Abiy seems to be mulling peace with Tigray, but this could pit him against his former allies and deepen other conflicts, While humanitarian aid deliveries to Ethiopia s war-torn northern Tigray region have increased since a truce was announced in March, they have been nowhere near enough to resolve acute food shortages that risk becoming more severe over the coming months.
Addis Ababa is trying to regain finance and investment from the West but continues to support Russia at the UN, As a two-months-old ceasefire with fighters in the northern Tigray region risks unravelling, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is grappling with multiple national and international contradictions.
The Prime Minister needs to look firm to his ethno-nationalist allies while appearing to concede western demands to deepen the Tigray truce, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has skilfully managed alliances with Oromo and Amhara political groups ever since he came to power in April 2018. He used them to obtain a historic peace with Eritrea, to oust Tigrayans from power, to drop the Oromos and then to create his own national Prosperity Party. Most recently he used the Amhara and Eritrea to pursue the war with Tigray.
The election went better than expected but may unsettle Addis Ababa and Asmara, Within hours of his election on 15 May Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a 66-year-old former president and founder of a private university, was warmly congratulated by international and regional leaders with a couple of exceptions.
Under international pressure, the federal government promised a truce in Tigray but is now losing ground to the Oromo insurgency, Just weeks after its 24 March announcement of an indefinite humanitarian truce in the civil war in northern Ethiopia centred around the defiant Tigray region, the federal government declared another offensive against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Oromia, the largest of Ethiopia s 11 semi-autonomous regional states.