixed. Inflation has dropped from the punishingly high 20s and 30s down to the low teens, Ethiopia's creditors have agreed on a new deal, and the IMF continues to disburse funds for Addis. And with money being ploughed into gleaming sidewalks and palaces in Addis, one might think that Ethiopia was enjoying some sort of extraordinary economic boom.
The damaging fallout of Tigray's polarisation rumbles on. Late last week, clashes erupted again in Southern Tigray as members of the Tigray Defence Force (TDF) sought to arrest an opposition militia member, triggering protests and fresh recriminations. Several people were injured in the violence, as the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) continues to seek to reassert control over the region's governance-- barring Western Tigray. However, facing concerted resistance from several angles, including Addis, the fallout from the destabilising political rift in Tigrayan politics over the past year shows few signs of easing.
The Tigray war was not the first sign of a decayed international order, but it was undoubtedly one of the bloodiest. Ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, mass sexual violence, induced starvation, telecommunications blackout, mass killings, and more besides defined the war on the Tigrayan people, carried out by the Ethiopian government and its Eritrean allies and Amhara paramilitaries. At least 600,000 people perished in the two-year conflict between 2020 and 2022, and over 120,000 women and girls were estimated to have been raped. And over two and a half years since the fighting ceased, harrowing stories and reports continue to emerge almost every day from the conflict, only adding to the reams of evidence stacking up against particular soldiers, units, and commanders. However, under the current federal administration and with another conflict involving Asmara and Addis looming —this time against one another —such questions of justice and accountability appear more distant than ever before.
One has to hand it to the Somali Regional State (SRS) President, Mustafa Omer Agjar; in a country not without unpopular politicians, he has a striking ability to aggravate so many in a single stroke. Without warning, on 27 July, the Somali Regional State Council announced that 14 new woredas, four zonal administrations, and 25 municipal leadership offices were to be established. The outcry has been furious and immediate, with senior Oromo and Afar politicians voicing their displeasure at what they perceive as irredentism by the SRS in their regions. Overhauling administrative units along the Oromia-SRS boundary was always likely to prove highly contentious, but the host of changes has triggered major protests in several towns within the SRS as well. With a year out from elections, the much-loathed Agjar appears to be continuing to consolidate his position as regional president.
Ethiopia is fast approaching another grim anniversary-- two years of the Fano insurgency in the Amhara region, an armed conflict that shows no sign of abating and that has exacted a savage humanitarian toll. In August 2023, a disparate collection of former militiamen from the Tigray war, former Amhara Special Forces, and disgruntled farmers under the banner of 'Fano' militias escalated their operations, attacking and seizing government buildings and military posts in the Amhara region. In the preceding months, the government had sought to suppress elements of their former allies, seeking to arrest and disarm the varied movement with prominent strains of Amhara nationalism, but to no avail. And in the two years since Fano fighters briefly seized Lalibela on 1 August 2023, much of the Amhara region has witnessed a near-total breakdown in governance and law and order, with several thousand killed and many tens of thousands displaced.
In a triumphant parliamentary address at the beginning of July, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed announced that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was finally complete. After well over a decade and USD 4.2 billion spent, GERD is the largest hydroelectric dam on the continent– stretching over a mile wide and 140 metres high in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region on the Blue Nile tributary. And with preparations underway for a likely lavish official inauguration in September, Abiy also took the opportunity to invite the leaders of downstream Egypt and Sudan. Striking a conciliatory tone, Abiy pledged that "the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity" and asserted "Egypt's Aswan Dam has never lost a single litre of water due to the GERD."