By Alexander Ekemenah, Chief Analyst, NEXTMONEY
Introduction
For many African media houses, there is high possibility of the ongoing Ethiopian-Tigrayan armed conflict escaping adequate or critical attention. This is because many individual African countries are faced with their own specific problems of the character of existential challenges that often preclude deep interest or involvement in other countries’ internal problems of their own makings – except for mischief purpose. For instance, Nigeria is faced with a high intensity insecurity framed by raging insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and herdsmen killings in the northern part of the country including increasing killings in the southeastern part of the country. Additionally, Nigeria is gradually being enveloped by politics of 2023 elections as presidential contestants are now emerging from all nooks and crannies of the country. As a result of these unfolding events, little is heard of the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict in the Nigerian media.
But the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict which has been raging for almost a year now is an additional pressure on the continent that has already been weighed down or buffeted by myriad of problems ranging from growing insecurity in many African countries, economic crisis, poor governance, including ethno-religious conflicts. Indeed, the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict involved these four already denominated problems including humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict – from both sides of the conflict. Additionally, the conflict has spanned and spawned the entire region (including the superjacent region of the Gulf of Aden) drawing other neighbouring countries into the vortex of the conflict including global superpowers such as the United States, China, Russia and others.
Statement of the Problem
There are inescapable four sets of identifiable problems as the main causative factors of the conflict and which also serve as the main drivers of the conflict.
The first is the 2018 Ethiopian general election which saw the emergence of the young but brash Abiy Ahmed as the Ethiopian Prime Minister who came with a loaded suitcase of political reforms that has been identified as part of the reasons for the outburst of the conflict especially igniting rebellion on the part of Tigray, a regional minority that has hitherto served as the political elite of Ethiopia prior to the 2018 general election. On the side of Tigray is Debretsion Gebremichael as the leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the main arrowhead of the Tigrayan opposition forces against Ethiopia – who had hitherto held high-profile positions in Addis Ababa before falling out with the government led by Abiy Ahmed. Things did not seem to have gone down well with Tigrayans who felt upstaged from their hitherto sinecure or hegemonic political position. This is the immediate cause of the conflict.
The second is the ongoing construction of the huge Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile which has drawn in countries like Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia into the conflict mostly on the side of Ethiopia (though with their individual differences) which conveys a kind picture of grand conspiracy against Tigray for varied reasons. All countries with varied degree of interests in the electricity project, including the United States, have been playing politics with the project – indeed playing one country against the other especially Egypt and Ethiopia. While the construction of the dam is not a direct cause of the conflict, it has, however, become source of friction between Ethiopia on the one hand and the other countries on the other.
There is also the ethnic dimension to the conflict. Ethiopia can be seen to be suffering from the inability to manage its ethnic diversity. This is perhaps the major problem with Ethiopia. Ethiopia originally has about 80 ethnic groups but grouped into 10 regions (excluding Eritrea that has broken away as far back as 2011). The Oromo ethnic group is the largest followed by Amharas and lastly by the Tigrayans, among others. Interestingly, the Amharas, the second largest group has been the historic rulers of Ethiopia until the Tigrayans took over in the early 90s after the Mariam Haile Mengistu’s Marxist Derg regime was pursued out of Addis Ababa. The rivalry between the three major ethnic groups and struggle for domination or hegemonic power in Addis Ababa (similar to the situation in Nigeria) must be factored into the overall analysis of this epochal crisis rocking the Ethiopian State that is already causing jitters about the grave threat to its very existence. Ethiopia stands the risk of disappearing as a nation-state the way it is going in the final analysis.
Ethiopia as a regional hegemon is being seen to be gradually whittling down in its hegemonic powers not only by internal strife but also by covert or overt hostility from its neighbours. Eritrea has already bolted away from the “union” as far back as 1991 even though it is currently supporting Ethiopia in the war against Tigray for geostrategic reasons. Those reasons will be disambiguated below. If Tigray succeeds in the years to come, despite the current excruciating pains, then Ethiopia can no longer be “Ethiopia” as we know it today. It would then remain a shell of its former self and nobody can be assured of the sustainability of the remnant of the “Ethiopian union” in this context based on the reality of ethnic cleavages that serve as dysfunctioning mechanism in the African state structural formations.
The fact these fears are being raised is an ominous sign that all may not really be well with Ethiopia contrary to impression created by Ethiopian government propaganda and those who believe in such propaganda. It can no longer be denied that the nuts and bolts that have hitherto held the country together have been wittingly or unwittingly loosened over the years by factors and forces beyond control.
Another dimension is the ferocious rivalry between two former comrades: Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and Debretsion Grebemichael of Tigray – a rivalry escalated by interference of the autocratic Eritrean leader, Isaias Afwerki. There is a sense in which it can be argued that the conflict is simply a fight among the three men. But such a reductionist methodology will not capture all the nuances of the conflict. The three men are simply representatives of aggregate forces that are involved in this epochal conflict including external forces. The three leaders, however, represent different schools of ideologies and hegemonic ambitions which have largely prevented mutual consensus on how to de-escalate the growing tensions among the three countries. In the Western media, Abiy Ahmed has been largely portrayed and presented as Mr. Nice Guy but who in reality is a new political breed or typology. His so-called sweeping political reforms (but anti-federalist reforms) are evidently not well calibrated enough. They essentially failed to take into consideration the political and ethnic reality of Ethiopia especially the sensitivity of the Tigrayans. Riding on the crest-waves of this rightwing populist reforms, Abiy Ahmed did not probably consider the effects of these reforms in advance before setting them into motion. And with his evident hubris and characteristic brashness, Abiy Ahmed has crossed the point of no return in his push for these reforms and the path to self-destruction.
It is doubtful if Abiy Ahmed could continue to sustain the image of Mr. Nice Guy when all the facts are laid bare and objectively viewed. While there is also nothing special about the Tigrayans or their political sensitivities, the fact remains that they are the elite just dethroned from power through the 2018 general elections and they are still smarting or squirming from the crushing defeat.
The Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict is the direct product of imposing reforms from the top without bothering to carry the grass-root along. The Abiy Ahmed-led reforms are top-down that eventually met resistance from below especially from Tigray.
Finally, the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict once again exposes and demonstrates the abysmal failure of African Union, the East African Community and other critical stakeholders in conflict prevention and alternative dispute resolutions. It is this strange failure that has helped to escalate the stakes in the conflict. In virtually all contemporary conflicts in Africa, armed conflict is usually the first step causing destruction of lives and properties and AU has demonstrated its utter failure or helplessness to prevent armed conflicts in the first instance. Political dialogue only follows as “medicine after death”, after wholesale destructions of lives and properties have taken place. The ineffectiveness of the AU comes with enormous collateral damage that is hard to quantify or qualify. Injured feelings or wounded prides linger for ages. What really is AU for when it cannot prevent conflicts from taking place in the first instance – instead of waiting for the eruption of the conflicts before embarking on knee-jerk reactions? AU has demonstrated times without number that it has become more of a talking shop than a proactive body that take initiatives to forestall crises or conflicts. Its horizon-scanning ability is zero, to say the least.
And the Conflict Begins
The Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict began like any other conflict elsewhere when “the falcons can no longer hear the falconer” or when the “centre can no longer hold” for reasons that are argued this way or that way in favour of one party or the other.
The conflict is rooted in the historical dynamics of Ethiopian politics itself. It is situated within the general context of confluence of factors that have been evolving over the years without anybody designating them as dangerous enough to cause conflict in the long run. They remain largely unattended to over the years until they became monstrous enough to start tearing apart the fabric of the social and political order. There is a sense in which it can be argued that Ethiopian State has suffered more from political instability and authoritarianism than from any other factor. The encountered economic crisis over the years was the direct product of this political instability-cum-authoritarianism.
Thus an historical perspective must be adopted in critically interrogating the ongoing conflict – without which it is not possible to understand the background to the crisis.
Ethiopia was ruled under a single dynasty, the House of Solomon, from antiquity until the 1970s. One of just two African nations to avoid European colonization—Liberia being the other—it was nonetheless occupied by Italy in the 1930s, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee. He was only able to return after British and Ethiopian forces expelled the Italian army in the course of World War II.1
In 1974, a communist military junta known as the Derg, or “committee,” overthrew Haile Selassie, whose rule had been undermined by a failure to address an ongoing famine. During the resulting civil war, the military regime violently persecuted its rivals, real and suspected; a particularly deadly campaign, begun in 1976, was known as Qey Shibir, or the Red Terror. Tens of thousands of people died as a direct result of state violence, and hundreds of thousands more died in the 1983–85 famine.2
In 1989, several opposition groups came together to form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by Meles Zenawi Asres of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The government (Mengistu-led Marxist regime) had been weakened after losing the support of the Soviet Union, itself on the verge of collapse, and the EPRDF forces defeated the Derg in 1991.3
Meles led the country for more than two decades, during which he consolidated his party’s hold on power. He introduced ethnic federalism, or the reorganization of regional government along ethnic lines, and he oversaw an era of massive investment, both public and private, to which many observers attributed the country’s subsequent growth. Critics, however, say Meles was a strongman who suppressed dissent and favored the country’s Tigrayan minority. Following Meles’s death in 2012, his deputy prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, took over.4
The almost three decade-long rule by Zenawi and the introduction of the so-called ethnic federalism (to consolidate the rule by Tigray) was what the sole purpose of Abiy Ahmed-orchestrated political reforms seek to dismantle because it marginalized the Oromos and other ethnic groups from the loci of the State or centre of power in Addis Ababa. Thus the Zenawi-led ethnic federalism and the Abiy Ahmed-led political reforms are the remote catalysts for the current conflict.
Tigray is one of ten regional states located in northern Ethiopia, sharing a border with Eritrea to the north and Sudan to the west. Prior to current Abiy’s ascension to power in 2018, the state dominated politics at the national level, with most of Ethiopia’s ruling coalition comprised of leaders from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).5
In 2018, Abiy’s national election win signaled a transfer of power from the decades-long rule of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). While in power, the TPLF had implemented a series of political reforms that marginalized other ethnic groups and consolidated the central government. Abiy’s ascent to power was buttressed by his visions of an ethnically harmonious, unified Ethiopia and initially appeared to be a critical change of course from the divisive policies of the TPLF-dominated ruling coalition. However, internal political friction between the TPLF and the government intensified during Abiy’s initial tenure, as the internationally lauded liberal reforms enacted by Abiy’s government marginalized the TPLF.6
In September 2020, following multiple delays in parliamentary elections and the extension of Abiy’s presidential term, the Tigray State Council defied the federal government and held regional elections, in which TPLF candidates won a majority of seats. In advance of the elections, Tigray leaders warned that intervention from the federal government would be considered a “declaration of war.” Abiy condemned the Tigray regional elections, accused the TPLF of attacking a military camp and looting federal military assets, and then declared a six-month state of emergency and swiftly deployed troops to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, in an offensive ostensibly targeting rebel TPLF leaders.7
Abiy first framed the Ethiopian government’s Mekelle offensive – which began in November 2020 – as a targeted operation against regional leaders in Tigray after failed cease-fire negotiations. However, troops began committing widespread atrocities from the start of the offensive against those they identified as Tigray civilians. A communications blackout near the beginning of the conflict shuttered coverage of the offensive, but the media has since been able to paint a fuller picture of the extent of the atrocities that have been committed in Tigray through firsthand witness accounts, video clips, and other testimony.8
Even as the offensive quickly escalated into a much broader war, with civilians facing the brunt of the violence, Abiy’s government rejected calls for mediation. Eritrean forces also joined the side of the Ethiopian government early in the conflict, and after months of denying their presence, in spring 2021 Abiy admitted that Eritrean troops were in Tigray. The TPLF and Eritrea have a history of hostile relations: Eritrea fought a brutal, decade-long war of independence against Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s, when the TPLF held power in Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. Eritrean troops have shown no sign of leaving, despite international pressure.9
The United States has characterized the conflict as ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans, and harrowing reports have documented the prevalence of mass atrocities in the conflict, including troops and members of militias perpetrating rape and sexual violence against women and girls in particular. These reports have raised the question of accountability for serious rights violations. In March 2021, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced a joint probe with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to investigate alleged serious abuses and rights violations in Tigray, although the impartiality of the joint probe has been drawn into question. Proposed efforts to call for an end to the violence from the UN Security Council have failed as a result of Chinese and Russian vetoes, countries that maintain the conflict to be an internal Ethiopian affair.10
For decades, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was the dominant party in Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, but Abiy’s ascent in 2018 heralded a recalibration of power. This change was an attempt to address domestic dissatisfaction with political repression, concerns about access to resources and opportunity, and the perception that an ethnic minority held outsized power and influence. (Tigrayans constitute roughly 6 percent of Ethiopia’s population.)11
But the TPLF felt threatened by the new government’s personnel and policy choices, and it declined to join the successor party to the old ruling coalition. In September, it chose to proceed with its own regional elections in defiance of a federal decision to postpone elections due in part to the COVID-19 crisis. A reported TPLF attack on federal forces stationed in the region was the immediate trigger for the conflict, but it was clear that both sides were preparing for confrontation for some time.12
The conflict was not so much as a result of the elections of 2018 but as well as the cumulative result of the tension that has been building up for many years before the elections. From Halie Selassie’s monarchical government to the Mengistu’s Marxist regime and to the Meles Zenawi-led parliamentary government, the Ethiopian State has largely functioned as an instrument of political dictatorship of one ethnic group or the other to the pains and sufferings of other ethnic groups whether they in the majority or not. This last point was the case during the reign of Meles Zenawi for almost thirty years. Zenawi is a Tigrayan and succeeded in consolidating the rule of Tigray over the rest of other ethnic groups. Even after Zenawi died in 2012 and with Haliemariam Desalegn taking over, there was no visible recalibration of power in Addis Ababa. It is just a question of time before the pot of rebellion will boil over.
That time came with the 2018 Ethiopian general election. The 2018 election result was a clear reaction against this minority rule of the Tigrayans. The election saw the landslide victory of Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, as the Prime Minister. The election result with the victory and emergence of Abiy Ahmed as the Prime Minister is the final straw that broke the camel’s back of the internal crisis within Ethiopia after the splitting away of Eritrea in 1991. The over-centralization of power in Addis Ababa and the corollary lack of adequate regional autonomy are inevitably bound to cause a conflict at one point or the other – even with the so-called ethnic federalism bequeathed as a legacy from Zenawi’s government. The latter struggle for power by the regional blocs and political warlords including the political reforms initiated by Abiy Ahmed are a manifestation of these conflicts of which seeds have already been planted in the Ethiopian State or the so-called “federal” structure.
Of course, the election result blew open the hitherto undeclared rivalry between the two main gladiators: Abiy Ahmed of Oromo ethnic group and Debretsion Gebremichael of Tigray. Debretsion Gebremichael and his core supporters lost out in the power equation through the 2018 election. A new coalition and configuration of power emerged in Addis Ababa as a result of the victory of Abiy Ahmed in the 2018 general elections. The fallout between the two gladiators was worsened by Abiy Ahmed-led sweeping political reforms which are perceived to have further emasculated the Debretsion Gebremichael and the Tigrayan political elite.
The first shot or strike was fired by Ethiopia when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered troops into Tigray to quarantine or uproot the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) for what Abiy Ahmed claimed to a provocation from Tigray when it allegedly attacked Army camps based in Tigray and looted their assets which was followed by declaration of state of emergency or force majeure and deployment of troops to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.
A conflict between the government of Ethiopia and forces in its northern Tigray region has [therefore] thrown the country into turmoil. Fighting has been going on since November 2020, destabilising the populous country in the Horn of Africa, leaving thousands of people dead with 350,000 others living in famine conditions. Eritrean soldiers are also fighting in Tigray for the Ethiopian the government. All sides have been accused of atrocities.13
A power struggle, an election and a push for political reform are among several factors that led to the crisis. The conflict started on 4 November [2020], when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive against regional forces in Tigray. He said he did so in response to an attack on a military base housing government troops there. The escalation came after months of feuding between Mr. Abiy’s government and leaders of Tigray’s dominant political party.14
For almost three decades, the party was at the centre of power, before it was sidelined by Mr. Abiy, who took office in 2018 after anti-government protests. Mr. Abiy pursued reforms, but when Tigray resisted, the political crisis erupted into war.15
The roots of this crisis can be traced to Ethiopia’s system of government. Since 1994, Ethiopia has had a federal system in which different ethnic groups control the affairs of 10 regions. Remember that powerful party from Tigray? Well, this party – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – was influential in setting up this system. It was the leader of a four-party coalition that governed Ethiopia from 1991, when a military regime was ousted from power.16
Under the coalition, Ethiopia became more prosperous and stable, but concerns were routinely raised about human rights and the level of democracy. Eventually, discontent morphed into protest, leading to a government reshuffle that saw Mr. Abiy appointed prime minister. Mr. Abiy liberalised politics, set up a new party (the Prosperity Party), and removed key Tigrayan government leaders accused of corruption and repression. Meanwhile, Mr. Abiy ended a long-standing territorial dispute with neighbouring Eritrea, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.17
These moves won Mr. Abiy popular acclaim, but caused unease among critics in Tigray. Tigray’s leaders saw Mr. Abiy’s reforms as an attempt to centralise power and destroy Ethiopia’s federal system. The feud came to a head in September, when Tigray defied the central government to hold its own regional election. The central government, which had postponed national elections because of coronavirus, said it was illegal.18
The rift grew when the central government suspended funding for Tigray and cut ties with it in October. At the time, Tigray’s administration said this amounted to a “declaration of war”. Tensions increased, and the eventual catalyst was when Tigrayan forces were accused of attacking army bases to steal weapons. Mr. Abiy said Tigray had crossed a “red line”. “The federal government is therefore forced into a military confrontation,” he said.19
Ethiopia, Africa’s oldest independent country, has undergone sweeping changes since Mr. Abiy came to power. A member of the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, Mr. Abiy made appeals to political reform, unity and reconciliation in his first speech as prime minister. His agenda was spurred by the demands of protesters who felt Ethiopia’s political elite had obstructed a transition to democracy.20
According to the Africa Report: This war has been long in the making. For years, the cohesion within the ruling government coalition of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has withered, accentuated by the widespread disturbances during 2015-2018 instigated by the Qeerroo (Oromo) followed by the Fano (Amhara) youth protest movements.21
The youth protested against government abuse and maladministration, as well as TPLF dominance within the EPRDF. The Qeerroo demanded an ‘Oromo First’ policy, that the Oromo should exercise self-rule in Oromia and be the dominating force at the federal level, due to their demographic size.22 The internal power-struggle culminated with the ascent of Abiy to the helm in April 2018. Representing the Oromo faction of the coalition with the support of the Amhara party, Abiy’s rise undercut the longstanding Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominance of the EPRDF.23 In December 2019, initial tensions between the factions of Abiy’s EPRDF morphed to open hostility when he dissolved the coalition and crafted the Prosperity Party from its ashes.24
The TPLF leadership declared the dissolving of the EPRDF as illegal and regrouped in Tigray, where they started to design their own development policies and political visions of a Tigray “de facto state” with a looser relationship with the federal government. Subsequent attempts by, inter alia, religious leaders to pacify the increasing tensions failed.25
The decisive breach of relations between the federal government and Tigray’s rulers began with Addis Ababa’s decision to postpone the 2020 general elections due to the pandemic. TPLF, believing it was because Abiy feared losing at the polls, characterized the postponement beyond government term limits unconstitutional.26 The TPLF decided to proceed with elections in Tigray, which the federal government condemned as unconstitutional. Addis warned of sanctions and possible intervention if the regional poll went ahead. Tigray did not budge, however.27
During the 9 September elections,[…] it was clear that for them, this was not an ‘ordinary election,’ but a referendum on their security and self-determination. In this respect, it was a plebiscite on TPLF’s role as the protector of Tigrayan people and the spirit of woyane (Tigrinya for ‘rebellion’)—the resistance against centralized rule and outsized influence on Tigray.28 Even local opposition members threw their support to the TPLF. “As the situation is, even I will vote for the TPLF. They are the only one who can offer us protection against the threats from the federal government. The way PM Abiy Ahmed has handled the issue has paradoxically made him the best campaign manager TPLF could have imagined.”29
In the aftermath of a TPLF landslide win, both governments denounced each other as unconstitutional, leading to the formal breach of political relations. From there, it was just a matter of time before the political conflict would explode into armed confrontation.30
The above is the general contour of events that finally led to the conflict (war) breaking out between the two parties (Ethiopia and Tigray). One thing led to the other in a chain reaction, from the dissolution of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to the formation of Prosperity Party by Abiy Ahmed Government, the postponement of the 2020 election followed by the defiance of Tigray People’s Liberation Force and insistence in holding the election at all cost, the holding of the regional election in which the TPLF emerged victorious, the declaration of the election as unconstitutional by Abiy Ahmed Government, the declaration of state of emergency in Tigray by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the sending of troops to Mekelle by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the intervention of Eritrea on behalf of Ethiopia, the counter-offensive by Tigray and the push into Afar and Amhara regions – formed the body of events that characterized this conflict.
From the various sources quoted above, one can discern subtle narratives and counter-narratives creating a confused picture. But what is certain is that Tigray’s revolt was not based on any identifiable nationalism but on what it felt or perceived as political exclusion or marginalization from Abiy Ahmed’s government. A careful reading of the propaganda from Tigray would also show that it is not agitating for an independent sovereign state per se – even when that may turn out to be the ultimate goal at the end of the day. But at least that evolutionary point has not been reached. Tigray can be seen to still be fighting for that “ethnic federalism” bequeathed by Meles Zenawi.
The war began last year [November 2020], after months of feuding between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and leaders of the TPLF, the main political party in the Tigray region. The prime minister sent troops to Tigray to overthrow the regional government after accusing the TPLF of seizing military camps. The government has designated the TPLF as a terrorist group, while it says it is the legitimate government of Tigray. Thousands of people are thought to have been killed and millions have been forced from their homes, with some fleeing into Sudan. Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities, including rape and mass civilian killings.31
Thousands have been reported killed in clashes in northern Ethiopia, as fighting between the military and Tigray rebels continue. The conflict has been raging for 10 months, pushing hundreds of thousands of people into conditions of famine. The rebel forces said on Sunday that they had killed 3,073 “enemy forces”, with 4,473 injured. It comes after the military said it had killed more than 5,600 rebels, without specifying a timeframe. Senior army general Bacha Debele said a further 2,300 rebels were wounded and 2,000 captured.32
It is hard to verify figures from either side due to a communications blackout in the region. The rebels said their figures were from the Afar and Amhara regions which border Tigray, adding that they had seized military tanks and weapons. Berhane Gebrekristos, Ethiopia’s former ambassador to the US, and now a supporter of the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) group, described the government’s claims as “false and laughable”. “The last five or six days, there were major military offensives by the TPLF in the two regions. In Afar and in the Amhara region, they [the Ethiopian military] lost eight divisions,” he said. He accused the military of trying to come up with “fake information” to give a morale boost to its troops. Lt Gen Debele had earlier accused the TPLF of trying to break up Ethiopia. He said one rebel division had tried to gain control of the town Humera in Tigray, but had been “completely decimated”.33
The UN accused the government of effectively blockading aid supplies to Tigray, warning that millions of lives were being put at risk. The UN estimates that 5.2 million people need urgent assistance if “the world’s worst famine situation in decades” is to be averted. It previously said some 400,000 were already living in famine-like conditions. But the Ethiopian government said 500 trucks with aid had entered the region, including 152 in the past two days. The number of security checkpoints had also been reduced, it said. The UN had complained that not a single truck had reached Tigray since 22 August, while 100 per day were needed.34
Evidently, the conflict came to a head when Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive against regional forces in Tigray for the perceived political belligerency of Debretsion Gebremichael-led Tigray regional government. When the conflict escalated with casualties on both sides, Ethiopia naturally resorted to weaponization or withdrawal of funding, foods and other humanitarian aids, including disruption of communication between Ethiopia and Tigray despite international outcries against these atrocities. Casualties in thousands of soldiers and civilians started mounting amidst accusation and counter-accusation of genocides and war crimes on both sides including Eritrea that entered the fray on the side of Ethiopia.
It is also evident that neither side sought political dialogue to resolve the disagreements in the first instance before resorting to armed conflict. This is rather unfortunate. Ethiopia thought that Tigray would be a quick walk-over in terms of military victory.
But things did not go the way expected by Ethiopia. Initially, Ethiopia was able to achieve the expected military victory by reaching Mekelle and taking over the town. But this was short-lived as Tigray launched a counter-attack that quickly sent Ethiopian troops out of Mekelle even with Eritrean forces already recruited like mercenary hirelings. Tigray launched a counter-offensive and pushed through to Amhara and Afar regions after re-taking Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, back from both Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. It was evident that Ethiopia was not in control of the dynamics and vectors of the war. It overestimated its own strength and underestimated the resilience of the Tigray People’s Liberation Force, the military arrowhead of the resistance to Ethiopian so-called federal over-lordship.
This was the obvious situation that compelled Ethiopia to call out on its citizens in late August 2021 for full-scale mobilization against Tigray. It is a sign of desperation on the part of Ethiopia, that even with the support of Eritrean forces, Ethiopia was fast losing the war to Tigray.
Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday summoned all capable citizens to war, urging them to join the country’s military to stop resurgent forces from the embattled Tigray region “once and for all.”35
The call to arms is an ominous sign that all of Ethiopia’s 110 million people are being drawn into a conflict that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, once declared would be over within weeks. The deadly fighting has now spread beyond Tigray into neighboring regions, and fracturing in Africa’s second most populous country could destabilize the entire Horn of Africa region.36 The prime minister’s summons chilled Tigrayans, even those outside Tigray, with the statement calling on all Ethiopians to be “the eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose spies and agents” of the Tigray forces.37
The expansion of fighting has alarmed some people of other ethnicities, such as the Amhara, who fear that the Tigray forces, now on the offensive, will take revenge. “We know the (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) is well-armed and the losers would again be the Amhara people,” Demissie Alemayehu, a U.S.-based professor who was born in the Amhara region, said shortly after the prime minister’s call to war. Without addressing Ethiopia’s root problems, including a constitution based on ethnic differences, he said, it will be “very difficult to talk about peace.” The deputy head of the Amhara regional government, Fenta Mandefro, asserted that hundreds of Amhara residents have already been killed.38
Fear of Ethiopia’s Disintegration
There are increasing concerns about Ethiopian unity as the conflict in the northern Tigray region escalates. It is a sign that the Tigray crisis is getting worse, but this is by no means the only fighting happening right now in Ethiopia. It is the second-most populous state in Africa with a history of ethnic tensions. In 1994, a new constitution was introduced which created a series of ethnically based regions meant to address the problem of an over-centralised state. Until 2018, the governing coalition was dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and was criticised for crushing any dissent. After Abiy Ahmed – who comes from the largest ethnic group, the Oromo – became prime minister in 2018, he made a series of bold liberalising moves to end state repression. But this liberalisation was accompanied by a burst in ethnic nationalism, with different groups demanding more power and land. “You have a plethora of ethnic warfare,” says Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based expert on security in the Horn of Africa.39
Also jeopardising stability is the historic border dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia over fertile agricultural land in an area known as al-Fashaga. It is claimed by both states. The dispute has led to skirmishes between the two armies, amid the conflict in Tigray. Amhara regional authorities have over the past decade accused neighbouring Tigray of stoking the ethnic feud, which Tigrayans deny. Add to those, the flare up in a long-running dispute between Ethiopia’s Somali and Afar regions, dangerously close to the Djibouti border, and a growing insurgency against the Ethiopian military in the Oromia region, and it is easy to see why Ethiopia-watchers are worried. “Ethiopia goes through historical cycles of being robust and then precarious and it’s at one of those very, very precarious moments,” says Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation in the US.40
Some Ethiopian experts are now talking about state collapse as a real possibility. “There is no denying Ethiopia is at an existential crisis moment,” says Mr. Abdi. “How it is going to navigate this crisis in Tigray as well as multiple points of ethnic warfare nobody can be sure of, but it’s in serious crisis and there is a great risk of Ethiopia collapsing.”41
But an academic at Ethiopia’s University of Gondar, Menychle Meseret, said he did not believe that Ethiopia was on the brink of state collapse. “It is not even appropriate to have a discussion about it, in the first place. We have a functioning government that controls the country, except for Tigray,” he said. The crisis in Tigray had, in fact, strengthened “national cohesion” among other regions and ethnic groups, which have rallied behind the government and military, Mr. Menychle added.42
The Tigrayan forces have said they will not stop fighting until a number of conditions have been met by Mr. Abiy. This includes the end of the federal government’s blockade of Tigray and the withdrawal of all opposing troops – the Ethiopian army, forces from other Ethiopian regions and the Eritreans fighting alongside them. The blockade refers to the federal government’s shutdown of all electrical, financial and telecommunications services in Tigray since the Mekelle withdrawal in June. International organisations have also had difficulty getting much-needed aid through. Gen Tsadkan Gebretensae told the BBC’s Newshour programme that Tigrayan forces will continue to fight – including in Afar and Amhara regions – until their ceasefire conditions have been met. “All our military activities at this time are governed by two major objectives. One is to break up the blockade. The second is to force the government to accept our terms for a ceasefire and then look for political solutions.” The general added that the Tigrayans are not aiming to dominate Ethiopia politically as they have in the past. Instead they want Tigrayans to vote in a referendum for self-governance.43
Ethiopia’s minister for democratisation, Zadig Abraha, told the BBC the Tigrayan rebels had a false sense of power and would be driven out of every village of the region when the government ran out of patience. In a sign the conflict is drawing in yet more combatants, young Ethiopians gathered at a rally in the capital, Addis Ababa, last week, answering a call from regional leaders to join the fight against the Tigrayan rebels. The conflict has caused a massive humanitarian crisis. The United Nations’ children’s agency, Unicef, said that more than 100,000 children in Tigray could suffer life-threatening malnutrition in the next year, while half of the pregnant and breastfeeding women screened in the region are acutely malnourished. Food experts say 400,000 people in Tigray are experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger”. All aid routes into Tigray are blocked except for one road from Afar region where food convoys have recently been attacked, reportedly by pro-government militias. The Tigrayan forces say they are hoping to force open a new aid corridor via Sudan by defeating the Ethiopian army and Amhara troops stationed there.44
As Ethiopia’s civil war spreads out of Tigray, the government of Africa’s second-most populous nation is under increasing threat.45
The northern region’s leaders are forming alliances with groups including a rebel army from the Oromo, the country’s biggest ethnic group — an ominous historical sign for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front overthrew the communist Derg regime in 1991 and dominated Ethiopian politics for the next 27 years. This wasn’t what Abiy envisaged when he sent his army into Tigray 10 months ago. He promised a swift conflict in retaliation for an assault on an army base. But the TPLF has since regained control of the province and its forces are pushing into neighboring Amhara and Afar.46
While their end-game is unclear, a repeat of 1991 seems unlikely. “They want a transitional government in Addis Ababa,” said Connor Vasey, an analyst at Eurasia Group. “We are a long way off saying this is a 1990s redux.” What is clear is that Abiy’s campaign to centralize power in the capital is in tatters. With many regions seeking more devolution, the conflict threatens the integrity of the state, according to a key Western diplomat, who asked not to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter. Abiy’s authority is at serious risk unless he can find a way to force the Tigrayans back. The Nobel peace prize winner has awakened more enemies than just the TPLF. “We have one thing in common and that is we are fighting the same enemy,” said Kumsa Diriba, the commander-in-chief of the Oromo Liberation Army.47
The belligerence on both sides is unmistakable. And it is often the belligerence of this typology that often leads to breakdown of possibility of peaceful settlement through political dialogue. It is when either sides or at least one side profess messianic zeal (such as has been demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt by the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Mr. Abiy Ahmed) that this tipping point is reached. And AU and the regional body have demonstrated their incompetence and ineffectiveness in this regard. There is no denial of the risks faced by both sides of the conflict, apart from the feared humanitarian crisis getting out of control – akin to what happened in Darfur. The type of optimism about the survival and sustainability of the Ethiopian State, probably well-placed, is however mediated by the circumstances of the present situation. Such optimism was witnessed prior to the final breaking away of Eritrea in 1991 which unfortunately crashed when reality dawned on Ethiopia that the break-up has become a fait accompli. Pretending that things are alright with Ethiopia because it still has command over the state structures particularly the instrument of inflicting violence and punishment, the military and other security forces, is like the foolish ostrich burying its head deep in the sand amidst all extant environmental dangers.
Matt Bryden, from the think tank Sahan Research, doubts that a political solution can be found at this stage, especially between two main antagonists. “The Tigray Defense Forces has to weigh up the prospect of political dialogue with the risk of losing the [military] initiative. On the other side, Mr. Abiy shows no interest or understanding that he might need to engage in political dialogue. He has… an unshakeable belief in himself and his mission. “I’m afraid we’re likely to see conflict continue until either Tigray is essentially liberated or – less likely – until both sides find themselves in a hurting stalemate,” Mr. Bryden says.48
The window of opportunity for political dialogue or alternative dispute resolutions has unfortunately closed – though it can still be re-opened. What has become clear, however, is that Abiy Ahmed-led so-called “political reforms” have turned sour, leading to conflict between the central government in Addis Ababa and the regional capital of Mekelle in Tigray. But what type of political reforms? Populist oriented, in short, and rightwing in character to shortchange Tigray for what it was perceived to be its long hold on power in Addis Ababa after the overthrow of the Marxist military rulers in 1991. Abiy Ahmed’s brinksmanship and/or pugilist statecraft has almost pushed Ethiopia over the tipping point. Of course, there are new dynamics, indeed strange paradoxes thrown into the mix. For instance, having Eritrea fighting on the side of Ethiopia, despite what both sides have earlier inflicted on themselves few years back, is largely literally inexplicable. But that is the phenomenal reality that makes the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict a complex entity.
Caught in the Horn of a Dilemma
The Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict has brought the Horn of Africa the risk of further destabilization. This is because all the countries in the region has a stake or the other, and from one degree to another, in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict. Nearly all the countries in the region have one axe or the other to grind with Ethiopia for one reason or the other. It seems to be Eritrea that is the only country that has axe to grind with Tigray for historical reasons that are rooted in the Ethiopian-Eritrean civil war that led to the breakaway of Eritrea in 2011, precisely a decade ago.
The conflict has also brought the region and the Gulf of Aden into a kind of head-on collision but in which one can see the ebb and flow of power between the two regions. Discernible in this regional struggle for dominance are diplomatic, strategic and commercial interests that converge at one of the world’s most important chokepoints: the Red Sea. However, the convergence of these interests at the Red Sea also diverges and disperses along the individual countries’ foreign policy or hegemonic thrusts – thus making it impossible to reconcile these interests to the mutual benefits of the countries concerned.
Who gains the upper hand in this power struggle between the two regional power blocs? In early 2020, the Horn and Gulf countries trooped like gazelles to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to launch the new Council of Arab and African Littoral States of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. There were representatives from Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen.
But conspicuously missing in action or the camaraderie was Ethiopia. Ethiopia was missing in the theatre because it already has its cup storming with crisis it instigated by itself through its prebendalist outlook in the Horn of Africa region. It is precisely this prebendalism that has constrained it from successfully projecting its power beyond the Horn of Africa to the Gulf Aden in this case in a reverse manner. Its foreign policy has been stymied by lack of clarity of what it precisely wants (except perhaps its narrowed interpretation of selfish Oromo ethnic-dominated government in Addis Ababa). Its sixty-year effort at containing Egypt has come to naught.
From the Gulf is Saudi Arabia on the one hand trying to attempt to assert its power and project same to the Horn to checkmate the rising profiles of Turkey and Iran that have their specific ambitions being projected to the Horn. Indeed it is the manifest quest of both Turkey and Iran individually to contain Saudi Arabia. However, in the mix are thrown the heavyweights of the United States (who is the godfather of Saudi Arabia) and China (neither directly supporting Iran nor Turkey) also vying for dominance through their privies or proxies.
The regional dimension to the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict is analogous to the complex web of the Nile tributaries with their origins in Ethiopian highlands. The entire Horn of Africa is enmeshed in the geopolitical crisis between Ethiopia and Tigray leaving no stone unturned in the political upheavals of the affected individual countries. Even though each country seem to be treading carefully in this new minefield of the Horn of Africa, their involvement in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan ongoing conflict can be traced directly to their antagonism with Ethiopia for one reason or the other and from one degree to another.
For instance, largely muted in the media are the simmering disputes between Ethiopia and Sudan which has, however, cast its dark pall on the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict. Sudan has been unwittingly drawn into the vortex of the conflict because of the tragic humanitarian fallouts of the conflict.
According to Amelia Twitchen “particular focus has fallen to Sudan, as many of those fleeing the violence in Tigray have headed west to the Sudan border. This influx has been greater than expected and the UN is planning for the arrival of around 200,000 more refugees over the next six months.49
Even before violence began in Ethiopia, Sudan was already home to over one million refugees, mainly from South Sudan. The influx of refugees from Ethiopia will inevitability put further pressure on the existing humanitarian relief efforts in Sudan, where camps are overcrowded and food, medicine and shelter are urgently needed.50
According to Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, United States, “[t]he armed clashes along the border between Sudan and Ethiopia are the latest twist in a decades-old history of rivalry between the two countries, though it is rare for the two armies to fight one another directly over territory. The immediate issue is a disputed area known as al-Fashaga, where the north-west of Ethiopia’s Amhara region meets Sudan’s breadbasket Gedaref state. Although the approximate border between the two countries is well-known – travellers like to say that Ethiopia starts when the Sudanese plains give way to the first mountains – the exact boundary is rarely demarcated on the ground.51
Borders in the Horn of Africa are fiercely disputed. Ethiopia fought a war with Somalia in 1977 over the disputed region of the Ogaden. In 1998 it fought Eritrea over a small piece of contested land called Badme. About 80,000 soldiers died in that war which led to deep bitterness between the countries, especially as Ethiopia refused to withdraw from Badme town even though the International Court of Justice awarded most of the territory to Eritrea. It was re-occupied by Eritrean troops during the fighting in Tigray in November 2020.52
After the 1998 war, Ethiopia and Sudan revived long-dormant talks to settle the exact location of their 744km-long (462 miles) boundary. The most difficult area to resolve was Fashaga. According to the colonial-era treaties of 1902 and 1907, the international boundary runs to the east.53
This means that the land belongs to Sudan – but Ethiopians had settled in the area and were cultivating there and paying their taxes to Ethiopian authorities. Negotiations between the two governments reached a compromise in 2008. Ethiopia acknowledged the legal boundary but Sudan permitted the Ethiopians to continue living there undisturbed. It was a classic case of a ‘soft border’ managed in a way that did not let the location of a ‘hard border’ disrupt the livelihoods of people in the border zone; there was coexistence for decades until just now, when a definitive sovereign line was demanded by Ethiopia.54
The Ethiopian delegation to the talks that led to the 2008 compromise was headed by a senior official of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Abay Tsehaye. After the TPLF was removed from power in Ethiopia in 2018, ethnic Amhara leaders condemned the deal as a secret bargain and said they had not been properly consulted. Each side has its own story of what sparked the clash in Fashaga. What happened next is not in dispute: the Sudanese army drove back the Ethiopians and forced the villagers to evacuate.55
At a regional summit in Djibouti on 20 December [2020], Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok raised the matter with his Ethiopian counterpart Abiy Ahmed. They agreed to negotiate, but each has different preconditions. Ethiopia wants the Sudanese to compensate the burned-out communities; Sudan wants a return to the status quo ante. While the delegates were talking, there was a second clash, which the Sudanese have blamed on Ethiopian troops. As with most border disputes, each side has a different analysis of history, law, and how to interpret century-old treaties. But it is also a symptom of two bigger issues – each of them unlocked by Mr. Abiy’s policy changes.56
The Ethiopians who inhabit Fashaga are ethnic Amhara – a constituency that Mr. Abiy increasingly hitched his political wagon to after losing significant support in his Oromo ethnic group, the largest in Ethiopia. Amharas are the second largest group in Ethiopia and its historic rulers.57
Emboldened by the federal army’s victories in the conflict against the TPLF over the last two months, the Amhara are making territorial claims in Tigray. After the TPLF retreated, pursued by Amhara regional militia, they hoisted their flags and put up road signs that said “welcome to Amhara”. This was in lands claimed by Amhara state but allocated to Tigray in the 1990s when the TPLF was in power in Ethiopia.58
The Fashaga conflict follows the same pattern of claiming sovereignty – except that it is not about Ethiopia’s internal boundaries, but the border with a neighbouring state. The failure to resolve it peacefully is the indirect result of another of Mr. Abiy’s policy reversals: Ethiopia’s foreign relations. For 60 years, Ethiopia’s strategic aim was to contain Egypt, but a year ago Mr. Abiy reached out a hand of friendship. The two countries each regard the River Nile as an existential question. Egypt sees upstream dams as a threat to its share of the Nile waters, established in colonial era treaties. Ethiopia sees the river as an essential source of hydroelectric power, needed for its economic development. The dispute came to a head over the construction of the huge Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd).59
The bedrock of the Ethiopian foreign ministry’s hydro-diplomacy used to be a web of alliances among the other upstream African countries. The aim was to achieve a multi-country comprehensive agreement on sharing the Nile waters. In this forum, Egypt was outnumbered. Sudan was in the African camp. It was set to gain from the Gerd, which would control flooding, increase irrigation, and provide cheaper electricity. Egypt wanted straightforward bilateral talks with the aim of preserving its colonial-era entitlement to the majority of the Nile waters.60
In October 2019, Mr. Abiy flew to the Russia-Africa summit at Sochi. On the side-lines he met Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. In a single meeting, with no foreign ministry officials present, Mr. Abiy upended Ethiopia’s Nile waters strategy. He agreed to Mr. Sisi’s proposal that the US treasury should mediate the dispute on the Gerd. The US leaned towards Egypt. If the young Ethiopian leader, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending tensions with Eritrea, thought he could also secure a deal with Egypt, he was wrong. The opposite happened: the 44-year-old cornered himself. Sudan was the third country invited to negotiate in Washington DC. Vulnerable to US pressure because it desperately needed America to lift financial sanctions imposed when it was designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1993, Sudan fell in with the Egyptian position. Ethiopian public opinion turned against the American proposals and Mr. Abiy was forced to reject them, after which the US suspended some aid to Ethiopia. US President Donald Trump warned that Egypt might “blow up” the dam, and Ethiopia declared a no-fly zone over the region where the dam is located.61
The TPLF has allies in Kassala in Eastern Sudan, as well as old friends in Khartoum, who may find it opportune to help them with supply routes in order to hit back on Addis Ababa’s stand on al-Fashaga. (It would also be a throwback to Sudan’s TPLF-friendly policies in the 80s and 90s when the Derg controlled Ethiopia.)62
The chilly reception given to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok during a recent visit to Addis Ababa, as well as a statement by al-Burhan, indicate that any goodwill gathered by Abiy in the early phase of his tenure is now spent political capital. The other major regional player is Egypt, which has long sought to pressure Addis Ababa over the use of Nile waters.63 The Arab nation already backs Sudan against Ethiopia on the Nile issue. While Cairo had long used Asmara as a proxy to pressure Addis, now that Isaias and Abiy are in cahoots, Egypt may shift its support to the TPLF to divert Ethiopia’s attention from finishing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The TPLF leadership may look differently at the GERD as a consequence of the war, and the prospects of Tigray possibly seeking secession from Ethiopia.64
History aside, Sudanese and Egyptian support for the TPLF would be a game-changer. Such foreign backing could secure the Tigrayan forces with a steady source of supplies, safe havens for exiled leaders, and transit points for travel in and out of TDF-controlled areas. This explains the current TDF offensive on the western fronts in Tigray, as informed by interlocutors close to TDF, in order for the Tigrayan forces to create a corridor to the Sudanese border.65
It is obvious that Abiy Ahmed’s often ill-thought unilateral decisions – in line with his incipient authoritarian tendencies – have rail-road him into a quandary from which he now finds it difficult to extricate himself. This is a reflection of his political immaturity despite what can be seen as his intellectual sophistries. His intellectual sophistries-cum-political immaturity has only earned him more troubles than he can reasonably handle through the framework of modern statecraft.
Somalia is also in the larger regional picture which further compounds the escalating strategic scenario in the region.
Historically, Somalia has viewed Ethiopia with suspicion, but Abiy’s diplomatic charm won over President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmaajo’, who at the time was only one year into his presidency. When the tripartite alliance was created between Abiy, Farmaajo, and Afwerki, analysts believe one of its main, albeit indirect, goals was to oppose federalism. Without that base, Eritrea’s strongman Isaias Afwerki is unlikely to have participated. For Farmaajo, Ethiopia’s reconciliatory diplomacy provided him with the opportunity to consolidate power in Mogadishu. After its inception, he exploited the alliance to undermine federalism in Somalia and suppress opposition, mainly from the country’s elite.66
But looming larger in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict is the role of Eritrea, a highly militarized and fortified one-party state held by the jugular by Isaias Afwerki as the President. This role is, however, rooted in the complex web of internal politics of Eritrea where President Isaias Afwerki has successfully instituted authoritarian rule over the last one decade with the corollary militarization of the Eritrean society, destruction of the realm of civil society organizations, caging the media including egregious violations of human rights.
Eritrea had initially denied any involvement in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict. But this plausible deniability (which may appear so to the gullible) was soon blown away by the preponderance of evidences clearly showing its military and involvement in the ongoing war between the two gladiators. It was forced to admit its involvement shame-facedly when it can no longer hide under any pretext.
Eritrea has [therefore] acknowledged for the first time its forces are taking part in the months-long war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and promised to pull them out in the face of mounting international pressure.67
The explicit admission of Eritrea’s role in the fighting came in a letter posted online […] by the country’s information minister, written by its ambassador to the United Nations and addressed to the Security Council. For months, the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments denied Eritreans were involved, contradicting testimony from residents, rights groups, aid workers, diplomats and even some Ethiopian civilian and military officials. Tigray residents have repeatedly accused Eritrean forces of mass rape and massacres, including in the towns of Axum and Dengolat. Abiy finally acknowledged the Eritreans’ presence in March while speaking to MPs, and promised soon after that they would leave.68
[The] letter from Eritrea said, with the TPLF “largely thwarted”, Asmara and Addis Ababa “have agreed – at the highest levels – to embark on the withdrawal of the Eritrean forces and the simultaneous redeployment of Ethiopian contingents along the international boundary”. It came a day after UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council that despite Abiy’s earlier promise, there had been no evidence of a withdrawal of Eritrean troops from the region. He also said aid workers “continue to report new atrocities which they say are being committed by Eritrean Defence Forces”.69
William Davison, the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) senior analyst for Ethiopia, told Al Jazeera that Eritrea’s admission came as […] increasing proof made it harder to continue denying the presence of its forces in Tigray. “Obviously, with that mounting evidence [came] increasing international pressure,” he said. “Ethiopia’s government admitted the Eritrean presence and said they would withdraw and Eritrea said nothing; that did lead to suspicions that there was a difference between the two governments who are allies in this conflict in Tigray, so perhaps Eritrea’s government also wanted to dispel the idea that there was any major split between Addis Ababa and Asmara.”70
Looking ahead, Davison said it was a matter of the international community to monitor “very carefully” whether the Eritrean troops will indeed leave Tigray. “[That is] because, of course, up until now, the two governments have completely denied Eritrea’s presence. So therefore, there’s no particular reason to take them at their word that this withdrawal commitment will be implemented.”71
The idea of Eritrean troops waging war in Tigray is condemned as reckless endangerment of civilian lives by Western diplomats and as a travesty of Ethiopian sovereignty by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s domestic detractors. But from the point of view of Ethiopia, Eritrea’s involvement could be best understood as a tragic but explainable option given the grave alternatives.72
Appreciating the stakes at the start of the conflict in early November [2020] is crucial. Following a swift and coordinated attack against federal army positions in Tigray region on November 3, the TPLF instantly became a formidable military force taking possession of more than half of the country’s military equipment. Additionally, the attack effectively incapacitated the northern command of the national army based in Tigray. With most of the national arsenal out of the federal government’s hands, and the national army’s best force incapacitated, TPLF’s forces next step seemed to be a match south on Addis Ababa.73
The scenario of a heavily-armed 250,000-strong regional rebel army marching towards the capital presented the Federal government a stark choice between capitulating, launching a prolonged pushback, or, in the best case, negotiating a settlement in which the TPLF would have a position of military and territorial advantage. All three scenarios would lead to nationwide security and political crisis, with potential for collapse of the central government.74
In the first case, the return of the TPLF to national power, whether by fait accompli as the federal forces capitulate or by agreed compromise, would not be accepted by other regional states, most notably the Amhara, Oromia, and Somali regions. Leaderships there have been outspoken in their opposition to the TPLF.75 In the second scenario, prolonged fighting carried on between the central government and Tigray forces, likely expanding into the centre of the country and involving several regional and paramilitary forces. This was the most catastrophic scenario, particularly because most regions have built up massive special armed forces.76
The more likely scenario seemed a protracted and all-encompassing civil war, creating, at best, a stalemate paralyzing the Ethiopian government. At worst, this created the danger of a full state collapse destabilizing the Horn of Africa.77
External Eritrean support might have averted this by tipping the scales in favour of the Federal Government of Ethiopia. The TPLF’s leadership seems to have feared precisely this likelihood. The group’s leadership has sought to alert the world about, and politically pre-empt, the potential involvement of Eritrea in a war they said was imminent.78
The Tigray war is about the survival of the central government of Ethiopia, hence the maintenance of basic political order. This does not guarantee the justice or liberty which the populations on either side of the warring parties want, but it is a basic prerequisite for those aims. The preservation of political order is not a democratic endeavour, but one of statehood – and, as such, it is not the exclusive turf of democratic states.79 In that sense, if indeed Eritrean support had shifted the outcome of the conflict, that is a gain in terms of political order, not only in Ethiopia but the entire Horn of Africa.80
Eritrea’s involvement in the war, on the other hand, would certainly be followed by darker legacies. The possibility of atrocities being committed against the Tigrayan population, and the vulnerability of Eritrean refugees in Tigray are grave consequences that could overshadow the gains of restoring political order, or even sow the seeds of threat to political order itself.81
The stark choice that presented itself, it seems, was one between averting the collapse of the central government of Ethiopia and ensuring that only clean hands would do the job. This is a dilemma which no national leader would want to confront. It is an eventuality that the TPLF leadership could have easily foreseen when kick-starting the conflict. They likely dismissed it as less probable, or accepted it as a cost of maintaining their power.82
To understand current Eritrean policies, one needs to discern the mindset of its autocratic president, the former guerrilla leader of Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), who has ruled the totalitarian one-party state with an iron fist since independence.83 The Eritrean state was born out of a 30-year liberation war. Its current military adventure in Tigray may lead to its collapse. What is Eritrea’s objective in the war? And, how will it impact the one-man rule of President Isaias Afwerki?84
Isaias has incessantly demarcated the borders of Africa’s second newest country through bloodshed and sacrifices—as Eritrea has been at war with all its neighbours since its independence in 1993. In 1995, it clashed with Yemen over the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea and in 1996 with Sudan, before the devastating border war with Ethiopia from 1998-2000. In 2008, Eritrea picked a fight with its tiny southern neighbour Djibouti, also over a strip of contested territory. In all these conflicts, Eritrea was the first to launch military engagement—and tens of thousands of youths have perished on the battlefields to sustain the image of the country as an invincible warrior nation.85
Isaias, meanwhile, attributes blame for the endless conflicts brought upon Eritrea to external forces, usually the USA, which he claims harbours an interest to “keep Eritrea hostage through the continuous fomenting and ‘managing’ of crises.”86
Eritrea has been called the modern Sparta State, as its martial traditions with never-ending military service and constant war campaigns resemble that of the ancient Greek city-state. Isaias asserts that the Eritrean nation was born through sacrifice and blood, and the new post-independence generations need to suffer and experience shared hardships as endured by their parents, to constantly recreate and manifest an Eritrean nationalist military ethos. Compulsory military national service for all women and men between the ages of 18 and 55 was imposed soon after independence. It was supposed to be limited to an 18-month period of service, but since the outbreak of the Ethiopian war in 1998, many have been forced to remain on duty. Youth recruited to fight Ethiopia in the late 1990s are now middle-aged. Today, once again, they are engaged in the war in Tigray.87
In 1998 Eritrea launched an offensive against Ethiopia, ostensibly over a sliver of territory along the border to Tigray. The war’s root causes, however, were found in differences of ideology, economic policy, and development visions between the two new governments in Asmara and Addis Ababa.88
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) constituted the senior Ethiopian political and military leadership at that time, as they were the dominant party within the EPRDF government coalition. When attacked, the late Ethiopian Prime Minister and former TPLF guerrilla leader Meles Zenawi ordered full war mobilization in Ethiopia, and the regional leadership in Tigray called back the old guerrilla army to service.89
During a two-year period of fighting, over 100,000 combatants were killed, before the Ethiopian army finally managed to crush the Eritrean forces and push them out of Tigray.90
The humiliating military defeat of his ‘invincible’ army has been a heavy burden for Isaias to carry ever since. The current full-scale military invasion of Tigray is thus likely driven by the desire for vengeance and to settle old scores, as Isaias apparently has ordered his forces to undertake what may appear to be a genocidal campaign against Tigrayans.91
Beyond vengeance against the TPLF, some argue that Isaias also harbours an interest in unmaking the ethnic configuration of the Ethiopian federation, with the aim of realigning Eritrea with Ethiopia—a vision staunchly opposed by TPLF but seems to be backed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Issues on the table include a federal/ confederal arrangement, the merger of the two national armies, an Ethiopian navy base in the Eritrean Red Sea ports, and joint mineral exploration in border areas.92
In spite of possible benefits, Eritrean nationalists in exile are afraid Isaias will squander the hard-won independence, for the sake of his own personal ambitions to become the ‘big man’ of the Horn of Africa in an Eritrean-Ethiopian federation.93
The authoritarianism of Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea is unmistakable. There is no more doubt that he is a wily gladiator. So also his predilections for gunboat diplomacy in the Horn of Africa! Even though Eritrea has been independent for the past decade after a gruesome national liberation war of over three decades, Eritrea has not benefitted much from this independence. It has not reaped the expected economic or political dividends because of the iron-fisted rule of Afwerki accompanied by his gross incompetence in managing a newly independent country. He substituted his personal ambitions to rule as long as possible for the development of Eritrea along the lines of economic progress and political liberalism. Afwerki wants to be the grandmaster of the Horn of Africa/Gulf of Eden without the necessary economic development. He is basing his calculation on the illusory might of the Eritrean Military which defeated Ethiopia in the long-drawn national liberation war that culminated in the sovereign independence of Eritrea in May 2011.
Eritrean foreign policy can, therefore, be seen to be based on what can be called Afwerki Doctrine in which Isaias Afwerki wants Eritrea to be the grandmaster of the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. The Afwerki Doctrine is based on the Machiavellian principles of playing one country against the other or exploiting every available weakness and opportunity that present themselves in any country that falls into internal crisis. This Doctrine cannot be said to be based on any known moral imperative but on Darwinian instinct of self-preservation in power by Afwerki. But the Doctrine has its Achilles Heel which lies in the collapsible Eritrean State superstructure not supported by any visible powerful economic development. It may last for some time but either a slight or seismic push will tip it over into final collapse and destruction inevitably with the overthrow of Isaias Afwerki himself as many examples in history of other countries have shown in the last few years in Africa.
Some observers fear that the Tigray conflict could turn Ethiopia into the ‘Libya of East Africa’, an unfortunate nod towards the true scale this conflict could take on. Hundreds have already been killed and thousands displaced, but regardless of how much longer the violence lasts for, what is certain is that the impacts on the wider region will continue long after the cessation of hostilities, whenever that may occur. It remains to be seen how this will affect Sudan in particular, though one unavoidable fact is that increased flow of refugees will put further pressure on the country’s already-fragile situation, particularly in terms of food insecurity.94
As the conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray regional government continues, serious concerns are arising about how it will impact East Africa’s peace and security in both long and short terms. The combination of civil conflict, increased flows of refugees and environmental challenges, all being faced whilst in the midst of a global pandemic, present serious challenges for the region’s security, as well as for the human rights of those caught up in the violence.95
The Tigray war will therefore impact politics, social cohesion, and development all over the country, just like the 1974-1991 Tigrayan struggle.96
The military campaign on Tigray will be remembered as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s “crossing the Rubicon” moment. No matter the outcome, or how long it will take to reach a victory or settlement, Ethiopia will likely never return to the status quo ante.97
Ethiopia, Tigray and Eritrea have boxed themselves into serious problematique that are clearly capable of unravelling them as States and region. Of course, this will not happen overnight. It will most probably be a long-drawn process that may even take many years, except they quickly retreat from their political and military grandstanding belligerency including moral righteousness.
AU Caught Napping Again
Many factors and forces have been critically interrogated by scholars and analysts as being responsible for the lack of effectiveness and efficacy of the African Union (AU) in solving African conflicts especially. However, there is one powerful factor that looms writ large either in the background or foreground (depending on the view of the scholar). It is the leitmotif of “African solutions to African problems” which is predicated as it is on the alleged capacity of the AU to embark on appropriate interventions to ensure that such conflicts, crises and disputes are resolved within a reasonable time frame. However, the reality has been the exact opposite of this wish or wisdom.
Around this dominant factor revolves round other subset of factors. The first is the relative resilience of the forces at play in the emergent conflict, their aims and the ability or inability to manage a consensus situation with the opposing forces. The second is the elasticity of the strength of the residual power of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state involved in conflict. At what point would African Union be willing to intervene “forcefully” in the internal affairs of a sovereign state?
The third factor has been argued to be lack of AU’s practical military capacity for intervention in conflict situation. But this is largely begging the issue. Africa has provided military personnel as peace-keeping force in many countries in the past and present. The real issue is the complex situation that African peace-keeping forces find themselves in more often than one case. The complexity often overwhelms the capacity of the African peace-keeping force from keeping the peace.
According to Chris Changwe Nshimbi of University of Pretoria, “Seven years ago African leaders committed themselves to working towards an end to armed conflict. As they marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the African Union they swore to ensure lasting peace on the continent. They pledged not to bequeath the burden of conflicts to the next generation of Africans.”98
The pledge was followed by the adoption in 2016 of the Lusaka Road Map to end conflict by 2020. The document outlined 54 practical steps that needed to be taken. They focused on political, economic, social, environmental and legal issues. They ranged from adequately funding the African Standby Force for deployment, to stopping rebels or insurgents and their backers from accessing weapons. Other steps included fighting human trafficking, corruption and illicit financial flows.99
At the time of the declaration, Africa had disproportionately high levels of conflict. State and non-state actors in Africa waged about 630 armed conflicts between 1990 and 2015. Conflicts orchestrated by non-state actors accounted for over 75% of conflicts globally.100
The efforts to ‘silence the guns’ has been singularly ineffective. Since the pledge was signed conflict in Africa has increased.101
One reason for the failure is that the 2020 goal was too ambitious given the number of conflicts on the continent. The second reason is that many are internal, arising from the grievances citizens have with their governments. This internal dynamic appears to have been ignored from the outset.102
Prominent conflicts by non-state actors include the Tuareg separatist and jihadist insurgencies in Mali, Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, jihadist and militia insurgencies in Burkina Faso, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the ethnic war in the Central African Republic. The most notable civil wars are those in Libya, South Sudan and the one waged by Anglophone Ambazonia separatists in Cameroon.103
Most conflicts are generally centred on these areas:
- Sahel region, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea
- Lake Chad area, including Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria
- Horn of Africa, including Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya, and
- Great Lakes region, notably Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda.
Though domestic, most of these conflicts tend to be cross-border in form. They threaten interstate and regional stability. For example, al-Shabaab in Somalia exploits porous borders to carry out deadly attacks in Kenya.104
Eighteen years ago the African Union changed its Constitutive Act, allowing it to intervene in the internal affairs of member states. Nevertheless, it’s been reluctant to do so. For example, it is conspicuously absent while bloody conflict escalated in Cameroon and Libya.105
There has been one notable exception: the organisation’s refusal to countenance the coup in Sudan, and suspending the country’s membership in June 2019. This should be the norm. But this highlighted the AU’s double standards. It tacitly countenanced the coups in Egypt in 2013 and Zimbabwe in 2017.106 (There has been a coup in Chad, Mali and Guinea in 2021, a failed coup attempts in Niger and Sudan, then a successful coup in Sudan alone as at the time of writing).
Another example of failure has been in Libya, where the AU has been seen to be wringing its hands while deadly conflict escalates and external actors make it their war theatre. These include Turkey, Egypt, Russia and United Arab Emirates.107
The presence of foreign military forces on the continent is of concern beyond the Libyan conflict. The increasing number has been recognised by the African Union Peace and Security Council as a problem. The numbers are going up via bilateral agreements between African states and foreign governments. African countries gain economically from hosting foreign military bases. Djibouti, for example, earns about $63 million annually from the US and $20 million annually from China by leasing parts of its territory for their military bases. It also hosts British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish military bases. The foreign actors establish themselves in Africa to protect their economic interests and for strategic reasons. Djibouti, for instance, is strategically close to the Middle East and the Red Sea.108
[As a result of this sordid incapacity of the AU] Africans around the world have [therefore] signed an open letter enjoining the African Union to mediate in the war in Ethiopia. Analysts agree on the need for intervention to end the bloodshed and prevent a major refugee crisis. Hoping to increase pressure on the warring parties to end the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, dozens of African scholars and activists around the world took the unusual step of publishing an open letter calling for a negotiated peace. “Ethiopia is on the precipice,” the letter reads, after condemning “the fact that the conflict is affecting ever-increasing numbers of civilians,” in a war increasingly characterized by human rights violations. Mamadou Diouf, cosignatory of the letter and professor of African Studies at the Columbia University in the US, told DW that “the inability to prevent this conflict is a failure of Africa as a whole.”109
The pan-African call for peace left no doubt about the increasing consternation over a war now entering its ninth month with no solution in sight. “The conflict in Tigray is deeply concerning to many African countries,” Hassan Khannenje pointed out. The director of the Kenya-based HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies went on to enumerate several reasons, including the fact that the headquarters of the African Union (AU) is in Addis Ababa, and that Ethiopia is the second-largest country in Africa in terms of population.110
Africa and African Union have been very unfortunate in terms of conflict prevention and resolution. It can be justifiably regarded as an effete body, big but good for nothing when it comes to conflict prevention and alternative dispute resolutions. It is more a talking shop but always short of concrete actions that solve problems. From Liberia to Sierra Leone, from Mali to Chad, from Libya to Sudan, from Burundi to Rwanda, from Angola to Democratic Republic of Congo, from Ethiopia to Eritrea and now to Tigray (just to mention a few), Africa and African Union have been helpless in preventing outbreak of conflicts and resolving them quickly.
The Humanitarian Tragedy
According to one account there are over 60, 000 refugees in Sudan (30% are children 300 unaccompanied and separated children). There are disturbing reports of sexual violence against women and children; electricity cut-off, communication blockage, and banks closed in most places; critical to none supply of food, water, medicine, fuel, cash for the entire region; war crimes all over Tigray causing massive displacement (2.2 million displaced so far); ethnic profiling outside Tigray mass arrests, job suspensions, bank accounts frozen, home searches, flight boarding denied; and universities, hospitals, pharmacies, farms, factories vandalized or looted by troops.111
According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) The conflict in northern Ethiopia has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and human rights crises in the world, with over 5 million people requiring humanitarian assistance and up to 900,000 living in famine conditions in Tigray. The conflict now risks expanding into a wider civil war that threatens Ethiopia and regional stability. The United States continues to work diplomatically to press for an end to this humanitarian and human rights crisis, and this Executive Order provides new leverage against those obstructing progress towards a negotiated ceasefire, hindering humanitarian access, or committing serious human rights abuses.112
We cannot ignore the fact that heinous human rights abuses are being perpetrated against civilians. I have personally met with Ethiopian refugees from Tigray, many of them women, who shared heart-wrenching experiences of armed actors committing murder, rape, and other gruesome acts of sexual and gender-based violence. Tens of thousands of women and girls in northern Ethiopia will need medical, mental health, psychosocial, and legal services to begin to rebuild their lives. Hundreds of thousands of people are facing starvation, in large part because of the Government of Ethiopia’s efforts to delay and prevent humanitarian aid from reaching civilian populations who need this emergency food and medical assistance to survive.113
The suffering of the Ethiopian people ensnared in this conflict must end. We call on all parties to cease hostilities, allow and facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, ensure accountability for human rights abuses, and enter into an inclusive dialogue to chart a path forward that preserves the unity of their state.114
Analysts warn of a refugee crisis of unprecedented scale ‘A refugee crisis like the world has never seen’ “But, critically, it is one of the anchor states in the Horn of Africa,” meaning that any instability there is bound to have implications for the whole continent, the analyst told DW. This is especially true for neighbors Somalia and Kenya, both of which share a long border with Ethiopia. Crucially, Addis Ababa has already withdrawn troops that were helping to fight al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia. “For Kenya, there’s a high risk of an influx of refugees to a level that would probably be unsustainable,” said Khannenje, warning that a potential disintegration of Ethiopia will mean that “the world is going to see a refugee crisis like no other we have witnessed in recent history.” Increasingly isolated from his allies in the West, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is seeking support among African countries. On Sunday he met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and their Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni on a quick trip to Kigali and Entebbe.115
Peace and mediation may not have been uppermost in Abiy’s mind, analyst Khannenje believes: “He is leaning heavily also on the region and other traditional allies to try and shore up support politically, but also, critically, to try and have access to armaments.” Abiy has also turned to Turkey for support. President Recep Erdogan views Ethiopia as the “keystone to expanding its economic footprint in the greater East Africa region as far south as Kenya and Uganda,” researcher Michael Tanchum, of the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy and a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told DW. Ankara is not only thinking about access to markets and resources. “By having a strong security relationship with Somalia and Ethiopia, Turkey seeks to offset the strategic presence of Egypt and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] in the Horn of Africa,” Tanchum said.116
The vying of outside forces for strategic advantages in the region does not bode well, according to analyst Khannenje. While Turkey might seem a natural ally to Addis Ababa to turn to for financial assistance and military armament “it only complicates the political and security situation in the Horn of Africa.” Already the conflict is spilling over into Sudan, at loggerheads with Addis Ababa over the construction of a Nile dam. Like many Africans, Mamadou Diouf believes that the Tigray conflict should be solved by Africans, and especially the AU: “We cannot burden the West with our own problem. We have an increase of these situations in Africa, because our institutions are not up to their task,” he told DW.117
The conflict has exacted a devastating toll on civilians. Widespread famine is rapidly unfolding across the region, due to the intentional use of starvation as a tactic of war; while communications blackouts make it difficult to discern the true extent of humanitarian catastrophe, reports of famine-related deaths are already emerging. Indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets and infrastructure have continued, including a bombing attack on a market in northern Tigray that killed at least fifty-one people. Ongoing reports identify Ethiopian and Eritrean national troops, as well as regional paramilitary forces and armed militias, carrying out extrajudicial killings, mass atrocities, and rape and sexual violence against Tigray civilians. Thousands of people from Tigray have also fled Ethiopia to neighboring countries, Sudan in particular, with millions more internally displaced.118
The blockage of humanitarian routes into Tigray and the deliberate destruction of health infrastructure have further restricted aid to millions of Tigrayans. The UN has repeatedly stressed the need for unfettered humanitarian access, including opening up the Ethiopia-Sudan border, which is already at risk of a military flare-up due to territorial disputes between the two countries. In July 2021, USAID Administrator Samantha Power also drew attention to the need for unfettered humanitarian access in a visit to Addis Ababa, and noted the Ethiopian government’s concerning use of dehumanizing rhetoric to describe ethnic Tigrayans. In late August 2021, the United States imposed new sanctions targeting Eritrea over the country’s involvement in the war in Tigray.119
Even as the offensive quickly escalated into a much broader war, with civilians facing the brunt of the violence, Abiy’s government rejected calls for mediation. Eritrean forces also joined the side of the Ethiopian government early in the conflict, and after months of denying their presence, in spring 2021 Abiy admitted that Eritrean troops were in Tigray. The TPLF and Eritrea have a history of hostile relations: Eritrea fought a brutal, decade-long war of independence against Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s, when the TPLF held power in Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. Eritrean troops have shown no sign of leaving, despite international pressure.120
The United States has characterized the conflict as ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans, and harrowing reports have documented the prevalence of mass atrocities in the conflict, including troops and members of militias perpetrating rape and sexual violence against women and girls in particular. These reports have raised the question of accountability for serious rights violations. In March 2021, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced a joint probe with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to investigate alleged serious abuses and rights violations in Tigray, although the impartiality of the joint probe has been drawn into question. Proposed efforts to call for an end to the violence from the UN Security Council have failed as a result of Chinese and Russian vetoes, countries that maintain the conflict to be an internal Ethiopian affair.121
There have been stark restrictions on humanitarian aid flowing to the region since the start of the conflict, including government suspensions of aid operations, blockage of aid routes, deliberate destruction of healthcare systems, and communications blackouts that hamper needs assessments. Ethiopia has also rejected UN proposals to open the Ethiopia-Sudan border. These restrictions have exacerbated the onset of widespread famine, which materialized in early summer 2021 after the UN had been sounding the alarm for months. The man-made famine, affecting 900,000 people with 1.8 million people on the brink, is currently characterized as the most severe starvation crisis in the world. Moreover, the deliberate destruction of agriculture and food production capacity has taken place, including government troops preventing farmers from planting fields or destroying seeds and crops.122
The conflict has also triggered an ongoing refugee and displacement crisis. More than sixty-one thousand people have fled for Sudan, and more than one million people have been internally displaced. Nearly one hundred thousand refugees from Eritrea living in Tigray have been caught in the cross fire. Millions of people, including children, are cut off from humanitarian aid and have limited access to shelter, water, food, and other basic necessities.123
The United States has viewed Ethiopia as a provider of security in the region and has a stake in the stability of Ethiopia’s neighbors, including Somalia and Sudan. Eritrea’s involvement in the conflict, led by President Isaias Afwerki, may signal an intention to expand influence in the Horn in an authoritarian fashion. The conflict in Tigray could compromise Ethiopia’s role in providing diplomatic support for Sudan’s fragile transition to democracy, further exacerbate tensions at the Ethiopia-Sudan border, derail talks around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and threaten progress to stability in Somalia.124
The Crocodile Tears of the International Community
There has been nothing spectacular about outcry or intervention of the international community as regard the ongoing Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict. Even though Ethiopia in particular has been under intense pressure from the global community, this pressure has not yielded the immediate expected goal: cessation of all hostilities from all parties concerned. For instance, while Tigray has pushed into the Afar and Amhara regions, Eritrea has so far failed to withdraw from Tigray despite the pressure to do so. Eritrea is refusing or slow to withdraw because once it does so, its entire strategic purpose for intervention would have come to naught. So Eritrea is still digging in so as to maintain its strategic stake in the conflict.
Even the fear of the fighting raising the possibility of further destabilizing the region and drawing in of the superpowers has not mediated or moderated the conflict in any significant way. It seems to have even emboldened the gladiators to continue to fight on with the expectation of drawing the preponderant sympathy and support of the international community to act as moral defense and help to overwhelm the opposing force.
Neither is the fear of growing humanitarian crisis which is actually seen as a bargaining chip.
While the US, the EU, France, Germany and the UK have called on all parties “to immediately end abuses and enter into negotiations toward a ceasefire,” observers are [also] closely watching Abiy’s Cabinet for signs of a different approach to the conflict, as the government faces growing international condemnation for its handling of the war and the recent expulsion of seven senior UN officials. The prime minister’s office, which blames the TPLF for starting the war, has said certain conciliatory measures, such as declassifying the TPLF as a terrorist group, can only happen after the new government has formed.125
A US State Department spokesperson told AFP that Washington was “considering the full range of tools at our disposal to address the worsening crisis in northern Ethiopia.” These measures include: “Targeted economic sanctions to hold accountable those responsible for or complicit in prolonging the conflict, obstructing humanitarian access or preventing a ceasefire, while mitigating unintended effects on the people of Ethiopia and the wider region.” US global trade representative Katherine Tai on Thursday said Washington would “soon” make a decision on Ethiopia’s status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which currently gives it duty-free access to the US. “Reports coming back to us through official channels and civil society are not encouraging,” she said. “What is happening in Ethiopia is a humanitarian crisis.”126
That the United States has not been able to achieve anything serious in helping to resolve the conflict is a testimony to the lack of foreign policy clarity about what the United States want or are its objectives in the Horn of Africa. This is the contextual sense in which one can assert that fundamental strategic error or miscalculation can be found in the position of the United States even before the conflict erupted between Ethiopia and Tigray. This error or miscalculation can be traced to the position adopted towards Ethiopia in relation with Egypt over the Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam by Trump Administration.
Around October 20, 2020, former President Donald Trump was reported to have called reporters into the Oval Office to listen to his conversation between him and Israeli Prime Minister and Sudanese Prime Minister in celebration of the normalization of relations between the two countries that have not been seen eye-to-eye for many years.
It was during the conversation that President Trump dropped the bombshell of a threat against Ethiopia on behalf of Egypt over the Grand Renaissance Dam saying that Egypt “will end up blowing up the dam. . . . they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.. . . They should have stopped it long before it was started.” He also reiterated that he is holding up U.S. assistance to Ethiopia to pressure its government to agree to his administration’s preferred deal.127
Why President Trump issued this threat against Ethiopia is inexplicable or what actually led to the issuance of the threat. About two weeks after this threat, war broke out between Ethiopia and Tigray. There may not be any visible connection or evidence of incitement to war between the two parties upon which to base the assertion that United States Government may have known in advance about the likelihood of war breaking out between Ethiopia and Tigray through its intelligence services or even having a hand in stoking or provoking the war. But circumstantial behavior on the part of the White House during this period buttressed the suspicion that the United States knew what was about to happen and did nothing to prevent the conflict because it probably already had axe to grind with Ethiopia over the Grand Renaissance Dam. The logic of the situation is that if the conflict had not been between Ethiopia and Tigray, it could have been between Egypt and Ethiopia in which case one would have seen the United States siding openly (or even assisting) with Egypt to deal deadly blows against Ethiopia.
Michelle Gavin was of the view that “[t]he notion of casually inciting war in the strategically important Horn of Africa is sickening. The idea that the United States can successfully bully Ethiopia into a deal is ahistorical nonsense – a misreading of the stakes for Addis Ababa and an insult noted throughout the continent. But worse, the president is apparently completely oblivious to the United States’ own interests. The United States doesn’t provide assistance to Ethiopia out of sheer altruism; rather, officials from both parties have long recognized that a stable and successful Ethiopia is critical to the security of the region and an important part of any vision for cooperative, mutually beneficial U.S.-African relations in the future.128
The president’s appallingly careless statement is only the most recent example of the Trump Administration’s unforced errors in Africa. While Administration officials charge around warning Africans about the danger of doing business with China, they ignore the damage they’ve been doing to the United States’ credibility and desirability as a partner. Just as youthful African societies are mobilizing to demand more accountable governance and more of a say in shaping their own futures, the United States is making the worst possible case for itself. The current administration gives the impression that it disregards African interests in the foreign policy issues that directly affect them and that it imagines Africans as supplicants desperate for external patrons.129
On September 17, 2021, President Joe Biden showed his moral apprehension and reprehension about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict. He said he is “appalled by the reports of mass murder, rape, and other sexual violence to terrorize civilian populations.”130
“The ongoing conflict in northern Ethiopia is a tragedy causing immense human suffering and threatens the unity of the Ethiopian state. Nearly one million people are living in famine-like conditions, and millions more face acute food insecurity as a direct consequence of the violence. Humanitarian workers have been blocked, harassed, and killed. I am appalled by the reports of mass murder, rape, and other sexual violence to terrorize civilian populations.131
“The United States is determined to push for a peaceful resolution of this conflict, and we will provide full support to those leading mediation efforts, including the African Union High Representative for the Horn of Africa Olusegun Obasanjo. We fully agree with United Nations and African Union leaders: there is no military solution to this crisis.132
“I join leaders from across Africa and around the world in urging the parties to the conflict to halt their military campaigns respect human rights, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and come to the negotiating table without preconditions. Eritrean forces must withdraw from Ethiopia. A different path is possible but leaders must make the choice to pursue it.133
“My Administration will continue to press for a negotiated ceasefire, an end to abuses of innocent civilians, and humanitarian access to those in need. The Executive Order I signed today establishes a new sanctions regime that will allow us to target those responsible for, or complicit in, prolonging the conflict in Ethiopia, obstructing humanitarian access, or preventing a ceasefire. It provides the Department of the Treasury with the necessary authority to hold accountable those in the Government of Ethiopia, Government of Eritrea, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and Amhara regional government, among others, that continue to pursue conflict over negotiations to the detriment of the Ethiopian people.134
“The United States remains committed to supporting the people of Ethiopia and to strengthening the historic ties between our countries.135
“These sanctions are not directed at the people of Ethiopia or Eritrea, but rather the individuals and entities perpetrating the violence and driving a humanitarian disaster. We provide Ethiopia with more humanitarian and development assistance than does any other country benefitting all of its regions. We will continue to work with our partners to address basic needs of at-risk populations in Ethiopia and the greater Horn of Africa.”136, 137
The Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict officially started on November 4, 2020. Even when Trump Administration was probably adding more fuel to the blazing inferno, the Administration was already lame duck – on the way out of power which eventually happened on January 20, 2021 when President Joe Biden took over. But for the next nine months while the conflict was raging (after President Biden entered the White House), Biden Administration can be seen shuffling its feet on the same spot. Understandably so! The US’s position can be excused by the fact that the US itself was under high tension during this period, been pulled and pushed hither and thither by the Augean stable left behind by Trump Administration which include the raging coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), economic crisis, political and racial crises – and the concomitant struggle to reset course and goals of American foreign policy. It is highly doubtful whether the United States can be argued to be reasonably expected to do much for the resolution of the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict under such hostile and/or inflammable domestic conditions while hegemonic disputes with China and Russia, including troubles Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, NATO and many other more critical issues are on its plate.
Ethiopia-Tigrayan conflict is essentially caused by both the Ethiopians and Tigrayans. African Union is also there to help resolve the conflict but have so far failed abysmally to do so. Therefore the extremist critics of the United States, especially of its failure to do much for the Ethiopians/Tigrayans as unreasonably expected should temper their criticisms with moderation in terms of what the United States can do during this period with so much on its domestic front.
But looking closely at the operating mindset either of State Department or the White House, Ethiopia is largely viewed as the chief culprit and suite of sanctions are already being package to be unbundled on Ethiopia including other parties. This is the unbroken relationship with the Trump Administration in its hostile attitude towards Ethiopia. It would be recalled that United States went to the poll on November 3, 2020, just a day before conflict broke out between Ethiopia and Tigray. Since then, the conflict has been raging and the United States has not been able to do anything to stop the pogroms been committed from all parties. United States leadership is conspicuously missing in the field and in the diplomatic circuit.
But it cannot be argued that the United States is ambivalent about the conflict in the larger context or picture of superpower competition in the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. Its position is strategically stated in the objective of being the grandmaster of the two superjacent regions. Individual countries are therefore seen as pawns (including Ethiopia and/or Tigray) in the superpowers’ strategic chess game. That is why Trump Administration can flippantly played Egypt against Ethiopia or did nothing to force out Eritrean forces from Tigray where it has been accused of committed war pogroms and contributing to humanitarian tragedies.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director, Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors Co-Director – Africa Security Initiative Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Brookings Institution, had noted that “the grinding war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and the associated humanitarian catastrophe, conflict and centrifugal dynamics have significantly escalated, eviscerating the country’s stability well beyond Tigray.”138
As a result of this especially the surprisingly crushing blows delivered by Tigray People’s Liberation Force and making further territorial incursions to Afar and Amhara regions amidst the meltdown suffered by Ethiopian National Defense Force despite the assistance from Eritrea, Ethiopia has been courting the paramilitary forces to help push or roll back the Tigrayan victories. Yet, according to Felbab-Brown, “Addis Ababa has severely limited capacity to control these paramilitary forces: Over time, they will pose a graver threat to Ethiopia’s stability, territorial integrity, and ethnic coexistence than the Tigray situation.”139
Since 2018, ethnic tensions and competition over state resources and power have grown in Ethiopia, as the country has sought to transition away from three decades of authoritarian rule by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Though EPRDF rule, dominated by leaders from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), delivered economic growth for years, it became increasingly heavy-handed. In the face of mass public protests, the EPRDF sought a soft transition, choosing as its new leader an Oromo politician, Abiy Ahmed, whom the Ethiopian parliament elected prime minister in April 2018.140
Ethnic tensions emerged across the country, including in regions receiving less international attention, such as the Southern Nations and Somali region, and particularly among the Tigray, Amhara, and Oromo. The tensions soon led to incidents of violence, assassinations, massacres, and large internal displacement, as well as regional and national coup plots.141
Struggling to control the unrest and stave off demands for faster political liberalization and economic redistribution despite increasingly repressive measures, Abiy took a confrontational attitude toward Tigrayan political leaders. In addition to reducing their disproportionate power, he sought to subject them to accountability for economic and political crimes of the EPRDF regime.142
Other claimants to power and resources in Ethiopia also took advantage of the conflict. Long resentful of Tigray’s decades of dominance, neighboring Amhara, home to the second-largest ethnic group and the ruling elite during the monarchy that ruled the country until 1974, seized parts of Tigray. Ethnic conflict over local resources, such as agricultural land, water, and access to revenue distributions from Addis Ababa, broke out in the other parts of the country. However, even though regional actors, such as Eritrean forces, entered the Tigray battlefield in support of Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) — with Eritrea and TPLF long defining each other as determined enemies — military fortunes changed.143 Despite seeming ENDF successes in the initial weeks of the push into Tigray, the TDF insurgency became entrenched and increasingly effective by spring 2021.144
The ambitions of Abiy and the ENDF to simply crush the Tigray rebellion militarily had all along been misguided. Yet the extent of ENDF’s routing is significant. The federal Ethiopian military forces had long been considered one of Horn of Africa’s most potent military actors, a favorite U.S. counterterrorism ally and the lynchpin of anti-Shabab efforts in Somalia. The likely ENDF quagmire in Tigray instead fairly rapidly turned into an ENDF defeat, albeit a temporary one.145
The exposed weakness of ENDF has both local and regional implications. In Ethiopia, the ENDF meltdown does little to deter violent rebellions elsewhere in the country (such as Oromia and the Somali region), which Abiy had presumably intended with his mailed-fist response. In fact, the ENDF defeat may tempt more aggressive moves by various unsatisfied ethnic groups. Regionally, it may reinforce counterproductive dependence of Abiy’s government on foreign reinforcements, particularly Eritrean forces that are dangerously regionalizing the conflict. And it raises profound questions about anti-Shabab efforts in Somalia, already weakened and struggling.146
With the departure of ENDF from Tigray, Tigrayan forces rapidly pushed into the Afar and Amhara regions, on August 5 seizing the important town of Lalibela, home to rock-hewn 13th century churches. In Afar, the TDF seek to take over the crucial land route to Djibouti, a vital artery for landlocked Ethiopia. Suppositions abound that the Tigrayan forces even entertain ambitions to march on Addis Ababa. Like Abiy before, they exhibit little willingness to undertake compromise negotiations, asking instead for the formation of a transitional government and Abiy’s resignation. Neither Abiy nor his power constituencies in Addis Ababa or broader constituencies among the Amhara and Oromo are willing to consider such concessions.147
Washington’s calls on the Tigrayan forces to withdraw from Amhara and Afar are unlikely to be heeded unless the United States is ready to threaten and impose punitive actions against the Tigray leadership, in the form of visa bans, sanctions, and criminal indictment portfolios. The threat of such sanctions may also be needed against actors in Abiy’s government and regional militia leaders to force their forces back into their home areas and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. Cutting non-humanitarian aid to Ethiopia may soon become a tool Washington should also exercise, though Addis Ababa can retaliate by withdrawing forces from Somalia, thus giving al-Shabab more power and room amidst multifaceted crises in the country.148
Even so, realistically Washington has little capacity to halt militia formation and the fissiparous unraveling they set in motion. And Abiy is unlikely to stop relying on them unless the Tigrayan forces return to Tigray and compromise negotiations begin. Even then, the militias have already been unleashed.149
The stakes are increasing. The US is being drawn deep into the affray not just because of the looming humanitarian disaster but because the strategic stakes are escalating. The US is being drawn in because other major powers are also being drawn it. This includes Russia, Turkey and China for variety of reasons.
According to Vanda Felbab-Brown, [a]verting an escalating civil war and its regional spillovers and reversing the humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region have been crucial priorities of the Biden administration. U.S. diplomats have spent months probing and prodding both Abiy and the TPLF in proximity talks toward a negotiated ceasefire. However, the so-called “humanitarian ceasefire” that Abiy declared in June, after the ENDF was routed in Tigray, has been anything but humanitarian.150
U.S. officials have also engaged extensively with European partners; Gulf countries including the United Arab Emirates, which has a close relationship with Abiy; Turkey; and various African leaders, including the African Union’s special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. Yet despite the exemplary diplomacy, all the signs through August were that both the emboldened TPLF and Abiy remained entrenched in their belligerent, uncompromising, and human-rights-violating policies — prompting my argument that tough love from Washington may have to be applied to the Ethiopian government, the TPLF, Eritrea, and others to at least attempt conflict de-escalation.151
On September 18, the U.S. government announced such a tough love policy — involving new sanctions to be applied to the above actors in coming weeks unless they allow unfettered humanitarian access and begin a dialogue to end the conflict.152
Second, the administration recognized that sanctions are like glue — once they are squeezed out of the policy tube, they are hard to retract. So while they are ready, the sanctions have not yet been applied to any individual on any side of the conflict. The government of Ethiopia, the TPLF, Eritrea, and the Amhara region’s leadership have been given a few weeks’ grace to allow humanitarian access and begin a conflict-mitigation dialogue. This implementation delay takes into account Prime Minister Abiy’s plan to announce his new cabinet in early October. The new cabinet and a strong June 2021 electoral mandate give Abiy some political space to start de-escalating the civil war, though they could also embolden him to double down on militaristic policies.153
Another possible sanction is on the horizon before November 1: whether or not to extend Ethiopia’s eligibility for duty-free imports allowed under the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). AGOA brings Ethiopia about $100 million in hard cash annually and, more importantly, directly generates employment for about 100,000 people, mostly women in southern Ethiopia working in textile factories that export to the United States. AGOA certification is statutorily linked to human rights compliance, requiring that the existing gross human rights violations in the Tigray conflict cease.154
The big question is whether Russia, China, and even Turkey will try to undercut the threat of U.S. sanctions. Turkey continues to expand its diplomatic and economic ambitions in the Horn, having offered to mediate disputes between Ethiopia and Sudan over refugees and the fertile agricultural land of al-Fashaga (mostly in Sudan, but claimed by Ethiopia), both issues exacerbated by the Tigray conflict, as well as Ethiopia’s filling up of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile. Ankara has stated its support for a peaceful resolution of the Tigray conflict, but may be giving Abiy a sense, whether inadvertently or purposefully, that he can shop among international actors to reduce U.S. and European pressure.155
Russia may well be tempted to insert itself into yet another area where it can damage U.S. objectives, irrespective of their substance. Russia’s policy across Africa — and in some other places — has been to subvert U.S. efforts simply by opposing them. And in Ethiopia, Russia may be tempted to attempt to “reclaim” its 1970s Cold War ally.156
China has equities in Ethiopia as well: It considers access to the Red Sea a strategic priority and should not want to see the situation in Ethiopia blow up into a complex and long-lasting civil war that would undermine its basic Horn policy, including its maintenance of a military base in Djibouti. China’s financial exposure in Ethiopia also makes it want stability in Ethiopia. But there are complexities. China made substantial economic investments in Ethiopia during the pre-Abiy Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime dominated by the TPLF. That regime’s land expropriation in the Oromia region for decade-long agricultural leases to Chinese and Gulf companies exacerbated ethnic Oromo anti-EPRDF protests and helped bring the regime down. True democracy and accountability in Ethiopia could mean a review and revocation of many of those shady sweetheart deals, and China may prefer to cultivate political clients instead of neutrally seeking to deescalate the conflict. The direction and degree of China’s involvement in Ethiopia thus remain unclear.157
Beyond the need for Washington to restore credibility and positive relations with European partners overall, strong engagement with them on Ethiopia could help counter the above risks. Many European countries have strong interests in Africa, yet have been divided on Ethiopia and not established levers such as a sanctions regime.158
The Ethiopian government currently feels alienated from Washington and is eager to find new external sponsors. Unfortunately, Addis Ababa sees the relationship in binary terms. Yet for years, the United States erred in coddling the EPRDF regime, ignoring its authoritarianism and human rights abuses at home and in Somalia for the sake of counterterrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa.159
Even though the great power rivalry or competition goes far beyond the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict in the Horn of Africa, it is largely over-shadowed by it. In other words, with or without the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict, the great power rivalry/competition goes on. The strategic stakes in the Horn of Africa including the superjacent Gulf of Aden are of special category involving economic, commercial and military interests.
There is also no more doubt that the US interests have gone beyond the Ethiopian-Tigrayan conflict now precisely because of the involvement and/or engagement of other major powers from outside the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. Perhaps of major concern to the US is the involvement of China in the region through the establishment of its naval base in Djibouti, the first of its type in Africa.
In a special report published in mid-2020, Zach Vertin was of the view that China’s growing presence in Djibouti has thrust unprecedented attention upon the little-known African port nation and made it a touchstone in the debate over Beijing’s expanding global aims. In 2017, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) opened its first-ever overseas military base there, at the mouth of the Red Sea, breaking a long-established policy against basing Chinese troops abroad. The new PLA Navy facility overlooks not only a major strategic chokepoint and one of the world’s most heavily-trafficked shipping lanes, but also a major U.S. military base — just six miles away.160
The PLA’s arrival has prompted new debate about the evolution of China’s military doctrine, sea power development, and expeditionary capabilities. But it has also brought new attention to Beijing’s economic investments astride the Red Sea region, which precede the base by more than a decade. The combination of Chinese commercial and strategic expansion has generated concern in U.S. national security circles and spotlighted the Red Sea as a potential theater of Great Power competition.161
Djibouti is hot, dry, and boasts few natural resources, but its strategic location and deep-water port complex have drawn not only the American and the Chinese militaries, but also the French, Japanese, Italians, and Spanish — as well interest from Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia. Djibouti is home to just one million citizens, its territory is the size of Vermont, and its GDP, at $3 billion annually, is equivalent to China’s output every two hours. The asymmetry between the two countries is hard to overstate, and a combination of big-ticket infrastructure projects and major debt obligations has raised familiar unease about outsize Chinese leverage over Djiboutian assets and decision-making, fueling another round of debate over so-called “debt trap” diplomacy.162
Chinese loans, construction contracts, and infrastructure investments in the Horn of Africa and the wider Red Sea region — most now folded into the much-debated Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — far exceed those of the United States. That gap is due to widen, and underscores a larger difference in the two countries’ approach to date: Washington has viewed Djibouti and the Horn of Africa primarily through a security prism, while Beijing’s prism has been predominantly “developmental.” Who benefits from that development is a matter of some debate.163
Djiboutian elites believe Chinese finance, technology, and trade volume can not only propel their country to become the “Singapore of Africa,” but accelerate growth and integration across a vastly underdeveloped region — a narrative echoed by Beijing. But skeptics see Djibouti and its neighbors as vulnerable outlets for Chinese excess domestic production capacity. They also worry that Djibouti, like other eager recipients of Chinese largesse, might default on its debt and be forced to make concessions to Beijing, a sequence which could threaten vital U.S. interests in the region. As elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain disruptions wreaked sudden and severe damage on Djibouti’s trade-dependent economy in early 2020. While it is premature to discern medium or long-term implications, projected contractions in both Djiboutian and Chinese GDP have added a new wrinkle to conversations over Djibouti’s long-term solvency.164
Concern among U.S. strategists has been amplified by corruption and poor governance atop Djibouti’s political system, a president whose authoritarian style resembles that of his new patrons, and technological inroads made by Chinese telecommunications firms. In this, Djibouti evinces the larger contest between China and the West — marked by different approaches to governance, economic development, and individual liberties.165
The Sin of Superficiality
When Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, nobody could predict that within just a year after that, he would become something else that cannot easily be described in his metamorphosis. What account for Abiy Ahmed’s mental somersault and 360-degree turn-around?
Abiy has stressed the importance of unity to Ethiopian politics. His new Prosperity Party represents a fundamental change from the ethnic federalist model that has dictated how politics have been organized in recent decades and has been regularly presented as the solution to the restiveness that plagued the country in earlier eras. In practice, this change not only threatens the interests of those who benefited from the old system; it changes the nature of the Ethiopian national project. In turbulent times it may well be a tougher sell than ethno-nationalism, which can be stoked at will by the prime minister’s opponents.166
According to Zach Vertin, a former Brookings Expert and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. – The White House: Ahmed was highly praised for lifting “the long-repressed nation’s state of emergency, released thousands of political prisoners, halted media censorship, and appointed women to top posts. Winning international praise at each turn, he also ended two decades of frozen conflict with neighboring Eritrea – the act for which his prize was nominally bestowed.”167
But in doing this Abiy unconsciously also lifted off the lid off Ethiopia exposing its fragility with its weak institutional structures.
Among Ethiopians (and many foreign observers), opinions of the 43-year old prime minister are as diverse as they are passionate. Supporters refer to him, not infrequently, as a “gift from god,” hailing his divinely inspired agenda and his rhetoric of unity and reconciliation. Critics balk at what’s become known as “Abiy-mania,” however, variously concerned that the Pentecostal preacher-in-chief is naïve, self-aggrandizing, or an unconvincing product of the old guard. (Abiy is a member of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, which has ruled the country since 1991 and is known for its abuses of democracy and the security and intelligence establishment from whence he came.)168
Ahmed may have sincerely set out with good intentions to right the wrongs that have largely afflicted Ethiopia in modern times and cleanse it of its Augean stable left by past regimes. But good intentions can easily be wrecked by overzealousness which is now been seen as part of the root causes of the present conflict with Tigray. Thus Ahmed is destroying his own efforts before they could solve any problem facing modern Ethiopia.
The prestigious recognition, while deserved, must be accompanied by a sober appreciation of what came before Abiy, and of the bumpy road ahead. The ruling EPRDF is a marriage of convenience, a four-tentacled coalition that allowed each ethno-regional arm a degree of autonomy and a share of the national cake. While famously disciplined and undeniably heavy-handed, proponents of the liberation movement-turned ruling party argued their formula is what has held one of Africa’s largest and most diverse countries together for three decades.169
What account for Ahmed’s metamorphosis is his quest to dwarf the legacies of past regimes even though this is largely mooted in the analysis of his personality profile.
At the center of the coalition was the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) — a minority from the country’s northern highlands that dominated the regime’s political and security structures until the passing of its intellectual strongman, Meles Zenawi, in 2012. Abiy isn’t one of them, and his ascension in 2018 was a watershed moment. The outgoing TPLF — unaccustomed to anything but total control — was thus believed to be the greatest threat to Abiy’s rule and his plan to overhaul the state they fashioned.170
The problem correctly situated is not TPLF not been used to play marginal role in governance but the silent or covert ambition to overshadow the legacy of Melez Zenawi who loomed writ large while still in flesh. So Ahmed was looking for political earthquakes that would put him above the achievements of past leaders. This was what drove him to extend a hand of fellowship to former bitter enemy: Eritrea both to buy breathing space for Ethiopia and to raise his profile as a peace-maker. This worked for some time. This singular feat actually earned him the Nobel Peace Prize – something that has not been seen in this part of the world in recent memory.
Zach Vertin agreed that most of the goodwill of Ahmed was “motivated by domestic politics.” Lurking beneath the surface is the volcanic animosity towards Tigray and its “arrogant” political elite that has ruled Ethiopia for more than two decades especially during the period of late Prime Minister Meles Zenami who dominated Ethiopian politics and social life with his overwhelming intellectual sophistication.
Much of the war was fought in Tigrayan territory, near the border with Eritrea, and the hostility between the TPLF and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is hard to over-state. Abiy and Isaias thus shared an interest, as one seasoned observer noted, of “choking the life out of the TPLF.” Since Abiy’s arrival, TPLF bosses have left their privileged posts and returned home to Tigray — first to lick their wounds, and then to organize. And they aren’t alone — the powerful Amhara and Oromo constituencies have likewise reinvigorated their political cadres, their regional security forces, and their nationalist rhetoric. Some argue the EPRDF coalition will persist in one form or another, its inherent compromise too valuable to each constituent part. Others believe it is already dead.171
This is not the first time Alfred Nobel’s trustees have sought to maximize the award’s political potential, or the first time its recipient has proven controversial. Aung San Suu Kyi, then a Burmese opposition figure, received the prize in 1991 for championing human rights and a “democratic society in which [her] country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.” She was later elected to the country’s top political post, and like Abiy, won great international acclaim. But when her government was accused of killings, human rights violations, and ethnic cleansing last year, many called for the Nobel committee to take back her prize.172
Abiy Ahmed was right; the time for change in Ethiopia had come. Now he must balance tradition and modernity, democratization and stability, ethnic loyalties and national identity. The success or failure of Abiy’s high wire act will shape not only his country, but the entire region, for a generation to come.173
Unfortunately Abiy Ahmed has bungled his chance.
On the side of Tigray is Debretsion Gebremichael, the leader of Tigray People’s Liberation Force, who definitely is not also known beyond the media reports about his background.
Coming from an Orthodox Christian family, the Tigray leader was named Debretsion, which means Mount Zion, while his second name is that of his father, Gebremichael, meaning Servant of Saint Michael.174
As stated earlier, there is a sense in which the conflict can be reduced to a struggle between Abiy Ahmed and Debretsion Gebremichael. But this is most probably not sufficient enough since both men are definitely not just fighting for themselves but for certain aggregate interests and forces.
From what can be gathered about Gebremichael, it is evident that he is not only an intelligent fellow but has innate technical knowledge and practical ability that enabled him to play key role in the history of Ethiopia, for instance, in the 17-year old guerrilla war against Mengistu-led Marxist regime that finally paved way for the emergence of a new regime headed Meles Zenawi for the next twenty-seven years before Abiy Ahmed took over in April 2018.
He then went on to be a government minister after the Derg had been defeated and replaced by a coalition of parties dominated by the TPLF until Mr Abiy came to power in 2018.175
Mr. Debretsion and Mr. Abiy seemed to be friends at the start of the prime minister’s time in office in 2018. The Tigray leader even arranged a rapturous welcome for the prime minister in Mekelle. “Tigray is a place where the history of our country is cooked, and it’s the region where foreign invaders [including Italians and Egyptians] had been defeated and embarrassed. In modern Ethiopia, it is the womb of Ethiopia,” Mr. Abiy said in 2018.176
Mr. Debretsion had ambitions to be prime minister himself and lost out to Mr. Abiy in the 2018 contest within the ruling coalition. “I told him: ‘You are immature. You are not the right candidate’,” Mr. Debretsion told the UK-based Financial Times newspaper in 2019.177
But his defeat did not come as a surprise, as the TPLF had become synonymous with repression and corruption during its 27 years as the dominant country’s dominant political force. Views about Mr. Debretsion’s performance when he was working in government are mixed. His critics say that when he was the deputy head of the intelligence bureau in the 1990s, he was instrumental in spying on opposition figures, and helping to crush dissent. But his supporters focus on the fact that he transformed Ethiopia’s telecommunications infrastructure when elevated to the cabinet, where he served as deputy prime minister and as minister of communications and information technology.178
He launched massive projects to expand mobile phone coverage across Ethiopia, though the state kept a monopoly over the industry, and the telecom company has been criticised for internet shutdowns aimed at curbing anti-government protests. “Most of the power and telecom infrastructure projects were led by him,” US-based public policy expert Dade Desta said. “The IT Park that is now in Addis Ababa was his idea [and] his fingerprints can be found in many state-owned projects.” This includes the building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is now at the centre of diplomatic tensions with US President Donald Trump warning that Egypt might “blow it up”.179
The TPLF and the prime minister parted ways when Mr. Abiy dissolved the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, the ruling coalition of ethnically based parties, to launch the Prosperity Party in 2019, arguing this would help unite the country. The TPLF refused to join, arguing that Ethiopia’s federal nature was a better way to manage the country’s deep ethnic divides. Mr. Debretsion returned to Tigray where he was seen as a reformist. He allowed four new political parties to contest the regional election held in September in defiance of the federal government. “My door is open to everyone,” he often said. “We want development; not war,” was another common statement of Mr. Debretsion. ‘This war is a curse’180
In a published essay Debretsion Gebremichael condemns what he called a “balanced approach” to the conflict or “bothsideism”. “The Tigray government and people should not face international sanctions for trying to avoid annihilation”, he declared.181
The international response to the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments’ genocidal war on Tigray has been woefully inadequate. But what is also perplexing about the international response has to do with the reflexive tendency to apportion blame for ongoing hostilities not on the basis of objective facts but on the need to appear evenhanded.182
Since ‘bothsideism’, or an insistence on false equivalence, permeates the international reaction to the conflict in Tigray, the Ethiopian government has incentives to levy baseless countervailing accusations against Tigrayan forces in the hope of muddying the narrative and avoiding accountability for various atrocities its forces have committed. But because there are two or more parties to a conflict does not automatically imply that their causes are equally just and their conduct equally acceptable.183
The Government of Tigray has, for instance, accepted the principles outlined in President Biden’s Executive Order, affirming its commitment to finding a negotiated ceasefire and ultimately a negotiated settlement to the current conflict. By contrast, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia penned a rambling open letter to President Biden, the upshot of which is simply that he does not favor a peaceful resolution of the conflict.184
The contents of Abiy Ahmed’s open letter conflate being asked not to violate citizens’ human rights and starve them to death with an unwelcome encroachment on national sovereignty. In short, the Government of Tigray has unequivocally accepted calls for a peaceful resolution whereas the Ethiopian government insists on a military solution to a fundamentally political conflict. And yet, the international community seems wedded to a version of fairness that paradoxically rewards the aggressor.185
As a result, the commitment to ‘bothsideism’ means that talks about coercive sanctions tend to encompass all warring sides irrespective of their stated position with regards to a peaceful settlement.186
The Government of Tigray, despite the region being subject to an asphyxiating blockade designed to exterminate Tigrayans, is willing to explore peaceful solutions. Sadly, a recent resolution by the European Parliament suggesting the imposition of sanctions on all sides if the situation doesn’t improve by the end of October exemplifies the tendency to punish all sides for the sins of one side.187
Since the Government of Ethiopia is openly defiant and contemptuous of peace overtures, it should bear the brunt of the EU’s coercive sanctions, not the side that’s fighting to free itself from a deadly chokehold and is on record as favoring a peaceful settlement.188
In fact, the Resolution by the European Parliament catalogues a litany of crimes by Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces. But when it comes to punitive measures, evenhandedness rears its ugly head. The Government of Tigray would like to take this opportunity to reiterate its support for an independent investigation into all atrocities, including any alleged violations by Tigray’s forces, in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.189
There is something excruciatingly tricky here. By trying to be evenhanded, the international community strives not to antagonize the aggressor, presumably to leverage the appearance of impartiality so as to position itself to help engineer a peaceful resolution of the crisis. In the case of Tigray and other sub-state national groups, the international community knows that apportioning blame on them and blaming the victims will not trigger a powerful backlash that goes beyond a strongly worded statement.190
An arms embargo imposed also on Bosnia while it was defending itself against Serbia’s brutal aggression in the 1990s is an example of well-intentioned evenhandedness gone awry. The Biden administration and its allies should not repeat that mistake.191
More fundamentally, the obsession with balance may have its origins in a misunderstanding of two interrelated humanitarian principles, namely, neutrality and impartiality. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross cannot favor one side during conflict (neutrality) and must treat all sides based on need (impartiality). In theory, one can favor one side (non-neutrality) and still treat combatants from both sides based on need (impartiality). In practice, the principles of neutrality and impartiality facilitate critical humanitarian operations during armed conflict by exempting humanitarian workers from being targeted by combatants.192
But when applied to conflict resolution, rigid adherence to both principles can have perverse effects. Unlike pure humanitarian operations, conflict resolution is also about making political and factual determinations necessary for the levying of coercive sanctions based on the parties’ position with regards to what is being asked of them.193
Only such an approach can achieve its strategic objectives through the proper calibration of means and ends. But the maintenance or appearance of neutrality in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing undermines the principle of impartiality, since by refraining from calling a spade a spade, neutrality leads to partiality. That is to say, by not calling out the aggressor and, worse, by punishing the victim, one rewards the aggressor. Victims without access to vast domestic and international resources, such as the people of Tigray, often fight an uphill battle. Punishing them for defending themselves in the name of evenhandedness makes a mockery of justice.194
The Abiy government is committed to exterminating the people of Tigray through a perpetual government chokehold. It is also the side that has been obstructing the delivery of humanitarian supplies and threatening to prolong the conflict. The Government and the people of Tigray merely ask that they not be exterminated. The balance of reason and evidence supports the notion that the Abiy government is the aggressor, while the Tigrayan people are the victims. Only commitment to a misplaced version of fairness could lead to the inclusion of the people and Government of Tigray in conversations about coercive sanctions.195
Conclusion
An Ethiopia at war with itself is distracted and unreliable, and spoilers in this volatile region will be quick to take advantage of a security vacuum.196
Ethiopia has long been a provider of security in the region, helping to stabilize Somalia and South Sudan and offering important diplomatic support during Sudan’s transition. Already, a border dispute between Ethiopia and Sudan has flared up and threatens to escalate, while Sudan continues to teeter uncertainly between the military and civilian elements of its transitional government. Meanwhile, Somalia is in the midst of a constitutional crisis that could undo hard-won gains. The future of both these states will be affected by Ethiopia’s stability and by the example of Eritrea’s ability to flout international law with impunity.197
The worst may be yet to come. If Ethiopia fails to consolidate a new political arrangement that accommodates its diverse population of 110 million and ensures basic measures of security and justice, it could be riven by further conflict that prompts a massive and destabilizing refugee crisis. An important voice for African interests on the global stage would be lost, and external actors who view the strategically important region as a venue for proxy conflict would be empowered.198
From what can be read from the above analysis so far, it is indisputably obvious that Ethiopia is facing another major epochal crisis essentially of its own making – never mind the attribution or contribution of external forces to this crisis which is basically of existential character. There can be no more denial of the fact Ethiopia is facing an existential crisis having arrived at this vexed conflict with its northern-most region of Tigray as part of the evolutionary trajectory that Ethiopia has been following in the last decades. This is quite surprising to all intent and purpose. Ethiopia reached a tipping point in 2011 when Eritrea successfully broke away to form an independent sovereign state after three decades of a bloody civil war – again never mind the fact that Eritrea is in a kind of military-political alliance to help crush the Tigrayan revolt.
The chickens have once again come home to roost for Ethiopia and no one is sure whether Ethiopia will survive this conflict with Tigray the way it did with Eritrea. The collateral damage to the Ethiopian State viability and not to talk of its reputation in the international community is quite extensive. Its former invincibility has already been shattered beyond recognition. It is shortsightedness to think on the part of observers and analysts that the war with Tigray will be a walk-over for Ethiopia even with Eritrea physically on its side now. The tide of the conflict has been re-directed by new dynamics that were not previously considered. Nobody had earlier thought that the Tigray People Liberation Force could smash Ethiopian National Defense Force to retake Mekele, the regional capital, and then match across the borders into Afar and Amhara regions. Apart from the fact that the TPLF is one of the most resilient fighting machine in the region going by its pedigree, there are equally other powerful factors and forces at are either at overt or covert play (mostly from outside the boundary of the two antagonists) that could change the terrain of the conflicts between the two contesting parties.
Ethiopia has definitely overstretched its luck and its fish is fast running out of water. It miscalculated the strategic scenario especially the fighting spirit of Tigray despite the losses it has suffered so far especially in terms of humanitarian tragedies. What has hitherto been seen as the corpus of “quick-fix” strategies on the part of the Ethiopian State has failed and/or back-fired. Its maneuvering with Eritrea, with no other visible support from any other neighbouring country (except to come and surreptitiously add more fuel to the blazing inferno) has weakened the position of Ethiopia considerably. It is payback time for its previous hegemonic posturing against neighbouring countries that did not yield any fruit.
On the other hand is Tigray with all its now well-known hubris especially its political failure. After the overthrow of the Halie Meriam Mengistu-led Marxist regime (the Derg) in 1991, the Tigray People Liberation Force rose to power in Addis Ababa alongside the Ethiopian Democratic Liberation Force. TPLF was the dominant party. For the following two decades, the Tigrayan political elite were in power through Prime Minister Meles Zenawi until his death in 2017. During this period Ethiopia rose to become the economic powerhouse of East Africa and the strategic linchpin or bridgehead of the Horn of Africa – but not without its visible internal contradictions and crisis that will inevitably set it on a path of internal conflict that would redefine its statehood. These historical contradictions and crises afford us the understanding of the current events and their dynamics and implications.
Out of the contradictions and crises, however, arose the nationalist aspirations the type that eventually led to the breakaway of Eritrea in 2011 after three decades of bloody civil war with Ethiopia in which Tigrayan officer corps played prominent role. What the Eritrean case demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubts in this ongoing conflict is that Ethiopia has unfortunately become a soccer being kicked around by its constituent regions. It was Eritrea yesterday. Today it is Tigray. Who knows whose turn it would be tomorrow? Ethiopia has become largely an unviable State entity despite the pretense to the contrary over the years. The centripetal forces have been let loose. The Tigrayan war is a further demonstration of the fundamental weakness of the Ethiopian State and its unfolding unviability. Should this observable trend continue without a serious attempt at fundamental restructuring of the Ethiopian State through a constitutional review, then the Ethiopian State would sooner or later collapse and stand the risk of disappearing from the scene of history forever as a modern state.
But Tigrayan regional government is not in any way fundamentally better than the Oromo jingoists-led Federal Government in Addis Ababa. Tigray had the opportunity to be in power. Yes. It did and helped to bring Ethiopia out of the monarchical woods under Emperor Halie Selassie and the Marxist ideological skullduggery under the jackboots of madcaps led by Halie Meriam Mengistu and his Derg clique. Indeed, Meles Zenawi, a Tigrayan, was largely credited with the development of Ethiopia as a post-monarchical state in terms of economic growth – but without the corollary political liberalism that promotes democracy, human rights and press freedom or inclusiveness in governance. Zenawi government ruled with iron fist which largely caused alienation and bred rebellion from other regions or ethnic groups. The resultant effect was the gathering of opposition over time and space culminating in violent conflict that we are now witnessing today.
African leaders have the predilection to rule as if there is no tomorrow, i.e. without being mindful of posterity. While Zenawi promoted economic economic growth for Ethiopia he failed to balance it with political liberalism (including adherence to rule of law, promotion of human and civil rights, press freedom, etc). Unfortunately, the current Tigrayan political elite seem not to have learnt any useful lessons from past historical mistakes. The Tigrayan political elite are still yoked to the chariot of ethnic-based politics played by Zenawi (under the guise of regional federal system of government). This regional federal system of government which is ultimately aimed at giving relative autonomy to the regions has unfortunately been taken out of context and turned into an instrument of political defiance to the federal authority.
In a certain sense, Tigray can be argued to be cause and effect of this unnecessary tragic conflict and the pains it has suffered on account of this conflict. Its political defiance and belligerence became alibis for Ethiopia to declare war as the only means of settling the rift between the two antagonists where political dialogue was seen to have been absent from the very beginning. The final spark was the unpremeditated attack on army camps located in Tigray by Tigray rebel forces/armed militias as alleged by Ethiopia including the refusal not to conduct regional election in Tigray, an allegation that has not been disproved or impeached by Tigray. Thus it can be further argued that Tigray did not weigh the implications of its actions before it launched into them, a situation that can be regarded as thoughtlessness at its most vulgar height because of its total adverse effects on Tigray itself.
Its political brinksmanship based on its narrow and selfish elitist interests has plunged Tigray into an unnecessary battlefield with corpses of victims littering the entire landscape. Why this gamble? Why this risk and at what price? The price is unmistakably a heavy one with thousands that needlessly died, with the millions that have been displaced, with destinies wantonly destroyed, with the weight of unnecessary stress on the entire ecosystem, etc. Are the narrow and selfish political ambitions of the tiny elite worth this widespread collateral damages and the sacrificial lambs?
Perhaps more painful is the gradual loss of that hitherto indivisible national identity for Ethiopians as Ethiopians. Eritreans are no longer Ethiopians. Tigrayans may soon follow suit if the current conflict is not quickly resolved. Here is the legendary Ethiopia slowly withering away before our very eyes by unravelling from the tectonic foundations that have held it together for centuries. Here is Ethiopia that was never colonized, and when Italy came on mission colonization, Italy met its match and had its nose irreparably bloody and broken. Here is Ethiopia that traced its root to antiquity, to the Biblical House of David through Solomon but seemingly disinherited from the legacy of the fabled Solomonic wisdom to manage a modern state. Emperor Halie Selassie is called the Lion of Judah! Here is Ethiopia that is ancestral home to the Queen of Sheba, the ravishingly African beauty that can only comparatively stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Egyptian Nefertiti, the types the world has ever seen. Here is Ethiopia from which the planetary famous Nile River has its origin on the plateau of its highlands. Here is one of the founding fathers of the continental body, Organization of African Unity (now African Union) that could no longer maintain its own unity or union. Here is the Africa’s second most populous country after Nigeria dancing at the edge of precipice exactly like Nigeria.
Colonialism has little or no impact at all on Ethiopia. It has no effect on its contemporary development and politics. Yet Ethiopia can be seen suffering from the pangs or paroxysms of post-colonial crises as have been empirically encountered by other colonized African countries. What could have been responsible for this epochal phenomenal crisis? Is there an unknown variable not captured in this analysis?
As a result of this inexplicable conundrum, and worst still, is the fact that Ethiopia has now become a playground for global powers and regional hegemonic upstarts. Such a twist of fate, indeed a great misfortunate that one may not even wish for one’s avowed enemy, has now become an aide memoire on how to avoid predatory politics that often bring a country to its knees or ruin it completely. Instead of international support for economic development and social progress, Ethiopia is now holding a begging bowl seeking assistance to alleviate humanitarian tragedies it willfully inflicted upon itself on the one hand and seeking military aids to quell a revolt stoked by its inability to manage ethnic diversity with which it has been blessed by God (similar to the situation in Nigeria). Ethiopia has become a pawn in the grisly hands of the global superpowers such as the United States, China, Russia, Great Britain, and France. Medium powers such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and even Eritrea are also in the affray seeking to cut their corners and carve out Ethiopia in the long run.
The core of all these upheavals is the undisputable growing incompetence or failure of the modern Ethiopian State to manage its own complexity (diversity) despite its authoritarian proclivities. The maggot-filled hubris and chutzpah of Abiy Ahmed have now revealed themselves despite the positive publicity given to his political reforms. His political immaturity (or lack of political sagacity) despite his populist posturing or outlook has now laid itself bare as an infantile disorder with reckless cancerous outgrowth that causes conflict and havoc. All other explanations for the tragedy now facing Ethiopia are excuses that do not drill down to the core of modern Ethiopian State crisis of existence.