May 20. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, announced this Monday a remodeling of his Government that includes the replacement of the Minister of Defense, Abraham Belay, who will be replaced by Aisha Mohammed, who already briefly held the position in 2018, without moment the reasons for these changes have transcended.
Abiy’s office has indicated in a brief statement published on his account on the social network Facebook that the remodeling also affects the Ministry of Irrigation, who will be headed by the until now Minister of Defense, in what represents an exchange of portfolios.
Likewise, he stated that Mohamad Andris, until now head of the Ethiopian Diaspora Service, has been appointed as Secretary of State of the Coordination Center for the Construction of Democracy, a position in which he will have the rank of minister.
The country is mired in a spike in violence despite the peace agreement signed in 2022 with the Tigray Popular Liberation Front (TPLF), which ended the war unleashed in November 2020 between the group and the Forces Ethiopian armies in the Tigray region (north).
In fact, United Nations experts warned in September 2023 that, despite this agreement, violence in the country had acquired an “almost national scale”, with “alarming reports of violations against civilians” in Tigray and the Amhara region, also located in the north of the country.
The Ethiopian Government declared a state of emergency in Amhara in August 2023 after months of clashes between the security forces and the Fano militias, which collaborated with the Amhara forces during the war against the TPLF, thus fighting on the side of the Armed Forces. Ethiopians.
Tensions erupted over the authorities’ decision to dissolve the regional special forces – including the especially powerful Amhara ones – within the framework of the peace process with the TPLF. Various members of these special forces joined the Fano militias and attacked the Army and politicians for this measure.
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