Just as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are in turmoil, with millions displaced and thousands killed in both countries and intense carnage continuing to destroy developmental prospects, so Ethiopia (population 120 million) is another large African country destroying itself from within. Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ahmed Abiy forcefully subjugated rebellious Tigray, its northernmost province, in 2021 and 2022, but simultaneously unleashed internecine hostilities in both the Amhara and Oromia provinces that now threaten to tear Ethiopia asunder. His failure to provide relief supplies to devastated Tigray has also plunged that province and parts of Amhara into the kinds of deep famine that the region saw only in the 1980s. (I wrote about Sudan on Feb. 22, Congo on Feb. 26.)
Ethiopia
Earlier this month, at least 80 insurgents from the Amhara Fono militia lost their lives in a battle with Ethiopian army soldiers in the northern part of Amhara that borders Tigray. The Federal government demands that the Fono disarm and fold themselves into the official Ethiopian army. The Fono, representing the most jaundiced section of the Amhara region and ethnic group, are refusing. As a result, Abiy declared national emergency in 2023 and arrested more than 4,000 Amhara for aiding and abetting Fono. Now his parliament extended the emergency for four months more. The proclamation of an emergency gives Abiy draconian powers, including banning dissidents and curbing free movement of citizens. Washington, rightfully, has expressed its "deep concern" and called for open investigations by human rights monitors. But battles with the Amhara continues, and the food security situation worsens.
Abiy's forces, after several severe setbacks, vanquished Tigray in 2022, being accused of engaging in a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 600,000 Tigrayans lost their lives and more than 5 million Tigrayans were displaced, thousands fleeing into Sudan. During the war, Ethiopian national forces received serious martial assistance from Amhara groups (subsequently becoming Fono). The Amhara insurgents tried then, and since, to take western Tigray away from the Tigrayans. Together, their actions left Tigray in ruins, with its agricultural and pastoral productivity destroyed. After their victory, however, the central government decided to consolidate central military control; that meant attempting to dissolve regional security militias and suppressing ethnic-motivated violence in Amhara (and also in Oromia).
The continuing fighting in and around Tigray and Amhara also accelerates the onset of famine. USAID and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) have expressed alarm at intensifying acute food shortages in Tigray, Amhara, Afar, Oromia, and other regions of Ethiopia. Millions of poor Ethiopians are immediately susceptible to death from hunger; drought in the Horn of Africa has persisted for several years, but the destruction of Tigray and continuing battles in Amhara has exacerbated livestock and farming losses, leaving both regions at serious risk. More than 4 million subsistence farmers are at immediate risk of death. Many more could suffer severely if international relief efforts fail and the local conflicts continue.
In addition to the Amhara uprising, there is trouble in Oromia, the home of Ethiopia's large ethnic agglomeration. For several years, the Oromo Liberation Front has been asserting the rights of the Oromo people and demanding autonomy. Abiy is an Oromo, but that has hardly prevented serious clashes between government troops and Oromo rebels. Indeed, as we wrote last year, Abiy's excessive determination to thrash Tigray has now aroused troubles in Amhara and Oromia and -- potentially -- to the fracturing of the Ethiopian state. His Somali constituents in the south are always restive, too, and his new alliance with Somaliland has angered both Somalia and Djibouti, nations on Ethiopia's borders. Somalia has threatened to attack Ethiopia.
The battles in Oromia, which surrounds Addis Ababa, began in 2021, and involved the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) attacking Amharan villages within Oromia. More than 200 Amhara were killed in this way in 2022. The assaults have continued ever since despite attempts by federal troops to crush the OLA and end its ethnic-prompted incitements. Peace talks with the Oromo Liberation Front and its Army have faltered time after time and are now in limbo. Ethiopia as whole remains in peril.
Abiy's alliance with renegade Eritrea, to the north of Tigray, originally helped him beat back the Tigrayans, but he and repressive Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki now appear to have become enemies again. (Abiy won his Nobel Prize largely after embracing peace with Isaias and Eritrea, antagonists ever since a major war between the two countries ended in 2000; a frozen conflict persisted until Abiy's initiative in 2019.)
What is little known is that Abiy's personalist/nationalistic power plays are supported financially by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Without UAE backing, and its provision of military equipment to turn the Tigrayan war in his favor, Abiy might have faltered before now. But what the UAE gains in exchange is not clear, just as its major backing of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan (as I wrote on Feb. 22) makes little obvious sense and prevents peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.
Peace (or at least the absence of internecine warfare) in Ethiopia now depends on the West, especially the U. S., pressuring Abiy to pause his unremitting attacks on Amharan and Oromo insurgents and negotiating the non-violent incorporation of both groups back into the Ethiopian whole. The UAE could help, too, but first Washington must learn what Abu Dhabi wants to accomplish in the restive Horn of Africa.
Senegal
The good news for African democracy is that Senegal's Constitutional Council unexpectedly overruled outgoing President Macky Sall's peremptory decision to reschedule its national election originally scheduled for February 25 (deferring it until December 15). It will now be held — maybe — on June 2. Furthermore, Sall (unlike many presidents elsewhere in Africa) finally agreed to accept the Council's ruling and promised to step down on April 2, as constitutionally appropriate. Even more striking, he released Ousmane Sonko, his long time and much harassed opponent, from prison, saying that he would now (finally) permit him to stand for president against his own candidate -- Amadou Ba, the current prime minister.
Even with Sall's striking volte face, spurred by the Council, whether Senegal will thoroughly abandon Sall's recent obstreperous endeavors and revert to its enduring democratic tradition is still up for grabs. Senegal's reputation as the only West African nation never besmirched by a coup is now mostly restored, however, and worth celebrating.
Bravo, professor, another tour de force across Africa in turmoil !
On Senegal, I still despair of any real semblance of a truly fair & democratic election!
;-(