There are strong parallels with Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where a federal state organised along ethnic lines broke up over similar tensions...In an ethno-federal state like Ethiopia is and like Yugoslavia was, power is very much claimed along ethnic lines...Ethnic parties, many of them with an openly chauvinistic message, have mushroomed. It would not take much to tip it over the edge. (Photo: A mourner holds the photo of Amhara president Mekonnen during a funeral ceremony in the town of Bahir Dar/REUTERS)
The Telegraph
Warnings over ‘Africa’s Yugoslavia’ as Ethiopia coup attempt heightens risk of violent Balkan-style split
The meeting was meant to have been top-secret. The men gathered inside the room were the most powerful in northern Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
The agenda before them was incendiary: the removal of Asamnew Tsige, the regional security chief whose shadowy ambitions had chilled the Ethiopia establishment.
But somehow Mr Asamnew had got wind of what was afoot.
Unknown to the participants, a convoy of his loyalists, armed and dressed in unfamiliar camouflage, was advancing towards them along the palm-lined avenues of Bahir Dar, Amhara’s capital.
Moments after they entered Amhara’s regional headquarters, the meeting room would be splattered in blood and gore. The region’s president and his chief aide lay dead.
Survivors emerging from under tables ripped curtains off their hooks in a vain attempt to staunch the wounds of Amhara’s dying attorney-general. Events were only just getting underway.
Elsewhere in Bahir Dar, Asamnew loyalists reportedly attempted to storm the city’s police headquarters and state media building.
Hours later came more killings, the most startling of them all, as Ethiopia’s powerful army chief, Seare Mekonnen, and a visiting retired general were shot dead while they ate their dinner in the country’s capital Addis Ababa, 300 miles to the south.
The motivation for last weekend’s attacks, and whether they were even connected, remains unclear…
Whatever the truth, the assassinations have laid bare the profoundly disturbing dangers facing Ethiopia.
Under its dynamic young prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia has been held up over the past year as one of Africa’s most promising states.
But beneath the exciting reforms, much of the country is seething. Some 3.2m people have fled communal violence that has erupted in pockets across the country in the past 18 months, more than in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia combined, leading to warnings of a humanitarian disaster.
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