32 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022
in which he swore to eliminate “vora-
cious feudalists, hired fascists, and run-
ning dogs” and smashed bottles filled
with red liquid, symbolizing his ene-
mies’ blood. Even as the country suf-
fered one of its periodic droughts,
Mengistu launched a Stalinist collec-
tivization campaign, and hundreds of
thousands died of starvation.
In 1991, the Derg was overthrown by
a coalition of rebel militias; Abiy, who
was then in the seventh grade, left school
for a time to join the cause. When the
fighting was over, the fiercest and most
cohesive of the rebel groups, the Tigray
People’s Liberation Front, took charge
of the governing coalition, and led the
country’s politics for the next twenty-
seven years. The T.P.L.F., as it was
known, imposed a program of economic
modernization, which in time produced
striking gains. For a decade and a half,
the growth rate hovered around ten
per cent, and Ethiopia became known
among boosters as the China of Africa.
But the real wealth went largely to those
who were already rich, or to people con-
nected with the government, which con-
trolled much of the economy. And the
leadership tolerated little dissent, im-
prisoning and torturing thousands of
political opponents.
The problems of ethnic division also
lingered. The Tigrayans came from
a region in the north that contains
ancient sites of civilization, and they
thought of themselves as the heirs of
a profound historical lineage. But they
were a relatively small group, making
up just six per cent of Ethiopia’s pop-
ulation, and they were trying to retain
control of a fractious country.
In an effort to reset the balance of
power, the T.P.L.F. split Ethiopia into
semi-autonomous regions, encompass-
ing the traditional territories of the
main ethnic groups. The effect, a se-
nior Western official told me, was to
“seed the future with ethnic problems,”
creating a system of eleven mini-states
in near-perpetual tension. For much of
the twentieth century, the Amhara, the
country’s second-largest group, had
dominated Ethiopian politics. Now the
government gave the Tigrayans a por-
tion of land that the Amhara regarded
as theirs, provoking an enduring re-
sentment. Just about everywhere an in-
ternal border was created, people felt
that their traditional lands had been
breached, and that they had been shut
out of power.
In 2012, a non-Tigrayan became
Prime Minister—Hailemariam De-
salegn, a mild-mannered Wolayta who
had trained as a water engineer. But
Tigrayans still held key positions in the
government, the armed forces, and the
state-controlled economy. Ethnic mi-
litias clashed, and resentments festered.
There was particular discontent
among the Oromo, the country’s larg-
est group. As the government pushed
to expand the capital city into surround-
ing Oromo villages, many people com-
plained that their land had been seized
without compensation. Protests broke
out, and the unrest spread to other re-
gions. In 2018, Hailemariam abruptly
stepped down as Prime Minister, call-
ing for “reforms that would lead to sus-
tainable peace and democracy.” His de-
parture gave Abiy his opening.A
biy has an unshakable belief in
his ability to overcome obsta-
cles—not just to see the future but to
shape it. “I used to tell all my friends
thirty years ago that I was going to be
P.M., and everyone took it as a joke,”
he said, on one of our drives. “Then,
once I became P.M. and I made peace
with Eritrea, I asked my minister of
foreign affairs, ‘Do you think I could
get the Nobel?’ He said, ‘It’s true you
have done everything you promised,
but on this I am not sure.’ And then
I won the Nobel.”
Before Abiy took office, he did not
seem to outside observers like an ob-
vious candidate for a country seeking
radical change. He had spent his early
career working within the ruling coa-
lition. After rising to the rank of lieu-
tenant colonel in the military, he went
into politics in 2010, winning a seat in
parliament. He served briefly as min-
ister of science and technology before
becoming vice-president of the Oro-
mia region. By Abiy’s account, though,
he was already agitating from the in-
side. “I was always telling the former
P.M.s that I was going to replace them,”
he told me. “You know, they can kill
you for that—but I said it.”
When the position of Prime Min-
ister opened up, Abiy’s candidacy of-
fered a new vision for the country:shrinking the Ethiopian state to allow
greater freedom and a more demo-
cratic system. It would also put an
Oromo in charge of the country for
the first time. In April, 2018, after a
brief and contested shuffling of legis-
lative leaders, parliament elected him
to the job.
Within days of coming to power,
Abiy moved to overturn the status
quo. He began by releasing thousands
of political prisoners, and decried the
use of torture in Ethiopia’s prisons.
He also ended a state of emergency
imposed by the T.P.L.F. and launched
an overhaul of the country’s security
agencies.
The first months of his tenure were
dizzyingly ambitious. He announced
his intention to privatize state-owned
enterprises, including telecommunica-
tions and aviation, and sought agree-
ments to give his landlocked nation
access to ports in Djibouti, Sudan, So-
maliland, and Kenya. He went on to
implement an economic plan, focussed
on five areas: mining, information and
communications technology, manufac-
turing, agriculture, and tourism. In the
West, his advocacy of freedom—in pol-
itics and, especially, in the market—
drew praise. The Financial Times called
him “Africa’s new talisman.”
Abiy speaks about his initiatives with
unwavering confidence. “I wanted to
add value for my country, and I am
doing it,” he told me. But his leader-
ship was quickly met with violent op-
position. Barely two months into his
term, as he addressed a crowd in down-
town Addis, an assailant mounted a
grenade attack, in which two people
died and scores were wounded. A group
of policemen were arrested for failing
to prevent the attack; Abiy’s sympa-
thizers saw it as evidence that he had
enemies on the inside. In June, 2019,
the military attempted a coup in the
Amhara region, killing the region’s pres-
ident and the national armed forces’
chief of staff. Abiy carried on with his
reforms, and increasingly worked to
force T.P.L.F. members out of his ad-
ministration. That November, he elim-
inated the governing coalition that the
Tigrayans had led. In its place, he de-
vised a new political vehicle, the Pros-
perity Party—essentially the same co-
alition that he had disbanded, except