For the past year, Ethiopia’s prime minister of 21 years, Meles Zenawi, was the subject of rumors that centered around his health. Months passed and every event he attended would be cause for worry as photos of his weakening state became apparent to all.
During this week’s African Union Summit, held in his country, the premier was unable to attend due to health reasons, sending shockwaves through the region. On the day of the summit, Ethiopia also experienced its largest public protest ever under his regime, with some reports citing up to half a million Muslims marching through the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The latest rumors, coming from the Ethiopian diaspora, state that the premier may have already passed away due to his illness. At this critical juncture in Ethiopia’s history, we look at the possible outcomes of what may happen to Ethiopia if their only leader in the past generation was no longer at the helm.
Classic ethnic rivalries
The wounds of Ethiopia’s ethnic rivalries of the past are not over. Of Ethiopia’s major ethnic groups, only the Oromo and Premier Zenawi’s own ethnic Tigrayans are for the most part content or politically neutralized. The Amhara are out for dominance and the Somalis are as always constantly on the move.
In recent years Ethiopia has also experienced heightened activity along its southwestern front as the various Nilo-Saharan groups became emboldened by the world’s newest Nilotic-dominated state in South Sudan. Unease about large-scale public projects in the southwestern states of Gambela and SNNPR have also raised alarm and renewed opposition.
For the past twenty years the only major ethnic opposition were Somali and Oromo ethnic-tribal militias, but the latter were subdued early on. The main Somali armed opposition group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) was reduced to near-absolute dormancy after the regime won over the support of the only other Somali opposition group, the United Western Somali Liberation Front (UWSLF)–remnants of the long-defunct Islamist group Al-Itihad Al-Islamiyah (AIAI).
Despite their apparent weaknesses, the Somali opposition has succeeded in turning away the federal government’s largest investors and effectively turned the Somali ethnic region into an inoperable zone for mineral and energy exploration.
Sectarian divide
Religious unrest is almost unheard of in modern Ethiopia, for many its a thing of the past. In the last twenty years Ethiopia experienced brief bouts of religious strife, mainly a resurgence of the old Christian-Muslim rivalry.
The first was a militant uprising in the 1980s by group known as the Islamic Front for Liberation of Oromia (IFLO), though the group’s power diminished before it gained enough traction. The second bout of religious conflict was in the early 1990s when defeated Somalia-based AIAI militants returned from exile in Saudi Arabia with the intent of taking over the country. But after failed attempts to seize power in the country, UWSLF-turned-AIAI leaders negotiated a settlement several years ago with the regime and capitulated for good.
For the first time in almost two decades a religious fissure has opened in Ethiopia and paved the way for a new kind of opposition. For the past year the Zenawi regime has launched a hard crackdown against Muslims who say their rights are being trampled. They have their grievances, the regime has grossly limited the practicing rights and curriculum of the Muslim establishment in Ethiopia.
Protests are picking up, though not of a political or militant nature, and Ethiopia’s regime is facing an opposition that did not exist just a few years ago and it has no way of accommodating this new face of dissent.
Trouble at home
Like any severely weakening or stressed regime, Ethiopia has rapidly increased the number and rate with which it dispenses political imprisonment. Every week for the past few months a new case of unlawful detention surfaces, or the closing of yet another communication service.
Regional and ethnic opposition have rendered large swathes of the country unsafe for investors and placed severe limitations on the regime’s revenue potential. Coupled with increasing distrust in the stability of a future Ethiopia, Premier Zenawi’s regime is losing credibility and control–its two most important assets in projecting power in the country and the region.
The end or rebirth of Ethiopia?
To many in the region, Ethiopia always looked to remain a nation of loyal (or at least neutralized) followers led by a strongman, but the long-held belief that Africa’s second-most populous nation would split are becoming more and more real as time ticks against the current regime.
Premier Zenawi did one thing well, and that was to play the right hand against the forces of division without resorting to heavy-handed tactics. Now the scheme is falling apart and at a rate that few predicted. The future of Ethiopia is not the industrial Horn of Africa enforcer, but more likely to be Africa’s Yugoslavia.
{DN Staff Writers}
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