Ethiopia’s Perilous Propaganda War

Efforts to Control Information Are Only Hardening the Country’s Divisions

Late last month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed finally admitted the worst-kept secret in Africa: that soldiers from neighboring Eritrea are fighting alongside Ethiopia’s military in the Tigray region of the country. For the last five months, Abiy’s government has waged a military offensive there against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which once dominated Ethiopia’s government and regarded Eritrea as an enemy. Numerous eyewitness and media reports had documented Eritrean involvement in the war, which erupted less than a year after Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize for his historic rapprochement with Eritrea. Yet the Ethiopian prime minister had been reluctant to acknowledge Eritrea’s role, both because it would open him up to accusations of compromising Ethiopian sovereignty and because he has gone to great lengths to portray the conflict as a necessary, proportional, and swiftly resolved military action against a recalcitrant regional government.