The rebellious ruler .. Who is the Debarsion Mikael who is chased by Abi Ahmed in the Tigray Mountains?

 Hassan Razak - Addis Ababa

His name has emerged as one of the most prominent leaders of the battles that broke out in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, where he was famous for his television speech and his frequent media appearances speaking about developments in the field. Who is "Debarsion Jabr Mikael"?

Mikael was born in 1950 in the town of Cheri, in the northern Tigray region.

In 1977 he cut short his university studies and joined the "Tigray Front" that was fighting the Marxist "Mengistu" regime at the time, where he worked at the time as a radio communication technician, founded the revolution radio station "Voice of Wani", and led a team of technicians to jam the government's military communication systems Mengistu.

After the fall of the Mengistu government in 1991, Debarsion resumed his studies at Addis Ababa University, from where he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and he also obtained a doctorate by correspondence from Kabila University in 2011.

For a long time, he was a familiar face in the federal government, as he held several high-level positions, including the deputy chief of intelligence between 1995-2011, the minister of information and technology, and the deputy prime minister between 2013-2015, in his capacity as responsible for the economic file, and he also chaired the boards of directors of several government institutions from Most notably, the Electricity Company and the Renaissance Dam Corporation.

In 2017, he was elected president of the Tigrayan Liberation Front, becoming its fourth president since its founding in 1975.

Researcher Omar Ahmed says that the election of Diprosion came after a difficult labor and a sharp division within the members of the central committee of the front (45 members) in light of the stifling political crisis that Ethiopia witnessed in 2017, represented by the ongoing protests by the Oromo ethnicity, which were later joined by the Amharic ethnicity.

Omar explained that the November 2017 meetings ended with the selection of Debarsion as a new president to succeed Abi Woldo, indicating that the reasons for his nomination came by virtue of his fame at the center level.

Omar Ahmed notes that the election of Debrison was frustrating for the reformists within the front, who were demanding that it be subjected to a deep renewal that responds to the crisis the country was experiencing, accusing the conservative hawks of excluding youth and intellectuals from decision-making.

In January 2018, Debrecion resigned from his post as Minister of Science and Technology, and moved to the city of Mikkeli, capital of the Tigray region, where he was elected deputy governor of the region.

A political quake,

and only a month after assuming his new position, a political shock occurred in Ethiopia, represented by the resignation of "Hailemariam Desalegn" on February 15, 2018 from the premiership and the position of head of the ruling party (the Revolutionary Front for the Peoples of Ethiopia).

The "Tigrayan Front" has been influential within this party for more than 3 decades.

And political analyst Alm Gitachto says that the vacancy of the prime minister's post would have resulted in the nomination of a new personality, which was a great surprise to Debreuse, who was not ready for this step.

He adds that Debrision needed to take a breather and rearrange the papers, but things developed quickly, on March 27, 2018, the ruling coalition elected Abiy Ahmed as its new president, and then Parliament approved his appointment as Prime Minister of Ethiopia.

Getachetto explained that, upon his appointment, Abiy Ahmed embarked on implementing a series of profound reforms and revisions to change the mental image of the political system, which represented a new challenge to the Berbers.

He points to the difference between the two men regarding the issue of normalization between Eritrea and Ethiopia, as Eritrea is the archenemy of the front.

Although Debrecion officially declared, on July 28, 2018, his support for normalization between the two countries, he later retreated under the pretext that the "Tigrayan Front" was excluded from participating in the peace-making process with Eritrea. He later accused Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki of interfering in Ethiopian affairs.

To the fighting

, Debarsion’s statements began to take a more severe turn after November 2019, that is, after Abiy Ahmed established the Flower Party, which was built on the ruins of the "ruling coalition" that was officially excluded from the list of registered parties, thus losing the last of the "Tigrayans" Remains influence in the federal government.

At the time, Debarsion said that Al-Izdihar was illegal, describing the process of writing off the "ruling coalition" as treason.

Later, the Tigray region began to gradually turn into something like an independent entity from Addis Ababa, measures that culminated in the announcement of Debrecion in September 2020 that his government would hold elections, despite the federal government's decision to postpone them due to the Corona epidemic.

The situation was further aggravated by the announcement of Debarsion last October to revoke his recognition of the federal government considering the end of its mandate, and he declared that he would not comply with any directives issued by it after that.

Since the sixth of last October, the statements exchanged between Debrecion and the federal government show that armed confrontation has become inevitable.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the attack by the Tigray Front forces on the northern command of the army, so Abiy Ahmed announced on the fourth of November the start of a military operation against the front forces.

On the seventh of the same month, the Ethiopian Parliament approved the dissolution of the Debarussion government and the formation of an interim government in its place.

Five days later, Parliament decided to lift the parliamentary immunity of Debrecion and other members of the Tigray Front. Later, the Attorney General issued an arrest warrant for Debrecion on charges of rebelling against the government and attacking the Federal Army.

After 3 weeks of battles, the Ethiopian army took control of Mikkeli, the capital of the region, and Albarrossion ended up wanted by justice on charges of rebellion after he bore the characteristics of a revolutionary, minister and ruler.