© 2021 AFP Outside a centuries-old stone church in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar, a drama troupe performed skits hailing the military defeat of the former leaders of the country’s Tigray region. As rifle-toting actors danced around chanting actresses, an audience cheered when the troupe denounced the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) as a […]
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — From “emaciated” refugees to crops burned on the brink of harvest, starvation threatens the survivors of more than two months of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The first humanitarian workers to arrive after pleading with the Ethiopian government for access describe weakened children dying from diarrhea after drinking from rivers. Shops […]
Source: BBC The shooting dead of Kitilaa Guddata has left his family in shock. The 32-year-old high school teacher was among the latest casualties in the conflict between government forces and rebels in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. The violence centres around demands by an insurgent group for the “liberation” of Oromia – a vast swathe of […]
Ethiopia’s security forces have “neutralized” 265 suspected Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) mutineers in Oromia regional state, state media outlet Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reported on Monday. The 265 suspected insurgents were killed in military actions carried out in the past two months, FBC said. Six suspected OLA insurgents and 87 of their accomplices have also […]
Source: LSE | Alex de Waal The political dispute that led to war in Tigray, Ethiopia, was sparked by contending interpretations of the right to self-determination in the country’s constitution. Drawing on a themed collection in the January 2021 issue of Nations and Nationalism, Alex de Waal explores the diverse theories and practices of self-determination […]
As Ethiopia heads toward the delayed elections tentatively now rescheduled for June 5, 2021, Ahmed’s fight not only undercuts his chief rival, who happens to be Tigrayan but enables him to use emergency powers to further erode democracy. Source: National Interest | Michael Rubin Africa has, for decades, been a democracy success story albeit one too often […]
The reforms by the country’s new prime minister are clashing with its flawed Constitution and could push the country toward an interethnic conflict. Source: NYT Opinion | Mahmood Mamdani Abiy Ahmed, the 42-year-old prime minister of Ethiopia, has dazzled Africa with a volley of political reforms since his appointment in April. Mr. Abiy ended the 20-year border […]
Source: Council of Foreign Affairs | by James M. Lindsay Ethiopian Parliamentary Elections, 2021. Ethiopians were supposed to go to the polls this past August. That vote was postponed, however, ostensibly because of COVID-19. If the vote is held in 2021, it will take place amid considerable turmoil. In late 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed merged the ruling government […]
By Tsedale Lemma for ©The New York Times Much of the blame must be laid at the door of the prime minister. The announcement last week that the government was about to launch a military operation into one of the country’s regions came, to put it lightly, as a shock. Not only was it very far […]
©Mail&Guardian – Rashid Abdi & Tobias Hagmann With the world’s attention fixated on the United States elections, Ethiopia embarked on a civil war last week. In a time span of five days Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel peace prize after making peace with Eritrea, ended the democratic transition that he had initiated two years before. In the early […]