In a sign of the changing political fortunes of a man who was once a pariah, Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has proven to be a staunch ally of Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, giving his troops much-needed support to fight the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in Tigray.
In a recent address to the Ethiopian parliament, the Nobel laureate revealed that Eritrea, a highly militarised one-party state, had fed, clothed and armed retreating Ethiopian soldiers when the TPLF first attacked them and seized their bases in Tigray, an Ethiopian region which borders Eritrea.
Mr Abiy said this made it possible for them to return to fight the TPLF, a former guerrilla movement with about 250,000 forces, until it was ousted from power in the region on 28 November.
“The Eritrean people…
