Ethiopia

Until recently Ethiopia, with its close ties to the American military, was seen as the strategic linchpin of the Horn of Africa. 

• In May a group calling itself the Oromo Liberation Army vowed to wage “total war” against Mr. Abiy’s government.
• In August, the OLA entered an alliance with the T.P.L.F. aimed at toppling Mr. Abiy — a pact that has borne fruit in recent months as the two groups fight their way down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa.

The Tigray conflict has its roots in tensions that go back generations in Ethiopia.

The country is made up of 10 regions -- and two cities -- that have a substantial amount of autonomy, including regional police and militia. Because of a previous conflict with neighboring Eritrea, there are also a large number of federal troops in Tigray. Regional governments are largely divided along entrenched ethnic lines.

Before Abiy Ahmed came to power, 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.

In 2018, Abiy was appointed by the ruling class to quell tensions and bring change, without upending the old political order. But almost as soon as he became prime minister, 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.

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A year ago, T.P.L.F. forces attacked a federal military base in Tigray and tried to steal its weapons. The group has said it struck preemptively because federal forces had landed in a neighboring region days earlier in preparation for an assault.

Hours later, Mr. Abiy ordered a military offensive against the Tigrayan leadership and its security forces.

The government restricted internet and phone communications and declared a six-month state of emergency in Tigray. But the Ethiopian military, which was dominated by Tigrayan officers, was divided, and fighting erupted between rival units inside the region, according to American officials.

• November 2020: Eyewitnesses told CNN that a group of Eritrean soldiers opened fire in November on Maryam Dengelat church in Dengelat village, in Tigray's east, while hundreds of congregants were celebrating mass. Dozens of people died over three days of mayhem, with soldiers slaughtering local residents, displaced people and pilgrims, they said.
• CNN has previously reported that soldiers from neighboring Eritrea have perpetrated many of the extrajudicial killings, assaults and human rights abuses in the Tigray region.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia ordered a military offensive against the government of the country’s northern Tigray region in a national address in November 2020.

A parade for the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in Mekelle, in February 2020.

The rebel alliance became Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, with the T.P.L.F. at its head.

Meles Zenawi, who headed the T.P.L.F., led Ethiopia from 1991 until his death in 2012, a period during which Ethiopia emerged as a stable country in a turbulent region and enjoyed significant economic growth. It sent troops into Somalia with American backing to fight Islamist militants in 2006.

But at home the Tigrayan-dominated government systematically repressed political opponents and curtailed free speech. Torture was commonplace in government detention centers.

Antigovernment protests that erupted in 2016 paved the way for Mr. Abiy to become prime minister in 2018. His government purged Tigrayan officials and charged some with corruption or human rights abuses, incensing the Tigrayan leadership.

In 2019, Mr. Abiy consolidated his power by creating a new party that was effectively the former governing coalition minus the Tigrayans, who refused to join.

But the T.P.L.F. still controlled the Tigray regional government and an array of security forces that were estimated to number as many as 250,000 armed men, the International Crisis Group said at the start of the war in 2020.

In the war, the government has set out to capture or kill T.P.L.F. figures who include some of Ethiopia’s former political and military leaders. In January, the federal government stripped the T.P.L.F. of its status as a legal party and in May, it labeled the group a terrorist organization.

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TPLF troops seized power in Ethiopia in 1991 with the backing of Eritrea, and the TPLF's Meles Zenawi became the nation's leader. Debretsion became deputy prime minister after Zenawi's death in 2012. The TPLF ruled until 2018, when members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups united against the party. Abiy was appointed prime minister in 2018 and won a Nobel prize last year for his peace deal with Eritrea.

Violence flared in the region last year after Tigray went ahead with local elections that the Abiy government had banned because of the pandemic.