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On Thursday, March 23, 2023, the Ethiopian government said that it had appointed a senior official in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front as head of the interim government in the region, after a peace agreement that ended a two-year conflict.
The office of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweeted, “Prime Minister Abyei Ahmed Getachew appointed Reda as head of the interim administration for the Tigray region.”
The announcement comes just one day after parliament removed the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from the official list of terrorist organizations, in a move it said would contribute to strengthening the November 2022 peace agreement between the rebels and the federal government.
The Front, which at a certain period dominated Ethiopian politics, was officially classified as a terrorist organization in May 2021, six months after the start of the war in Tigray.
Getachew Reda held the position of Minister of Communications in the federal government under Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who ruled between 2012 and 2018.
Under the terms of the peace agreement signed in November in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, the TPLF agreed to lay down arms in return for facilitating access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the war.
Since the agreement, some basic services and aid deliveries have resumed to Tigray after it suffered severe shortages of food, fuel, cash and medicine.
