The British embassy in Addis Ababa has been evacuated amid fears of a new civil war in Ethiopia, following Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s landslide election victory. Sources confirm that embassy personnel were airlifted out on Friday evening, a rare and drastic step that signals the Foreign Office’s alarm at the country’s trajectory. Abiy’s Prosperity Party swept nearly all parliamentary seats in the June 21 poll, a result the opposition calls a sham.
But the peace prize winner’s triumph masks a tinderbox. The Tigray region boycotted the vote, and its fugitive leaders are still fighting federal troops. Now, with Abiy emboldened and his rivals cornered, the risk of a shattered nation is acute.
Uncovered documents from the Ethiopian Election Board reveal millions of registered voters were blocked from polling stations. In Tigray, no voting took place. In the Amhara region, where ethnic tensions are high, reports of coercion and ballot stuffing are rampant.
I have seen internal memos from the Ethiopian National Defence Force ordering commanders to ‘secure’ polling stations in contested areas. This is not democracy. This is a power grab.
The evacuation of British staff, confirmed by a diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity, is the tell. ‘We cannot guarantee their safety,’ the source said. ‘The situation is deteriorating faster than anyone in London expected.
’ The last time the UK pulled embassy staff from an African nation was Libya in 2014. That ended in a civil war that still rages. Abiy’s government has dismissed the evacuation as ‘overreaction’ but the PM’s own rhetoric suggests otherwise.
In a victory speech, he vowed to ‘cleanse’ the country of ‘enemies’ and ‘traitors’. That language is a dog whistle to his hardline supporters. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controlled the region for decades, is now a proscribed group.
Its remnants are dug into the mountains, armed and angry. They have already demonstrated they can strike at will: last month, a rocket attack on Asmara, the capital of neighbouring Eritrea, was traced back to Tigrayan forces. The conflict is metastasising.
Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, has sent troops into Tigray to back Abiy. That move risks a regional war. Sudan is already hosting tens of thousands of refugees from the fighting.
Now, with the election done and dusted, there is no political outlet left. The opposition is marginalised. The international community is paralysed.
The African Union has called for dialogue, but Abiy’s government has refused. A diplomatic cable I have seen from the US embassy in Nairobi warns of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Tigray, with the phrase ‘credible reports of atrocities’. The US has imposed sanctions on Eritrean officials, but that is too little, too late.
The British evacuation is the final warning. When the diplomats leave, the bombs follow. I have covered conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
The pattern is the same. First the political fix. Then the military build-up.
Then the bloodletting. Ethiopia is on the cusp of another civil war, one that could dwarf the previous one which killed over a million people in the 1998-2000 border conflict. Abiy Ahmed has his mandate.
The cost will be paid by the people of Tigray, and possibly the entire Horn of Africa.
