The dismantling of the “special forces” created by certain regions of Ethiopia has been completed, the head of the federal army announced on Sunday, ten days following the announcement of this measure which sparked clashes in the north of the country.
The government announced on April 6 that it was going to “reassign”, within the federal army and the police, the members of these military units set up illegally for fifteen years by several of the 11 states. Ethiopian federates.
The beginning of the process had triggered incidents and demonstrations in the Amhara region, whose “special forces” are particularly powerful. Calm had generally returned on Thursday.
No noteworthy incidents were reported in the other regions.
“As of today, the regional special forces structure no longer exists. Our job is done,” General Birhanu Jula said in a video statement.
The authorities will now channel the old special forces into their new units, train them and “reintegrate those who have lost their way through confusion”, he explained.
The Ethiopian Constitution provides that the 11 federated states, drawn along linguistic and cultural lines in a country with more than 80 peoples, have their own institutions and a regional police force.
But over the past 15 years, some states – including the Somali region, faced with armed groups and incursions by radical Al-Shabaab Islamists from neighboring Somalia – have gradually set up “special forces”, not provided for in the Constitution but widely tolerated .
Some have become powerful, like the Amhara special forces which provided crucial support to the federal army during its armed conflict once morest the rebel authorities in the Tigray region between the end of 2020 and the end of 2022.
