Hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of cities and towns across Ethiopia’s Amhara region have taken to the streets in a powerful demand for peace. Amid a year of violent conflict between the government and the Fano rebels, demonstrators are calling for an immediate end to the armed conflict, the restoration of safety and security, and the return of normalcy to their daily lives. Demonstrators defied threats by Fano not to come out onto the streets.

The Fano, a group of rebels seeking the violent overthrow of the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa, has increasingly resorted to brutal tactics in recent months. Their violent campaign has resulted in widespread fear and suffering, including kidnappings, extrajudicial executions, closure of school, and the disruption of entire communities. Despite these grave threats, demonstrators have bravely marched across the Amhara region, demanding an end to the violence that has torn apart families and devastated lives.

Many of the protesters, mostly ordinary citizens who have endured the suffering of conflict for far too long, carried signs with bold messages, calling on armed combatants to lay down their weapons and allow safe passage for students and civilians. The blockades, often set up by Fano fighters to hinder military movement and disrupt daily life, have paralyzed entire regions. For many, the protests represent more than just an end to fighting—it is a call for the restoration of basic human rights and a return to peace.

In recent months, the rebels have executed and kidnapped hundreds. These shocking acts of violence have left scars on the community, leading to a deep sense of grief and outrage. By marching through the streets, these demonstrators are not only mourning the lives lost but are also making it clear that they will no longer stand in silence.

The significance of these protests cannot be overstated. For months, there had been an overwhelming fear of speaking out against the Fano, as the group’s violent retribution against anyone perceived as opposing them was swift and deadly. The fear of retaliation kept many quiet, with citizens forced into a state of constant anxiety and distrust. However, the bravery of these demonstrators marks a new chapter for the region. 

2024 has been a year of intense armed conflict, as Ethiopia’s security forces have engaged in direct combat with the Fano, using drones and airstrikes to target rebel positions. Tragically, these operations have also resulted in civilian casualties, further compounding the region’s suffering. Amid this military escalation, there have even been signs of infighting within the Fano itself, with factions of the group reportedly turning on each other. This fragmentation has made the rebels even more dangerous and unpredictable, further escalating the crisis in the region.

Yet, despite the growing violence, the message from these protests is clear: the people of Amhara are no longer willing to tolerate the endless bloodshed and fear. The unity displayed by protesters across cities is a significant shift in the region’s political and social landscape. For many, this is the first time in months that they have dared to speak out in such a public and unified manner, showing that, even in the face of violence and intimidation, hope for peace can still survive.

This movement, while still unfolding, represents a pivotal moment in the struggle for peace in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. It is a stark reminder that, even in the darkest times, the collective will of the people can inspire change. As these demonstrations continue to grow, there is a renewed sense of hope that the region’s ongoing conflict will come to an end—not through more violence, but through the strength and resilience of its people, standing together in the name of peace.

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This is an excerpt from the latest extended version of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” a book by veteran Horn of Africa correspondent Rasmus Sonderris

A quick Google search finds that “Meaza Mohammed is an Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist”. Countless newspaper articles depict her as an advocate for raped women. International organizations dedicated to press freedom portray her as persecuted for speaking truth to power. The website of the US State Department, no less, pays homage to her in this manner:

This honorable mention is because the State Department bestowed upon her the International Women of Courage Award on March 8, 2023, at a ceremony with First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Following up on this event, a Voice of America video opens with the words: “Meaza Mohamed was arrested three times within the span of one year, all for doing her job.”

Meaza Mohammed is not only the founder, but also the chief editor and voiceover woman of Roha TV, one of the more successful of a plethora of ethnic-based Youtube channels produced by Ethiopians in the West. These can be watched freely in Ethiopia too (although until July 2023, a VPN was required). Most of the worldwide sympathy with Meaza Mohammed predates the Fano insurgency in the Amhara Region, which broke out in April 2023, but she was known in Ethiopia as an ethnonationalist firebrand before that. Certainly, Roha TV today is wholly dedicated to propagandizing for Fano, which is, as of 2024, just like the TPLF was until late 2022, an irregular army with the ambition of toppling the elected federal government. However, in this case, the first obstacle on its warpath is the local Amhara regional government, which also has a democratic mandate dating from 2021. We shall return to how Fano both resembles and differs from the two other major ethnonationalist militias in Ethiopia, the TPLF and OLA.

Roha TV serves up a fare of ethnicity-obsessed hate-, fear- and war-mongering. One claim is that the capital Addis Ababa, whose population is majority Amhara, is now in the hands of Oromo extremists who hate all things Amhara.

Roha TV is not all doom, however, as a triumphalist tone is important for recruitment. Just like the TPLF’s propagandists, Fano’s Meaza Mohammed plays a tune about human rights in English, but beats the drums of war in her own language. For instance, at the Amhara Grand Convention, held by the Confederation of Amharas in North America in Atlanta, USA, on March 9-10, 2024, she delivered a fiery speech in Amharic.^[4] Dressed in a T-shirt with three raised fists in the Ethiopian colors, she denounced the realists within the movement who seek a negotiated settlement: “We’re not talking about politics, in which we engage in compromise,”^[5] she thundered, and ended on this note: “We’re saying that if we don’t achieve victory, the outcome will be our destruction as a people. If this does not bother you, those of us who do care will struggle and we will win, and you better get out of our way!”^[6]

The last part is a thinly veiled threat to fellow Amharas who disagree with her. Many of them have been killed. Apart from attacks on federal soldiers and officers, basically anyone in constitutional authority in the Amhara Region, such as mayors, policemen, journalists for government media, and elected members of the regional parliament live with the risk of assassination. In some cases, bounties have been placed on their heads on social media.

In May 2024, I travelled to Bahir Dar, the beautiful capital of Amhara Region by the shores of Lake Tana. Despite a curfew in force after 8pm, life goes on. Amhara Region is suffering an insurgency, but not, as Tigray during the war with the TPLF, an all-encompassing insurgency regime. Banks and businesses continue to function. The mobile-phone network is up, but not for data. Those who can afford a coffee at a major hotel can get a wifi password for internet access. In general, the mood is depressed. People complain of disinvestment, economic sabotage, absence of tourists and rich people fleeing the city: “If they don’t pay Fano, Fano kills them, and if they do pay, the government arrests them,” the locals explained to me. In the parts of the countryside where Fano is in control, either schools have been closed or parents are afraid of sending their children.

There are no two ways about it. Meaza Mohammed campaigns and raises funds for Ethiopians killing Ethiopians, and particularly for Amharas killing Amharas. Of course, she and her backers genuinely believe that this is for a noble cause. To convince themselves and others that Fano’s killings are just, rather than extremist, they play up how the State Department as well as do-gooders around the world celebrate Meaza Mohammed as a champion of human rights. The international community’s failure to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence is depressingly déjà vu from the war with the TPLF.

“Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” is now available on Amazon Kindle, paperback, or hardcover

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Ethiopia, with a population of 130 million, has experienced remarkable economic expansion over the past two decades, positioning itself as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. As a landlocked country, Ethiopia’s access to reliable and efficient ports is crucial for its trade, imports, and exports. Given this, port services in the Horn of Africa are highly coveted. Historically, Ethiopia relied heavily on Djibouti for access to the sea after losing the ports of Massawa and Assab in 1993, following the secession of Eritrea. Djibouti has since served as Ethiopia’s primary gateway to international trade, with the port of Djibouti handling the majority of Ethiopian cargo.

However, Ethiopia’s dependence on Djibouti has long been a point of strategic concern for Addis Ababa. In recent years, the Ethiopian government has sought to diversify its access to maritime routes to reduce its reliance on a single port. The government has explored several alternatives, including the newly developed port of Lamu in Kenya. However, the progress of infrastructure projects, including vital road and rail connections between Lamu and Ethiopia, has been slow. Political and security challenges have also hindered Ethiopia’s efforts to secure alternative routes through Sudan and Eritrea, limiting the impact of these ports.

As a result, Ethiopia has increasingly turned its attention to other regional ports, particularly in the semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland. Both territories—Berbera in Somaliland and Bosaso in Puntland—have been seeking to attract foreign investment, but their status remains contentious. While Somaliland and Puntland both claim independence, the Somali government in Mogadishu regards them as part of its territory, complicating the legal and political landscape for international investors.

The rivalry intensified after Dubai-based DP World, a global port operator, became a key player in the region. After losing the concession to operate the Doraleh Container Terminal in Djibouti in 2018, DP World shifted its focus to the ports of Berbera and Bosaso. It has secured long-term contracts in both locations, promising to invest heavily in their development and significantly improve their infrastructure. This strategy puts DP World in direct competition with Djibouti, which has traditionally been Ethiopia’s main port partner.

In January of this year, Ethiopia and Somaliland reached an agreement allowing Ethiopia to develop port facilities on 20 kilometers of Somaliland’s coastline for a period of 50 years. This agreement gives Ethiopia a foothold in Berbera, positioning it as a key alternative to Djibouti for Ethiopian trade. The move is part of Ethiopia’s broader strategy to diversify its port access and reduce its vulnerability to political and economic changes in Djibouti.

However, Djibouti’s latest strategic move—offering Ethiopia the opportunity to operate the Tadjoura port—appears to be a direct attempt to undermine Ethiopia’s growing involvement in rival ports. Tadjoura, located on the opposite side of the Gulf of Tadjoura from Djibouti’s main port, was completed in 2017. Despite its potential, the port is still relatively small and lacks significant capacity compared to other regional ports. Built at a cost of $90 million, it has just two berths, a short Roll-on/Roll-off (RoRo) quay, and a depth of 12 meters, which limits its ability to handle larger vessels. Nonetheless, Djibouti’s offer to let Ethiopia operate Tadjoura represents an effort to create a new avenue for Ethiopian trade, while also attempting to solidify Djibouti’s role as Ethiopia’s primary port partner.

Djibouti’s decision to involve Ethiopia in the operation of Tadjoura is likely motivated by several factors. First, it may be an attempt to secure Ethiopia’s continued reliance on Djibouti for access to the sea, even as Ethiopia seeks alternatives. By offering Ethiopia the chance to develop Tadjoura, Djibouti may be trying to ensure that Ethiopia does not fully commit to the rival ports in Somaliland and Puntland. Second, it reflects the growing importance of port infrastructure in the region, where access to seaports is not just an economic matter, but also a strategic one.

While Tadjoura’s infrastructure may still be modest, its potential role in Ethiopia’s broader trade strategy should not be underestimated. With ongoing regional competition for access to Ethiopia’s booming economy, the outcome of this port rivalry will likely have far-reaching implications for the Horn of Africa’s geopolitical and economic landscape. As Ethiopia continues to explore alternative port options, including its growing involvement in Somaliland, Djibouti will need to carefully balance its offers with the broader regional competition to maintain its position as Ethiopia’s primary maritime gateway.

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The Ethiopian government has been working for four years to establish a securities exchange as part of its broader economic reform and liberalisation agenda. This includes the recent decision to allow the Ethiopian birr (ETB) to float freely and open up strategic sectors such as banking and telecommunications to competition.

The exchange’s debut will feature several significant state-owned enterprises, including Ethio Telecom, the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation, and the Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), which will be listed on the platform. The government views the move as a way to break the long-standing dominance of nationalised entities in the economy, increase Ethiopia’s global competitiveness, and attract foreign direct investment.

Local reports suggest that over 90 companies are expected to list on the exchange within its first few weeks of operation. So far, the exchange has raised approximately 1.6 billion birr (around $13 million) in capital.

In a bid to bolster investor trust and ensure the safety of investments, ECMA has introduced new transparency and disclosure rules. These measures are intended to enhance the credibility of the market and reassure both local and international investors.

At a recent event in Addis Ababa, Hana Tehelku, the Director-General of ECMA, highlighted that the new guidelines are essential for creating a well-regulated capital market. She explained that the measures focus on increasing transparency, standardising processes, and safeguarding investor interests, all in alignment with the country’s broader economic objectives.

The new rules include mandatory annual audited financial statements for listed companies, along with ongoing communication with shareholders. To further protect investors, a “pre-emptive rights” clause will allow existing shareholders to maintain their proportional ownership when additional shares are issued, thus preventing dilution of their holdings.

Additionally, companies will be required to demonstrate adequate capital reserves to reduce the risk of defaults and protect shareholder investments. ECMA will oversee the implementation and enforcement of these regulations.

While such regulations are common in many stock exchanges globally, some African markets have faced challenges in assuring investors of the safety of their capital due to insufficient transparency and weak disclosure practices.

A 2022 report from the African Development Bank (AfDB) noted that international investors may hesitate to engage in markets where they lack confidence in the disclosure standards, even if the underlying investments appear solid.

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Even in the event of peace, Ethiopia is not going to achieve a democratic political culture overnight. It may even get worse before it gets better. However, it is wrong and reckless to conclude that violence is now a last resort. During the darkest years of the TPLF/EPRDF, when armed resistance was in every way legitimate, I personally disagreed with that path, not out of pacifism, but from a strategic perspective. Because violence begets violence. Conversely, making the most of a small democratic space can expand democracy. There are plenty of political parties in Ethiopia that have taken this path. Some examples are the National Movement of Amhara (NaMA), Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice, EZEMA, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), the Enat Party, and the Tigray Democratic Party (TDP). Some of them complain of all manners of harassment. In the name of national unity, others have joined the government and been awarded with places in the cabinet, but they too will be running against the ruling Prosperity Party in the next election in 2026.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has often promised a peaceful transition of power, if he loses at the polls. It is admittedly hard to find Ethiopians who envisage that, if push comes to shove, he and the powerful people around him will just admit defeat and gracefully swap places with the opposition. But this needs to be tested rather than dismissed out of hand in a call to arms by actors whose democratic credentials are actually more dubious than the government’s.

Many have accused me of “shilling for the regime”, even of being a paid mouthpiece and what not. Of course, I would never take money from a party to a conflict that I am covering as an independent. Apart from giving interviews to Ethiopian state media, I have never even met anyone from the Ethiopian government, which has committed and will undoubtedly continue to commit acts that I disagree with, even condemn. Most international classifications use the term “hybrid regime” about the current system, that is, a mix of authoritarianism and democracy. This is probably fair.

But it is the legitimate government. It may sometimes commit illegitimate acts, but none of the armed alternatives today has a shred of legitimacy, let alone any prospect of making things better. Even if the government sometimes categorizes fair criticism as “incitement” and misuses the judiciary as in the bad old days, constructive opposition is the only way to go. Ethiopians demand solutions to everyday problems like long lines for public transport, bribe-demanding traffic police, power cuts, red tape, pollution, unaffordable healthcare, homelessness, low-quality schools, etc. Fundamentally, ethnic rivalry is not the root cause of war, but ethnic rivalry is an effective mobilizer for war. Unresolved bread-and-butter problems can make people vote for the opposition, but do not usually make them pick up a gun. If the most urgent issue of security gets under control, peaceful political competition should be able to focus on the second- most urgent issues, like growing the economy and fighting corruption. Conversely, if security continues to be the overriding concern, democracy, human rights and even good governance will look increasingly like unaffordable luxuries.

When I first got involved in opining on war in Ethiopia around November 2021, I set myself the goal of getting through it without regret. Notwithstanding some quick- tempered tweets,390 the only thing I would change, if I could go back, would be the headline of my speech for the Danish Society of Engineers in March 2022, in which I characterized Ethiopia as “a fellow democracy”. This was overselling a point in the heat of the propaganda battles. Building an Ethiopian democracy, let alone a democratic culture, remains a daunting project with no guarantee of completion. As we have seen, it backslides under pressure and polarization. Tensions lurk and can erupt into the next big war, in which the security state takes over and rolls back the reforms.

And yet, there is hope. The vast majority of Ethiopians both preach and practice multiethnic cooperation. Although ethnically-exclusive rebel outfits brandishing genocide hashtags still have too much manpower and firepower, their popularity seems to be in decline.

Meanwhile, outside of Ethiopia, despite the endurance of a narrative about a “Tigray genocide”, the Pretoria Peace Agreement has become unanimously endorsed. The TPLF has not been properly disarmed or stopped being a threat, but nearly everyone agrees that it should. The TPLF is unlikely to get much international support for another round of aggression under the cover of resisting a genocide. A retired Western diplomat told me that one lesson had been learned after all: “We should have listened less to the media and more to the African Union.” Indeed, and the African Union issticking firmly to the Pretoria Agreement.

However, there has been no reckoning over the tragic cost of achieving the Pretoria Agreement. Those who got Ethiopia dead wrong are not wondering aloud why the TPLF sent young Tigrayans to kill and die for peace terms that could have been easily obtained without firing a shot. Having learned so little, the world is perfectly capable of getting Ethiopia and other countries dead wrong yet again.

With this in mind, the final word goes to Dr. Steven Were Omamo, the results-oriented humanitarian sabotaged by self-serving, glory-seeking cowboy humanitarians during the war ‘At the Centre of the World in Ethiopia’:

“I also lament how the politics of major powers was allowed to infiltrate and corrupt a fragile but promising science-based process, destroying hard-earned credibility, along with the trust that went with that. Nobody has admitted that ‘the people are dying of hunger in Tigray’ narrative was total fabrication. There were no consequences. There are never any consequences as the ‘international community’ recycles itself from crisis to crisis. Incompetent and unethical people who lie, distort, and mess up can just walk away and do the same thing somewhere else. To me, that is annoying. For the world, it should be unacceptable.”

“Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” is now available on Amazon Kindle, paperback, or hardcover

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On November 3, around one thousand senior Ethiopian commanders stationed in Tigray went for a dinner party with regional government officials. The invitation, however, was a ruse to take them prisoner.

That same night, while the world was focused on vote-counting in the US presidential election, a total of five federal military bases in Tigray came under fire. Defenders were killed or captured, though those in the Sero Base, near the border with Eritrea, held out for a grueling ten days. Tigrayan soldiers turned on their comrades of other ethnicities, many of whom had lived in Tigray for decades, working alongside the local communities. Reports about soldiers killed in their pyjamas and arbitrary cruelty shocked the Ethiopian public.

Thankfully, Michael Pompeo, Secretary of State under the outgoing Trump administration, condemned it immediately.

Wisely, Secretary Pompeo left it open to interpretation how to “de-escalate tensions”, but surely “immediate action to restore the peace” meant arresting those responsible for such a ferocious assault on the constitutional order.

For the first year or so, the world press downplayed or omitted this manifest casus bellialtogether, even in longreads on the war, which focused obsessively on the prime minister’s personality and on how the Nobel Peace Prize had gone to his head.

The Economist, for instance, as late as October 2021, while TPLF troops were marching on Addis Ababa, published a shockingly defamatory and inflammatory leader, to which we shall return in Part 3, attributing the cause of the conflict to an “increasingly paranoid and erratic” Abiy Ahmed deciding to attack the regional government of Tigray, “which he accused of rebellion”. This shallow phrasing amounts to speculating that the attack on the Northern Command was made up.

In fact, only ten days into the war, the high-ranking TPLF leader, Sekoture Getachew, speaking on Tigrayan television, confirmed that an elaborate plan had been executed, using soldiers from inside and outside the bases, with the aim of taking over the firepower of the Ethiopian army. Some two weeks later, this was admitted by Getachew Reda, with the excuse that “whatever we did, we did in self-defense”. In January 2021, Kjetil Tronvoll mentioned it in an article, as did, in March 2021, the diehard pro-TPLF magazine Tghat, albeit portraying it as a preemptive strike justifiedby an enemy plan to commit genocide. Accordingly, the world press eventually began to incorporate this event into its timeline.

From the first day of the war, Declan Walsh and co-author Simon Marks, writing in The New York Times, put the war down to the notion that “Mr. Abiy presented a radically different face”, from his Nobel-Peace-Prize face that was. They studiously ignored the crucial dispute over the control of the army, except for stating that “Mr. Abiy said his hand had been forced by Tigrayan leaders who brazenly defied his authority”. Of course, there is no quotation mark around the prime minister saying: they brazenly defied my authority. But this is how The New York Times interprets his denunciation of the attack on the Northern Command, which it does not even bother to mention. What the New York Times would take for granted at home in the US, namely state monopoly on violence under democratic rule of law, is reduced for Ethiopia to the big man exercising “his authority”.

Eleven days into the war, Mr. Walsh and Mr. Marks did report “a purported Tigrayan attack on an Ethiopian army base in Tigray early this month”. This is when Kjetil Tronvoll is introduced in the New York Times as a “a scholar of Ethiopian politics”. Conversations with him might have colored Mr. Walsh’s views, as he continued to overlook not only the foregoing two and a half years of political developments as the source of the tension, but also the attack on the Northern Command as the point of no return. The New York Times explanation would continue to focus on the “messianic” prime minister, who had “plunged Ethiopia into a war”. Finally, by December 2021, Declan Walsh must have felt challenged, as the attack on the five federal bases had become acknowledged as fact and was getting more mention in the media. This accounts for the timing of the “new evidence” that the prime minister “had been planning a military campaign in the northern Tigray region for months before the war (…)”. Mr. Walsh was rationalizing his early choice of virtually ignoring the attack on the Northern Command.

That this is how the war began is no longer controversial. Yet even as of 2023, The Guardian’s official view frames it as a mere accusation: “Fighting broke out in November 2020 when Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed deployed the army to arrest Tigrayan leaders who had been challenging his authority for months and whom he accused of attacking federal military bases.”

Once again, legitimacy to rule Ethiopia is reduced to the big man exercising “his authority”. And “challenging his authority” is a hell of a euphemism for raiding national armories and usurping the command of the national army.

“Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” is now available on Amazon Kindle, paperback, or hardcover

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During the event, Governor Mamo addressed concerns from the Ethiopian diaspora regarding the floating exchange rate of the Birr and the significant regulatory changes underway. He noted real progress towards convergence between the parallel exchange rate and the newly established market-based bank exchange rate over the past two months, a natural result of the free exchange rate system.

Concerns about rampant inflation and a drastic depreciation of the Birr have diminished, with the governor asserting, “such a scenario was highly unlikely due to a monetary policy that’s periodically reviewed and adjusted according to market conditions.” He emphasized that measures have been taken to mitigate inflationary pressures and currency depreciation.

The shift to a free-floating currency has bolstered the export sector and increased remittances, with Dashen Bank reporting a staggering 300% year-over-year rise in dollar remittances in its third-quarter report. Despite the increased availability of foreign exchange in the banking sector however, bankers contend that importers have shied away, relying on their customary and informal means to access hard currency. “This could be a case of old habits die hard, but I believe it is more likely to be a problem of being misinformed about recent changes—we as banker certainly need to do more to clear up the confusion, said Abe Sano, CEO of state owned, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, the country’s largest. 

Historically, many people in Ethiopia depended on traditional savings and loans schemes, mostly based on small knit circles of friends and family. Modern banking, although more than 120-year-old in the country, only started to make inroads just in the last few decades. For this reason, many remained unbanked up until very recently. This traditional way of thinking about money and credit is baked into the culture. This means relationships, be they familial or communal are still strong in business. These are not as easy to reform of to modernize. For this reason, a parallel market for foreign currency exchange will likely remain. But the price gap will converge as institutional trust grows. Combined with other incentives provided by licensed financial entities, the legal route for exchanging foreign currency should become more attractive. NBE Governor Mamo reiterated, “our ultimate goal is to instill trust in our banking institutions by building the right incentive mechanism for a healthy financial architecture, one that centers economic development and growth”. 

In a bid to enhance transparency and competitiveness, the NBE recently implemented a 2% cap on bank fees for foreign exchange transactions. However, questions linger about potential collusion among major banks in setting similar pricing for dollars and euros, as the price gap between buying and selling rates remains substantial. To further diversify the market, the NBE has licensed five new Independent Foreign Exchange Bureaus, including Dugda Fidelity Investment PLC and Global Independent Foreign Exchange Bureau.

While the Ethiopian banking sector shows signs of recovery, with restructured debt and improved capital adequacy, loan portfolios remain constrained, primarily serving a limited clientele. Governor Mamo pointed to the success of microfinance as a model for broader lending, suggesting that larger banks need to adopt similar strategies to reach a wider public. New fintech players, such as Ethio-Telecom’s TeleBirr, are poised to outpace traditional banks in attracting borrowers.

Ethiopia is also considering the entry of foreign retail banks into its previously closed market, a move that could disrupt the landscape for domestic banks that have historically faced little competition due to stringent regulations. “The layers of strict regulation meant there was little incentive to innovate for banks,” Governor Mamo noted. Dashen Bank’s CEO Asfaw Alemu said “Stringent regulation meant there was little you can do to fail as a bank in Ethiopia—you were always parented by the state”. Indeed, bank failure is very rare in Ethiopia, not because the banks are good, but rather because of moral hazard. The recent reforms aim to reduce bureaucratic obstacles and enhance the overall banking environment, though many local banks may struggle to compete against foreign entrants without adequate capitalization.

Legislation is on the horizon to encourage bank mergers, aiming to centralize capital and strengthen the sector in anticipation of increased competition. Pooling resources will be a matter of survival even for the biggest of the current institutions. As Ethiopia navigates these transformative changes, the future of its banks is poised for historic evolution, one that is long overdue. 

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For months, the TPLF’s old guard and the interim regional government, led by Getachew Reda, have engaged in a blame game over the region’s botched recovery, marked by military defeats, what many claim to be “loss of territory”, and a breakdown in law and order. These tensions have roots in the discord that emerged in 2019 when the newly formed Prosperity Party, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed embarked on a series of reforms that threatened the TPLF’s grip on power. Hostilities then ultimately led to a devastating war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands is what has come to be referred to as the “Tigray War”.

The Pretoria Peace Agreement was welcome news, as it ended the war. It also served as somewhat of a face-saving surrender for the TPLF, averting its total collapse, potentially leaving an unpredictable and perhaps even more dangerous power vacuum. Since then, however, internal frictions within the region’s long time ruling party have multiplied, with divisions deepening, especially after the Ethiopian Electoral Board refused to reinstate the TPLF, demanding its re-registration as a new political party.

Faced with diminishing prospects for regaining power, the TPLF’s old guard now appears to be relinquishing control of regional capital Mekelle to Getachew Reda’s interim administration, which is gaining support from key districts across central, eastern, and southern parts of the Tigray region, chiefly among the young.

Meanwhile, Debretsion Gebremichael, head of TPLF’s other more senior faction, seems to be consolidating power in Shire, the region’s second-largest city. Shire’s proximity to lucrative gold mines, currently under the control of TPLF warlords and generals aligned with Debretsion adds another layer of complexity to the situation.

Interim leader Getachew Reda accused his adversaries of engaging in the illicit gold trade. In a recent meeting with his supporters Getachew said, “Those who accuse me of falsehoods are involved in facilitating the export of gold from Tigray to the Gulf States via Eritrea” -— which has also relied on its own gold exports to finance itself despite years of Western sanctions. 

Before the war, licensed miners in Tigray sold gold to the National Bank of Ethiopia. Since the conflict began however, much of the region’s gold has been smuggled out. Other more urgent political priorities overshadowed the issue, but there is now growing concern the illicit trade may fuel yet another round of conflict. Any attempt by the interim administration, backed by the federal government to intervene could spark further violence due to the political nature of the mining interests.

As public dissatisfaction grows, pressure is building on the region’s government to utilize its resources to provide adequate services and to punish criminals. Many schools in the region remain shuttered. The vice chair of the Tigray Regional Board of Education reported that out of 2,492 schools ranging from kindergarten to high school, 1,835 are fully operational. However, approximately 500 schools are currently being used as arms depots and garrison to house the region’s large number of idled fighters. This despite nearly two years of relative peace. 

It is in this context the town of Shire emerged as a stronghold for the TPLF’s hardliners, as cadres continue trade blame for the region’s challenges and race to gather support for what appears to be another round of struggle, which so far has been limited to public rallies and heated public meetings organized by each side.

Considering the TPLF’s intolerant political culture and history of armed conflict, recent developments could trigger another wave of violence, especially since the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of TPLF fighters has not been fully realized. The situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region remains unstable, raising significant concerns about the possibility of renewed conflict, a scenario feared by many in the international community, particularly the peace deal signatories like the African Union and the United States.

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His article cited the New York Times’ 2015 piece about how “Time-Worn Village in Moldova Springs Back to Life, Thanks to Port”, which celebrated the way in which the aforesaid swap helped that former Soviet Republic’s struggling economy. The historical context is that the medieval Principality of Moldavia used to connect to the Black Sea, as did the Russian Empire’s Bessarabia Governorate, which is one of its subnational successors. Contemporary Moldova then became landlocked as a result of border changes.

Stalin gave the historically Moldovan/Romanian land (they’re kindred people who are considered to be part of the same civilization) of what’s now known as Budjak to Ukraine after World War II upon capturing it from interwar Romania, which cut Moldova off from the Black Sea. The post-independence era was very difficult for Moldova, but its leadership knew that restoring their access to the sea could help stabilize the socio-economic situation and therefore the political one a lot more.

For all their faults, of which there are many, their leadership and Ukraine’s agreed to swap land to this end. Kiev’s motives were pragmatic since it didn’t want its smaller neighbor to remain unstable and impoverished, which could further impede its own development plans. Although Ukraine was ultimately unable to improve its domestic situation for reasons that are beyond the scope of this analysis, the point is that it agreed to this swap in order to advance the greater regional good.

Ethiopia’s history is similar to Moldova’s in that it too used to have access to the sea, but distant imperial powers were responsible for changing that, not its neighbors like in Moldova’s case. Italy’s colonization of Ethiopia’s historical Red Sea coast was then falsely “legitimized” by its fellow European empires, after which the administrative borders of “Italian Eritrea” were inherited upon that land’s reunification with Ethiopia. This policy later became the standard for post-colonial territories across the world.

That wasn’t a problem for Ethiopia until after Eritrea became independent in 1993 and then provoked a war between them five years later, which once again cut Ethiopia off from the sea and made it dependent on Djibouti since the nearby port of Assab was no longer accessible for obvious reasons. This new geo-economic reality was exploited by Djibouti to enrich itself at Ethiopia’s expense, with neither Eritrea nor Somalia wanting to help Ethiopia diversify from that statelet since they sought to contain it.

The regional strategic situation is altogether different for Ethiopia than for Moldova though since the latter’s economy depends largely on nearby states with whom there are many overland trade opportunities and the nearby Black-Mediterranean Sea beyond the Danube River is very safe. The same can’t be said for Ethiopia, whose top trade partners are in different corners of the world, and the maritime logistics upon which its economic and therefore political stability depend aren’t safe at all.

Moreover, Ethiopia is the second most populous state in Africa and while Moldova is one of the least populous in Europe, so instability stemming from the first’s fragile maritime supply chains could reverberate much more widely to the detriment of millions while the second’s instability is manageable. If ulterior motives weren’t at play and Ethiopia’s neighbors didn’t conspire to contain it, both on their own, and on behalf of its historical rival Egypt, then they would rationally help it regain access to the sea.

After all, ensuring Ethiopia’s economic growth and associated stability would naturally benefit them too, and this can only be achieved by allowing it military-commercial access to a nearby port in order to rebuild its navy (for protecting its maritime supply chains with time) and freely conducting global trade. In furtherance of this end, Ethiopia clinched its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)with Somaliland, but complementing it with more deals in the region would expand the scope of benefits for all.

With this in mind, just like justice in Southeastern Europe was served by Ukraine swapping land with Moldova in order to restore the latter’s historical access to the sea, so too could it be served in the Horn of Africa through a spiritually similar deal between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti if the political will existed. Land doesn’t need to be swapped, but an arrangement modeled off of the Somaliland MoU could be negotiated in which Ethiopia would obtain military-commercial access to Assab and Tadjoura.

Commercial access isn’t enough due to Ethiopia’s need to eventually defend the maritime logistics upon which its economic and political depends, which ideally requires a set of bases in the Gulf of Aden-Red Sea (GARS) region instead of relying on the one that it plans to obtain in Somaliland. Eritrea and Djibouti would do well to stop trying to contain Ethiopia and enrich itself at its expense respectively and instead seriously consider the mutual benefits inherent in replicating the Somaliland MoU model.

Stakes in Ethiopia’s national companies can be offered to them too, which can help Eritrea obtain more sources of revenue while assisting Djibouti in diversifying from its dependence on port fees. Eritrea previously flirted with resuming Ethiopia’s commercial access to Assab while Djibouti recently offered full management of Tadjoura, but neither wants to include military rights into their proposal. Therein lies the rub since they still want to contain Ethiopia, but that’s counterproductive and dangerous.

It’s better to move beyond the regional security dilemma and towards more complex economic interdependence in order for the Horn to rise as one instead of being picked apart by others like Egypt. The Moldovan-Ukrainian land swap occurred one-quarter of a century ago in very different conditions, but the example of restoring a landlocked state’s historical access to the sea in pursuit of mutual benefits can form the basis of a spiritually similar deal in the Horn if Eritrea and/or Djibouti agree.

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According to Egyptian authorities, the partnership among Cairo, Mogadishu, and Asmara is officially aimed at combating terrorism and securing Red Sea shipping, which has been disrupted by Houthi (Ansarullah) attacks from Yemen. These attacks target ships in “solidarity with Palestinians” amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, significantly impacting maritime traffic through the Bab El-Mandeb strait.

Beneath the surface, however, the emerging relationship may also involve potential Egyptian mediation to address the longstanding conflict between Eritrea and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Cairo will likely seek to provide support to dissenting factions of the TPLF via Eritrea to pressure the Ethiopian government, which has effectively completed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)—a project Egypt views as a threat to its vital share of the Nile River’s water.

During the two-year war in the Tigray region, Egypt supplied logistics and weapons to the TPLF via secret flights, one of which was shot down in 2022. Ethiopia has consistently accused Egypt of undermining its stability by supporting anti-government factions for decades. Recently, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stated that “thousands of rebel groups were given assignments to impede the construction of the GERD.” Whether Asmara will allow itself to be used as a conduit for Cairo remains to be seen.

The potential rapprochement between Eritrea’s long-time ruler, Isaias Afwerki, and the TPLF leadership, once deemed implausible, is contributing to divisions in Tigray and threatening the relative peace in the region as various factions vie for power.

Historically, Egypt has played a crucial role in Eritrea’s political landscape. As early as 1960, Egypt supported the Eritrean independence movement, which eventually led to the rise of the current Eritrean regime. This historical involvement has established a complex relationship, with Eritrea often functioning as a client state of Egypt, seeking to intervene in Ethiopian affairs. The recent visit by Egyptian intelligence chief Gen Kamal Abbas and Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty to Asmara underscores the rekindling of long-standing ties between the two nations.

Egypt’s collaboration with Eritrea is part of a broader strategy to counter Ethiopia’s growing influence in the Horn of Africa. By strengthening ties with Eritrea, Egypt aims to exert pressure on Addis Ababa and influence regional geopolitics. This move aligns with a series of engagements Egypt has pursued with other regional actors, including Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia.

A recent military cooperation agreement between Egypt and Somalia further highlights this strategy. Under this deal, Egypt has airlifted arms, military hardware, and a limited number of military advisors to Somalia, which has heightened tensions with Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government has expressed strong objections, warning that these actions could destabilize the Horn of Africa, vowing to respond firmly. Arms supplies and other forms of assistance to the dysfunctional government of Somalia have consistently leaked to the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab terrorist group.

The historical context adds depth to the current dynamic. Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993, following a prolonged civil war, has been marked by ongoing tension despite periods of peace. The 1998-2000 border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia left a legacy of mistrust that continues to influence their interactions today.

The initial brief period of positive relations following Eritrea’s independence in 1993 ultimately gave way to a shooting border war from 1998 to 2000. The 2018 rapprochement, which earned Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed a Nobel Peace Prize, was never formalized and lacked any legal basis. The honeymoon ended with the Pretoria Peace Agreement, which concluded what is now commonly referred to as the “Tigray War,” during which Eritrea backed the federal government of Ethiopia against an armed insurrection in the Tigray region.

Somalia’s ongoing dispute with Ethiopia over Somaliland further complicates the situation. Somalia has condemned Ethiopia’s recent agreement with Somaliland, which involves leasing its coastal territory for a Naval bases in exchange for potential recognition of Somaliland’s independence from Somalia, which views this agreement as a breach of its sovereignty and has threatened military action if Ethiopia and Somaliland proceed with their plans. On September 12, Ahmed Moalim Fiqi, the foreign minister of Somalia told Universal TV that ‘Somalia could choose to engage with armed rebels in Ethiopia if it wishes, noting that this option remains available.’

The heated rhetoric elicited a response from Nebiyu Tedla, Ethiopia’s deputy permanent representative to the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, who took issue with remarks from Somalia’s foreign minister. On X, he described it as “comical” to see al-Shabab affiliates masquerading as government officials, ineffective beyond the Banaadir region, engaging in empty nationalism fueled by narrow clan interests”.

Amid the ongoing cycle of horse trading and temporary alliances, the Horn of Africa continues to serve as battlefield for external powers. There is no clearer premonition of the potential disaster of proxy violence than the ongoing war in Sudan, which has displaced millions, alongside the persistent threat from militant groups like Al Shabab in Somalia. Egypt’s increasingly aggressive posture aims to contain Ethiopia and prevent it from establishing a naval presence near the strategic Bab El-Mandeb.

For its part, through the construction of the GERD, Addis Ababa has demonstrated resilience in achieving national objectives despite difficult circumstances. It remains troubling, however, that existing regional and international mechanisms for cooperation and dispute resolution have so far failed to address the growing rivalry between Egypt and Ethiopia.

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In the opening lines of “The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia”, author Tom Gardner recounts his struggle to obtain close-up testimonies about the Ethiopian prime minister since 2018, Abiy Ahmed, whose eccentric personality is presented as “an enigma” and as key to understanding, in particular, the so-called Tigray War, which raged in the northern half of the country from November 2020 to November 2022. Some such precious first-hand sources had initially agreed to meet, but cancelled on second thoughts. “Even those living far away in safe countries in the West were often too afraid to speak with me”, we learn. Since the book casts Abiy Ahmed in the mould of the megalomaniac African despot, it fits the bill that fear would be at play. Why else would anyone not wish to help out the East Africa correspondent of the respectable highbrow weekly, The Economist?

Well, Tom Gardner ought to know. “I was a war reporter, then I became the enemy”, ran the headline of his article in late June 2022. It chronicles how Ethiopians railed against him online, culminating with his deportation in May 2022. However, it is beneath him to engage with the view that he did something wrong. He picks out the crudest insults and assumes that it was government-directed, since Ethiopia had learned “disturbing lessons from China and other authoritarian states” in order to “become a modern, digital autocracy”. His new book sticks to this script, in which he incarnates the well-intentioned free-speech pro from the civilized world amidst the murderous passions of an African tribal war.

This might have resonated with me too, as a decades-long subscriber to The Economist and to its pro-Western worldview. It is certainly a framing that will raise no eyebrows from Tom Gardner’s editors or mainstream audience, some of whom will give “The Abiy Project” rave reviews. However, since I happen to be familiar with Ethiopian affairs, having lived in the country, immersed myself into its society and reported on it since 2004, what I take away from the work of Tom Gardner is a moral-superiority complex that manifests itself as embarrassingly lazy journalism and, most of all, as vile slander of the second-most populous African nation. But before we get into that, a little context is necessary.

The Trump and the Biden framing of the war

Although the full background to any civil war is complex, in this case, as the first shots are being fired in Ethiopia, simultaneously with vote-counting in the US presidential election on the night between 3 and 4 November 2020, it is straightforward to identify the two main warring parties. One is the internationally recognized government with a short but remarkably liberalizing record, yes, even with a Nobel Peace Prize awarded to its leader, Abiy Ahmed. Its multiethnic armed forces have suffered a surprise attack by the other side, an ethnically-exclusive militia commanded by some of the most powerful people in the country, that is, until two-and-a-half years earlier, when they were kicked out of office thanks to decades of popular protests and painful sacrifices. At this stage, in late 2020, the dictatorial old guard has held on to some of its grip on the military and, as we shall soon learn, has considerable resources abroad, as well as friends in high places like Brussels, Washington DC, and the UN system.

The outgoing Trump administration makes the obvious distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of force, supporting the constitutional government against the rulers-turned-rebels. Tom Gardner complains (in Chapter 15) that this greenlights Abiy Ahmed’s war effort. He is more in tune with the incoming Biden Administration, whose Africa policy-makers view it more as a case of a third-world strongman with a short fuse who whips the masses into a frenzy. Tom Gardner feels vindicated in this interpretation of the conflict, when he himself ends up as a victim of incitement to hate.

However, when he speculates breezily (in Chapter 17), apropos no particular incident or witness account, that Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers got together to gang-rape women of the Tigrayan ethnicity for the purposes of “male bonding”, he is the one who incites hate. We shall come back to what else Tom Gardner has to say about sexual assault in the Tigray War, the evidence presented for it, and even how Ethiopians feel about it, because, as we also see in the Israel-Hamas conflict, this issue packs an explosive punch in the propaganda battles.

Full disclosure and a sales pitch: I have just written my own book, “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, whose pantheon of villains features Tom Gardner, winner of the pot-calling-kettle-black award for complaining that ordinary Ethiopians on social media, and not himself in big media, poured fuel on the fire. In those 71,000 words, I tackle every hair-raising accusation, from weaponized rape and starvation to hate speech and genocide. Nothing must be swept under the rug. But, we must never forget, the fine line between championing human rights and inciting hate is the truth, which is the proverbial first casualty of war.

Diverging from the single story about Africa

Now, there is no doubt that the war often became dirty. But so did the propaganda war. In a nutshell, young people from the northern region of Tigray were not minded to fight for the corrupt, cruel and discredited leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to return to power. But the constant messaging from the world press, amplified by a handful of TPLF-friendly individuals in academia, diplomacy, politics and humanitarian work, and of course pushed relentlessly by the TPLF itself, was that this was essentially an ethnic extermination war. Therefore, the usual legitimacy criteria did not apply. The only choice of Tigrayans was to kill or get killed. As we shall see, Tom Gardner did his part in this fear-, hate- and war-mongering campaign. It was so successful that, when the federal army and its allies finally prevailed in October 2022, having pushed the TPLF rebels all the way from near-victory in the capital to the brink of defeat in their stronghold in Tigray, the world had been primed for the killing of all six million or so Tigrayans in Tigray. As a natural authority on this subject, the US Holocaust Museum put the world on acute genocide alert. The most sought-after Ethiopia pundit, the professor and BBC man, Alex de Waal, who was never coy about his closeness to the TPLF hierarchy, wrote: “The Tigrayans have every motive to fight to the death”.

And then, thank God, they preferred to live! As Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia had insisted throughout, asserting state monopoly on violence was the path, not to genocide, but to peace. This is what made the TPLF agree to disarm and demobilize, as enshrined in the agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, on 2 November, 2022. Implementation has not been smooth, and the TPLF is currently riven with internal divisions on issues of compliance, but for the international community, the Pretoria Agreement is the only game in town. After two years of preaching that “there is no military solution” and mulling punitive measures against Ethiopia, diplomats of liberal democracies have gone through some soul-searching, judging from their keenness to resume aid, trade and good relations with this strategically important partner. The massively traded hashtag #TigrayGenocide has lost its value. Hopefully, outsiders will now be warier of buying into a couple of other Ethiopian genocide hashtags, which are being pushed online, also to dress up the violent pursuit of power as noble human-rights causes, and also with quite a few Western takers, from left to right.

Alas, in “The Abiy Project”, Tom Gardner does not reflect on how peace came about in the very manner that he never considered viable or desirable. He steers strictly clear of the goldmine of lessons to be learned, namely the substance behind the anger that got him expelled from Ethiopia. The Tom Gardner project is to claim the high ground by conforming strictly to the genre of the single story about Africa, which the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has warned against. And in his miscasting of heroes and villains, he stoops low, very low. He even plays the victim by throwing the race card.

White demons and a bloodbath situation

“White demons” should “leave the country”, billboards greeted Tom Gardner in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in September 2021, or so he writes in Chapter 18, with a footnote berating the government for not censoring this “for several months”.

I was there too for the natives to picture horns atop my cold blue eyes, but I was not pressured to leave, only to listen some frustrated people out. I noticed on television that Tom Gardner’s questions were still answered politely at official press conferences in October 2021, by which time The Economist was demanding an arms embargo and other sanctions against Ethiopia with the caption: “No favours for killers”. Yes, “killers” referred to the government, not to the TPLF, whose  irregular army was, at that time, marching towards the centre of power, sowing death and destruction in the regions of Amhara and Afar, while its triumphalist spokesman, known for a brutal crackdown seven years earlier, when he was the national Minister of Communication, tweeted out threats full of military bravado. So, yes, the city was slightly on edge. Yet Tom Gardner continued to be tolerated into November, when he also engaged with me in a private email correspondence. Oh yeah, it was almost like we could have been buddies, despite our strong disagreement. He rejected my suggestion that liberal democrats like us should support the elected government. He argued that outsiders should rather put pressure on the beleaguered Abiy Ahmed to enter into “negotiations to work out a new configuration of power”.

For the vast majority of Ethiopians, negotiating from that position of weakness was out of the question. And by then, the TPLF and some Westerners, admittedly not Tom Gardner, wanted all-out regime change. The journalistic cliché that month, still November 2021, became “a matter of weeks, if not days”. Western embassies evacuated their staff, and Jeffrey Feltman, the US Special Envoy, candidly called the capital falling to the dreaded enemy “a bloodbath situation”. Back then, the tone of Alex de Waal, the aforementioned superstar pundit, was not yet sombre and bitter. He waxed lyrical with a Rudyard Kipling poem, assuring again and again that the TPLF had already defeated Abiy Ahmed, rubbing it into the face of the vanquished: “Face your day of reckoning.”

Volunteers from all ethnic groups responded to Abiy Ahmed’s call for mobilization. Nobody cared that Facebook censored him for “incitement”. Or that the Western powers condemned both the attack on and the defence of Addis Ababa. A leader in The Economist ran the sensible headline: “Act now to avert a bloodbath in Ethiopia”. But it trained all its verbal firepower on those who were acting then to avert a bloodbath in Ethiopia, and who are, to this day, owed an apology.

Because, if Addis Ababa saw Tom Gardner as a white demon, the reason is that he demonized Addis Ababa relentlessly. In The Economist, it was claimed that “all ethnic Tigrayans” were locked up, going into graphic detail: “Tigrayans were grabbed and shoved in warehouses and old factories. Even doctors and nurses were dragged out of hospitals if they were Tigrayan.” Tom Gardner’s new book tones it down a notch, but insists that “residents [of Addis Ababa] turned on their Tigrayan neighbours”, citing a figure of 15,000 detainees within a few weeks. No motive other than their Tigrayan ethnicity is suggested.

Again, I was there. As per local taste, Tigrayan folk music continued to be played in malls, cafés, even in gyms. Tigrayans, as always, could be found in all walks of life. Still today, they number in the ballpark of half a million in Addis Ababa alone, from the poorest beggars to the wealthiest businesspeople, plus a lot of taxi drivers with whom I would strike up conversation. During those anxious days, I found that their politics varied on the spectrum between supporting and opposing the TPLF’s war effort. But, yes, all of them felt eyed up as potential infiltrators in the city where they had, until recently, felt perfectly at home. Some had experienced bigoted outbursts. There was fear of extremist mobs. Their plight was delicate, undeserved and sad. And, yes, some innocents were apprehended. The Ethiopian justice system is flawed.

However, a Tigrayan identity could not have been the sole reason for arrest, or the internment camps would have been on a much larger scale. With reports of TPLF sleeper cells operating inside nearby towns that had already fallen, these measures were not tribal madness, but, at worst, erring on the side of caution for Ethiopian lives. There are approximately two million Tigrayans in Ethiopia outside of Tigray. A Reuters investigation stated that 18,000 of them were imprisoned, of whom some 9,000 were still so in June 2022. Many were military men reasonably suspected of strong loyalty to the TPLF. All were freed after the war.

Here is a curious side note: In September 2020, less than two months before the fighting began, Abiy Ahmed wrote by invitation in The Economist. Clearly with the TPLF threat foremost on his mind, he denounced those out to derail the transition to democracy by sowing hatred and division. He added: “For those accustomed to undue past privileges, equality feels like oppression.” This was a reference to when the TPLF was in power on the national stage from 1991 to 2018, giving a leg-up to TPLF members, and hence to Tigrayans, in the economy, in the state apparatus, and most blatantly so in the military. Was the prime minister dog-whistling hate against Tigrayans in The Economist? Well, this is how it was read at the time in the TPLF camp. But those 27 years of ethnic favouritism had left a legacy that Ethiopians had to grapple with. Some did it with resentment towards all Tigrayans. A handful of extremists even acted out murderous blood vengeance. However, and keep in mind that this is when an army of Tigrayans was rapidly approaching and raising the spectre of pandemonium, the vast majority of Ethiopian citizens and political leaders did not take it out on their Tigrayan neighbours, friends and colleagues. This was by far the bigger picture, though it did not make it into The Economist.

Respectability journalism

Tom Gardner’s idea of evidence is to invoke what passes for moral authority or to refer to some untrue truism from the war, for instance, that there were “residential bombardments” in Tigray, even though not a single photo was ever presented of these neighbourhoods supposedly reduced to rubble.

Frustratingly, he gets away with his lazy journalism, because the good guys in his storyline, including himself, are respectable in the eyes of his non-specialist mainstream audience. Thus, in Chapter 17, he sticks up for the various do-gooder international organizations, NGOs and foreign embassies by mocking Ethiopian denunciations of TPLF infiltration in their ranks as a paranoid craze, and concludes: “Not even the internationally-respected Tigrayan head of the World Health Organization [WHO], the former TPLF member and Ethiopian foreign minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was spared.”

Indeed, Dr Tedros is internationally respected. In his home country, he was perhaps more feared than respected, when he was a powerful man during the most oppressive years of the TPLF-led regime. But that was in the past. Today he has rebranded himself as a donor darling. Forgotten is also how he started his tenure at the WHO by appointing Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador, and how he picked a fight with Taiwan to ingratiate himself with Beijing. Since the Tigray War began, he has been the epitome of the internationally-respected African with tweets like: “Tolerance. Kindness. Compassion. Peace. Love. Say #NoToHate speech.” Apropos hate speech, he spent the war accusing Ethiopia of things like  “carpet bombing”, “torching an entire town in Tigray” and, most insistently, “genocide”. Meanwhile, he sent out coded messages to egg on the bloodshed.

Cultural meme as a weapon of propaganda

Tom Gardner writes that, in June 2021, “in a closed meeting of the UN Security Council, Mark Lowcock, then the UN humanitarian chief, said that parts of Tigray were now suffering famine – a sharp rebuke to the prime minister (…)”. Indeed, throughout the war, Mark Lowcock would do little else than sharply rebuking Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, on every subject under the sun, including economic policy, and on all sorts of platforms, including a lengthy opinion piece, in which he defended the TPLF’s legacy as rulers of Ethiopia and announced a list of Abiy Ahmed’s war aims: “The first is to starve the population [of Tigray] either into subjugation or out of existence.” This was an appalling abuse of moral authority for hate and incitement, but Tom Gardner must think he is on safe ground here, because, I mean, who can trump the moral authority of a UN humanitarian chief?

Well, let me try Dr Steven Were Omamo, the WFP Country Director for Ethiopia until the end of 2021, having arrived from his native Kenya in 2018 with an accomplished career in agricultural development and food security. He was the top UN relief-aid man in the logistical thick of it all, negotiating humanitarian access with both sides. And this is his reaction to what Mark Lowcock said in the UN Security Council: “To those of us on the ground in Ethiopia, it was an astonishing declaration. Not only was it not his role to declare a famine, we knew that he had no evidence to back such a declaration. There was no expert who could credibly support his claim. On the contrary, experts had just announced that there was no famine in Tigray. But the voice of the ERC [Mark Lowcock] could not be ignored. Every major news outlet carried the story.” The quote is from Dr Omamo’s book “At the Centre of the World in Ethiopia”. It paints a picture of committed UN fieldworkers in dire tension with senior UN political appointees, like Mark Lowcock, who prioritized hogging the limelight to take sides in the war over forging good cooperation to distribute relief supplies. This friction within the UN was confirmed by other incidents, such as the firing, in October 2021, of Dr Omamo’s compatriot, the UN Migration Agency’s Ethiopia chief, Maureen Achieng, after audio was leaked of her complaining that UN high-ups from outside of Ethiopia were aggressively pursuing a pro-TPLF agenda.

Dr Omamo does describe many obstacles to getting relief-aid trucks safely in and out of Tigray and other regions, but the Ethiopian government, notwithstanding its security concerns, acted as a trusted partner to the WFP. The Economist owes Ethiopia and the world a thorough review of this detailed testimony. It drew some attention from a magazine specialized in development issues, but it has been ignored by big media. This could be because it makes for uncomfortable self-questioning in newsrooms, which ran with the huge cultural meme on Ethiopia and man-made famine, evoking the legendary 1985 Live Aid concert, with every good person singing along to “We are the world”.

From early on in the war, Tom Gardner’s Ethiopia coverage in The Economist jumped on that cultural-meme bandwagon too, which is what later motivated the aforementioned caption: “No favours for killers”. In his book, Tom Gardner does make a clear retreat, as he admits that: “In mid-July [2022], an official from the World Food Programme told the BBC that famine had been successfully averted.” So, by then there had been widespread food insecurity but no famine. “But”, Tom Gardner continues, making the case that there was still a “slow strangulation” of Tigray. Part of the obfuscation here is to equate the misery in Tigray with the guilt of the government, though it was the TPLF, not the government, which had imposed an immiserating total-war regime on Tigray. Yes, there was a military blockade but not a humanitarian siege in place. Tom Gardner writes that, since the government “alleged” that fuel was being diverted to the TPLF’s war effort, fuel supplies were “tightly throttled” to the detriment of food distribution within Tigray. Well, what Tom Gardner knows, but chooses to omit, is that the TPLF took 12 WFP fuel tankers at gunpoint to power its last-ditch offensive in late August, 2022.

Also strangely absent from Tom Gardner’s account is how the TPLF war machine systematically confiscated the WFP’s trucks. The first 400-or-so trucks had gone missing by September 2021. By mid-2022, the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC) said that, out of 3,297 trucks entering Tigray, 1,128 had not been returned. This was UN capital stock being used not to save but to take lives. Again and again, Tom Gardner’s humanitarian concern is predicated on a moral judgement, or rather an immoral judgement, that the Ethiopian government must not care about its people getting killed in war.

Trust me, I am a liberal Westerner

Is it a mitigating circumstance that some of Tom Gardner’s peers were worse? For instance, The Telegraph’s correspondent based in Nairobi, Will Brown, threw everything plus the kitchen sink at Ethiopia during the war, with no follow-up to his mishits, such as his claim of chemical attacks. At the end of that fateful November 2021, this multi-award-winning young Englishman, said to have already “reported from over 30 countries“, wrote that “ethnic Tigrayans [in Ethiopia outside Tigray] are allegedly being rounded up into concentration camps and murdered”. This also went without follow-up.

The same month, an op-ed in The Guardian, penned by a trio of the great and the good, and sponsored by the Gates Foundation, raised the alarm about “a possible mass killing of interned civilians in Addis and elsewhere”, associating the Tigrayans with the Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide.

In February 2021, Associated Press awarded the “best of the week” to journalist Cara Anna for her “determined source work” behind a horror story about 800 Tigrayan church-goers in the holy city of Axum, who were cornered, dragged out into the central square, mowed down and eaten by hyenas. This version of events is still being commemorated by radical Tigrayan ethnonationalists, who will no doubt pass it down as the historical truth to their children and grandchildren. I went undercover online to get Cara Anna to loosen up about it. She fell for my two fake personalities, and it is both shocking and amusing how she squirms and squirms so as to neither own nor disown what she clearly knows was a fabrication. Cara Anna went on to report many more insanely inflammatory atrocity stories from the war, usually based on anonymous witnesses. Libelling Ethiopia is a free-for-all.

I find this to be the jaw-dropping scandal here, that is, how big media became the real hyenas in an African war, howling as a pack, lacking the instinct for individuality to hold one another accountable. Tom Gardner has little interest in taking on his colleagues, except briefly criticizing CNN for its “wildly erroneous claim” (really: its disgusting psychological warfare, also never apologized for), on 5 November 2021, that “Tigrayan troops” stood “just outside Addis Ababa”. At least in book-promoting interviews, Tom Gardner has admitted that some media-driven atrocity stories turned out to be inaccurate.

Alas, this has not sharpened his critical faculties. For instance, when he says the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) “downplayed the scale” of one massacre by Eritrean soldiers, he assumes, without probing into the details, that Amnesty International got the scale right (though he thinks Amnesty did “an unusually rushed report” on another massacre that found the killers to be TPLF-affiliated). The EHRC is the only entity that has worked on the crime scenes, including jointly with UN staff, but Tom Gardner lambasts it as partisan. A footnote mentions that its chief Daniel Bekele once expressed some personal views. And, bonus info, he was indeed a prisoner for his personal views under the TPLF-led regime. Mapping out the political bias of war-crimes investigators is fair game, of course, but Tom Gardner consistently gives short shrift to Ethiopian complaints of political bias. His line of reasoning only works on the tacit assumption that Amnesty, as a Western-based organization, is more credible than the EHRC as an Ethiopian one. This may be so, or it may not. The good journalist finds out by comparing the different investigations, critically assessing their methodology and evidence, their sources and their sources’ possible motives, how their findings either match or fail to match the known facts. However, on all the controversial issues related to the Tigray War, too numerous to mention here, Tom Gardner’s footnotes and links defer (if one knows who is behind the pages and institutions that he refers to) to the individuals exposed in my book as activists, propagandists, some even as blatant liars out to stir the pot.

Presenting this case takes a whole book, but the short answer is: No, it is not a mitigating circumstance that Tom Gardner was less extreme than other war reporters. Because his relative moderation springs not from digging deeper in search of the truth, but rather from trying to make the smear job more believable.

What standards of proof for African rape?

Rape is even more taxing on the human heart than murder. We feel both empathy with the horrified victim and revulsion that a mind could be so sick as to obtain sexual gratification, or whatever it is, from the misdeed. Most gut-wrenching of all is a close-up of a woman in the grip of one or more such scumbags. Tom Gardner provides one too in his Chapter 17. Yes, a Tigrayan woman is the target.

This kind of personal story hits all the buttons of disgust and anger. It is easy to imply that the good-hearted person sits in these emotions, whereas the cold-hearted person demands evidence. Indeed, Tom Gardner writes that Ethiopians demanding evidence were “engaging in a cruel campaign to cast doubt on Tigrayan accusers”. Unsurprisingly, nobody in big media was up for being called apologists for atrocity rape by insisting on evidence, not even in the rare case when the victim was identified, like Mona Lisa Abraha, an 18-year-old Tigrayan, who, in her harrowing story in the New York Times, lost an arm when she fought off a sadistic Ethiopian soldier, though one month earlier, Al Jazeera had published that it happened when a whole gang of Eritrean soldiers had attempted to rape her.

To be clear, there is no denying that sexual violence was committed in the war, and yes, on both sides. The way forward is to support Ethiopian civil society and legal practitioners in investigating cases and bringing more perpetrators to trial than the handful of its own soldiers that Ethiopian courts have thus far convicted. This should be obvious, but apparently it needs to be said: the Ethiopian public wants its armed forces to be disciplined and decent. Almost nobody in Ethiopia wants any citizen of any ethnicity to be raped. Nearly everybody wants the men on their own side to be punished if they are found guilty, that is, not in trial by media or by organizations full of righteous zeal, but through justice based on evidence that holds up in court.

Nothing appeals to a man’s honour like protecting his mother and sisters from degenerate monsters. In some cases, it also appeals, alas, to a man’s dishonour, as when some TPLF fighters invoked “revenge” as a motive for raping women in Amhara and Afar regions. Again, make no mistake, nearly all Tigrayans, including diehard TPLF supporters, do not want their troops to commit rape.

But for the same reason that rape churns good people’s stomachs and provokes a natural urge to kill the rapist, rape accusations are the most powerful demonizing and recruitment tool of all. This created a strong motive for the sophisticated TPLF propaganda team to fabricate. Indeed, a Tigrayan journalist deserting from Radio Dimtse Woyane (‘Voice of the TPLF’) testified on Ethiopian television (incidentally to a famous interviewer who is also Tigrayan) about Tigrayan sex workers being paid to pose as university students and tell rape stories to foreign NGOs. The journalist’s task is to tell the truth from the lies by examining the evidence. Because, again, in a war scenario in which truth is the first casualty, the truth, and sticking to evidence as the standard of truth, is the only way to navigate that fine line between championing human rights and inciting hate. So, in his book, how does Tom Gardner perform this delicate duty?

Well, in his aforementioned theory that rape was used for “male bonding” between Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers, he throws a grenade. At least as far as I know, this was never even alleged before, which must be why there is no source indicated, other than a piece from the general literature on conflict rape. Hand on heart: would the burden of proof have been so light to make a frivolous suggestion about, say, Scandinavian soldiers strengthening their togetherness at the expense of Afghan women? Of course not, and the theme that rape served as a morale-booster for the common soldier speaks volumes about how Tom Gardner sees people in this part of the world.

Indeed, Tom Gardner’s demonization goes the whole hog by portraying Ethiopians in general as fine with rape. He writes that many of them heard Tigrayan complaints as “special pleading”, because rape is par for the course in Ethiopian wars. To illustrate the backward savage mentality, he quotes an anonymous Ethiopian businessman who is supposed to have told him about Tigrayan rape victims: “It’s karma; they got what they deserve”. Tom Gardner should be careful talking to blabbering psychopaths. And when he uses an anonymous quote without any way to tell if he just made it up, may be it should not be something hateful and incendiary.

Tom Gardner moves on to the topic of baby-killing rapists who think they “purify bloodlines”. To show where this information comes from, a footnote takes the reader to a celebrated Al Jazeera article “No Tigrayan womb should ever give birth”. This was written by an Addis Ababa resident of Tigrayan origin, Lucy Kassa, who got her big break in international journalism, freelancing for the world’s most prestigious media, by telling tales of spine-chilling inhumanity. For instance, one featured in The New Humanitarian recounts a group of Ethiopian soldiers viciously executing a toddler for some political comment that they overheard the little boy say to his mother. Referred to endlessly as “courageous Lucy” and winning a grand human-rights award, it was as if her being Ethiopian gave her license to go one up on her colleagues in portraying Ethiopians as depraved, fiendish, diabolical. In her depictions, civilians would not only be rounded up and murdered, but also mutilated and dismembered. Women and girls would not only be raped, but gang-raped with a hot metal rod being inserted into their uterus. Lucy Kassa never went to the frontline. Her stories were based on anonymous witness accounts. One simply had to take her word for it, as indeed, all of big media did, The Economist too. The only evidence for her rape stories that she would come up with, on the exceptional occasion when someone in big media mentioned it ever so timidly, was “medical records”. Not that she ever showed any, but also medical records could easily be made up by an insurgency regime that is engaged in a fierce propaganda war.

Not rape, mass rape

To dispel the just-a-few-bad-apples defence, rape statistics became another battleground in the propaganda war almost from day one.

Tom Gardner writes that “plausibly” the real figure is 100,000. The footnote to back this up refers to Tigray’s regional authorities and that this is “a figure later supported by a comprehensive study conducted by the Columbia University biostatistician Kiros Berhane.”

Here, Tom Gardner invokes the moral authority of Columbia University, but refrains from throwing the additional respectability card that the survey-based study was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), oh yes, very respectable (except if you are an anti-vaxxer or something). But what ought to be more respectable, if truth-seeking is the goal, is to actually read the study, subject it to critical scrutiny, and yes, look at the politics of the team behind it. I did that, finding it inconceivable that it could have reached any other conclusion, and that the BMJ might as well have published a survey conducted in North Korea by North Koreans to document North Koreans’ love for their leader. But don’t take my word for it. Start with my article, but then also read the study report in the BMJ, especially the small print, google the team listed in the study report, learn about the political climate in Tigray in which these interviews took place.

Tom Gardner’s book does touch upon a more nuanced view of the rape issue, but only obliquely, not apropos rape, but to make the point that the UN was largely biased in favour, and not against, Ethiopia: “In reality, the top leadership of several of the largest UN agencies in Addis Ababa were broadly supportive of Abiy’s government. The leaked audio of an internal meeting in March 2021 on the subject of sexual violence in Tigray, to take one example, demonstrated just how instinctively sympathetic many UN officials were to the arguments of their Ethiopian counterparts. Yet such was the force of official propaganda—and its narrative of Ethiopia alone against the world—that inconvenient facts like these were easily obscured.”

This is a new level of condescending. Does Tom Gardner take Ethiopians for such simpletons that they see the UN as a single sentient being? It also showcases Tom Gardner’s steely determination not to listen to Ethiopians. Of course, they always distinguished between the different individuals who compose the UN, and paid attention to how power is distributed throughout this vast organization. Yes, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Mark Lowcock became national villains, but Steven Were Omamo and Maureen Achieng became national heroes. The leaked audio from March 2021 was of seven UN professionals serving in Ethiopia, who privately discussed the difficulty of sorting rape facts from rape fabrications, feeling under pressure to feed the media sensationalism and thus fuel the war with more hate. One of the seven was Letty Chiwara, representative of UN Women to Ethiopia and to the AU, who pronounced the taboo words: “You take it with a pinch of salt”. While some vilified her for that, Ethiopians thanked her for her integrity.

Between pacifism and warlordism

So now it should be clear why Tom Gardner made Ethiopians angry and disinclined to cooperate with his book project. Given that he trots out so many TPLF talking points, all the way down to using the term “Western Tigray” about a territory that is disputed with Amhara Region, he often gets accused of being pro-TPLF. He shrugs this off, and in good conscience, because, actually, he is not. Nor does he side with Fano militia in its ongoing insurgency in Amhara Region, or with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), still waging armed struggle in Oromia Region. Indeed, to my pleasant surprise, there were some good parts early on in his book describing the chauvinism of these ethnonationalist militias. But again, he suggests that it is up to Abiy Ahmed to solve these conflicts too. He clearly does not mean by spending more on arms and prevailing militarily, so it must be by making concessions. A negotiated settlement could be preferable to war, but for now, both the OLA and Fano aim to take the capital. Meanwhile, both are bleeding men and popular support, as they descend into banditry and infighting. As in the Tigray War, but not in the Ukraine War, the Western mantra here is that there is no military solution. More accurate is that any solution will have to have a major military component.

This aversion to legitimizing legitimate use of force is illustrated in Chapter 18. Tom Gardner revisits December 2021, when the TPLF offensive is beaten back through the unity of Ethiopians of different ethnicities and faiths. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a protestant Christian, thanks his Creator for being with him. Tom Gardner seizes on this to harp on his pop-psychological theme that Abiy Ahmed believes himself to be some kind of Messias. In the final sentence of the chapter, Tom Gardner then laments Abiy Ahmed’s success in repelling TPLF’s attack on Addis Ababa: “Now, it seemed, he might never need to compromise.”

This reflects a philosophy which, as I learned to my indignation during the Tigray War, is prevalent among liberal Westerners out to ‘help’ the developing world: That patriotism and peace through strength is a luxury for rich countries with superior morality, whereas poor ones with inferior morality, like Ethiopia, must make do with pacifist sermons and deals between its strongest warlords.

To be fair, the liberal Western moral-superiority complex made more of a fool of itself than it decided the war in Ethiopia. But it did exacerbate the rancour and the suffering. In the attempt to look good doing bad, some infuriatingly smug careerists resorted and continue to resort to shocking dishonesty. Tom Gardner’s book about Ethiopia says more about Tom Gardner than it does about Ethiopia.

Go here to read my book instead. And, given how the mass media will ignore this perspective, please, encourage others to read this article and to subscribe to my Substack (no payment needed).

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Ethiopians can observe that Egypt’s efforts in eastern Libya, Sudan, and especially Gaza have been ineffective despite an over-the-top posturing. Formal meetings further highlight that Egypt’s so-called “intervention” in Somalia was little more than grandstanding, because after all, no other nation is better suited to understand and navigate Somalia’s complex clan politics than Ethiopia, which has entrenched itself in the country for over twenty years. Already several powerful clans in regions, including Baykol, Hiraan, and Jubaland have denounced Mogadishu’s Hawiye clan for making a military pact with Egypt, thus increasing the chances for Somalia becoming a proxy battle ground.

Authorities in Mogadishu, grappling with territorial mismanagement, the Al-Shabaab insurgency, and regional pressures, might find some benefit in Egypt’s renewed engagement. However, people are aware that Egypt’s recent efforts in eastern Libya and Sudan indicate its primary aim is to apply pressure on Ethiopia vis-à-vis GERD, rather than genuinely expanding its influence to include Somalia. Furthermore, a hot war between Egypt and Ethiopia in Somalia is not in the cards, otherwise Egypt would need significantly more than just the ten thousand troops it plans to deploy, not to mention the logistical nightmare that presents.

Rather than deterring the MoU, the presence of Egyptian troops in the Horn of Africa seems to be accelerating Ethiopia’s increasingly revisionist stance vis-à-vis access to and from the sea. Djibouti’s recent willingness to provide Ethiopia with an expanded alternative trade outlet to the sea has had no bearing on Addis Ababa’s decision to take advantage of the opportunity for escalation. It just graduated thousands of Somaliland soldiers, appointed an ambassador to Hargeisa, while deploying more forces on the border with Somalia, and warning Mogadishu against seeking support from external powers. But it has also said through its foreign minister that the door for negotiations is always open. 

Somalia, despite its ongoing internal strife and geographical significance, remains distant from Egypt’s core interests compared to Ethiopia’s pressing regional ambitions. Ethiopia’s strategic move to secure access to the Gulf of Aden through Somaliland has notably increased its regional clout. This development, alongside its successful dam project, amplifies Ethiopia’s negotiating strength, especially in relation to Egypt’s attempts to exert regional influence.

Despite its own internal conflicts, Ethiopia’s enhanced diplomatic and military positioning allows it to challenge Egypt’s regional maneuvers more effectively now than at any time in recent history. While Egypt’s actions in Somalia might seem impressive on the surface, they are overshadowed by Ethiopia’s growing assertiveness and strategic advantages, including its control over the Nile’s flow and its military presence in Somalia. As such, Ethiopia is adeptly using the situation to strengthen its position by counterbalance Egypt’s efforts. Nevertheless, Egypt will continue to leverage Ethiopia’s internal rifts as well as hostile neighbors to exert more pressure on Addis Ababa.

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