One of a state’s most vital institutions is thought to be the military. The military is incumbent for the survival of the state and its sovereignty. Although the military’s institutional mission is to protect the nation from external and internal risks, its involvement in domestic security issues has grown since the Second World War and Cold War era.  According to military political scientists, when a state of emergency is proclaimed and the state fails in a security crisis, military intervention and involvement may take place.
In countries around the world, a governmental military, which has been designated as the legal guardian of the state, is involved in local issues of restoring security and solving conflicts. Similarly, in Africa, particularly in those countries where regimes are totalitarian, it has been common to see military involvement in domestic issues in the name of political stabilisation. But the case in other parts of the world and in Africa is different. Even though, in most African countries, militaries have been involved in local cases to cope with chaos and conflicts, they have added nothing rather than making more political turmoil and security crisis.
Military involvement may be foreign or domestic. A sovereign state’s direct intervention in another state’s territory and sovereignty with the intention of affecting the targeted state’s political system was known as foreign military involvement. On the other hand, domestic involvement refers to the intervention of a given country’s recognised and legal military force in its political, economic, and social issues.
Since the focus of this piece is on domestic military involvement, it is incumbent to be explicit on it. Domestic military involvement in politics refers to the military’s intervention in a state’s internal political affairs for a variety of reasons, such as to restore security, protect institutions (governmental and non-governmental), defend political power, rescue marginalized groups, and so on. Military intervention in internal politics is more likely in African, Latin American, and Asian countries, which have had heterogeneous societies, ethnic antagonisms, and weak political institutions.
Since Ethiopia is a part of Africa and has more than 80 ethnic groups that are at odds, the Ethiopian army frequently intervenes militarily in the internal affairs of the state under a variety of political regimes. The imperial army was tasked with protecting His Majesty from any domestic dissent during Haile Selassie’s rule, like from westernized and anti-Ethiopian secessionist groups. The army’s function was reinterpreted as defending illiterate authoritarian elites by 1974, when the military, the Derg, took control. This gave it the opportunity to actively participate in national government as well as the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Jewish, Tigrayan, and Amhara peoples.
Later in the post-1991 period, the EPRDF (Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front) emerged as a party army fighting for the interest of TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front). During that period, the role of the military was used as an instrument to enforce the interests of the TPLF. Concerning this, Amhara and Oromo youths who were against the biased economic and political structure of the minor Tigray elites were killed and tortured by Ethiopian military force.
After 2018, the new political power, the Prosperity Party, which supplanted the EPRDF, has been accused by its military force of using violence rather than stabilizing the country for the sake of securing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (2018- ) in office.
Even though the Ethiopian army has always been impacted by changing regimes and bad historical record in its own country intervention, it has been participating in international peacekeeping and showing good achievement. For example, Ethiopia’s military actions in other countries of Africa, such as Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, and South Sudan, have been comparatively successful in controlling some of the crises.
As, writer states in previous paragraphs, internally, the Ethiopian military force’s involvement is problematic and needs to be examined since it has been serving as guardian of the ruling elites only, and it has been committing crimes. Different writers and international organizations have been arguing that the Ethiopian army has made different blunders in its intervention for peace and stability in the state.
It has been taken as the participant and the catalyst of conflicts, chaos, and violence. Following the expansion of political wrangling and ethnic conflicts after Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, the Ethiopian military force has also become charged with the continued crisis. Some claim that in the Amhara and Tigray National Regional State, atrocities, killing of civilians, extrajudicial killing, and raping have been committed by the Ethiopian military force. Others added that since the military force of Ethiopia has been losing trust in Amhara and Tigray, it cannot bring long-term peace.
As a result, it would seem cautious to take the advice of the United States of America (U.S.A.). As part of Ethiopia’s transitional justice process, U.S.A. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack urged the Ethiopian government to remove military personnel associated with human rights violations. In connection with this, it is time to investigate higher-ranking military officials of the Ethiopian federal government and confiscate military officials from office whose crimes were confirmed by witnesses in order to bring about peace and transitional justice, foster national reconciliation, and guarantee the safety of the transitional government.
