The Ethiopian premier has his Attorney General Gedion Timotios out there telling the international media that his hand has been forced.

“Winning the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t take away his responsibility as the Commander in Chief,” Timotios tells the BBC’s Hard Talk.

Ahmed is dealing with rebels bent on seizing weapons and taking military control of the north Ethiopia.

“No government anywhere in the world could accept that,” he says.

Pressed on the declaration from Ahmed’s military that there would be no mercy for the people of the Tigray capital Mek’ele, now facing its final onslaught, Timotios attributes this to a Colonel of the line who was actually referring to the leadership of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Forces.

The harsh reality is that there is a raft of frighteningly bellicose statements out there from Ahmed and his forces. 

There is also his admonition to the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union, who have expressed their fear of growing conflict in the Horn of Africa not to interfere.

Evidently Ahmed feels it is his personal responsibility to restore order in Ethiopia.

Anyone seeking peace and stability rather than retribution and revenge would surely appreciate the assistance of the paramount regional and international organisations.

It is not too late.

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Ahmed won the coveted prize last year largely for forging a complex and difficult peace with neighboring Eritrea.

In doing so he greatly assisted stability in the Horn of Africa, one of the most dangerous hotspots on the planet.

He has yet to match domestically what he has achieved regionally.

In that respect he’s like the 1991 peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

She richly deserved the prize awarded for her doughty resistance to the brutal military regime in Myanmar.

Her star has faded of late because of her stubborn refusal to speak out against what is to all intents and purposes a genocide against the Rohingya people – a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist country.

Ahmed has decided to show his muscle against the minority Tigray people.

Comprising only six percent of Ethiopia 110 million people they dominated business and politics until Ahmed from the majority  Oromo ethnic group took the helm.

The Tigrayan have a special place in Ethiopia’s history.

Legend has it their land bordering Eritrea was the home of the  Queen of Sheba.

A church in Tigray is said to house the Ark of the Covenant.

In 1991, the same year Aung San Suu Kyi won her Nobel Prize the Tigrayan led the fight to topple the cruel Derg regime in Ethiopia.

They have, of late become hugely angry at Ahmed reforms, claiming that they are becoming increasingly marginalized.

They are not the only ethnic group to oppose Ahmed’s reforms.

On November 4, Tigrayan rebels attacked a government military base.

There is no reliable indication of casualties.

Indeed the toll from three weeks of fighting is difficult to ascertain.

It is said to be hundreds, perhaps thousands.

The United Nations says if reports of attacks against civilians are true, it would amount to war crimes.

At least 40 000 Tigrayan have fled into neighboring Sudan to escape the fighting.

The Tigrayan have ratcheted up things with rocket attacks into Eritrea to the north and the Ethiopian province of Amhara to the South.

Ahmed’s assurance that the insurrection would not become a war has proved to be optimistic.

Fearful of a regional conflagration, the United Nations, European Union and African Union have all urgently called for an immediate ceasefire.

Ahmed is having none of it.

He says he will talk to the three AU envoys named to broker a peace.

Indeed he is open to negotiations with anyone except the Tigrayan leadership.

He has surrounded the Tigray capital of Mek’ele and warned residents to save themselves.

His uncompromising call to the Tigray leadership at the weekend was: “You have 72 hours to surrender.” 

He believes that Ethiopia will be pulled apart if he does not completely subdue Tigray. 

Angry and undoubtedly provoked, his bellicose language can be understood.

Nevertheless, it is not the behavior of an internationally acclaimed peacemaker.

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Not only have things gone seriously pear shaped since then, with Ethiopian refugees fleeing into Sudan to escape the fighting, but the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front admitted today it had shelled Asmara airport in neighbouring Eritrea.

The TPLF claims this in retaliation for Ethiopian air force using Eritrean airports to launch attacks against it.

It could not get more difficult for Ahmed, who has vehemently denied this.

The Nobel Peace Prize he collected last year was for forging peace with Eritrea.

Not only has this been thrown into turmoil but the United National Human Rights Commission is saying the peacemaker faces possible war crimes charges for the lethal attacks his forces have made on Tigrayan civilians. 

How have things gone so wrong?

Tigrayans make up only six percent of Ethiopia’s 100-million population.

They had a disproportionate share of political power until Ahmed took the helm.

The Tigrayans paid a heavy toll in Ethiopia’s war with Eritrea 20 years ago.

Already marginalized by Ahmed, they were pushed even further out by the political reforms he initiated in Ethiopia.

The TPLF attack on an Ethiopian military base 12 days ago was both an expression of frustration and a demonstrate of muscle that the Addis Ababa forces felt obliged to answer ruthlessly.

Ahmed’s denials notwithstanding, the fighting has brought the prospect of all out war back to the Horn of Africa.

Before the Tigrayan attack, he was already dealing with clashes between the Oromo and the Amhara, which are the two largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia.

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It is pretty much common cause among strategic analysts that the next world war will be fought over water .

The argument that oil might be the casus belli has been dealt a body blow by the Covid 19 lockdown.

The black stuff remains vital to economic prosperity – important enough, certainly to take up arms over it.

But in the last three months as the economy was forced to take a backseat to public health, the price of oil dropped below zero.

And through the worst times since the Second World War,  the clear stuff has remained as vital to life itself as ever it did.

The most dramatic example of this is the battle over the water in Africa’s longest river stretch 6650 kms from south to .

President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his capacity as revolving chairman of the African Union, presided over a virtual summit yesterday seeking agreement on the use of  the Nile.

The three parties in the thick of things – Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt – agreed to continue pursuing an accord.

That is obviously better than having any of them walk off in a huff.

But they are still a considerable distance from finding an African solution to this existential African problem.

We may take comfort from Egypt asserting that it will not go to war over the Nile.

But since President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has involved both the United Nations Security Council and the Arab, in addition to the African Union, in this imbroglio we may be assured the matter will not go away for some time.

El Sisi would have us believe that the problem started when Ethiopia broke ground nine years ago on the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) across the Blue Nile.

The six-billion-dollar wall rising 155-metres above the water below and extending 1,85 kms across the valley  will make Ethiopia Africa’s largest producer of hydro electric energy and lift many of that country’s 106-million people out of poverty.

Downstream, Egypt counters that the dam will reduce the supply of water on which 100-million of its people are entirely reliant for their survival.

The third riparian country at the top end of the giant river is Sudan, where the White and Blue Niles meet in its capital Khartoum.

It too complains that the GERD will reduce its supply of Nile water. But its position is convoluted by the fact that it will buy some of the 6500 mw generated at the GERD and that the dam will reduce the flood damage it suffers annually from the Nile.

Egypt’s historical hegemony over the Nile was underpinned by agreements signed in 1929 and 1959 by the colonial power, Britain.

Ethiopia was not party to those agreements that it maintain are part of an unhappy past.

It has sought a new agreement with all eleven riparian countries – Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Eritrea in addition to the northern troika.

This has proved problematic because it requires more than a technical accord on water sharing.

It runs to legal, historical and trust issues that have brought the United States and Europe into the equation.

The matter has come to a head now because satellite pictures show Ethiopia is carrying out its plan to start filling the dam.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for the compromise he showed in forging a peace with neighboring Eritrea, has been stubborn on this issue. He refuses to tell Egypt how much water will be allowed to flow downstream from the GERD.

Egypt wants this and more, nothing less than an agreement on how much water it can rely on in times of drought and an agreement on the very definition of a drought.

There is also divergence over the timing of the filling.

Ethiopia says it could complete this process in three years but offers a compromise of taking four to seven years. 

Egypt maintains the faster this happens, the greater the impact on its farmers downstream. It is asking for Ethiopia to take at least 21years to fill the dam.

However forceful the ministers of Ahmed and El Sisi may sound in negotiations, their positions must be seen against the domestic troubles in both Ethiopia, which has had to postpone for a year elections scheduled for August and Egypt which has had to commit its full military capability to fighting insurgents in the Sinai.

El Sisi’s claim to be fighting for the very existence of his people must be measured against the real beneficiaries of the Nile water – the factory owner and big farmers who are all part of the power elite that keep him where he is.

Ahmed, for his part, cannot back down on a project financed by loans and donations from a public that still vividly remembers the civil war and famine that turned it into a basket case.

The GERD is an integral part in Ethiopia continuing on its upward trajectory.

ends

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The country’s electoral board will announce a new timeline after the pandemic ends.

The election will be a crucial test of the reformist agenda of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who is dismantling on the most repressive systems in Africa and mending fences with his neighbours.

The postponement is supported by some of Ethiopia’s opposition politicians who oppose Ahmed freeing political prisoners, allowing the return of exiles and lifting restrictions on journalists.

The Horn of Africa has 25 confirmed cases of COVID 19.

Ethiopia has closed schools and restricted public gatherings as have most countries on the planet trying to curb the spread of the pandemic.

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The East African country has 19 patients infected with the coronavirus.

The decision to release the prisoners was taken by the national task force to tackle COVID 19 which is lead by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The premier has launched a nationwide fund raising drive to fight the spread of the the virus and prepare the nation to deal with a worst case scenario.

Ethiopia, along with Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt and South Africa have been named by the World Health Organization as the African countries that will probably be worst hit by COVID 19 because of the number of people passing through them.

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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government lauds the Sudanese administration for not endorsing the Arab League position.

ends intro

Last week Ethiopia deplored what it called the United States meddling in the controversy over the Grand Renaissance Dam its building across the Blue Nile.

Egypt brought the US into the process when it was unable to get Ethiopian assurances that the flow of water downstream would not be affected the by dam.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is on a tour of seven Arab countries following the support for its position by Arab League foreign ministers.

Ethiopia accuses the ministers of  supporting a fellow member rather than dealing with the facts of the matter. 

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The meeting brokered by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took place in Addis Ababa without any communique being issued.

It is billed as breaking the ice. Observers say it could be heartening news for the complex and troubled Horn of Africa.

Presidents Mohamed Farmajo of Somalia and Musa Bihi of Somaliland are the first two leaders of those countries to meet in nearly 30 years.

Somaliland withdrew from its post-independence union with Somalia after the 1991 fall of dictator Siad Barre who tried to bomb Somaliland out of existence.

Since then its has successive democratic elections but has never gained recognition by Africa or the rest of the world.

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The Nobel Peace Prize laureate studied in the capital at the Tshwane University of Technology.

Abiy Ahmed could not have known as a student at the Tshwane University of Technology that one day he’s be welcomed back to Pretoria with a 21 gun salute as the premier of Ethiopia.

He and his host President Cyril Ramaphosa clearly enjoyed one-another’s company as they presided over a press conference after their talks and the signing of a number of bilateral agreements.

Ahmed strongly advocates building on trade tied with South Africa, which he knows from personal experience has a great deal of expertise to offer his country

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He was speaking after the destruction of a number of mosques on Amhara, north of the capital Addis Ababa.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner condemned attempt by extremists to break down Ethiopia’s rich history of religious tolerance and co-existence which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed added have  no place in the new prosperity focused country.

He condemns what he calls acts of cowardice and calls on peace-loving Ethiopians to draw deeply on their reservoir of respect.

Five people suspected of burning down four mosques in Ethiopia’s Amhara region have been arrested.

A church in the town of Motta was also targeted by arsonists but it is not immediately clear who is responsible.

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