What did Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed say about regional special forces ?
- The integration of special forces members into the armed forces or police has been proposed and discussed for a long time.
- There are two reasons why the subject has been raised. The first one talks about the benefits, career growth, and rank of special forces members; the second one talks about the organisational challenges we routinely faced.
- They must go through the domestic and international military education and training programmes. They should possess state-of-the-art military equipment. Because of their grit and bravery, they ought to be allowed to advance to the highest military positions.
*This is only possible if they are allowed to join regular security and safety organisations like the national defence army, the federal police, and the state police forces.
The nation and its people would be worse off if temporary special forces formations were used in place of such battle-proven forces.
*It should not be forgotten that Ethiopia has occasionally faced threats from regional special forces to its sovereignty and unity. We can observe that threats to unity and sovereignty lead to unwarranted rivalry and conflict between the states.
- Problems with smuggling, theft, and unlawful check point growth are also present. These issues are brought on by the fact that we’ve started to think of the arrangements we’ve made as long-term fixes.
- We had a good reason for delaying the topic of regional special forces. The first was that we needed space and time to properly organise our defence troops. The second was that there was no possibility to carry out such work given the threat to our nation at the time.
In numerous conversations with the people over the past three years, the people have requested that the special forces be utilised in the defence. The topic of mechanised training, salary, promotion, educational possibilities, and other issues has been brought up frequently by the special forces soldiers.
- Appropriate preparations are made when it is decided to let Special Forces personnel to enter other security institutions.
The duty of introducing them to other security structures should be applied to all special forces in the areas.
- To get the members of the special forces to join the military, the federal police, or the local police. Factors will arise to prevent this conduct, first through dialogue and persuasion; those who engage in behaviour beyond this call for law enforcement intervention.
*We wish to thank the special forces of each region for their service to date and look forward to incorporating them into further security systems in the future. This decision is accepted by all regional leaders, who then jointly carry it out.