The victory of the Tigray rebels in Ethiopia is full of unknowns – Pierre Haski

By sending the army to the Tigray region in November last year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised a swift operation to bring local leaders back into line.

Eight months later, the Tigray rebels recaptured the capital Mekelle, from which they had been driven out, and control a large part of the region. The defeats of the federal army and the personal defeats of the prime minister are severe and have severe local, regional and national consequences.

The stakes are considerable: Ethiopia is one of the countries that count on the African continent, with more than one hundred million inhabitants. Main power of the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia plays a key role locally and globally. The former empire is regularly shaken by revolts, a consequence of its mosaic of populations.

The Tigray crisis is part of these multifaceted challenges. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (Tplf), capable of holding its own against the federal government of Addis Ababa, is triumphing today, but will have to make difficult decisions.

The first is immediate and essential for the survival of the population. The war has resulted in a major humanitarian disaster, with parts of Tigray’s seven million people forced to take refuge in Sudan or other areas of the country, and in need of urgent aid. The problem is that aid is blocked and a total lack of security reigns: last week three operators of Doctors Without Borders were brutally killed in the Tigrai.

How to organize aid in a region cut off from the world, where communications have been interrupted, in a state of profound insecurity, despite the prime minister having decreed a ceasefire?

The other decision is political. The management of the Tplf hesitates at the idea of ​​going west to open a corridor towards neighboring Sudan which would ensure a window to the outside and therefore the possibility of receiving aid. The problem is that in this way the rebels would enter on a collision course with the Amhara militia that controls the area.

What can be the political solution for this war? It is the third choice that belongs to the leaders of Tigray: do they want to secede, as Eritrea did almost thirty years ago, leaving the Ethiopian group after a long war, or will they accept to remain in a renegotiated federal framework? A part of the Tplf is pushing for independence, at the risk of relaunching the war with Addis Ababa and unleashing a new political earthquake in the former empire.

Finally, the stakes are also regional. Ethiopia has allied itself with Eritrea, whose troops intervened in the Tigray and carried out several massacres. But this alliance is part of a wider conflict that pits Ethiopia against Sudan and Egypt over the waters of the Nile, and which threatens to degenerate into open war.

Beyond the interests closely linked to the Tigray, the risk concerns an entire part of Africa, with its ill-defined borders, its access to resources and its historical rivalries. It would be yet another disaster for one of the poorest regions in the world, which does not need a useless war.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)