When the Ethiopian government led by Abiy Ahmed launched a military offensive against the rebel authorities of the Tigray region, the prime minister had promised a quick and surgical operation.
The war, which began on November 3, 2020 while the rest of the world was focused on elections in the United States, has come at a terrible cost and there is no end in sight. Millions of Tigrayans are now in urgent need of assistance. To defeat the Tigrinya militias, the Ethiopian federal army has allied itself with the forces that ensure the security of the Amhara region, on the southern border of the Tigris, and with Eritrea, which has sent its soldiers. All parties to the conflict are accused of war crimes.
The media documented that federal troops killed unarmed Tigrayans during the advance into the Tigris to overthrow the regional administration led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that dominated Ethiopian politics for years. Among the reported atrocities are the execution of a young man, thrown from the top of a cliff last January near the city of Axum, and the killing of 160 people on 8 January in the village of Bora, in southern Tigray.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a federal institution, accused Eritrean soldiers of killing more than 100 civilians in Axum in November 2020. According to several reports, Asmara’s troops also committed other massacres, looting and sexual violence. . The latter accusation was also directed at soldiers from the Ethiopian army, who are allegedly responsible for gang rape, reduction into sexual slavery and for having forced some men to rape their families. Eritrea denies the allegations, while Ethiopia has supported a joint investigation by the National Commission for Human Rights and the United Nations.
The Amhara and Tigrinya armed forces are also alleged to have committed serious abuses: the former are accused of killing Tigers and driving them out of some territories in the west of the country which, according to the Amhara, the TPFL had violently occupied at the beginning of the the nineties. The Tigrinya armed forces are allegedly responsible for slaughtering Amhara civilians.
Insurrections under the radar
In December 2020, the leaders of the TPLF withdrew to the innermost part of their region, giving rise to what, as Abiy admitted, is an undercover insurrection that enjoys widespread popular support. Other riots could easily break out across Ethiopia, especially in Oromia, the country’s largest region. In the eyes of many Ethiopians there is a risk that the federation will break up violently.
Triggering the war in Tigray was the attempt by a dissident group of senior Tigrinya officers and local paramilitary groups to seize the national military command base, which was located in this northern region to counter Eritrea. The Tigrinya leaders, for their part, claim that they wanted to prevent an intervention by the federal army after the constitutional crisis that saw the regional government of Tigray oppose the national one. The real cause of the conflict, however, are disputes over the very nature of the Ethiopian state.
The clash between the center and the autonomous regions
In Ethiopia there is no agreement on the balance of power between the center and the regions, and on the role of ethnolinguistic groups in the political and federal system. The TPLF, together with other ethnonationalist rebel groups, fought in the 1980s against a centralizing military regime, considered the umpteenth incarnation of an assimilationist government policy, which would have obliterated the various Ethiopian cultural realities.
Since 1991, a government coalition led by the TPLF has created administrative regions based on ethnolinguistic identities, granting them an autonomy that also included the right to secede. In practice, however, this government monopolized power and repressed dissidents, sparking mass protests in 2015. It is in this situation that Abiy became prime minister in 2018.
At the end of 2019, ruling parties from all regions of Ethiopia merged into the new Abiy Prosperity Party. But the TPLF refused to participate. Tigray leaders – as well as prominent politicians representing the Oromo people – viewed the merger as the initial move in an attempt to undermine the autonomy of local governments. By then Abiy should have invited the more restless factions around a table. Instead, he went straight on his way.
When the pandemic pushed last August’s elections and the government extended its mandate, the arrests of opponents and the expulsions of critical voices from the government began. Denouncing the executive’s repressive methods, the two main Oromo opposition parties have decided to boycott the elections scheduled for the summer of this year.
Abiy’s supporters see him as a man capable of overcoming Ethiopia’s ethno-federalist system which, in their opinion, threatens the country’s survival. But as long as the government does not reach out to the opposition, it will risk following the same authoritarian script that led to the fall of the previous regimes.
By the same logic, instead of continuing to crack down on resistance in Tigray, causing enormous suffering to the civilian population, the federal authorities should put an end to the hostilities. And allow humanitarian aid to reach the five million people in the region who need it.
After an initial entry ban, humanitarian organizations are now present in Tigray. But as the fighting continues, access is limited and food deliveries are reaching at most one fifth of those in need. A checkpoint guarded by Eritrean soldiers kept one of the main roads closed for weeks. And, with the arrival of the sowing season, Eritrean troops hinder the work in the fields, after having plundered agricultural equipment.
Vulnerable minorities
To reform such a disputed federal system, a compromise is needed in the long run. Although imperfect, the ethnofederalist system was the answer to the marginalization, operated by the imperial state, of the various communities, which have fueled the revolts since the 1960s. Those who oppose the system today, however, are right in saying that it hardens ethnic identities and creates vulnerable minorities in every region.
Given these divisions, there is no ready-to-use solution. The Tigrayans will not abandon the demands for greater regional autonomy. Many Ethiopians living in cities, especially those linked to the Amhara community, want to see the end of a politics and a state structure based on ethnicity. For the Oromo nationalists this is unthinkable, because in their eyes the mobilization around ethnic identity is a necessary tool to overcome past discrimination. Pragmatism and the ability to find areas of common interest will be fundamental.
This could mean, for example, better applying fiscal decentralization; strengthen the rights of minorities by allowing various communities, for example, to open schools where their language is taught. Strengthening civil society would boost individual rights.
While none of this will be easy, Ethiopia’s international partners should push Abiy, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, not to see himself as the lone savior of the country, but as a leader capable of courageously engaging opponents, allowing a bitterly divided political body to peacefully design a new entity based on mutual conciliation. If, on the other hand, Abiy were to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors and stifle the rumors against, we must expect new catastrophes.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
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