Why Ethiopia is at war with itself

The death of Ethiopia’s charismatic former prime minister Meles Zenawi in August 2012 caught both his foes and friends by surprise. His classic rise to power on the back of a tank, his rapid consolidation of authority, and savvy navigation of Ethiopia’s ethnically complex politics granted him the prestige of a real statesman while also providing Ethiopia with relatively durable stability and economic prosperity. Zenawi’s death forced some to predict an inevitable period of instability and chaos in Ethiopia. Not because Ethiopia lacked a leader as charismatic as him before, but because the historical reality of Ethiopia’s politics, which had so long relied on the wisdom of one powerful ruler who glued the country together, would render finding another strongman like Zenawi extremely difficult.It wasn’t long before the tenuous and fragile stability Ethiopia had maintained following Zenawi’s death unraveled. The country seemed to descend in an open-ended inter-ethnic conflict that has shown no sign of slowing down while waiting for a new leader to quell it. As a result, and precisely like pundits predicted after Zenawi’s demise, Ethiopia has been mired in chaos. It is equally plausible that the longer the crisis persists, the more likely the window for a comprehensive resolution narrows and the implications spread to the entire East African region. The Pragmatist Zenawi came to power in the 1990s. As a rebel who fought the Derg State in Ethiopia (a Marxist-Leninist, one-party government that ruled Ethiopia from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s), he managed to survive a decades-long armed struggle against one of Africa’s most powerful regimes. Under the pressure of a coalition of militias known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the Derg State collapsed, and its ruler, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, an ethnic Amhara, resigned and fled the country in May 1991.The dissolution of the Derg State resulted in Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia (which officially transformed Ethiopia into a landlocked country) and the EPRDF’s takeover of the Ethiopian government. The EPRDF, which consisted of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), and the Southern Ethiopian’s People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM), an eclectic representation of the country’s ethnic fabric, went on to govern in an atmosphere dominated by mistrust and power struggle among its members that eventually led to its defragmentation and the TPLF ultimately triumphing over the others.Over the next two decades, the TPLF would rule Ethiopia, with Zenawi serving briefly as the country’s president from 1991 to 1995, and then as prime minister from 1995 until his death in 2012. He ruled Ethiopia with a combination of brute dictatorship, cronyism and compromise. Under his leadership, Ethiopia developed a fragile but functioning federalism with ethnic characteristics. Although Zenawai belonged to the Tigray minority, a powerful and influential ethnic group in Ethiopia, during his era, simply being a Tigray came with advantages. In addition to filling top government positions in the military, finance and intelligence with Tigrayans, Ethiopia’s historic inter-ethnic realities provided regular Tigrayans with power and advantages members of other ethnic groups did not wield, simply because power was not held by one of their own.During that time, it wasn’t uncommon for speaking Tigrayan, the official language of the Tigray people, or owning a business as a Tigrayan, to yield off-record incentives such as access to government services, tax breaks, softer regulatory oversight and other benefits that Ethiopians belonging to other ethnic communities lacked. On some occasions, businesspeople from other ethnic groups would feel compelled to hire an ordinary Tigrayan to seek government access, or even just have them sit in the passenger seat of their truck filled with merchandise to avoid excessive stops and inspections at custom checkpoints.This corrupt, ethnic-based privilege system created a sense of desperation that made non-Tigrayans feel like second-class citizens. It wouldn’t be long before members of other ethnic groups showed their resentment toward the TPLF and recalibrated their relationship with the regime by picking up arms, thus playing hit-and-run games with government forces. Armed groups like the Oromia Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) would soon evolve to catch Zenawi’s attention. His ruthless pragmatism would lead him to engage with those forces when necessary and compromise where possible.Ethiopia’s economy flourished under Zenawi. A year before his death, the economy grew by stunning double digits (11%). Businesses boomed, trade exchanges with neighbouring countries thrived, and Ethiopia’s reputation on the world stage ameliorated. Soon, world leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would lavish praise on Zenawi. On a visit to Africa in 1998, Clinton hailed him as one of “Africa’s new generation of leaders.” As a result, the strong economic numbers provided Ethiopia with a relative stability that made the country an example for other African nations.Zenawi believed that economic achievement didn’t necessarily ensure democratic reforms. He often pushed back against Western journalists in interviews, arguing that a country can be prosperous without being democratic, demonstrating a strategic cleverness that would earn him a friend miles away across the Indian Ocean: China. With Chinese investment, Ethiopia’s economy grew even stronger. One of Zenawi’s proudest accomplishments was the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a gigantic electric dam that would generate up to 6.35 gigawatts of power, a capacity that won’t only electrify Ethiopia, but will also likely go beyond to neighbouring countries like Djibouti, Sudan and South Sudan.