How Ethiopia PM Abiy Ahmed Went From Nobel Peace Prize to Tigray Crisis
- Failure to manage ethnic tensions at root of Abiy’s troubles
- Bond yields soar as rebel troops threaten capital city
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
Photographer: Jemal Countess/Getty Images
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Few leaders have seen their fortunes turn as dramatically as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel laureate now accused of human rights abuses whose officials on Sunday asked residents to secure the capital against a potential assault by rebel forces.
What went wrong, according to close observers, was Abiy’s failure to navigate the deep ethnic divisions that have consumed Africa’s second-most-populous nation since the 1960s. Now, isolated by the U.S. and Europe, his own future suddenly looks much more tenuous.