In Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed has won the battle but not the war

THE BATTLETPLFTPLF, in the end, was mercifully short. The 500,000 inhabitants of Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, were spared a large-scale bloodbath. On November 28th Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, declared victory over Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (). A military operation that had started a few weeks earlier was complete, he said. Shelling of the city began at about ten that morning. By the evening Tigray’s president, Debretsion Gebremichael, and other leaders had vanished into the mountains. Crowds in the national capital, Addis Ababa, broke into celebration.But the fighting has not stopped. “Almost all the Tigrayan forces are outside the big towns and cities,” says a intelligence officer, explaining that they had withdrawn when Ethiopian forces started shelling towns. Only hours after Abiy’s announcement of victory, rockets were fired for the third time from Tigray into Eritrea, a country to its north that has been helping Ethiopian forces. There have since been reports of sporadic clashes and air raids, as well as looting in towns, including Mekelle. “We have a plan to retake our towns from the invaders,” Debretsion told by text message.