Just five years ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was the toast of the town. He won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation,” especially with regard to Ethiopia’s long-simmering conflict with Eritrea.
The Nobel Peace Prize is unique among Nobel Prizes for two reasons. First, it is the only prize awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a committee of five politicians, many of whom wear political agendas on their sleeves; in contrast, Swedish professional bodies award the other Nobel prizes. While the scientific and literary prizes consider lifetime achievement, the Peace Prize is aspirational, with Norwegian politicians prioritizing rhetoric above achievement or seeking to virtue signal. Abiy’s award was both a celebration of the hope that Ethiopia-Eritrea peace might be held and that Abiy would pursue a reformist, democratic agenda.
Abiy had other plans. While Abiy can be charismatic, the Nobel committee did not understand the rot in his soul. He was thin-skinned and megalomaniacal, bent more on avenging past slights, real and imagined, rather than advancing and reforming Ethiopia. He was a former child soldier in the fight against the Communist regime—the so-called Derg—and harbored a hatred common to many Ethiopians who fought a regime that terrorized society and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Ethiopians. As a member of the successor regime, Abiy rose to run the Ethiopian equivalent of the National Security Agency, often bragging to visiting diplomats about how he could pinpoint and direct the arrest of dissidents and regime opponents.
Abiy rose to the premiership in 2018 as the stars aligned within the broader opposition coalition and within his own faction. Abiy did not believe his ascent to be luck, however. Following his mother’s example, he was a fervent Pentecostal Christian following his mother’s example, and grew convinced that his rise was part of a divine plan. Believing he was the hand of God, Abiy no longer accepted accountability to the electorate. His desire for revenge and unwavering belief in the righteousness of his own agenda and actions catalyzed his transformation into an unrepentant dictator with as much blood on his hands as the Derg he fought in his youth. His sense of divine right also led him to justify his attempted genocide against Ethiopian Tigray between November 2020 and November 2022. Turkish and Chinese drones saved Abiy from unmitigated disaster and condemned the Tigray to misery, but Abiy believes God’s own hand saved him and punished his enemies. Today, his religious journey continues as leaders who interact with him say he has gone down the path to malign Christian mysticism, more like Joseph Kony in Uganda rather than the balanced evangelicalism of Kenya’s William Ruto.
Behind the scenes, American diplomats and especially Congressional leaders recognize the Abiy problem. The State Department, for example, may throw cold water on Somaliland’s port for Ethiopian recognition memorandum of understanding due to their ossified commitment to past policy and a lack of general appreciation of democracy and U.S. strategic interest, but Congress is more concerned about any policy that might reward or empower Abiy. The big question, therefore, is not whether Abiy is a net positive or negative but whether American policymakers have learned from their mistakes.
Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no because history repeats in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In December 2018, Congolese went to the polls. Most election observers concluded Martin Fayulu, the leader of an opposition coalition, won but after some furious backroom dealing, the election commission declared Felix Tshisekedi, the well-connected son of a former prime minister to be the victor. International officials, however, did not want reality to get in the way of a good narrative. “The United States salutes the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for their insistence on a peaceful and democratic transfer of power. We also recognize outgoing President Joseph Kabila’s commitment to becoming the first President in DRC history to cede power peacefully through an electoral process,” the State Department declared.
As the United States and European countries indulged Kinshasa and maintained the fiction that Tshisekedi was a democrat, he was disappointed. He renegotiated Chinese cobalt contracts not to punish corruption, but rather to get his own cut. Rather than invest in good governance, he began playing Congolese ethnic mosaic against each other, not only in eastern Congo, where he set Hutus and others against Tutsis, but also in the West, where Teke and Yaka now fight. In order to appease and encourage Tshisekedi, Secretary Antony Blinken agreed to loosen UN reporting requirements for Congolese arms purchases. The result? Tshisekedi has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Chinese drones, advanced weaponry, and mercenary salaries, giving him the confidence to believe he can win wars that he cannot but which will bring ruin to the region.
Whatever manipulations surrounded Tshisekedi’s first election were nothing compared to December 2023 elections in which Tshisekedi won a second term. While the constitution limits presidents to two terms, Tshisekedi now hint at revisions to allow him to serve longer. Here, as with Abiy, he believes he enjoys divine guidance.
The DRC has $24 trillion worth of commodities buried in its soil and dominates the world’s cobalt markets, a metal necessary for lithium batteries. With good governance, the DRC could be to the 21st century what Saudi Arabia’s oil boom was to the 20th century. With poor governance, however, the DRC could be the new Ethiopia, a regional giant that fails to meet its potential. Unfortunately, that appears to be Tshisekedi’s trajectory. He positions himself as the new Abiy, a man in whom the international community placed great faith only to become a symbol of disappointment, ego, and incompetence.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).
