But even in those early, optimistic days of Abiy’s premiership, as he kickstarted a flurry of ambitious reforms — freeing thousands of political prisoners, lifting restrictions on the press, welcoming back exiles and banned opposition parties, appointing women to positions in his cabinet, opening up the country’s tightly-controlled economy to new investment and negotiating peace with neighboring Eritrea — Berhane Kidanemariam had his doubts.
The Ethiopian diplomat has known the prime minister for almost 20 years, forging a friendship when he worked for the governing coalition’s communications team and, later, as CEO of two state-run news organizations, while Abiy was in military intelligence and then heading Ethiopia’s cybersecurity agency, INSA. Before working for Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kidanemariam ran the country’s national broadcaster, the EBC, and he said Abiy sat on its board of directors.
In a recent phone interview, Kidanemariam said he, like many Ethiopians, had hoped Abiy could transform the nation’s fractious politics and usher in genuine democratic change. But he struggled to square his understanding of the man he’d first met in 2004 — who he described as power-hungry intelligence officer obsessed by fame and fortune — with the portrait emerging of a visionary peacemaker from humble beginnings.
In 2018, Kidanemariam was serving as Ethiopia’s consul general in Los Angeles and said he helped organize Abiy’s visit.
When Kidanemariam, who is from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, approached the dais to introduce his longtime friend and colleague to the crowd, he said he was greeted with heckles from members of the audience: “Get out of the podium Tigrayan, get out of the podium Woyane,” and other ethnic slurs. He expected Abiy, who preached a political philosophy of inclusion, to chide the crowd, but he said nothing. Later, over lunch, when Kidanemariam asked why, he said Abiy told him: “There was nothing to correct.”
Kidanemariam said to CNN he believed Abiy’s focus had never been about “reform or democracy or human rights or freedom of the press. It is simply consolidating power for himself, and getting money out of it … We may call it authoritarianism or dictatorship, but he is really getting to be a king.”
“By the way,” he added, “the problem is not only for Tigrayans. It’s for all Ethiopians. Everybody is suffering everywhere.”
In an email to CNN, Abiy’s spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, described Kidanemariam’s characterization of the prime minister as “baseless” and a “reflection.”
‘The epitome of hell’
The 45-year-old’s fall from grace has confounded many observers, who wonder how they could have gotten him so wrong. But diplomats, analysts, independent Ethiopian journalists, acquaintances and others who have followed his career closely say that even at the height of “Abiymania,” there were warning signs.
Critics say that by blessing Abiy with an array of international endorsements, the West not only failed to see — or willfully ignored — those signals, but gave him a blank check and then turned a blind eye.
“Soon after Abiy was crowned with that Nobel Peace Prize, he lost an appetite in pursuing domestic reform,” Tsedale Lemma, founder and editor-in-chief of Addis Standard, an independent monthly news magazine based in Ethiopia, told CNN on a Skype call. “He considered it a blanket pass to do as he wishes.”
The war in Tigray is not the first time he’s used that pass, she said, adding that since Abiy came to power on the platform of unifying Ethiopia’s people and in its state, he has ruthlessly consolidated control and alienated critical regional players.
The TPLF had governed Ethiopia with an iron grip for decades, overseeing a period of stability and economic growth at the cost of basic civil and political rights. The party’s authoritarian rule provoked a popular uprising that ultimately forced Abiy’s predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, to resign. Abiy was appointed by the ruling class to bring change, without upending the old political order. But almost as soon as he came to power, Abiy announced the rearrangement of the ruling coalition that the TPLF had founded — the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front, or EPRDF, which was composed of four parties — into a single, new Prosperity Party, ostracizing the TPLF in the process.
Abiy’s appointment had been intended to quell tensions. Instead, his drive for a new pan-Ethiopian political party sparked fears in some regions that the country’s federal system, which guarantees significant autonomy to ethnically-defined states, such as Tigray, was under threat.
The Tigrayans weren’t the only ones who were worried. In Abiy’s home region, Oromia, and other administrative zones, people began to demand self-rule. Soon, the government began backsliding into the authoritarian practices Abiy had once renounced: Violent crackdowns on protesters, the jailing of journalists and opposition politicians, and twice postponing elections.
Ahmed Soliman, a research fellow at Chatham House and an expert on the Horn of Africa, said Abiy’s reform plan also increased expectations among constituencies with conflicting agendas, further heightening tensions.
“Abiy and his government have rightly been blamed for implementing uneven reforms and for insecurity increasing throughout the country, but to an extent, some of that was inherited. These simmering ethnic and political divisions that exist in the country have very deep roots,” he said.
Tensions reached a boiling point last September, when the Tigrayans defied Abiy by holding a vote which had been delayed due to the pandemic, setting off a tit-for-tat series of recriminations that spilled into open conflict in November 2020.
“He sees himself as a Messiah, as chosen, as someone who’s destined to ‘Make Ethiopia Great Again,’ but this country is collapsing,” Lemma said, adding that the international community’s folly was falling for the picture Abiy painted of himself — “a post-ethnic, contemporary capitalist” — in their desperation for a dazzling success story.
‘A monumental failure of analysis’
Still, many Ethiopians are reluctant to lay the blame for the country’s unravelling at Abiy’s feet. Ahead of the election in June, residents in Addis Ababa told CNN they felt Abiy had inherited a mess from the previous regime and had always faced an uphill battle pushing reforms forward — an assessment shared by some regional experts.
“Lots of people were hopeful that the liberalizing changes, after those years of anti-government protests and all of the state violence in response, […] marked a moment where Ethiopia would start to conduct its politics more peacefully. But that thinking glossed over some of the major problems and contradictions in Ethiopia,” said William Davison, senior Ethiopia analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“There was always a massive challenge ahead for Abiy, and for everyone. Just the promise of a more pluralistic political system did nothing necessarily to resolve the clashing nationalisms, opposing visions, and bitter political rivalries.”
As the tide of international opinion has turned against Abiy, the prime minister’s office has maintained he is not concerned about his deteriorating reputation; his supporters have increasingly blamed the West for the crisis unfolding in the country. “The prime minister need not be a darling of the west, east, south or north,” Abiy’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum told reporters in June. “It is sufficient that he stands for the people of Ethiopia and the development of the nation.”
