Can Ethiopia’s rebels buck a trend?

What’s lost to those basking in the narrative that government forces were defeated is that, in fact, the government’s stated reasons for withdrawal make strategic sense.

First, historically, benign neglect has been helpful. One can’t easily pacify an armed ethnic group that’s fully united. The rebels, according to an Eritrean friend, have indoctrinated the children; an entire generation has been told that they faced an existential threat. Most everyone now backs the rebels. Apparently, nothing that government does right now will change that. This is common at the start of guerrilla warfare. Exhibit: #Uganda took decades to wean nearly a quarter of its population away from the #LRA. The same happened with #SouthSudan’s #SPLM/IO. But over time, previously cohesive groups, when left to themselves and with a degraded existential threat, develop fissures. In-group differences magnify. A breakdown in services is ultimately blamed on the reigning rebels. A new generation begins to question their rebel leaders. The pressures force some combatants to return to government; the radicals stay away. Indeed, in Uganda, some of #Museveni’s biggest electoral margins in the last election came from the previously pro-LRA region.

Second, the opportunity cost favours such a strategy. In announcing his strategy, Abiy said, according to Addis Standard, that the government was losing money, spending 13 times the budget for Tigray. War is costly: #Ethiopia's #Mengistu government fell, partly, because war had drained the country's resources, leaving misery in its wake. Consequently, people wanted change, any change. By stopping the economic leakage, the government can now refocus on easier, less costly goals, such as providing social services to the 94% of the population that currently enjoys relative peace, hence strengthening its mandate.

By and large, Ethiopia could go anyway. War is never predicable. But the signs point to a strengthened government.