Ethiopia is sprinting toward calamity. Last week, as the rebel forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and their allies advanced toward the capital of Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed traveled to the frontline and vowed to lead Ethiopian troops into battle himself. “We won’t give in until we bury the enemy,” he said. Not to be outdone, a spokesperson for the TPLF called Abiy’s leadership a “chokehold on our people” and pledged to continue the rebels’ “inexorable advance.”
If Abiy and his opponents continue on their current path, they risk triggering not only massive bloodshed and economic collapse but the fracture of the Ethiopian state as we know it. Ethiopia is at risk of becoming this generation’s Yugoslavia: a great nation and a regional leader that violently shatters along ethnic lines. Echoes of the bloody Yugoslav wars are already evident in the polarization, hate speech, and violence that have gripped Ethiopia over the last year. The memory of those previous conflicts haunts me when I think of what may be next for Africa’s second most populous nation.
The full op-ed can be read here.
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