In the shadow of the elections in the United States, news about Ethiopia was somewhat oppressed. Perhaps that is why Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched his offensive to take control of the northern province of Tigre. The air force is bombing targets in Tigre, a state of emergency has been declared and Prime Minister Abiy wants to replace the Tigre regional government with his own people.
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It is difficult to estimate what is happening on the site. Reuters news agency has been told by diplomats and aid workers that fighting is taking place in the northwest, along the border between the regions of Tigre and Amhara, and on the border with Sudan and Eritrea. KU Leuven has a cooperation agreement with the University of Mekelle in Tigre. Professor emeritus Seppe Deckers has worked there for decades on soil research. Professor Deckers told VRTNWS this morning that he is pessimistic about the outcome. “I have called with former PhD students there. Everyone is scared and stays in. There is bombing and the internet is shut down. I think the situation is very serious. Normally I am an optimist for Ethiopia but today I have to review that.”
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I think the situation is very serious. Normally I am an optimist for Ethiopia but today I have to review that.
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(Read more below the photo).
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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is jeopardizing his reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
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Adding color to the Tigre issue is the fact that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has now launched the attack, was awarded the last year’s Nobel Prize for Peace. He received it because of his democratization of Ethiopia and the peace treaty with neighboring Eritrea, after decades of war between the two countries.
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Tigre, the cradle of Ethiopia
Tigre is located in the north of Ethiopia and has just over 6 percent of the country’s 110 million inhabitants, making up a small but important group in ethnically very diverse Ethiopia. Until recently, the Tigreans in that country even ruled. (Read more below the photo).
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A fresco of Mary with the Child Jesus in the Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral of Axum. Photo: Miko Stavrev.
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The province of Tigre has historically been the core from which Ethiopia was formed. From the mix of influences from South Arabia across the Red Sea (present-day Yemen), a unique mixed culture emerged here more than 2,000 years ago. realm of Axum grew. That empire is considered to be the forerunner of the Ethiopian Empire, which absorbed Semitic influences from Arabia such as language, but also Judaism and Christianity that would later dominate. Axum was considered by the Roman and Persian empires to be a full-fledged counterpart in eastern Africa.
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After the 13th and 14th centuries, the center of the successive imperial dynasties gradually shifted south to Gondar and more recently the current capital Addis Ababa and touched Tigre marginalized while the larger Amhara-speaking population took over. This has led to uprisings in Tigre before. (Read more below the photo).
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The famous royal stelae of Axum are a Unesco world heritage site.
AP2002–
The Tigre regional government that has now come to blows with the central government is formed by it TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front – People’s Liberation Front for Tigre), an originally Marxist rebel group that has fought a guerilla war with the then communist dictatorship of Mariam Mengistu in the capital since the 1970s. After the Cold War, the TPLF expelled Mengistu in 1991 and since then led TPLF in an umbrella with other parties in Ethiopia, not always with a soft hand. Marxism, incidentally, was soon thrown overboard and replaced by the free market.
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To the current conflict
In 2018 came current premier Abiy Ahmed in power after calls for reform. He is ethnically an Oromo, the largest population group in Ethiopia living in the south and predominantly Muslim, but Abiy Ahmed is himself a Protestant Christian. So he does not belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that traditionally dominates Ethiopia. Abiy Ahmed democratized Ethiopia and under him the others got population groups more say and he made peace with the enemy Eritrea for decades, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. That frees up money for economic development and infrastructure (such as the Addis Abeba metro), but also for Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia experienced strong economic growth, partly due to Chinese investments. (Read more below the photo).
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One of the many new factories that have sprung up in Ethiopia in recent years.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.–
Last year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed broke up with the TPLF and saw his influence shrink. This year, that tension turned into a crisis. The planned elections were postponed due to the corona virus. The province of Tigre organized regional elections on its own initiative in which the still powerful TPLF came out as the big winner.
Those elections were not recognized by the central government and thus the regional government in Tigre calls illegal. Conversely, Tigre says that the central government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed are now no longer legal because elections were not held. The war of words has already led to violence back and forth. Both sides accuse each other of attacks and provocations. (Read more below the photo).
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The Renaissance dam on the Blue Nile creates water tensions with Sudan and Egypt.
AFP or licensors–
What is certain is that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed risks that economic growth, his reform policy and his international image would be squandered in a new and protracted war. The TPLF still makes up a large part of the Ethiopian army and grew out of decades of guerrilla warfare against the then Mengistu dictatorship, which was backed militarily by the Soviet Union. Tigre may be small, but it is a tough nut to crack.
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The conflict also comes at a time when the internal tensions between other population groups in Ethiopia are also increasing (Amhara against Oromo), there is the corona crisis and also a conflict with Sudan and Egypt over the water level of the Nile and a large dam that rises Ethiopia. who builds river.
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