# Translator press #
Since Abiy Ahmed became Ethiopia's prime minister in 2018, he has led a series of reform agendas and was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching a historic rapprochement with neighboring Eritrea. But since then, the ethiopian crisis has gradually intensified. The central government of Ethiopia and the local government of Tigray have differences over the distribution of state power and ethnic contradictions, and after failing to find a solution, they have fought each other. The civil war has led to a series of humanitarian crises, with a total of 5.5 million people in Tigray and the surrounding area facing threats to food security, of whom 350,000 face famine. In the face of civil war and chaos, Prime Minister Abiy maintained his usual confidence and refusal to respond to the concerns of the international community, believing that he would soon be able to quell the turmoil.
On June 28, local time, the Ethiopian government announced that for humanitarian reasons, government forces will unilaterally cease fire and begin to withdraw from Tigray State. At the same time, Abi denied the defeat of government forces and was very unhappy with the international community's condemnation of the civil war leading to humanitarian crises, massacres and famines.
Source | New york times
原文标题 | from nobel hero to driver of war, ethiopia’s leader faces voters
Translated by | Wandan Qing
*"Universal Insights" is an original compilation column of the Chahar Society, which has been deleted and modified based on the original meaning of the article and does not represent the position of the Society
Last month, when war raged in northern Ethiopia and suffered its worst famine in decades, Jeffrey D. Feltman, the U.S. envoy for the Horn of Africa region, flew to Addis Ababa, ethiopian capital, to persuade Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to end his attack on the Tigray region.
However, the Ethiopian leader led the envoy on a four-hour tour of Addis Ababa, trying to show the envoy the economic progress of his country and avoid the wars and unrest that parts of the region were experiencing.
Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abi Ahmed
Abi Ahmed, with his passionate and passionate appeal to Ethiopians and the people's desire for peace, justice and prosperity, became a symbol of a peaceful, multi-ethnic society in the people's imagination. Since coming to power in 2018, Abiy has been ambitious, unleashing a whirlwind of reform, expanding civil liberties, releasing political prisoners, liberalizing trade, and promising the first free and pluralistic elections in Ethiopian history. Most impressively, a landmark peace deal was reached with old rival Eritrea within a few months.
Abi's achievements happen to be the success stories that Western countries aspire to see in Africa. In recognition of his efforts in the search for peace and international cooperation, particularly in resolving the ethiopian-Eritrean border conflict, In 2019, Abiy, who has only been in power for 18 months, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Surprisingly, just nine months later, the Nobel Peace Medal was cast over a shadow of war.
In November, the civil war that broke out in the northern region of Tigray had turned into an atrocity against the Ethiopian people. Abi blamed the Tigray North Region's ruling party, the Tigre People's Liberation Front, for planning the attack and ordered a military strike.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front is a political party made up of rebels. In September last year, the party's leadership retreated to Tigray, where, dissatisfied with Abbey's reforms, continued regional elections despite opposition and the impact of covid-19, clashing with the ruling party and escalating into a civil war.
Statistics of zones controlled by the warring parties in the Tigray region (as of 04/23/21) / Ghent University "Tigre Humanitarian Map"
The eight-month period of ethnic violence has led to mass killings, kidnappings and sexual violence, killing hundreds of people and displacing 2 million people. Neighbouring Eritrea has also been involved in the conflict, in which the Eritrean army used "starvation as a weapon of war" to prevent aid from entering the Tigray region, directly leading to a humanitarian crisis.
A United Nations report released in April showed that more than 5 million people in the region are in urgent need of food aid, of whom 350,000 are threatened by famine. Mark Lowcock, a senior U.N. humanitarian affairs official, said last week that the famine in the Tigray region and northern Ethiopia would risk hundreds of thousands of deaths, the worst since the 250,000-strong somali famine of the 1990s.
Complete one's misery. The Long Domination of state power by the Tigres, who make up 8 percent of the country's population, marginalized the Oromia, the largest population, and sparked an armed rebellion. At the same time, the refugee problem caused by the ethnic crisis has exacerbated the border dispute between Ethiopia and the Sudan and has led to a major military confrontation.
In the face of this situation, high hopes are high for the Ethiopian parliamentary elections on 21 June as the country's first free vote and a great opportunity to overthrow decades of authoritarian rule. But now it seems that the election only highlighted the division in Ethiopia and the people's doubts about the country.
Ethiopia has experienced COVID-19, famine, civil war and humanitarian crisis
Faced with questions from people and Western countries, the Prime Minister's Office did not publicly respond. Previously, Abi has repeatedly downplayed the Tigray conflict as "law and order action" and insisted on pushing for a modern, economically vibrant Ethiopia. However, the United States, which has provided economic assistance to Ethiopia, is pressuring Abbey to end the hostilities in Tigray. A few weeks later, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken imposed a visa ban on Ethiopian officials as a warning.
After government forces entered Tigray and launched ground and military operations in the Tigray area, U.S. Senator Chris Coons, who has long been concerned about Africa, called Abbey at the end of November to say that it was dangerous for the region to resort to military force, and that the United States assumed a quick victory at the beginning of the Civil War and World War I, but the fact was that the war lasted for years and killed millions of people. Kuhns said: "Prime Minister Abi has no scruples and is confident of ending the war in six weeks. ”
In February, Kuhns spoke again with Abi, warning that an outbreak of ethnic hatred could crush the country and that ethiopia would not want Ethiopia to repeat the mistakes of the 1990s Yugoslav civil war. Abi disagreed and responded that Ethiopia was "a great country with a great history."
Abi's shift from Nobel Peace Prize laureate to wartime leader has prompted some of his allies to rethink. Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the glow of the Nobel Prize and the strong desire for African success stories have blinded many Western countries to his shortcomings. Limited knowledge of Africa has led The West to classify the continent's leaders as "good" or "bad" too easily and hastily, with no gray area between good and bad.
De Vermont said: "It must be admitted that we have contributed to Abbey's consistent self-confidence. The awards and financial support given to him by the international community are equivalent to giving him a blank check and letting him play. We didn't intervene properly when he started to move down the wrong path, and it may be too late to act now. "
Editor-in-Charge: Fang Rouyin Lang Yajiao
Photo editor: Xu Kunyang
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