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Liyyu Special Forces

The government in Ethiopia assembled the special forces / Liyyu police from scratch, applying doggy recruitment methods including giving prisoners the choice between joining Liyyu police or remaining in jail. The government repeatedly denied the allegations of forced recruitment, maintaining youth of legal age joined security forces voluntarily. Supplying deadly modern military equipment, training and military logistics to Liyyu police destabilized existing power balances.

The recruitment of regular prisoners and POWs was a well established practice in Ethiopia. In the months prior to 1991, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) suddenly began to present itself as multi-ethnic organisation by recruiting prisoners of war of various soughtafter national backgrounds taken from the defeated Dergue forces during the last days of the Dergue’s regime. In 2022 authorities in Ethiopia's war-shattered Tigray region are forcing young people to join their army's fight against the central government by threatening and jailing relatives, according to captured fighters and residents. Ethiopian government officials received multiple reports of forced recruitment.

Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and in some cases life threatening. Problems included gross overcrowding and inadequate food, water, sanitation, and medical care. Overcrowding reportedly was common, especially in prison sleeping quarters. The nongovernmental organization (NGO) World Prison Brief estimated the country’s prisons held 110,000 persons in March 2020, although they had no estimate of the prison system’s capacity. Prison cells were small and cramped. By 2022 there were increasing trends of security forces holding detainees without charges, beating detainees, and arresting family members in lieu of suspects at large.

National and regional police forces are responsible for law enforcement and maintenance of order, with the Ethiopian National Defense Force sometimes providing internal security support. The Ethiopian Federal Police report to the Prime Minister’s Office. The Ethiopian National Defense Force reports to the Ministry of Defense. The regional governments control regional security forces, which generally operate independently from the federal government and in some cases operate as regional defense forces maintaining national borders.

Members of Amhara's special forces and allied militias vowed to oppose the 06 April 2023 order to integrate regional special forces into the police or national army. Thousands protested against the federal government order, setting up a standoff with the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who said in a statement that the plan was “for the sake of Ethiopia's national unity.” The order applied to all of Ethiopia's 11 regions, which have their own regional armies and the right to use their own language.

"Realizing that the issue is not a disarmament issue, but to get more training and weapons and enter the structures where they can better serve the country, the cabinet of the region, after a wide discussion in today's meeting, unanimously supported the decision," Somali Fast info reported of the vote by the Cabinet of the Somali Regional state to implement the federal government's plan for "the reorganization of the special forces of the region".

The order was received particularly badly in Amhara, the second biggest state, which had fallen out with Abiy recently. Special forces and militias from Amhara fought in support of the federal army during its two-year war in the neighbouring Tigray region. The conflict, which killed tens of thousands, ended with a truce in November 2022. But in subsequent months, Amhara leaders and activists accused Abiy's government of turning a blind eye to atrocities committed against ethnic Amharas living in the neighbouring Oromiya region and of planning to hand back territory captured from Tigray forces during the war. They say the dissolution of their region's special forces would leave them vulnerable to attacks from Tigray and Oromiya.

The federal government is entrusted with establishing and administering the “national defence and public security forces as well as a federal police force,” as Article 51 of the Ethiopian Constitution stipulates. On the flip side, regional states are endowed with the power “[t]o establish and administer a state police force, and to maintain public order and peace within the State” based on Article 52.

“Liyyu” is an Amharic expression to mean “special”, so Liyyu police denotes a “special police”. The Liyyu police was first created in 2008 in the Somali People’s Regional State of the ethnically constituted federal government of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian military maintains a significant presence in the major towns and some strategically important villages. However, the rural areas remain largely out of the military’s control and so it relies heavily on locally recruited informers and militia for military intelligence, supplemental forces, and local knowledge. In addition to a surge in forced recruitment of pro-government forces, there were also a number of longer-established pro-government militias which tended to be more voluntarily recruited, most of them composed of the same Ogaadeeni subclans and some from non-Ogaadeeni clans. These militias are known as tadaaqi (literally, riflemen in Amharic).

In an article entitled “Talking Peace in the Ogaden: The search for an end to conflict in the Somali Regional State (SRS) in Ethiopia”, author Tobias Hagmann observes that the creation of Liyyu police is essentially “indigenization of confrontation”. In other words, the government in Ethiopia established Liyyu police to create a façade that human rights violations in Ogaden and its neighboring regional state are “local conflicts”. This was done pretty much in similar fashion with Sudanese government that resorted to countering freedom fighters in Darfur through the Janjaweed militia.

Similar to the army, regional special police forces are organized in divisions, battalions, and squads. Across the board these special police forces resemble more closely the defence forces than any type of conventional police. If there is any difference, it is only in the name or the uniforms they wear, and as more and more former army officers join the ranks of special police forces, lines between the two are becoming increasingly blurred. some regional states like Tigray have abandoned the name special police entirely. Since January 2021, for example, the Tigrayan special police was renamed to the TDF. In Oromia and Amhara, the preferred term remains Liyu Hayle, or “special force.”

Like many federal and devolved systems, Ethiopia has both federal and regional security forces. In the last fifteen years, however, Ethiopia’s regional states have established regional special police forces, in addition to the regular regional state police. Established first in Ethiopia’s Somali region in 2007 to conduct counter-insurgency operations and riot control, special police quickly spread to all other regions of Ethiopia.

The role and status of special police forces in Ethiopia remain contested. Resembling paramilitary forces, the regional special police units are well armed and receive military training. They are rapidly growing in size and have successfully recruited senior (former) army officers into their ranks. Special police forces have become deeply involved in Ethiopia’s interregional conflicts and border disputes, most notably in the current conflict in Tigray. They have even been involved in international operations in Somalia and Sudan and internal coup attempts. They have also been linked to severe human rights abuses.

While federal and regional governments are empowered to establish their respective police forces, no specific legal provision deals with the special police force. As trust in the federal government waned in many regional capitals, states have linked the mandate of their special police forces with self-government. Still, special police have overstepped that boundary and engaged in activities, such as international border security and settling interregional disputes, that fall within the exclusive mandate of the federal government and federal forces.

In a context of increased interregional state conflicts, the reliance of regional states on special police forces has become a recurring problem. Conflicts between Amhara and Benishangul-Gumuz, Amhara and Oromia, 24 Afar and Somali, and most notably, Amhara and Tigray have caused death and displacement to millions of people. 25 Most of these conflicts relate to claims and counterclaims over land and the rights of minorities in regional states; in all these disputes, the special police forces are among the lead actors.

Special police forces have been successful in recruiting (former) senior officers from the armed forces. In Oromia for instsance, the defense and federal security apparatus slowly lost capable people as they joined the regional state special police. This had two significant consequences: regional state special police increasingly resembled Ethiopia's national defense force and led to the gradual weakening of the defense force. And it has compelled the federal government to elevate the role of the special police, effectively making them a part of the army. The involvement in border security is another example of creeping mandates by which special police forces have gained an increasingly prominent place in Ethiopia's security sector.

Over the past years, Ethiopia's regional special police forces have rapidly grown in size. The exact number of forces that had been trained was unclear, but it was reported to be tens of thousands. Recruits received a six-month training, as long as the training for the armed forces and double the three months generally required for police forces. According to some sources, the size of the Oromia special police is close to 100,000. In the Amhara region, it is estimated to be 60,000 (this number may have increased with the war between the federal government and the Tigray Defense Force now expanding into the Amhara region). 41 40 Other regional states are estimated to have a smaller number than the special police figures for Amhara and Oromia, but all states have established special police forces. Regional state heads of special police and experts are not willing to disclose exact figures.

Since the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn and the rise of Abiy Ahmed to power in 2018—initially as the leader of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and later of the Prosperity Party (PP)—regional special forces have been involved in at least three major conflicts in Ethiopia in Somali, Amhara and Tigray region. Since the formation of the Liyu police, eyewitness reports and victims from the Ogaden reported that the armies worked together with the Liyu police operating as death squads, carrying out killings alongside the Ethiopian army.

On 03 November 2020, the Tigray Special Forces (TSF) and allied militia attacked the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) and took control of the bases and the weaponry. On 4 November 2020, the federal government announced a military operation against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and its forces. The ENDF, the Amhara Special Forces (ASF) and allied militia, and the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) accordingly started a military offensive against the TSF and allied militia in Tigray.

By November 2021 the conflict in Ethiopia had been going on for a full year. There were many human rights violations and abuses - looting, displacement, extrajudicial executions, rape, and sexual violence as weapons of war. The Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Eritrean Defense Forces, the Amhara Special Forces, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front were all culpable. There were no good guys. There were only victims on all sides.

HRW reported in 2022 that security forces ethnically profiled and arbitrarily arrested Tigrayans throughout the year. According to a Reuters report, approximately 9,000 Tigrayans were still in detention as of June 17. In addition, on June 16, HRW reported that since January, Amhara security forces had held “hundreds, possibly thousands” of Tigrayans in life-threatening conditions. Following the resumption of hostilities in August, police reportedly engaged in widespread, ethnically based detentions of Tigrayans. The Addis Ababa police commissioner maintained that arrested Tigrayans were under investigation for alleged support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

According to an 06 April 2022 joint report released by HRW and Amnesty International, authorities in the Western Tigray Zone and Amhara regional security forces, with the acquiescence and possible participation of federal forces, committed grave abuses against Tigrayans, including killings, torture, forcible transfer, rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearances, widespread pillage, imprisonment, possible extermination, and other inhuman acts as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tigrayan civilian population.