Sky News Network
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • National
  • Culture
  • Science & Technology
  • Opinion
  • Sports
No Result
View All Result
Sky News Network
No Result
View All Result
Home Politics

Ethiopian military declares war against Tigray leaders

skynewsbyskynews
November 6, 2020
in Politics
0
Ethiopian military declares war against Tigray leaders

Ethiopia orders attack on Tigray

0
SHARES
40
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterWhatsapp

Ethiopia’s military has said it is “at war” with the ruling party of the country’s northern Tigray region, amid unconfirmed reports of fighting, artillery duels and air raids.
There appears little hope of averting conflict in Africa’s second most populous country, with senior officials on both sides apparently determined to seek military advantage before any negotiations designed to defuse the crisis.
Analysts and diplomats have been warning for weeks that a standoff between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) could plunge Ethiopia into a bitter and bloody civil conflict.
“Our country has entered into a war it didn’t anticipate. This war is shameful, it is senseless,” Berhanu Jula Gelalcha, Ethiopia’s deputy chief of defence staff, told a press conference in Addis Ababa on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, accused the TPLF of attacking a military camp in the region and attempting to loot military assets.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

In the early hours of Wednesday a Facebook post by the Office of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seemed to indicate that several months of growing tension between the federal government and the country’s northern Tigray regional state had reached a tipping point.
The Facebook post accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of an unprovoked attack on the Ethiopian army’s northern command of trying to loot its weapons. In response, the prime minister said he had ordered military operations against what it called “a treacherous” group.
The TPLF denies the attack occurred and accuses Abiy of concocting the story to justify deploying the military against the organisation.
“What has been initiated against us is clearly a war, an invasion …. This is a war we’re conducting to preserve our existence,” Debretsion Gebremichael, chair of the TPLF and president of the Tigray region, said at a press conference.
The TPLF, meanwhile, has accused Abiy’s administration of trying to destroy Tigray’s right to self-determination and conspiring with Ethiopia’s northern neighbour Eritrea to stage a military attack.
On Thursday, Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael said the region has gained control of all the heavy weaponry of the northern command and that the division’s leadership and rank and file had decided to side with Tigray, an allegation denied by the federal government.
Martin Plaut, a former BBC Africa editor and a longtime observer of politics in the Horn of Africa said despite long-standing tensions between the two sides, there were two main reasons why a conflict broke out this week.
“PM Abiy gradually eroded the system of ethnic federalism that the TPLF had built under PM Meles (who died in 2012),” Plaut told Al Jazeera. “This threatened their hold over the Tigray region. The TPLF resisted, holding elections on 9 September this year, despite PM Abiy banning this show of regional autonomy.
“Secondly, PM Abiy mended fences with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern neighbour which borders directly on Tigray. Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has a long-standing animosity towards the TPLF. The Tigrayans were threatened with a pincer movement from south and north and have effectively seized control of their region.”
Although the TPLF governs Tigray it acts as an opposition party at the federal level, with Abiy’s Prosperity Party (PP), which was formed late in 2019 controlling the central government and the country’s nine remaining regional states.
Tigray citizens

With telephone and internet communications lines cut in Tigray, many Ethiopians and analysts are relying on media outlets owned by the federal government and the Tigray regional government as well as social media posts of partisan bloggers for information.
Tsedale Lemma, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Addis Standard, an English publication that reports on domestic and foreign current affairs, agrees politics is behind the escalation between the federal government and Tigray regional state but says the flare-up was precipitated by differences over military appointments.
“Fundamentally, the differences (that are) mostly political in nature have been building up since Abiy came to power,” she said. “However, it is safe to say the immediate reason follows the latest army restructuring announced by the Federal government and Tigray’s decision to reject the new appointments, including chief of command, for the Ethiopian Defense Force’s northern command.”
Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjorknes College in Norway and a keen observer of Ethiopian politics for 30 years, says the establishment of PP from the ashes of the ruling coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and TPLF’s refusal to enter a centralised party system had fed mutual animosity, on top of tensions that had been festering since Abiy came to power in April 2018.
This mutual animosity deepened when the PP-dominated federal legislature postponed national elections slated for last August citing the risks from COVID-19, while the Tigray regional administration, which opposed the move, held its own election in defiance of federal government warnings.
‘Civil war in the making?’
Although the scant information coming out of the “front lines” around Tigray suggest the military skirmishes have been limited, many Ethiopians are worried the country could be entering into a phase of destructive civil war reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s.
Plaut, while not discounting this possibility, says a full-fledged civil war is not inevitable.
“This could be the start of a civil war, but that is not certain,” he said. “The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but could intensify, drawing in other Ethiopian regions, while also threatening neighbouring Sudan and Eritrea.”
People of Tigray

While Lemma agrees a full-fledged civil war is not inevitable, she says it is a “real possibility” and one that could endanger the very territorial integrity of Ethiopia.
“To assert it could be the beginning of a civil war depends on whether or not both parties heed the growing international calls to de-escalate the current standoff and tension,” she said. “But I can say both have passed the phase of mutual brinkmanship – and that should worry us all.
“The possibility of Ethiopia breaking apart is real, but the final verdict depends on two critical outcomes of the current standoff: First, if the parties opt for a conventional war; and second, absent that, if they refused to conduct a serious dialogue and power bargain as a peaceful way out and continue maintaining a tense status quo.”
Tronvoll notes the crisis would be difficult to solve through military means.
“I don’t think any side can militarily annihilate the other side, it’s likely instead it could turn into an unnecessary protracted conflict which in the end would need to find a political solution,” he said.
While the federal government and TPLF seem to be inching towards war, with the world distracted by other events including the US presidential election, there are calls domestically and internationally for both sides to show restraint.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the Ethiopian federal government to restore communications in Tigray, while there are reports of behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the conflict.
For now, many Ethiopians regardless of their political motivation are looking on helplessly, fearful their country is drifting inexorably towards civil war.

Source: Agencies
Plugin Install : Subscribe Push Notification need OneSignal plugin to be installed.
skynews

skynews

Related Posts

We all have to work together in DRC, Museveni tells EAC colleagues
National

We all have to work together in DRC, Museveni tells EAC colleagues

June 21, 2022
East African states disagree on funding EAC
News

East African states disagree on funding EAC

March 29, 2022
Is South Sudan at the brink of war again?
National

Is South Sudan at the brink of war again?

March 29, 2022

Popular Stories

  • How corruption has eaten up Uganda’s water corporation

    How corruption has eaten up Uganda’s water corporation

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Uganda’s water boss lined up for sacking as wife shames minister in party elections

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • NWSC Board probes Silver Mugisha as Museveni unleashes intelligence on water ministry

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Assassinations: who is spilling blood in Uganda, and why?

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • How Ugandan brokers sealed Museveni, Ruto deal throwing Kenyatta, Odinga into chaos

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Archives

About Us

We are the leading online news publication in Uganda with authentic and reliable news.

LEARN MORE »

Recent News

  • Prince Charles represents Queen at Commonwealth meeting in Rwanda June 22, 2022
  • New method can stop cyberattacks in less than a second June 21, 2022
  • We all have to work together in DRC, Museveni tells EAC colleagues June 21, 2022

Quick Links

  • About us
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact Us

Address

UJA House, Bombo Rd,

Keti Falawo Zone, Kawempe Division

Kampala – Uganda

© 2020 – Sky News Network

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Politics
  • News
  • Business
  • National
  • Sports
  • Science & Technology
  • Agriculture & African Medicine
  • Travel
  • Opinion

© 2020 Sky News Uganda

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.