End of the Ethiopian empire?

Ethiopia can survive losing Tigray, but the wholesale disintegration of Africa’s second-biggest country would be an almost limitless disaster. Abiy Ahmed’s blunders are as much to blame for this dreadful situation as the obdurate and self-centred leadership of Tigray, but he is probably now the only man who can hold the rest of the country together. If he’s lucky.

So now Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, pictured, has a new job: to prevent the rot from spreading. There are powerful separatist forces in other states of Ethiopia too, many people are very unhappy with the federal government’s conduct of the recent election, and Tigray’s example could be infectious, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

July 1, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—Most analysts thought it would take a year or two of guerrilla war for the rebels in Tigray to drive Ethiopian federal forces out of their state, but it has only taken eight months. “The capital of Tigray, Mekelle, is under our control,” Getachew Reda, spokesperson for the Tigray ...

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