28/04/2021
's investigators in have been directed to overlook personal accounts of abuses and focus only on tangible evidence, a senior federal source told us.
EHRC presents a difficulty for Abiy. It has already embarrassed Issayas by confirming accounts of massacres by his troops in Aksum in November, but any compromise of its independence will damage Ethiopia's image, already deteriorating under widespread allegations of abuse in Tigray. The Ethiopian investigators in Tigray have been directed to overlook personal accounts of abuses and focus only on tangible evidence, a senior federal source told us.
Ultimately, Abiy cannot please everybody. This also goes for Ethiopia's internal turmoil, as tensions continue to build between the core elites of the Amhara and Oromia ruling party blocs. They recently traded accusations over brutal intercommunal violence in an Oromo enclave of Amhara region and, reportedly, against Amhara civilians in western Oromia. About 100 people were killed in another ethnic conflict on the border of Afar and Somali provinces.
Equally, Abiy will be unable to stop the fighting in Tigray ahead of the election (AC Vol 62 No 1, Abiy’s search for legitimacy). Doing so would allow the resurrection of the TPLF, and that could dent the popular image he is cultivating of 'wartime leader'. Abiy will not be willing to take that backwards step. Yet, the competing pressures are such that something has to give.
Issayas’s forces were the spearhead of Addis Ababa’s ousting of the Tigray government. They are there for the long haul
