Everyone wants him to be a hero. But he ‘s not.
Abiy Ahmed is the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2019 for turning Ethiopia into the hope of Africa after 18 months in power. His contribution at that was undeniable. He signed a peace deal with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s biggest rival for 20 years. He opens the prison and allow political prisoners to walk free on the street. He welcome Ethiopia who had been living abroad to come back to the nation. He shut down the detention facilities where torture and the vile human rights abuses took place. He wants to create an Ethiopia that is second to none in its guarantee of freedoms of expression.
Everything seems so promising until the real truth comes out. Ethiopia has got over 100 ethnic groups. Before Abiy takes power, Ethiopia was under controlled by the Tigrayan, a one-party state with iron rules. The Tigrayan managed to keep tension under control between ethnic groups. But when Abiy became prime minister, his idea of liberalizing the system makes the tension become worse and he is struggling to control it.
And when things go out of control, he starts to go back locking up his political opponent. There are reports of police brutality with protesters against him. The people who put him in power, the Tigrayan became furious because of his previous action which is putting many Tigrayan leader in jail for corruption. This tension escalated until Covid.
Abiy demands to propose the election in 2020 due to Covid-19. Suddenly, his opponent accused him to use pandemic as an excuse. Things got worse when the Tigrayans go ahead with elections in their own province which made the prime minister furious.
In September and November, Abiy decides to move his military to Tigray for “law and order operation” which turns out to be one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the history of Ethiopia. He promised this to be bloodless but about two months later, when reporters got access to Tigray, they found out that there was widespread looting by soldiers and massacres of civilians who were dying in the dozens, and sometimes, hundreds in a single incident.
It turns out that Abiy reached out to Eritrea, Ethiopia’s biggest rival for 20 years to cross the border and helps him attack his own people in the Tigray. The war has not ended because of Tigray ‘s fighting back. But Tigray itself was destroyed basically and there are still innocent people that is trapped in the war.
The idea of liberalism versus authoritarian has always been a big debate when it comes to maintaining a stable political condition in many countries. Two of the largest superpowers in the world are US and China which is two sides of a coin in this picture. Abiy Ahmed, for me, is a fascinating story which represents the idea above and authoritarian wins in this case.
