Ethiopia’s Tigray taps Muslim past

Beirut: Rebels from Ethiopia’s Tigray region are drawing on early Islamic history in an Arabic-language propaganda push to rally solidarity among Muslims online for their battle against the government.

Thousands of people have been killed since the conflict erupted last year between the government in Addis Ababa and its foes, the rebel Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The overwhelmingly Christian Tigrayan people account for less than six percent of Ethiopia’s 110 million people, and the media-savvy TPLF rebels may hope to win over Muslim allies among anti-government forces in the country’s complex multi-ethnic population -- as well as generate sympathy abroad.

Amongst Tigray’s five percent Muslim-minority, Tigrinya speakers writing in Arabic have sought to remind people about the role the region played as one of the first Islamic settlements and as a refuge for early Muslims fleeing HolyMakkah.

But while their references may be drawn from the Koran, "the conflict in Ethiopia is not religious but ethnic", one Tigrayan activist using the alias Mustafa Habashi told AFP in Arabic, who insists his efforts are not connected to TPLF activities.

One Twitter account, "Tigray in Arabic", has amassed about 40,000 followers in just a few months.

It translates statements by rebel leaders into Arabic and publishes reactions to statements from Addis Ababa. "Our mastery of Arabic and our Islamic culture has helped us address the Arab and Muslim world to make our cause known," Habashi said.

After Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent federal forces into the Tigray region in November 2020, the number of times "Ethiopia" has appeared in Arabic on social media has risen sharply.

The term received around 70 million likes, clicks, posts and comments on Facebook, according to social media analytics tool CrowdTangle, data that includes all online content about the country.

For reference, the number of Facebook users in the Arab world stands at about 187 million.

By comparison, between November 2019 and November 2020, amid heightened concerns among Egyptian and Sudanese users over Ethiopia’s upstream Nile mega dam, this figure was less than 40 million.

While Tigray may figure in many people’s consciousness because of the conflict, for much of the Arab world -- where Islamic history is on the curriculum in schools -- the region’s history is ingrained in the collective imagination.