The Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed had his back to the wall over the weekend with the Tigray forces and other armed opposition groups banding together in an alliance against the head of government. A year after the country was roiled by a civil war, the objective of the Tigray fighters is to seek a political transition.
“There is no limit for us,” Berhane Gebrechristoc, a former foreign minister and a Tigray official, told reporters in Washington. The general hope is that that there will be a change in Ethiopia before the country implodes. For once, the UN Security Council has been assertive.
The opposition alliance was announced hours before the UN Council ~ for the first time ~ called for an end to the conflict and for the smooth access for humanitarian aid to tackle the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade in the war-ravaged Tigray region.
It is a measure of the intensity of the crisis that the statement was approved by all 15 members of the Security Council. The statement has urged all parties to “refrain from inflammatory hate speech, incitement to violence and divisiveness”.
The hard fact of the matter must be that the Security Council has urged the parties involved “to put an end to hostilities and to negotiate an enduring cease-fire that will end hostilities. The cease-fire ought to create conditions for the start of an inclusive Ethiopian dialogue to resolve the crisis and create the foundation for peace and stability throughout the country”.
The nub of the raging crisis must be that the consummation that is devoutly wished for is easier imagined than accomplished. The Tigray fighters are inching towards Addis Ababa, the capital, according to the State Department. On Friday, Ethiopia called on military veterans to join what it now calls an “existential war”.
The US Embassy has urged citizens to leave Ethiopia as soon as possible. The Opposition alliance was formed as the US special envoy, Jeffry Feltman met the embattled country’s Prime Minister amidst calls for an immediate cease-fire to end the war that has killed thousands of people over exactly a year.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has called upon the Tigray and Oromo Liberation Army to “immediately stop the current advance towards Addis Ababa. He has also urged Ethiopia’s government to halt its military campaign, notably airstrikes on Tigray, and the mobilization of ethnic militias.
The plot thickens with the newly-formed United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces warning that time is running out for the Ethiopian government to act. There are red herrings across the trail. Little or nothing has been done over the past year to ensure the vital cessation of hostilities. Tigray may be in ferment for some time yet. So too will be the storm-centre that is Ethiopia.