Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 09/2012

Ethiopia After Meles

August 2012

International Crisis Group

Abstract

"Ethiopia after Meles", the latest International Crisis Group briefing, analyses the profound national and regional consequences expected from the death of the man at the epicentre of his country’s life for more than two decades. Meles engineered one-man rule within the virtually one-party system of his Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an ethnic party representing a minority group within an ethnically diverse country that co-opted other ethnic elites into the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). His successor will lead a weaker regime facing mounting grievances along ethnic and religious lines and a likely increase in radicalism. Without Meles, Ethiopia will struggle to control unrest that could easily spill across regional borders.