Calm had returned to major towns in Ethiopia’s Amhara region on Thursday, residents said, after several days of unrest following the federal government’s decision to disband local “special” military units.
“Today is calm. Banks are open and shops are starting to open. Transport resumed yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon,” a resident of Bahir Dar, the administrative capital of Amhara, told AFP on Thursday, requesting anonymity.
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In Debre Birhan, one of the main towns in the region, “Today nothing is happening, everything is quiet”, a resident said Thursday in a message to AFP, also wishing to remain anonymous. Gondar, the former imperial capital and the most populous city in Amhara, had also found peace on the eve of Good Friday, then Fassika on Sunday, the Orthodox Easter, the ultra-majority religion in Amhara.
According to an Ethiopian journalist who contacted relatives there, calm had also returned to Dessie and Woldiya. The situation is difficult to assess in Amhara, forbidden access to the press “For safety reasons” and with which communications are random.
For the past week, these five cities, among others, have been the scene of demonstrations, roadblocks and sometimes clashes with certain armed forces opposing federal soldiers and members of the “special forces” amhara or local militias “self-defense” Fano.
These unrest were triggered by the decision of the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to “reassign” in the federal army or the police the members of the “special forces” regional, military units set up illegally over the past fifteen years by several of the eleven federated states.
Five towns in the Gondar region, Dessie, Debre Berhan, Woldiya and Kombolcha are subject to night traffic restrictions, enacted by “command posts” premises, seeming to indicate that they are placed under military authority.
The toll of the violence is unknown, but the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a statutory independent public institution, reported on Wednesday evening “civilians killed and injured as a result of the action of the security forces or attacks by the by unidentified people”.
The EHRC called on the “competent authorities to solve the problem through dialogue and consensus”. On Sunday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assured that the process would come to an end “whatever the cost” and concerned the “special forces” of all regions with them.
On the contrary, Amhara nationalists affirm that the government’s goal is to disarm the only Amhara special forces to weaken the region, which territorial disputes oppose to those neighboring Tigray and Oromia.