The Nobel Peace Prize That Paved the Way for War

[Zorro]

This is the story behind how Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, won a Nobel Prize for making peace with his country’s longtime enemy — and then used the alliance to plan a war.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Secret meetings with a dictator. Clandestine troop movements. Months of quiet preparation for a war that was supposed to be swift and bloodless.

New evidence shows that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had been planning a military campaign in the northern Tigray region for months before war erupted one year ago, setting off a cascade of destruction and ethnic violence that has engulfed Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country.

Mr. Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate seen recently in fatigues commanding troops on the battlefront, insists that war was foisted upon him — that ethnic Tigrayan fighters fired the first shots in November 2020 when they attacked a federal military base in Tigray, slaughtering soldiers in their beds. That account has become an article of faith for Mr. Abiy and his supporters.

In fact, it was a war of choice for Mr. Abiy — one with wheels set in motion even before the Nobel Peace Prize win in 2019 that turned him, for a time, into a global icon of nonviolence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/world/africa/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-nobel-war.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSlUaBibKWsIjolqPi-LOy7V7i2P-LS-NSD8Hxu4UEs2J-0LAae9lYNE-23GETcUHMKMqQLY66N5jCHFXalvipIqYytNCKj8pqIm3UyRt08vGVOpkqXrhPznnbbonneD670KKOX3uXKLY1nZxJFs0pZB1ZBr9jyxzs6TOEeZ32tN73-5wRcwpAGddO1TZ-qXgGB58O92ZbhrD6gVQW-xRXDvbndX0-KtXOUwJSgqAFCUjlD56vNBMO9oXPLL8LAogcKf9hLYXCG9rLuS5FuPK2esoqnEfkIcMU-6g0M0&smid=url-share

[Tetrachloride]

1. Ever since Kissinger, I am against awarding Nobel Peace Prize to politicians