The administrator of the southern zone of Tigray, Habtu Kiros, refuted the report, asserting that there were no major clashes, only a minor incident incited by forces in the Raya-Alamata. He clarified that Tigrayan protesters, advocating for the implementation of the return of IDPs, embarked on a long public demonstration march from Mahoni and Maichew towns to federal forces checkpoints over the weekend of April 13, 2024.

In contrast, Raya Alamata administrator Mola Derbew claimed that Tigray forces had employed heavy weaponry to capture the Addis Berhan and the Garjale zones near by. A few days earlier, in anticipation there were Amhara public demonstrations in and around Alamata, asking for “greater unity against the coming attack”.

Mola Derbew stated that the Tigray regional forces, commonly referred to as the TPLF, orchestrated the attack, which began at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday and continued until late Monday April 15, 2024. But given recent deep divisions between the Interim administration of Tigray and members of the TPLF, it remains doubtful if another round of war has popular support.

This flare up reignites tensions from the two-year long war that ended in late 2022 with the signing of the Pretoria Peace Agreement, which effectively needed the fighting between the Federal government and the TPLF. However, unresolved issues persist, including contested territories, disarmament of ex-combatants, and the repatriation of displaced persons, many from the Tigray region, but also from Afar and Amhara. 

Raya-Alamata, previously administered by Tigray, fell into Amhara hands during the 2020-2022 war. But the issue goes back further, with Amhara claiming the lands as having been unjustly annexed into Tigray by the TPLF in the early 1990s, after the group came to power following a protracted civil war lasting seventeen years.  

The resurgence of hostilities has seen Tigray forces reportedly advancing into some areas of the district. But sources close to the matter provide a more nuance outlook. Senior officials in Amhara say they cannot rule out involvement of some Amhara Fano rebels from North Wollo, who view a tactical cooperation with TPLF as beneficial in their fight against the federal government. 

Certain Fano factions have recently touted the merits of collaborating with the TPLF. This is especially true considering disappointments incurred by the rebels in their disjointed drive to oust the federal government. A renewed government offensive against the Fano in Amhara may have prompted some of them to reconsider their long-held misgivings for TPLF. Chatter on social media outlets closely associated with both Fano and TPLF forces seemed to predict a sort of tactical convergence between them.

Last week Ethiopian Telegram channels indicated Fano fighters operating in North Wollo were receiving arms, ammunition, and logistical support from Tigray, via the town of Sekota. Authorities in Amahara claimed their continued vigilance in confiscating the flow of arms from Tigray into the hands of insurgents in Amhara. 

It was recently revealed Fano commander Mehiret Wodajo received medical treatment at Ayder hospital in Mekelle. TPLF linked media outlets opposed to the Pretoria Peace Agreement have flaunted this as symbol of their renewed war pact to oust the federal government.

There is also plausible speculation to suggest the incursion of gunmen from Tigray into Ofla and Alamata zones is a false-flag operation, involving TPLF’s army 23 and 24, as a way of confounding federal government action. Ofla zone administrator Fisseha Mola said, “the situation is fluid and has the potential to expand into a wider war”.

Given the level of mistrust and recrimination between Fano and TPLF, it remains to be seen how this new alliance would be viewed by the public on both sides. In either case, this latest clash will have the effect of delaying a lasting and peaceful resolution to the question of disputed territories.

Immediately following the incursion on Alamata, Tigray regional interim leader, Getachew Reda, on twitter, denounced the move as instigation by “diehard enemies to the Pretoria Peace Agreement”. However, this was immediately followed by another criptic tweet meant to arouse Tigray nationalism. Observers viewed this as double-speak and contradictory to his earlier point made about “those opposed to peace”. Getachew has to perform a tight rope balancing act. On the one hand he must assuage TPLF hardliners while also maintaining his relationship with the federal government in lieu of the peace agreement.

Speaking to Abren, a senior Amhara official currently on a visit in the United States says, “there is an element of confused blabbering at play, and it seems to be deliberately designed to confuse the public about he true intention of TPLF leaders, who seek to break with the peace agreement, albeit without drawing much in the way of international attention, or condemnation”.

Efforts to resolve divides between Tigray, Amhara and the authorities in Addis Ababa have been accompanied by little reported shadow wars. Authorities in Amhara have sought to entrench their administration in disputed territories, much to the chagrin of Tigray. In response TPLF hardliners have sought inflame the current Fano rebellion in Amhara. Relatedly, little attention has been given to a recently attempted incursion of TPLF affiliated militia from Sudan near the border crossing of Metema. 

External entities have also been inserting themselves as a third-party instigator in ongoing clashes in Gambella between the Nuer and Anuak tribes. Simon Tut, chairman of the opposition Gambella People’s Democratic Movement says, “there is certainly a strategy to provoke tension in the region by outside forces.”  He adds, “these subversive activities must be seen in-light of proxy shadow wars by various actors including the TPLF and others outside of Ethiopia”.  

The latest clashes in Alamata come on the heal of efforts to mediate a lasting solution between Amhara and Tigray. Senior officials from the Amhara region, speaking on condition of antonymy accuse Tigrayan authorities of obfuscating their intentions on resolution of contested territories. “In public, as well as in our meetings with them, they say they want IDPs to return, which is wholly justified, but when we actually begin laying out the groundwork to implement this plan, they turn around and incite another round conflict”, said one official. 

For their part authorities in Tigray accuse the Amhara regional government of orchestrating an ethnic cleansing campaign in the disputed territories. They say there are hundreds of thousands of IDPs that need to go back to their homes in areas currently “occupied by the Amhara region”.

Clandestine activities are elevating mistrust on all sides, endangering the viability of the Pretoria Peace Agreement. So far, the federal government has chosen restraint, perhaps in hopes of avoiding an endless cycle of entanglements with shadow warriors in Ethiopia’s highly fractured and illusive political landscape, which is proving difficult to govern democratically. 

A bit further south, in Kobo, people remain anxious. Residents here are watching to see if in case the TPLF forces that recently entered Alamata decide to expel Amhara residents and perhaps even expand their incursion into other areas. At the time of this writing, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported the number of people displaced from Raya-Alamata spiked in just the last few days.

In the meantime, the diplomatic missions of seven Western nations, among them the US and the UK, have included their apprehension over the reported unrest in Alamata in their general collective statement issued last week. They emphasize the need for de-escalation, disarmament and demobilization efforts for all armed combatants.

The post Ethiopia: Fresh Clashes in Alamata Reignite Territorial Dispute Between Amhara and Tigray appeared first on Abren.

Cara Anna is the Associated Press reporter who spread, all across the world in numerous respectable newspapers, the fake news that some 800 church-goers in the holiest place of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity had been cornered, dragged into the central city square, gunned down and eaten by hyena.

This background information is provided just in case you missed the section “Do we know what happened in Axum?” within my 50,000-word piece “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, soon to come out in book form.

Also rather shockingly, she got away with it without any mea culpa or stain on her reputation that we know of.

Whether she initially believed in her own Axum massacre story, there is no way to tell, but it is clear that, no less than eight days later, she knew that her key witness account, which she had validated in no uncertain terms, was made up.

Instead of eating humble pie, she went on to write many more atrocity stories based on anonymous sources. The Pulitzer Center website presents her thus: “Cara Anna is the East Africa correspondent with The Associated Press. Her team’s Pulitzer Center-funded coverage of Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Ethiopia’s government barred her from the country. The team also won the AP’s top journalism award in 2021.” 

She probably thinks she can continue to escape scrutiny, as long as she avoids nosy journalists like me. It would be a waste of my time to request an interview with her, so I went undercover with nothing but a gmail account and an AI-generated portrait.

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2024, 15:53 (Ethiopian time)
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you so much for your amazing work, which has inspired my dramatized student film project. I am referring to your groundbreaking reporting from Ethiopia for Associated Press on February 18, 2021, when you revealed in shocking detail that some 800 church-goers in Axum, Tigray, Ethiopia, had been cornered, dragged outside, gunned down and eaten by hyenas. My reaction to reading it was: “How come nobody made a movie about this before?”

I have been searching for some original documentary footage of the dead bodies, the burials or the like, but have yet to come across any. Could you perhaps point me the way? Otherwise, given your prestige with many prizes to your name, naming you as my source for this true-story script must be enough, don’t you think?

Thanks once again, and hoping for your reply.

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva, film student from Chile

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: February 15, 2024, 16:34 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, thank you for asking and for being interested. It was very hard to get any images from a region where telecoms were cut. We often relied on people who physically left Tigray. Have you tried Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, who also published reports based on their own interviews?

Cara

AP

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 15, 2024, 17:41 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you very much for your prompt response! I will go carefully through all the documentation of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and only come back to you if I have any questions after that.

Yours sincerely
Fernando

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:47 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

I have now carefully studied the Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch reports on the Axum massacre. Your and the human-rights organizations’ reports coincide on the dates and the perpetrators, but not on the location, also not on the description of what happened, certainly not in any of what I was going to use for my film script, that is, the 800 church-goers getting cornered, dragged out, gunned down and eaten by hyena, as told in your first article on February 18, 2021, and subsequently retold in The New York Post, The Sun, The Independent, The Times, etc. 

Sorry, but can you clear up my confusion? Were there two separate events? Should I give up my script along the lines of your report from February 18, 2021?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva.

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:51 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, that’s very much up to you, especially since you’re looking for footage from a time when basic communications and other services like electricity were cut in parts of Tigray and many people had difficulty just keeping their phones charged. Having enough for a film sounds challenging, but perhaps contacts in the Tigray diaspora can help now that the war is over and it’s easier to reach people and share information.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 20:22 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thanks, but I don’t want it to be up to me, but up to the evidence. If I present it as a true story and it turns out not to be so, I will be accused of slandering an African nation.

You did your report by talking to people in Axum over the phone, and so did the Amnesty researchers. From my own little research, I know that Axum is a fairly big, modern city with tens of thousands of smartphones and also many generators, powerbanks and what not. Yet even the Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports have no footage revealing anything noteworthy, nor has anybody come up with anything since, at least not online. Moreover, Amnesty says the festival on November 30 was called off, which makes sense if up to ten dead bodies were being stacked on each cart for mass burials on November 30, 2020, as the Amnesty report says. But then I found an Ethiopian television report from the festival , and it is definitely that exact festival from November 30, 2020.

Never mind, it is YOUR story and not Amnesty’s that I care about. And after February 2021, there seems to be nothing about the 800 church-goers any more. Long question short: do you today have any doubt that your dramatic version of the Axum massacre is true or not?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent:  February 21, 2024, 20:33 
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi, you reached out by looking for original documentary footage of what happened in Axum, and I encourage you to find what might exist. You’ll see that for months, media coverage and humanitarian reports along with some government reports noted a long and wide cutoff of basic services in Tigray that affected communications, utilities and the supply of basic items like food and medicine. Even land lines weren’t working in many cases. I do hope that with such conditions having eased, you’ll have much more success reaching people and accessing any footage captured in Axum.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 23:27 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thank you for your prompt reply. But I can only take that as a “YES”, you do have doubts if your shocking report that made it into headlines across the world is actually what happened.

Indeed, none of the factors you mention can explain a complete lack of photographic evidence, but I can and I will look more into it. And shouldn’t you be doing that too? This is a big deal! Your report on February 18, 2021, made a huge impact on public opinion in the West and in Tigray too, stirring fear, hate, all the emotions of war. If those graphic details of insane savagery turn out to be a lie made up to justify revenge killings, and if you lent the trustworthiness of Associated Press to spread such dangerous disinformation, surely, your conscience would want to know and, if necessary, make you issue an apology, am I right? 

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

Let me interrupt with some commentary:

Rather than answering the questions, Cara Anna trots out the half-truth about Tigray being cut off, which I have addressed at length in Part 3 of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”. All her focus is on not incriminating herself. This is why she neither defends the veracity of her story nor admits that it was a lie. Now she is being confronted with the common-sense observation that, surely, having a conscience requires her to care one way or the other.

So this is when she ends the exchange, which must have rattled her. Can anything lure her out of her shell again? Well, two weeks later, she gets this email from someone using the “Tigray genocide” hashtag as his avatar.

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:23 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Anna Cara.

I am Gabriel Teklehaymanot, I work in real estate in the UK, where I have also been involved in activism against the Tigray genocide. You know all about that, because you have covered it and your journalistic brilliance and integrity have been widely recognised, including by the Pulitzer people, I just saw online.

I was contacted some days ago by someone interested in informing the world about what our people went through. He said he had been in contact with you a little while ago. He is the one who gave me this email. Is it okay if I ask you for some advice here? Because I know your work, your time is precious to me too.

Regards

Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Mekete Tigray UK

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:27 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for reaching out. What advice are you looking for?

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:25 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.

Thank you for this opportunity to borrow some of your precious time.

Well, a young man from Chile, Fernando Silva, wrote me and we talked on the phone too, at length and on numerous occasions. He said you had suggested he reach out to someone like me in the diaspora for guidance. He was very confused and frankly a bit annoying, going into tiresome detail that I am not going to bother you with, but it came from a good place, as he cared about the Axum massacre, which he has scripted a whole film project around. This will be a great opportunity to raise conscience about what happened to our people. It may be an amateur production, but he is putting all his savings into it, and he has many volunteer actors lined up for this true-story drama, which might do well on Youtube. He even showed me how he plans to do the hyenas with blurry imagery of Chilean street dogs shot at night and some horrifying sound effects. 

However, now he is having doubts about what actually occurred in Axum. He said you had suggested that we might have some original photographic material, to which I replied: “Hey, we do not always get to film it when we get killed! So YOU film it, Fernando!”

He objected that you had somehow not affirmed the deacon’s story in his email exchange with you. I am sure he has misunderstood something. The testimony of the deacon was accepted by many, many important newspapers and even corroborated by the honourable Lord David Alton speaking in the UK House of Lords as late as November 2022.

I have more arguments on the ready when he calls me, I think tomorrow, for why his script should stick to your first report on the Axum massacre. Yes, the perpetrators and their supporters have denied everything, of course, this is their evil nature and the reason we had to fight them. But nobody independent or important in the media has ever questioned your story.

I hope you can attest that I am in the right here, thank you. And please, let me once more express my utmost admiration for your professionalism and also thank you for your solidarity.

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:30 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for explaining. We didn’t discuss the deacon, and I did encourage Fernando to see whether footage might be available now that communications and services in Tigray have resumed.

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:50 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.
Ah, I see, well, with me he discussed the deacon and every little clue like he was Sherlock Holmes!  As for footage, I found some from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, but it is very different from what the deacon said, and none of it would persuade the sceptics that there was any massacre at all. Anyway, the deacon’s testimony was at the heart of your story and it is what we have been telling our children and grandchildren within our community as a reminder to know who we are and who are enemies are. So I can understand he cares about verifying it, even if he is a little bothersome.

Should I advise him to make adjustment to his script? I made another argument, a completely different one, that seemed to work much better with him, but the best option for me would be to insist on there being enough evidence for the deacon’s testimony for him to follow his script, so do you think I can do that?

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:59 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

That’s your conversation with him, and I have no advice to pass along for that.

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 7, 2024, 14:55 
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Wonderful news!

Dear Cara.

Thanks for your time, yesterday, and I will not bother you anymore except to tell you this wonderful news:

I talked at length to Fernando Silva this morning, and he agreed to go ahead with his script as it is, except making it clearer that you are the one we can thank for knowing about it. I am going to raise more funds for the production, and I will personally go to Chile for a full week and be on set as his advisor, isn’t that great?

The argument that I had hinted at before is that Western media are free to shine a light on the truth, as you did throughout the war, but also to debunk whatever is found to be inaccurate. We are a society of free speech. And of checks and balances, because anyone can go to libel court, but nobody has done so in this case. What you reported from Axum was not trivia about, say a celebrity sleeping around. It was about, let’s remember, 800 people being ruthlessly mowed down in an affront both to humanity and to our Christian faith. Your revelation of a crime so unforgivable shaped the worldwide perception of the war. I can tell you that in my community, it showed us the evil of our enemy and strengthened our will to fight at whatever the cost. Glory to our martyrs!

So what I said to Fernando which finally convinced him is that, if a news organisation as reputable as Associated Press were to get it that wrong about something that serious, there would be big consequences. But there has been no retraction, and you are still working for Associated Press and considered a highly respectable journalist.

Which means your story stands and is perfectly fit for being dramatised, crediting the original author, you, the incredible Anna Cara, who will be mentioned repeatedly in gratitude for your investigatory work. Your name will live forever in the annals of spreading knowledge of the Axum massacre.

Once the film is out, and provided it is as good as it promises, can we count on your help to promote it? Most of all, we would love to interview you, is that okay? Must we submit a formal request for this to your employer?

I hope this happy news makes your day, like it did mine, and that our interview can be scheduled soon.

Happy regards
Gabriel

Notice how both my fictional undercover personalities put an ordinary, very reasonable-sounding trust in the “respectable” institutions of the liberal world order, from our free-speech society to our human-rights bodies. This was myself until recently, and it would still be me today, had it not been my lot to realize how low they stooped in their insistence on getting Ethiopia dead wrong.

UPDATE on April 10: Two days later, a final message from Cara Anna did arrive, though I only discovered this a month later.

From: Anna, Cara 
Sent: Mar 9, 2024, 16:21 
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Wonderful news!

Hi Gabriel, thank you for asking, but there’s no need for me to take part. Now that it’s easier for most people to travel to Tigray, one can go and speak to people there who lived through it.

Cara

AP

Cara Anna seems to believe the authenticity of the undercover personalities to the end!

And yes, as she says, one can go to Axum to ask around and investigate. Plenty of people and institutions have done that. Not a single finding remotely resembles Cara Anna’s story of February 18, 2021. I refer once again to my own work on what we know about what happened in Axum.

I left it here, as I published the exchange on March 30, 2024, having demonstrated sufficiently that Cara Anna is utterly shameless, and that Ethiopians were right to ban her from entering their country. If she had had the slightest conscience, she would have said: “Such a film wouldn’t be a true story, so now I am going to retract my article and apologize in public for the profound harm that I caused. I shall also come clean about my sources throughout the war, and about the extent to which I knew beforehand or only found out later that I was spreading incendiary falsehoods.”

Dream on, she will not say that of her own accord, because she and her employer have proved themselves indifferent to the truth and disdainful of African lives. We cannot expect these people to repent. We must work to hold them to account. And take solace from the fact that history will judge them harshly.

The post Going undercover to interview Cara Anna from Associated Press appeared first on Abren.

By Rasmus Sonderriis, from Addis Ababa

Harrowing tales of sadistic rape were recounted in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe by Katharine Houreld on November 26, 2023. This Nairobi-based East Africa correspondent touches every nerve of revulsion and anger in her retelling of tearful interviews with a dozen female rape survivors. These are not mere denunciations of bad apples, such as the three men who were recently sentenced by Ethiopian military courts. The sexual violence against women of the Tigrayan ethnicity is categorized as “sustained and organized”. Particularly the prevalence of gang rape suggests a whole culture of depraved cruelty. Indeed, the article puts the individual horrors into perspective: “More than 100,000 women may have been raped during the two-year civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, according to the most comprehensive study so far of these attacks in research conducted by the Columbia University biostatistician Kiros Berhane.”

The alleged perpetrators are: “Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers and […] militiamen from Ethiopia’s Amhara region”. This is the totality of allies who put down the insurgency of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the TPLF. However, there is no mention of this group at all in The Washington Post article, which is packed with closeups and devoid of zoom-outs. This follows a pattern in Western coverage of African affairs, which is meant to evoke commiseration and indignation, and not to generate insight. Going into the politics is typically seen as a distraction, even considered in bad taste. This lets the clueless reader fill in the context with the stereotypical “single story about Africa”, which the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has warned against. It features a continent of gut-wrenching savagery, leaving us primed to believe the worst without question.

I have written in detail about how this particular conflict was essentially a power struggle, challenging the clichés in big media about Africans yet again being in the grip of tribal rage. I refer to my freely available 50,000-word paper “GETTING ETHIOPIA DEAD WRONG”, which will be released in a slightly extended book version in early 2024. It tackles all the issues stressed and ignored by the world press, without shying away from the most delicate subjects. For instance, there is a section titled “Was rape used as a weapon?”

For sure, the focus here is not on Ethiopian politics, but on the rape described in The Washington Post. Yet what we assume about the context influences our standard of proof. By way of example, let us imagine a study concluding that American troops gang-raped a major percentage of women in Afghanistan. How would that be read? Even the most dangerous criminals in US prisons consider rapists to be the scummiest of scum, so we Westerners would need extremely compelling evidence to believe this about our patriotic young men.

It ought not surprise us that Eritreans and Ethiopians feel the same way about their young men, and also about a high number of young women, doing armed service for their country. Again, this is not just a tribal instinct. Their reading of claims about the truth is also influenced by the political context. The difference is that they have firsthand knowledge of it.

We need to talk about the TPLF

So very, very briefly, the TPLF is not just some plucky guerilla force, as one would think from the David-and-Goliath-themed scripts of many an Africa reporter. From 1991 to 2018, this highly disciplined party with Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist roots had a firm grip on the helm of the Ethiopian state. Its characteristic obsession with ethnicity included putting “ethnicity” on ID cards, never mind that millions of citizens are mixed or see themselves simply as Ethiopian. Moreover, the TPLF expanded the Tigray region, renaming the lush territories west of Tigray as “Western Tigray”, which then became a laboratory for extremist Tigrayan ethnonationalism, driving out non-Tigrayans and moving in Tigrayan settlers. TPLF leaders occupied key positions in the monopolistic economy and ran the national army. Still today, the TPLF holds vast wealth in foreign currency, and has an extensive international network of friends in high places. Despite its militaristic ethos, it has, over the years, acquired fluency in the ‘donor-darling’ language that Westerners fall for. Its battalion of Wikipedia-editing activists, for instance, know which rhetorical buttons to push on women’s rights, never mind that the TPLF’s only-ever prominent woman was Azeb Mesfin, wife of the late dictator Meles Zenawi. And she was purged and exiled in 2017.

One world-famous TPLF luminary is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. Today, he talks like a pacifist humanitarian, as he spends Martin Luther King Day “reflecting on the interconnections between love, trust, peace and justice”. But as Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016, he took a tough line when it came to jailing pro-democracy protesters. Ultimately, this oppression failed, enabling Abiy Ahmed to become prime minister in 2018, incidentally placing women in powerful positions for the first time in the country’s history. The TPLF retreated to its stronghold as the regional government of Tigray, sheltering its men prosecuted for corruption and torture. It also refused to let go of its control over the military.

War broke out when the TPLF attacked five Ethiopian army bases in Tigray on November 3, 2020, killing thousands of soldiers. One year and many bloody battles later, the rulers-turned-rebels were closing in on the national capital Addis Ababa, being widely hailed as the imminent victors by prominent Western pundits and think tanks. The special US representative, Jeffrey Feltmann, described the fall of the capital as a “bloodbath situation”, yet urged the Ethiopians to do nothing to prevent it. They turned a deaf ear and mobilized in defense. Yet another year and even more bloody battles later, the fighting had returned to Tigray. Staring at defeat, the TPLF leaders agreed to hand over their heavy weapons in exchange for staying in control of regional governance in Tigray, as per the peace agreement entered into on November 2, 2022, in Pretoria, South Africa. Oddly, Katharine Houreld’s article refers in passing to the Pretoria Agreement as a mere “cease-fire”. This happens to be the term preferred by the most extreme TPLF supporters, who refuse to admit defeat.

No need for due diligence on African rape?

Surely, in assessing the credibility of a hypothetical study showing rampant gang-rape of Afghani women by American soldiers, the first step of due diligence would be to google the authors to check for any pro-Taliban bias. Accordingly, a self-proclaimed anti-racist newspaper, such as The Washington Post, should be expected to do the same before publishing a highly incendiary story about mass rape by African soldiers. However, politely probed in an email by Ethiopian-American student, Samuel Kassa, Katharine Houreld volunteers this information: “Regarding the political leanings of Dr. Kiros, I haven’t looked into it.”

She may or may not realize that the Columbia University professor’s first name “Kiros” is typically Tigrayan. Anyway, this is definitely no smoking gun. After all the Ethiopian Minister of Defense since 2021, Abraham Belay, that is, the man in charge of the allegedly rapist army, is also a Tigrayan. And yet, though not every Tigrayan is a TPLF member, every TPLF member is a Tigrayan, so the minimum would be a rudimentary check of his Twitter account. This reveals total dedication to the TPLF’s storyline that the war was a one-way street of violence against the Tigrayans as a people.

It is beyond the scope of the present article to make the case that these accusations were, at least in the bigger picture, a ploy to justify an irregular army waging war against an elected government. My painstaking review of all these narratives in “GETTING ETHIOPIA DEAD WRONG” maps out how the TPLF, assisted by a handful of unscrupulous foreigners, managed to instill into Western minds the essentially false notion that this war was driven by pathological hatred rather than ordinary politics. But even if one shares Kiros Berhane’s view of the conflict, his partiality in conducting such a study should be obvious.

Kiros Berhane has also frequently endorsed and retweeted messages by the aforementioned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who spent the war blaming the Ethiopian government for the hardship that the war caused to ordinary Tigrayans, while never uttering a word of sympathy for the victims in Afar and Amhara, the two regions that were ravaged by the TPLF during its march on the capital.

Responding to Ethiopian-American student Samuel Kassa, Katharine Houreld makes this defense of Kiros Berhane’s research paper and its publisher: “I know the BMJ is a very respected peer-reviewed journal and there were multiple scholars involved in the study, which I have sent to you”.

Indeed, 17 other names are listed at the top of the paper, all Tigrayan-sounding. It is stated that most of them live and work in Tigray, where the TPLF exerts control over every aspect of life, and would have a massive stake in a study about rape by enemy soldiers for worldwide publication.

The authoritative ring of the term “peer review” is being increasingly challenged after scandalous retractions by, for instance, The Lancet. And indeed, what could the peers possibly have reviewed for this study to go into the prestigious BMJ Global Health? They must have validated the statistical method, which is Kiros Berhane’s specialty. But did they cross-examine the witnesses? Did they check the translations from Tigrinya into English? Did they look for evidence of whether or not the interviewees were coached or even coerced? Whatever these mysterious peer reviewers did, they failed to point out the fundamentally absurd assumption of a free-speech climate in Tigray. It is inconceivable that this study could have reached any other conclusion, because that would have amounted to TPLF subjects disproving the TPLF’s war propaganda on TPLF soil. The BMJ might as well have published a survey by North Koreans conducted in North Korea documenting North Koreans’ love for their leader. 

The ugliest of crimes

Rape is more taxing on the human heart than murder. There is something uniquely sickening about deriving sexual gratification, or whatever it is, from inflicting horror on a vulnerable person. The dilemma is this: We know that sick bastards take advantage of armed conflict to commit sexual violence, but also that this is the staple of fake atrocity propaganda. Thus, in a scenario where many young Tigrayan men were reluctant to kill and die for the old guard of cruel and corrupt men, the TPLF needed an argument as strong as this: “If you run away from rebel-army conscription, you are failing to protect your mothers and sisters!” In some cases, this appeal to Tigrayan men’s honor also appealed, alas, to their dishonor, as when some TPLF fighters invoked “revenge” as a motive for raping women in Amhara and Afar regions.

Mr. Mulueberhan Haile was one of many Tigrayans who risked their lives by serving as interim administrators during the seven months, from November 28, 2020, to June 28, 2021, when the Ethiopian army tried, but largely failed, to take charge of security in Tigray. Talking to Voice of America a few months into the war, he said: “When we started investigating, we found out there were women instructed to make false claims of rape and to engender a feeling of anger and resentment in the Tigrayan youth.”

In June 2022, a Tigrayan journalist deserting from Radio Dimtse Woyane (‘Voice of the TPLF’) talked on Ethiopian television (incidentally to a famous interviewer who is also Tigrayan) about Tigrayan sex workers being paid to pose as university students and to tell rape stories to foreign NGOs. Nobody in the Western media or human-rights circles would touch his testimony with a bargepole.

There were, however, seven African UN professionals serving in Ethiopia who privately discussed the difficulty of sorting facts from fabrication, feeling under pressure to feed the media sensationalism and thus fuel the war. The audio of their meeting was leaked by a pro-TPLF website, indignant that Letty Chiwara, representative of UN Women to Ethiopia and to the African Union, had used language such as “take it with a pinch of salt”. Though most of the press ignored it, it nevertheless caused a bit of a stir, with an emphasis on shaming the African women on the ground who dared question the TPLF narrative.

This matches the extensive testimony of the Kenyan national, Doctor Steven Were Omamo, who served in Ethiopia during the war as the Country Director for the UN World Food Programme. In his highly recommended book “At the Centre of the World in Ethiopia”, he describes how Ethiopia-based UN staff, mostly Africans, had their life-saving work on the ground sabotaged by senior political UN figures, mostly Westerners, who made little secret of their nearness to the TPLF hierarchy, and who would rather hog the limelight with outright lies than engage with a largely cooperative Ethiopian government.


From accused to accuser: Tony Magaña

Katharine Houreld’s article stops short of using the ubiquitous expression “rape as a weapon of war”, but quotes a nurse from a rape crisis center lamenting the lack of HIV drugs, as “some of these women were deliberately infected with HIV.” Once again, this rhymes with what Westerners think they know about Africa being a hotbed of HIV/AIDS, never mind that Ethiopia has the same HIV prevalence rate as Ukraine, at 1.1%, while Eritrea at only 0.6% does better than some developed countries.

Another voice leveling the charge of rape-mediated “biological warfare” has been neurosurgeon Dr. Tony Magaña, whose American citizenship gives him a shine of neutrality.

Living in the capital of Tigray, Mekelle, when the war broke out, Dr. Tony Magaña was to be frequently rolled out as a truth witness, including to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Yet it is no secret that his full real name is Ignacio Antonio Magana. In Florida, he was arrested back in 2002 due to a series of sexual-assault accusations from his female patients. He was also hung out to dry in, of all places, The Washington Post, after he was suspended from practicing medicine in order to protect the public. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to battery and was sentenced to one year in the county jail (see image below). In 2005, he went on trial again for no less than ten women saying he forced himself on them across three counties in Florida, though he was cleared of the rape charges.

The backstory of Dr. Magana has long been discussed among Ethiopians on social media. He says he came to Ethiopia in 2012, and was recruited to work at Ayder Hospital in Mekelle “by leaders of the university, who were also members of the TPLF”.  While the war was raging, he said: “I know the leaders of the TPLF.”

So how well did they know him? Given the sophistication of the TPLF intelligence apparatus, it is unthinkable that his googleable sex-offender record could have been overlooked. His TPLF protectors must have decided they could make him grateful, loyal and useful by taking him in. Indeed, Tony Magaña has testified widely about sadistic treatment of Tigrayans in graphic  and horrific detail, hyenas and all, featuring as a medical authority on this subject in a newspaper as prestigious as the Spanish El País. He has also provided input to the Belgian geographer Jan Nyssen’s ‘estimate’ of the death toll in Tigray, which became quoted by countless media as a serious study from the University of Ghent, even though Jan Nyssen gives speeches at TPLF rallies and events, and writes passionately about how “Western Tigray” belongs to Tigray.

And this is just one more example of how the TPLF has covered its propaganda in a veneer of academia, which the media lap up uncritically, because it fits so neatly with the “single story about Africa”.

The fine line between justice-seeking and hate-mongering

In her email reply to Samuel Kassa, Katharine Houreld declines to say who put her in touch with the women testifying for her article, having promised not to reveal anything that might identify them. Thus, the only objective conclusion that can be drawn about the individual horror stories is that they are impossible to prove or disprove. For outsiders wishing to stand up for abused women, yet mindful of sinister agendas, the only way forward is to support Ethiopian civil society and legal practitioners in investigating cases and bringing them to trial.

Katharine Houreld also sent Samuel Kassa a study published in The Lancet in August 2023, authored by the New York-based NGO Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), based on field research conducted by its Ethiopian (and undoubtedly Tigrayan) partner: “Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa” (OJAH). This outfit has been completely anonymized, as its staff “cannot be named for their own safety”. So in this case, there is no way to check for political leanings on Twitter, although a google search reveals that OJAH is exclusively dedicated to denouncing human-rights violations in Tigray, and only by actors other than the TPLF.

The full version of the study in The Lancet refers to the aforementioned BMJ-published quantitative survey by Kiros Berhane. Its own research is more qualitative in nature, looking at 305 medical records from “multiple health facilities in Tigray known to provide clinical services to survivors of sexual violence”.

It is ironic that the authors describe justice-seeking “relying on potentially biased national mechanisms” as “ill-conceived”, yet put their trust in the record-keeping of the TPLF-controlled healthcare system. But at least the 305 files were selected for scrutiny by the research team, and not by the regional government of Tigray. And it is, of course, fully plausible that 305 people and many more were raped in Tigray during three years with widespread lawlessness. Where the study is weak is in the identification of perpetrators. The dubious assumption is that victims, even genuine victims, would face no pressure to blame enemy soldiers given the political climate in the region. And according to the study, the supposed end of the conflict did not lower the rate of conflict-related sexual violence. It even says that “95 percent of conflict-related sexual violence experienced by children and adolescents under 18 years old occurred following the signing of the [Pretoria Peace Agreement]”. No explanation of this is attempted. In this period, the TPLF-controlled Tigray regional government has been in charge of law and order. It has indeed been criticized by other Tigrayans for heavy-handed policing of opposition rallies, and for arresting the victim’s friend rather than seek justice for the recent murder and attempted rape of 32-year-old Zewdu Haftu in Mekelle. Where the TPLF is no longer in charge, however, is in the territory consistently referred to in The Lancet as “Western Tigray” (notice the capital W). This also reveals a Tigrayan ethnonationalist bias.

Thus, The Lancet substitutes medical records for criminal investigations, and concludes that: “What is documented in PHR’s analysis points to the use of sexual violence by the military as a tactic to terrorize civilian populations.” It is hard to make sense of this now when the war is over. Surely, sexual violence against Tigrayans by outsiders is more likely to reignite the insurgency than to cow anyone.

Just a little sympathy with Ms. Houreld

I regret quoting emails in which Katharine Houreld did not know she was on the record. Samuel Kassa is not myself, but nor is he exactly who he pretended to be. This was not an honest method to fish for information. However, the public-interest defense is compelling, given the defamatory and inflammatory nature of her article. If Katharine Houreld has managed to read this thus far, she must be aghast. What looked like slam-dunk virtue-signaling as a champion of African women has come to seem more like reckless incompetence with a stench of racism in cahoots with forces out to sow division and frustrate reconciliation in Ethiopia.

Even so, I do sympathize with how she puts her trust in authority, as her email refers to: “…the Lancet and BMJ (both globally respected peer-reviewed medical journals that have published on the subject), and rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN investigators – all of whom have documented extensive rape during the conflict by all actors”. 

Until recently, I myself would have needed no more convincing than that. Today, however, my faith in such esteemed institutions has been replaced by scrutiny of their fine print and methodological notes. To understand what changed me, read my 50,000-word exposé of how so many of the great and the good of our media, academia, humanitarian work, politics and diplomacy demonized a friendly people and fueled a big war with dire mispredictions and shocking lies.

I never imagined myself writing such a fiery anti-establishment piece. Like Katharine Houreld, I am a run-of-the-mill centrist. However, unlike Katharine Houreld, I had the good fortune to live in Ethiopia, following its affairs closely since 2004. I was able to immerse myself into the society, familiarize myself with the mentality, learn to speak colloquially in the national language, observe day-to-day interethnic relations. Had I been sent to cover the recent war in northern Ethiopia without this background, I might have sullied myself as badly as Katharine Houreld. After all, a year into the war, I still struggled with denial about the scale of so many self-professed do-gooders doing bad, all retold in “GETTING ETHIOPIA DEAD WRONG”.

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Actions taken against Mr. Taye, a prominent member of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party, comes in the wake of a series of critical social media posts he made in the past week, expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s failure to maintain peace in the country.

According to a report by Reuters, Sintayew Alemayew, Taye’s wife, disclosed that her husband was apprehended by a combination of uniformed and plainclothes police on Monday night. She also revealed that authorities have issued an ultimatum, giving her three days to vacate her residence or face eviction.

Taye blamed the government for the breakdown of the second round of peace talks between Ethiopia and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). Authorities said, ‘The week-long talks which took placed in Tanzania last month were largely unsuccessful due to unrealistic demands put forth by OLA rebel leaders.’

According to a statement broadcast on EBC, police had been surveilling Mr. Taye’s activities for months. After a judge issued a warrant, a search of the suspect’s home revealed several military communications devises, dozens of electronics, weapons, ammunition, cash, and paraphernalia representing the OLA. Authorities claim these were all part of an organized plot. The government also accused Mr. Taye of orchestrating kidnappings alongside OLA rebels.

According to Reuters news report, despite requests for comment, a spokesperson for the OLA did not respond. Taye himself was unavailable for comment, and his family had not yet enlisted the services of a lawyer, as indicated by his wife.

Although Abiy’s government released numerous political prisoners since assuming power in 2018, it has faced criticism for suppressing dissent by apprehending individuals who oppose its military engagements in various regions, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

The government contends that its measures are lawful and essential to address threats to national security.

Requests for comment on the arrest directed at a spokesperson for the Ethiopian government went unanswered.

Upon his dismissal, Mr. Taye rebuked Prime Minister Abiy in a Facebook post, referring to him as a “barbarian” playing with “human blood.” Taye viewed his removal as retribution for his outspoken stance against the Abiy administration. Taye has been a rare internal critic within the ruling party, particularly regarding human rights abuses against civilians in Oromia. He was previously imprisoned for his association with the Oromo Liberation Front, a predecessor of the OLA, a group which was designated a terror entity by parliament in 2021. The group is responsible for numerous atrocities and and the displacement of tens of thousands in Ethiopia’s most populous region.

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During the Mekelle visit, Ambassador Massinga held crucial discussions with leaders of the Tigray Interim Regional Administration. The focus was on the progress of implementing the Pretoria Agreement, a pivotal step towards establishing sustainable peace in northern Ethiopia. Furthermore, he engaged with Mekelle University’s President Dr. Fana Hagos and U.S. government-sponsored exchange alumni. The conversations centered on identifying avenues to strengthen U.S. support for education and economic development in the region. As part of his visit, the Ambassador also visited a nutrition site supported by USAID.

In Bahir Dar, the Ambassador conducted meetings with key figures, including Amhara Regional President Arega Kebede, Bahir Dar Mayor Goshu Endalamahu, and Bahir Dar University President Dr. Firew Tegegne. These discussions provided firsthand insights into how the crisis in Amhara is impacting essential institutions and the broader populace.

These visits build upon Ambassador Massinga’s trip to the Afar region on November 29. The objective of these engagements is to comprehensively assess the impact of U.S. government programs in each region, gaining a nuanced understanding of local challenges and opportunities.

According to the State Department, a holistic approach that aims to inform strategic decisions that will further strengthen relations with local partners, institutions, and the government is needed in Ethiopia. The Ambassador plans to extend these travels to other parts of Ethiopia, fostering lasting relationships and evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. government assistance in promoting America’s enduring relationship with Ethiopia.

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The GoE’s official statement said, ‘its commitment to halting hostilities and to mitigate the extensive harm caused by the conflict based on respecting the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity of Ethiopia, along with adherence to constitutional norms was obstructed by the OLA’.

According to Ambassador Redwan Hussain, ‘despite these efforts, the talks concluded without an agreement, citing the intransigence of the OLA as the primary obstacle’. Referring to the OLA as a terrorist group, the Amharic version of the GoE’s statement further added by stating, “The obstructive approach by the rebel group and unrealistic demands were identified as key reasons for the lack of progress”. The GoE insinuated the group as beholden to diaspora-based groups and even foreign governments.

The OLA said, “True to form, the Ethiopian government was only interested in co-optation of the leadership of the OLA rather than beginning to address the fundamental problems that underlie the country’s seemingly insurmountable security and political challenges”. As in past engagements, the OLA sought a transitional regional government, a demand the GoE has repeatedly rejected on constitutional grounds.

It was hoped OLA rebel leaders would moderate their demands with a more realistic approach during these renewed talks, particularly in light of the the group’s weakened position. Assessment that it was influenced away from peace by its diaspora support base gives credence to allegations of foreign capture. As things stand, it is difficult to foresee a near future in which the rebels will muster what is needed to negotiate from a position of strength.

The peace talks highlight the intricate challenges involved in resolving the conflict in parts of the Oromo region besieged by guerrilla fighting since 2019. The complexities of the situation may necessitate continued dialogue and efforts to address underlying issues. Nonetheless, given the repeated failures to negotiate a peace deal, the GoE may be more inclined to lean towards a military solutions.

Kenyan and Norwegian diplomats involved as mediators remain unknown to the public, and have thus far refrained from making a statement.

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Ethiopia’s controversial constitution, with its system of ethnic federalism has been a boon for demagogues and conflict merchants seeking power using identity-based propaganda. Even outside powers with interest in Ethiopia have long figured out how to exploit Ethiopia’s ethnic divisions, exacerbated by this system of governance. For instance, the State Department regularly confers with diaspora groups and organizations carefully selected by their ethnic affiliation, while regularly shunning or avoiding multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Ethiopian national organizations. Historically the collective West has promoted destructive identity politics in Africa. Leveraging the growing African diaspora in the West for this purpose is thus a natural extension of this policy. Regional powers in the Middle East have used a similar approach. In a bid to slow the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Egypt has long supported ethnic based insurgencies in Ethiopia.

It was hoped Ethiopia’s constitution adopted in 1994, would bring equity to its many nations and nationalities, whose culture and language was suppressed by successive regimes seeking centralism for fear of losing power to ungovernable separate entities. Ethiopia had been a more centralized state for a century before. Proponents argued the new constitution would bring unity and stability to a nation beset with separatist liberation movements. In hindsight, after three decades, fundamental questions of nationhood, culture, language, identity, boundaries, and equity remain unanswered, and arguably worst off. In practice, federalism in Ethiopia has led to fragmentation, not equality or democratization.

Many had argued freeing up political and civil liberties too quickly would be unsustainable, given the country’s divisive identity politics, as well as its underdeveloped economy. In light of this argument, democracy was not compatible with Ethiopia’s socio-political circumstance. In retrospect this argument seems to have been vindicated by the insurrections that followed. The way to keep a lid on Ethiopia’s discordant ethnic political discourse, encouraged by the country’s constitution seems to have been by repression. But that only buys more time, without resolving the underlying issue. Sooner or later, Ethiopia will need structural political reform, one that can accommodate and nurture unity, democracy and civility.

This trend towards ethnic balkanization in Ethiopia enshrined in the constitution has become particularly stark ever since 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s new administration introduced a relatively more open political discourse in this country of 120 million. Previously, Ethiopia had been a security state, whereby free speech and political organization was heavily curtailed, but the country enjoyed relative peace, stability and economic development. During this period, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) espoused a “developmental statist” approach akin to East Asia, whereby fast economic growth was given priority, as human rights deteriorated.

In the early months of Abiy Ahmed’s administration Ethiopians aspired for a truly reformist new regime. At the time, it was hoped keeping the pressure valve slightly open, while making significant reforms to the system of governance could prove to be a successful strategy. Nonetheless, political reforms were delayed by conflict, particularly by the crisis in northern Ethiopia, and the war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an entity that had every intention of maintaining the existing status quo. A precipitous loss of grace for its leaders does not seem to have changed minds so far, but increasing numbers of people in Ethiopia are realizing the futility of a perpetually divided nation.

TPLF is not alone is trying to derail the reform agenda in Ethiopia. Support for maintaining the current constitution and governance can also be found among members of the ruling party, although it is difficult to determine the exact extent of this support. A generation of ethnic elites have emerged in Ethiopia. These heirs of the system have a tangible interest in forestalling change. Although small in number, they provide the inertia for keeping things as they are, thanks to their key positions within the establishment as either political cadres or business persons in regular collision with them. Ethiopia has been on a path dependency towards more fragmentation, one that is beset with strife and even wars. Only a determined and unashamedly reformist political leadership can reverse course on this trend.

Most people inherently understood the challenges. Despite the setbacks and delays, the public largely wanted to see the reformists succeed, and even voted overwhelmingly in favor of the ruling Prosperity Party on that base. The Pretoria Peace Agreement, which effectively ended the conflict in northern Ethiopia, as well as relative calm in other parts of the country offered renewed belief. Yet, notwithstanding what the New York Times called “a full military victory” by the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), Addis Ababa was unable, or as some have argued unwilling to implement a key clause of the peace deal, namely the “full disarmament of the TPLF rebels in 30 days” after its signing.

A bid to avoid another war, outstanding financial and budgetary strains, and an attempt to carry favor with the United States, a key donor with leverage on international financial institutions has come at significant political costs for the GoE. All of this is made worst by a glaring public relations and communications failure. The ruling party has waned in popularity. The prime minister has eroded his mass base of support. Key allies in Amhara, Afar, and in the diaspora, who fought alongside the national army to repel the TPLF insurgency as recently as October 2022 feel betrayed, particularly by the GoE’s failure to fully disarm the TPLF in the allotted time period, as called for by the peace agreement.

However, after months of slow moving progress, the African Union monitoring team responsible for Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration(DDR) recently stated, “85 to 90 percent of heavy weapons used by the rebels has been handed over to their team”. The statement further noted, the next phase will encompass demobilization and re-integration of forces, whose exact size is not exactly known, given many had already deserted their post. Yet the AU’s Major General Ridan remained hopeful in the process.

Costly political blunders of the ruling party go beyond recent attempted disarmament in Amhara region. They include its mismanagement of the crisis in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in February 2023. Parishioners were incensed by the government’s response not to immediately denounce the breakaway synod, which they correctly viewed as breaking with thousands of years of church cannon. Having sensed the political fallout, the Prime Minister quickly reversed course, and admonished the breakaway synod on television. This did not instill public confidence. On the contrary it was viewed as political expediency.

Nonetheless, its noteworthy, that amidst conflict, mishaps and unforced errors, the Abiy government has made some structural changes. This was particularly the case in its early days. These changes include reforming the loosely organized EPRDF coalition, to the more inclusive and united Prosperity Party, encompassing hitherto underrepresented regions such as Somali, Afar, Gumuz, and Gambella. This was a step towards a more united and less ethnically fragmented organization. In addition, law was passed for a new digitally integrated national ID system, whereby ethnicity or place of birth is not featured.

On the economy, GoE has started some key reforms. They include the rollback of outdated fuel subsidies that were a drain on reserve currency, and encouraged a black-market export of refined fuel to neighboring countries, where prices are higher. Banks which had previously been instructed to direct their lending towards state owned enterprises have since shifted gear towards the private sector. State-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia recently quadrupled its share of loans to the private sector. Digital of payments is also something that is being implemented quickly, as Ethiopia tries to catch up. Digital payments will make financial transparency easier, reduce friction, as well as help by broadening Ethiopia’s tax base.

An important step has been recent policy studies and discussions looking at systemic challenges. The House of People’s Representatives will soon review a research document by the Policy Studies Institute of Ethiopia that explores possible ways of amending the constitution. The question remains whether the GoE’s reformist camp can still muster the political capital needed to embark on an ambitious plan to make structural changes to a country at war with itself. In parallel with the National Dialogue, it could be the only offramp for a government that will likely struggle to win enough support in the coming remedial elections set for 2024. These elections will take place where the 2021 general election was not conducted due to conflict.

In light of the recent past, there is no question reformists have lost the political momentum they once had. A confluence of foreign pressure, political mishaps, and a lack of clear and consistent directional leadership, as well as a reactionary war has taken a toll on ambitious plans. Nonetheless, changes to the country’s basic political structure and the constitution is an idea that still garners significant public support, one that is likely to grow.

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Once again, a fragile peace agreement in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region broke as rebels loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) went on the offensive. Fighting emerged again near the end of August, as rebel forces sought to drive west and south, capturing the small town of Kobo in the Amhara region. At the start of this third round of conflict, Tigray’s insurgent forces had a strong showing, capturing Kobo as Ethiopia’s National Defense Forces exited, citing the risk to civilians posed by urban fighting. Nonetheless, the tide seems to have turned in favor of Ethiopia’s army.

Observers had warned of increasing tensions in this volatile region, despite optimism just weeks earlier that talks to establish a lasting peace agreement were set to get under way. However, seemingly insurmountable challenges remained. For one, TPLF leaders continued insistence on preconditions involving the resumption of basic services, such as telecom, and banking. The government of Ethiopia maintains these can only be part of a larger comprehensive peace deal. According to the office of the prime minister, “there is no magic on/off button to restart telecom and banking in the Tigray region”. Authorities maintain this would require hundreds, if not thousands of technical experts to repair damaged infrastructure.

Since the outbreak of recent fighting, government forces have had a relatively easier fight in maintaining an upper hand. Unlike last year this time, when TPLF fighters overran cities and towns in the Amhara and Afar regions, this time around the insurgents’ offensive has stymied, with thousands of their recruits captured or even killed in the first few weeks. Among the captured are soldier under the age of 15. Government forces are now back in Kobo and last vestiges of TPLF fighters have been pushed back out of Amhara.

The mass human wave tactics used successfully by the rebels last year have been largely ineffective, partly due to better prepared defenses as well as recently surprising twists in the fight, as Ethiopian forces opened other assaults flanking the rebel stronghold region. TPLF’s leaders have accused the government of launching an attack from the north, from neighboring Eritrea, which is allied with Ethiopia. These reports have not been officially confirmed by Ethiopian officials

Still more reports suggest forces loyal to the TPLF have been operating along the border with neighboring Sudan, where they’re engaged in fighting to gain the critical corridor of Humera and Welkait. According to a recent report by CBS News tensions in the area could potentially draw Sudan into what is already a complicated regional conflict. In August Ethiopia’s air force said it shot down an Antonov 26 type cargo airplane carrying arms supplies to the rebels in the Tigray region.  Moreover, Ethiopian authorities have complained about insurgents using UN administered refugee camps in eastern Sudan as launch pads for military missions.  

The tacitly agreed humanitarian truce between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government on March 24, 2022 was to get much needed humanitarian supplies into the Tigray region, which had been severely hampered by intense fighting before that. The trickle of aid had improved before the most recent flare up. It was hoped that the ceasefire would lay the groundwork for a more permanent peace deal under the auspices of the African Union, and chief mediator and former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo.    

But TPLF officials have said the AU appointed Obasanjo is not an honest broker and is too close to Ethiopia’s prime minister, preferring instead former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta as replacement for Obasanjo. Ethiopian officials prefer to maintain AU stewardship as well and have indicated willingness to negotiate anywhere and at any time without pre-conditions. Ethiopian government officials insist there can only be a comprehensive peace deal.

As fighting rages, Ethiopian joint forces, which includes regional Amhara forces have fought well. The US has once again stated its desire to see an end to hostilities, albeit not as vociferously as it once did. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Mike Hammer is again headed to the region, reportedly to try and broker an end to hostilities. Rightly or wrongly, many in Ethiopia view the US desire to end conflict at this juncture as implicitly giving the beleaguered rebels a fighting chance. Last year, as TPLF rebels advanced the threat of sanctions were used by the US to hand tie Ethiopia’s federal government according to statements by officials.

Indeed, Ethiopia – US relations have been fraught of late. There also seems to be some policy disconnect among American foreign policy circles regarding Ethiopia, a once international aid darling held up as a success story. Ambassador Mike Hammer is the fourth Special Envoy appointed specifically to deal with the conflict in northern Ethiopia. The last several envoys were viewed by the Ethiopians as pandering to TPLF’s whims. This is perhaps a reflection of the once close relationship held between the TPLF-led regime in Addis Ababa before the advent of the current ruling Prosperity Party. Recent conflict seems to be closing the door on the Tigray rebel’s chances. The situation on the ground is significantly different now, particularly after the last round of atrocities committed by the rebels against civilians in the Amhara and Afar regions. The rebels are a much more despised group now than at any point in the past. More importantly, Ethiopia’s army and regional forces are much more capable fighting force than before 2020.

The hope is that Mike Hammer will find success whereas others have failed to convince the TPLF leadership to end their warlike stance. Perhaps under some sort of security guarantee or transfer to a third country, rebel leaders can exit their current predicament and let a new generation of leaders in Tigray hammer home a lasting peace deal that sees an end to the suffering in northern Ethiopia. This seemingly far fetched plan may be the path of least resistance to end a festering conflict. The bigger picture in the Horn of Africa requires a stable and peaceful Ethiopia that is friendly to the United States. Achieving this task is the primary interest the special envoys are keenly aware of.

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