TELELDENGY, Ethiopia – The last time Ethiopian farmer Zeleke Alabachew saw combat was two decades ago, when a border war broke out with neighbouring Eritrea and he joined a ragtag militia that went to the front.
Now Zeleke is preparing to fight an enemy closer to home: the ruling party of Ethiopia's Tigray region, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last week ordered a military campaign that has Africa's second most populous nation careening towards a potential civil war.
“In total, the militiamen in this area are around 200. We are all set and ready to go,” said Zekele, referring to his hometown of Tekeldengy in Ethiopia's Amhara region, which borders Tigray to the south.
He spoke while standing in wheatfields with his trusty rifle – the same one he used in the Ethiopia-Eritrea war – suspended from his shoulder.
Thousands of Amhara militia fighters like Zeleke have already deployed to the region's northern border with Tigray, Mulualem Gemdhin, a regional government security adviser, said.
They say their objectives are straightforward: to help federal and Amhara regional forces respond to an attack on a federal military camp by Tigray's ruling party that Abiy described last week as the immediate catalyst for the conflict.
The once-powerful Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been embroiled in a heated feud with Abiy and his government, says the attack never occurred.
But while the military operation that has seen air strikes, shelling and scores of soldiers wounded is not even a week old, there are already fears it could spread, inflaming old tensions between Amhara and Tigray.
The two regions are mired in a decades-old dispute over land that has sparked violent clashes in the past and that analysts continue to see as a dangerous flashpoint.
For Melkamu Shumye, an Amhara opposition politician, the land question remains “a strategic interest” and “is in everybody’s head and heart” – especially those of militiamen now heading to the Tigray border.
That could undermine the Ethiopian military’s stated goal of keeping the fighting contained to Tigray, as well as diplomats’ frantic efforts to bring the conflict to a swift end altogether.
“Any involvement of Amhara regular and irregular forces in the conflict in west Tigray means it is likely some of them will try and reclaim territory in that area,” said William Davison of the International Crisis Group (ICG).
“This would deepen the conflict, lead to fighting between Tigray and Amhara elements, and make it less likely that the TPLF would agree to a ceasefire.” – AFP, November 11, 2020
