For weeks there had been troubling signs: homes raided by unknown assailants; activists beaten in the street. Then, on March 11th, armed men appeared in Adigrat, a town in Ethiopia’s semi-autonomous Tigray region near the border with Eritrea. Their faces covered with black masks, they stormed government buildings and arrested the mayor. Elsewhere in Tigray similar scenes unfolded. By March 14th soldiers appeared to be in control of the regional capital, Mekele. Getachew Reda, Tigray’s interim president, had left on a plane for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Several of Mr Getachew’s allies are said to have gone into hiding.
The masked soldiers belong to the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF), the region’s army. By attempting what is, in effect, a coup, they may have triggered the most consequential crisis since the end of the civil war that devastated northern Ethiopia between 2020 and 2022. Depending on the actions of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s president, it could spark a new regional war in a part of Africa already beset by multiple overlapping conflicts.
On the face of it, the coup attempt is a deepening of the schism in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s ruling party. The coup’s leader, Tigray’s former president Debretsion Gebremichael, sees Mr Getachew’s interim administration, formed as part of the deal that ended the war between Mr Abiy and the TPLF in 2022, as Mr Abiy’s puppet. His allies claim the aim of the coup is to ensure that deal is properly implemented. But Mr Debretsion may also be mourning his old job and the control over Tigray’s resources that came with it.
The crisis matters because of its potential effect on Ethiopia’s troubled relationship with Eritrea. A peace deal in 2018 ended hostilities between the two countries that had lasted nearly two decades, including an all-out war from 1998 to 2000. During the war in Tigray between 2020 and 2022 Mr Abiy and Mr Isaias made common cause against the TPLF, a mutual foe (it ruled Ethiopia before Mr Abiy came to power and helped defeat Eritrea in the border war in 2000).
They have since fallen out again. Mr Isaias is arming Ethiopian opposition forces and has struck an alliance with Egypt and Somalia, Ethiopia’s adversaries. Mr Abiy’s supporters have stepped up talk about Ethiopia’s need for a naval base on the Red Sea. Many Eritreans fear the prime minister covets their ports.
The crisis in Tigray, which sits on the border between the two countries, makes the volatile relationship more dangerous. The TDF, which staged last week’s coup attempt, still has tens of thousands of fighters under arms. That could tip the scales in any conflict. Mr Abiy has courted the TDF in the past, asking it to join him in a war against Eritrea.
TDF leaders are understood to have declined the prime minister’s overtures. Now, some appear to be trying to forge an alliance with Eritrea to overthrow Mr Abiy’s government. Credible reports say that Eritrean military advisers and intelligence officers have arrived in Adigrat and Mekele in recent days.
Much will depend on whether Mr Abiy chooses to defuse or stoke tensions. De-escalation may be on the cards. The prime minister has held discreet talks in Addis Ababa with both Tigrayan factions and appears to have offered concessions to Mr Debretsion rather than send troops to try to restore Mr Getachew to his post. Such a move could trigger fighting with the TDF and perhaps draw in Eritrea.
But there are also signs that Mr Abiy is preparing for something bigger and more dangerous. In the past week large military convoys, including tanks, lorries and bulldozers, have been moving through Afar to the east of Tigray (see map). They are heading towards Bure, near the border with Eritrea and 70km west of the Eritrean port of Assab, which the prime minister has long had in his sights. For months Mr Isaias has told foreign interlocutors that Ethiopia is planning an assault on the harbour. In February he is said to have ordered nationwide military mobilisation.
Each side may be flexing its muscles in order to force the other to make concessions. The Ethiopian army, already bogged down fighting two local insurgencies, is in no state to fight another war. There is little discernible public appetite for one. Yet the chance of miscalculation on all sides remains uncomfortably high. ■
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