This week will mark a year since the start of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Twelve months in, the conflict is widening, the human toll is devastating, and the prospects for peace more remote than ever. The future of the Ethiopian state is so uncertain that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined to release a forecast for the country in the latest World Economic Outlook.

He recalls the popular challenge now underway against Omar al-Bashir’s rule in Sudan; the deaths of Kofi Annan, the first African secretary General of UN, and Winnie Mandela, a flawed leader of the South African liberation movement; the highly positive emergence of the reform-minded Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister; and the international attention to Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege, who won a Nobel Peace prize for his work with rape victims.

The Biden administration is trying to capitalize on positive trends in Ethiopia as it transitions from Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman, whose resignation was announced last week, to his successor, David Satterfield.

Over the past week, as many have been distracted by the U.S. elections, an extraordinarily dangerous unraveling has picked up speed in Ethiopia.  Months of simmering tensions between the leadership o…