ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia’s army chief Birhanu Jula has said that the country had completed the special forces dismantling created by some regions, finalizing a policy which generated recent unrest.
The government said on 6 April that the troops would be integrated into the regional police or federal army. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed defended the policy as strengthening the multi-ethnic unity of Ethiopia.
The forces had been working in several of Ethiopia’s eleven federal states. The decision to dismantle them created several days of unrest in the Amhara region, where they were especially active earlier this month.
Work completes
Army Chief Birhanu Jula said on Saturday that starting today, the regional special troop’s structure no longer exists. The work has been completed. New units would receive training to help with their integration.
Ethiopia’s constitution gives the states in a country of over 80 groups of the population to have their institutions, including regional police.
However, the past fifteen years have seen some states fall prey to incursions by armed organizations like Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab, which is behind an insurgency in the bordering country Somalia.
That unrest caused the formation of “special forces”, some of which had become very powerful such as the Amhara variant, which assisted the army in fighting Tigrayan forces after they launched a 2-year rebellion in 2020 against the government.
