Abiy Declares State of Emergency in Ethiopia
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared a six-month state of emergency on Tuesday in response to a rapid advance by Tigrayan forces, which has put rebel forces within 200 miles of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Abiy has in recent days told citizens to take up arms and organize their neighborhoods in preparation for a potential Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) invasion, declaring in a televised address that “dying for Ethiopia is a duty [for] all of us.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround for the Nobel peace laureate, who promised a swift end to an offensive launched against the TPLF last November.
Since then, federal forces have captured Tigray’s capital Mekele only to be forced out roughly six months later. They then returned to fighting following a hastily declared cease-fire in June.
The strategic failure of Ethiopian government forces to tame TPLF rebels can be traced to the beginning of the conflict. Tigrayans, who dominated Ethiopia’s government for decades, also account for a disproportionate share of the country’s top military commanders. When many of them sided with the TPLF, they set the stage to outfox their federal army counterparts.
As William Davison, an Ethiopia expert and senior analyst at the International Crisis Group explained, the well-trained Tigrayan forces have been able to build up considerable momentum since July, and have benefited from a corresponding drop in federal troop morale that has compounded territorial gains.
To regain the upper hand, the Ethiopian air force has recently started bombing targets in Tigray, with questionable results. But while the airstrikes showcased the government’s technological supremacy—and led to accusations of targeting civilians—it has done little to stop the rebel advance. “This is still an infantry heavy army, it’s not like there’s some key weapons factory or training institute they can target.” Davison said. “So I don’t think the federal government is achieving anything, really, other than enraging Tigrayans further.”
And while an invasion of Addis Ababa may not be imminent, the TPLF has other means to pressure the central government. Its recent seizure of key towns put it close to controlling the land-locked country’s main trade route to the Port of Djibouti, giving the rebels a chance to both strangle the capital and free up a route for much-needed aid to the estimated 400,000 people facing famine in Tigray.
To add to Abiy’s problems, the U.S. government has just declared Ethiopia out of compliance with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) due to alleged human rights violations in Tigray—a move that would deny Ethiopia duty-free access to U.S. markets if it does not return to compliance by January. It is not a trivial threat; Mamo Mihretu, Ethiopia’s chief trade negotiator, wrote in Foreign Policy last month that removing AGOA privileges would pose an “existential threat” to the country’s manufacturing sector.
Confronted with a TPLF force with the wind at its back and a looming economic blow from Washington, Abiy’s best option may be de-escalation. “I think now is the time for the federal government to acknowledge the degree to which the Tigray resistance is a force to be reckoned with and to look at making some sort of concessions to try and stop this in its tracks,” Davison said. “Because the direction it’s going in looks fantastically perilous.”