Ethiopia PM's party wins landslide as fears grow of new conflict
On election day, 143 polling stations failed to open in the country's two most-populous regions because of safety concerns caused by armed groups fighting the
On election day, 143 polling stations failed to open in the country's two most-populous regions because of safety concerns caused by armed groups fighting the government. The Fano militias in Amhara and the proscribed Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Oromia, which both want greater autonomy, rejected the election and its results. The situation is also troubling in Tigray, which is still recovering from a two-year civil war that only ended in 2022. The region and its six million inhabitants, comprising 38 constituencies, were completely excluded from the poll amid rising fears that fighting could break out once more. Tigray borders Eritrea and during the war, its troops were allied with Ethiopian government forces.
They were accused of widespread atrocities against Tigrayan civilians, which were denied. But since the conflict ended, relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have sharply deteriorated. Eritrea, with its 1,350km (840-mile) coastline, accuses landlocked Ethiopia of having imperial ambitions. Over the last three years Abiy has repeatedly spoken of his country's need to regain access to a Red Sea port, which it lost when Eritrea became independent in 1993. In a dramatic about-turn, Asmara has now allied itself with Tigray's leaders - and should any new conflict erupt, it is likely that Eritrea would side with Tigrayan forces and vice-versa. Addis Ababa has also been accused of involvement in the civil war in Sudan, which borders both Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Multiple reports have alleged that Addis Ababa has supported one of Sudan's warring factions, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), although Ethiopia has repeatedly denied this. While Eritrea and Tigrayan forces have long been understood to have close links to the Sudanese military, which is fighting the RSF. It all makes for a toxic cocktail which could potentially spread across the region - and it does not look like Abiy is about to play peacemaker. The enmity between Abiy's government and the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant party in the region, was supposed to have ended with the peace deal signed in November 2022.
But both sides accuse each other of violating that agreement. The conflict was one of the most deadly this century, with the African Union's mediator estimating some 600,000 people had died as the fighting drove the region to the precipice of famine. The government was accused of blocking food aid to the region - an allegation it denied. "The risks are real and are driven by both sides," Cameron Hudson, an Africa analyst who once worked for the US State Department, told the BBC.
The BriefWire