Ethiopia’s Tigray region has been in the midst of armed conflict since November 2020, following resistance to new leadership from the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF) from the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF).

The TPLF enjoyed a thirty-year rule of Ethiopia from 1988 to 2018.

After 2018, Ethiopia’s current Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed of the EPRDF, surged into leadership and established a new government.

In October 2019, Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for establishing a peace agreement between Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea. 

Against the backdrop of claims of ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses from government forces in Ethiopia’s Tigray region against rebel forces, many Western voices are calling for Ahmed’s receipt of the award to be re-assessed.

Oppositional opinions, such as that of Ethiopia’s Foreign Press Secretary, Billene Seyoum Woldeyes, hold Western denouncement of Ahmed’s administration as “propaganda” to further a “biased narrative” against the Ethiopian government.

The narrative in question is that atrocities within the conflict have been committed by both sides, one that has been denied by both Ethiopian and Eritrean governments.

Writing for the Black Agenda Report, Ann Garrison chimed in, saying, “Most Western press about the Ethiopian conflict has disparaged the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and blamed him for the war, even though it began when the TPLF attacked a federal army base nearly a year ago.”

BreakThrough News recently contextualised the situation in Ethiopia in an Instagram video posted six days ago.

In the video, Eugene Puryear claims the TPLF’s military advancements against Ahmed’s administration is being supported by the West to preserve “capitalise imperialism”. 

Puryear goes on to say, “A lot of this red herring stuff about Abiy Ahmed being a neoliberal is just that. It’s designed to throw people off the scent of the fact that one of the most imperialist forces on the continent, that was deeply brutal, that was sidelined due to the struggle of its own people, is trying to use a war and a generated humanitarian crisis as a leverage point to force their way back into political leadership of Ethiopia. And that’s why they’re getting so much backing from the United States in the context of the narrative war.”