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Ethiopian Prime Minister on the Road to the Front: "A Period of Sacrifice"
As the rebels advance from Tigray towards the capital, Abbey Ahmad has announced that he will join the front, in a move that testifies to the desperate state of the government.
The United States still believes there is a small window of opportunity for a ceasefire, but the prime minister's opponents - Nobel Peace Prize laureate - are determined to overthrow him: "We will not give up until the end of suffocation"
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Ethiopia
Abbey Ahmad
Tigray
IP
Tuesday, November 23, 2021, 12:30 p.m.
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In the video: Air strikes in northern Ethiopia in Tigray province (Photo: Reuters)
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad announced yesterday (Monday) that he will lead the army "from the fighting front" starting today, in a new and dramatic phase in the devastating war that lasts a year. "This is a time when the country needs to be led by sacrifice," the prime minister, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, said in a statement posted on social media. Due to the advance of rebel forces from Tigray to the capital Addis Ababa, his government declared a state of emergency earlier this month.
It is estimated that tens of thousands of people were killed in the war between the Ethiopian army and its allies and fighters from Tigray province in the north of the country, who long controlled the federal government before Abbey took office in 2018. The United States and other countries have warned that the second largest country in Africa could disintegrate and undermine the stability of the Horn of Africa region.
The statement from the prime minister, a former intelligence officer, did not say where he would go. His spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. "Let's meet on the battlefield," the 45-year-old prime minister said.
In response, rebel forces spokesman Getachau Rada tweeted that "our forces will not give up on their inevitable progress towards the end of our people's (suffocating) suffocation."
The forces in Tigray claim they are pressuring the Ethiopian government to lift the prolonged siege it is imposing on Tigray province, where some six million people live, but also want Abbey to be replaced.
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Ethiopia was until recently one of the most stable countries in Africa.
PM Olmert's supporters in Addis Ababa, this month (Photo: AP)
The prime minister's statement also claimed that the West was trying to defeat Ethiopia, further accusing the government of interfering in the international community in the conflict. Envoys from the African Union and the United States continue their diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire and conduct unconditional talks on a political solution.
Shortly after Abbey's announcement, a senior State Department official told reporters that Washington still believes there is "a small window of opportunity" to stop the war.
Within a year, the government description of the conflict in Tigray changed from "law enforcement operation" to "existential war." Ethiopia's army has reportedly weakened in recent months, and with its withdrawal from Tigray in June, regional ethnic forces have strengthened and my father's government has urged all eligible citizens to join the struggle.
The prime minister held a meeting of the leadership of the ruling "prosperity" party yesterday, and Defense Minister Avraham Blay told state media that "all security forces will begin taking special measures and tactics starting tomorrow."
He refused to elaborate.
The war map in Ethiopia (Photo: image processing, Walla system!)
Abbey's announcement stunned the nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, Evel Allo, a senior law professor at Kill University in the UK.
"The message is replete with the language of martyrdom and sacrifice," he tweeted.
"It's so unusual and unprecedented, and shows how desperate the situation is."
In his speech at the 2019 Nobel Prize, Abbey spoke passionately about war: "I crawled my way to peace through the dusty trenches of war years ago. I witnessed firsthand the horrors of war in frontal battles. War is the embodiment of hell for all involved, I know I was There and I came back. "
Abbey won the Nobel Prize for the peace treaty he signed with neighboring Eritrea, which he fought on the border while stationed in Tigray province.
The terms of the peace agreement have never been revealed, and opponents of the current war claim that the agreement was in fact the understandings between the two countries for waging war against Tigray leaders.
The latter were unpopular with many Ethiopians due to their 27-year repressive rule, although significant progress was made in the country's development.
Eritrean soldiers have been accused of some of the worst atrocities that have taken place throughout the war, although Abbey has denied for months their presence in Tigray.
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