As The World in 2021 went to press it was unclear whether the armed confrontation
that followed between Abiy’s forces and those loyal to Tigray’s rulers, the Tigrayan
People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), would be contained. Diplomats might yet persuade
the two sides to talk. But Ethiopia could just as easily find itself in a full-scale civil war,
which could wipe out the progress made over the past two decades in areas such as
rural health care (see next story) and raise the spectre of the disintegration of a country
of 118m people.
The conflict with the TPLF, which called the shots in the capital for almost three decades
before being ousted by Abiy, is far from the only crisis. Parts of the prime minister’s
own region of Oromia, the country’s largest, are besieged by armed separatists.
Elsewhere he is struggling to quell popular—and sometimes violent—protests against
his rule. Those that followed the murder in June of an Oromo musician resulted in at
least 166 deaths. Many victims were members of ethnic minorities, slaughtered by
mobs. Underlying all this are worsening tensions between the federal government and
the states, each of which has the right to secede.
Elections, delayed because of covid-19 and now promised for June, may no longer be
possible. Not that all Ethiopians would mind: many now yearn for a strongman who can
keep order, and Abiy casts himself as the one person who can hold the country together.
The question is whether enough Ethiopians still agree with him.
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