Hosted by Kwangu Liwewe
Featuring Jalale Getachew Birru and Alan Boswell
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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The 2022 agreement between Ethiopia and the secessionist Tigray region wasn’t so much a peace deal as a “cessation of hostilities,” Alan Boswell, the International Crisis Group’s project director for the Horn of Africa tells Kwangu Liwewe Agyei on this episode of Global Insights on The Lede. There are a “number of issues” from the 2020-2022 conflict between the two parties that were never fully resolved, Boswell says. However, “At its core, this is a power struggle over Ethiopia.”
A major development that helped to spark the latest violence is the alliance of several anti-government movements, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, under one banner, says Jalale Getachew Birru, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data’s East Africa regional expert. Birru is forthright on the lack of common ground between the movements. “Except removing Abiy Ahmed, they don’t agree on anything,” she says. “They are enemies among each other. They don’t have the same ideology.”
“It will be a divided country.”
Nevertheless, the TPLF’s cause has been further bolstered by an alliance with neighboring Eritrea, Boswell says. “Even though the two had fought against each other very bitterly in this last war and have a very long, complicated history with each other, now they form this sort of awkward alliance against the government,” he says. “I think that’s the move that really put the pieces in place for the TPLF to try to reassert itself and now challenge the federal government again militarily.”
As a result of the anti-government coalition’s disparate objectives, Birru is skeptical of its ability to take or hold power. “From where we are sitting right now, I don’t think they will be successful in removing the current government,” she says. “Even if they succeed somehow, I don’t think they will be able to govern the country. It will be a divided country.”