My Reflections on the Situation in Ethiopia Since Nov. 4

Aug 20

Preamble

My idea for this blog was to write about “what I am learning, what I am teaching and what I am learning about teaching.” Admittedly, this blog post falls quite far to the periphery of that intended focus, but let me briefly make a case for it with two points. First, this post arises from what I’ve been learning; it reflects learning mostly from the past year, but rooted in ongoing learning over the past decade. I spent ten years living in Ethiopia and during that decade, I committed to discovering all that I could about the country, its history and its culture. That learning informs this post. Second, I spent nine of those ten years in Ethiopia as a teacher. During my time as a teacher, I spent several years helping to develop as well as teaching curriculum for our IB History course about Ethiopian history. Also during my time as a teacher, I was a strong advocate that, though we were an international school with primarily non-Ethiopian passport-holding students, it was important that we were rooted firmly in our place in Ethiopia and engaged with the host country and culture. I tried to live that commitment by rooting myself firmly within Ethiopia. Therefore, while this post is not strictly speaking about curriculum, school policy or instructional practice, I want to argue that it still fits within the scope I intended for this blog.

The content and shape of this blog post has been forming in my mind for months. When I visualized it in my head, I saw it as an eight to ten paragraph sort of thing that would help me get some things off my chest so that I could return my attention to more strictly pedagogical topics. I’m now sitting here and looking at fourteen pages of text; I guess I had a lot to get off my chest. Because it’s grown to an absurd length, I think it’s important that I provide a clear thesis and roadmap for what follows at the outset. In this post I will argue that, for the sake of peace, stability and continued progress in Ethiopia, I do not want to see the collapse of the current federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and I certainly do not want to see the country descend into a protracted civil war. However, I have been concerned from the beginning about the government's decision to attempt a military solution to the conflict with the TPLF, and that concern has grown as I’ve observed a number of tragic miscalculations by Prime Minister Abiy’s government in its execution of the military operations since last November. I believe that this military campaign has been pursued by the federal government in a way that has not only failed to solve the conflict, but has worsened it to the point that it threatens the existence of Ethiopia as a nation-state. But because this topic is so politically divisive in Ethiopia, where I have many good friends and colleagues, before I make the above-stated case, I want to start with an introduction where I will clearly situate myself and acknowledge my limitations of perspective and understanding in this discussion. I then want to clarify very explicitly that I am not and have never been a sympathizer of the TPLF, nor am I outright anti-Abiy or anti-Prosperity Party. Then for any reader who is not immersed in the politics and history of Ethiopia, I want to provide some brief context to the ideological debate currently raging over the future of Ethiopian identity and the Ethiopian state. I will then summarize some of the specific issues and events that ultimately led to a military operation, led by the federal government, into the regional state of Tigray on Nov. 4, 2020. Then finally, I will outline my primary concerns about the federal government's decision to act militarily and my concerns over its implementation of that decision. I will attempt to conclude by raising a couple of points about what’s at stake in Ethiopia with this conflict.

Before I begin, let me also just add that this post is not intended to be a research-based argument, and I have not cited sources; this is an opinion piece, but one based on my careful following of events. It’s also not intended to be an exhaustive history in any sense. I provide some context for the TPLF’s role in Ethiopia, the rise of Abiy as Prime Minister, and the issues or events that preceded the outbreak of military hostilities in Nov. 2020, but there is much detail I have left out (it’s already fourteen pages, afterall). I will also say that clear and unequivocal evidence is difficult to come by related to this conflict due to the propaganda war coming from both sides and due to a communications black-out across all or part of Tigray for large parts of the past 9 months. I have tried my best to evaluate the various claims made throughout the conflict and repeat in this post only those that seem most credible and well-documented. Though I have not provided source citations, a quick google search of things that I mention will bring you to more detail; I would, however, recommend that the reader avoid looking for objective information on twitter.

List of Acronyms

EDF - Eritrean Defence Forces
ENDF - Ethiopian National Defence Forces
EPRDF - Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
Derg - military group that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 - 1991
FDRE - Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995 - present
GERD - Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
OLA - Oromo Liberation Army
OLF - Oromo Liberation Front
PP - Prosperity Party
PDRE - People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1987 - 1991
TGE - Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 1991 - 1995
TPLF - Tigray People Liberation Front

Introduction

Ethiopia was my home for ten years. It was not just the place I lived and worked, it was truly my home. I embraced Ethiopia: the culture, language (Amharic, that is), people and history. Even before making Ethiopia home, for eight years it was a country I visited often and studied closely. I have decided to write this post partly because I struggle to think about much else these days. We moved from Ethiopia just a couple of months ago, but I continue to find myself daily checking up on the news. I’m writing from the perspective of one who has long been bullish on Ethiopia, its beauty, progress and future potential. Unfortunately, over the past year, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about its trajectory. I fear the future holds increasing political and economic instability and even the outright disintegration of a country that has been a relative model of security, stability and economic growth over the past couple of decades.

I have hesitated to write this post, and, to be honest, I don’t really know my intended audience. On one hand, I have my Ethiopian friends and former colleagues in mind as I write this. I’d like to think they’d appreciate my perspective and respectfully give it some thought. On the other hand, because this is such a politically charged and divisive time, I fear making enemies of former friends. I also fear being labeled a foreign interloper, as anti-Ethiopia, or as a TPLF sympathizer. Perhaps some may fairly label me the former, but I’m definitely not anti-Ethiopia, nor a supporter of the TPLF. Despite these misgivings about writing this, now that I’m outside of Ethiopia, I feel this written record of my concerns may help me process what has happened over the past year; maybe I’m writing for an audience of just myself. I record these concerns not as a tourist or a casual observer, and not as one simply interested in the political intrigue. I write this because I’ve been deeply saddened by what I’ve watched and I fear for the future of a place that I’ve loved.

Despite my decade of calling Ethiopia home, I approach this post with some unease because I am aware that I remained a cultural outsider in many regards. Ancient cultures, such as those of Ethiopia, are layered and shaped by millennia of history. As a foreigner, no matter how I immerse myself, a lifetime would not have been sufficient to gain a full insider’s understanding. Though I learned a little Amharic, which aided me in some nuanced understanding of the country, my Amharic was mediocre at best, and Amharic is just one of 80+ languages in Ethiopia, many of which aren’t even closely related. For example, I knew only a couple of greeting phrases in Afaan Oromoo, which is the mostly widely spoken primary language in the country. In fact, this is one of the great challenges in Ethiopia, with its vast diversity of languages, cultures and ethnicities. I gained a strong familiarity with only the political and culturally dominant Amharic-speaking urban and Amhara-highland cultures of Ethiopia, which have long been considered “Ethiopian culture” by the ruling and educated classes, but excludes more than half of the people of the country. For these reasons, I approach what I write below with humility; I cannot claim to be an expert on all things Ethiopia. I cannot claim to understand all the nuances and long historical tentacles of the current crisis in the country. I cannot claim to understand all the grievances of all groups going back generations. Because of this, I hope the reader will recognize the concerns expressed below for what they are -- observations from a foreigner who called Ethiopia home and did his best to understand it.

The narrative of “never colonized” is strong in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is proud that it’s done history its own way and taken its own path. This has made Ethiopia unique in many ways. Much like many animal and plant species in the country, there are practices and ways of life that are endemic to Ethiopia. While Ethiopians are quite welcoming of foreigners, and they will often patiently listen to a foreigner speak from his arrogant soapbox on how things should be done, they have no problem turning away and shrugging off these ideas as just what they are -- foreign to Ethiopia. This is why Ethiopia has largely ignored outside diplomatic efforts, even from the African Union, to pressure it into some sort of resolution of this conflict. By and large, the message that this is a matter of Ethiopian sovereignty and that Ethiopia has a right to address its own internal affairs has resonated with the Ethiopian public. This is why there is political traction to the #HandsoffEthiopia campaign against mostly the US, but also the EU, the UN, international aid organizations and foreign journalists who have been critical of the federal government’s actions in this conflict. I fully recognize as I write this that I’m opening myself up to criticism for my neo-colonial meddling in Ethiopian sovereign affairs, and I’ll accept that there’s some legitimacy to that criticism.

Before going any further, I want to reiterate very clearly that I am not a supporter of the TPLF. The Ethiopian federal government has successfully promoted the idea that anyone critical of its actions in the conflict against the TPLF must therefore be a TPLF sympathizer. This has had the effect of squashing important critical voices internally and has sufficiently maligned the international press and human rights organizations so that many Ethiopians pay little attention to their reports. When a foreign media source questions the narrative of events that comes from the Prime Minister’s office, that source is labeled a TPLF sympathizer, or as a buffoon naively taken in by TPLF propaganda, or as a neo-colonial intruder into Ethiopian sovereign affairs. I know that my raising of questions about the actions of the federal government at this time will likely get me labeled as one of the above. Again, though, I want to be clear that I do not raise these questions because I stand on the TPLF side, nor support their cause or their political ideology.

I have been following Ethiopian politics since 2003, and I have studied Ethiopian history, including that of the post-Derg era. I am not ignorant of the roots of the TPLF, the insurgency it waged in opposition to the Derg regime through the 1970s that grew into a larger civil war in the 1980s, the formation of the EPRDF, its victory over the Derg / PDRE military, and its tight control over Ethiopia since 1991. I understand the EPRDF ideology of ethnic federalism, which is at the core of the FDRE constitution and the EPRDF’s redrawing of the Ethiopian map into ethnic-based regions. I am conscious of the authoritative nature of the TPLF-led EPRDF governing coalition that oversaw the TGE and then the FDRE from 1991 until recently. I am not ignorant of the way in which TPLF leaders gained control over previous state-run enterprises, often for their private gain, and the corrupt flows of capital that slipped out of Ethiopia. I am not ignorant of the political opponents and journalists who fled, or were arrested, languishing in prison. I’ve witnessed the elections, where little to no political opposition was permitted. I was in Ethiopia shortly prior to the elections of 2005, and closely followed the violent crackdowns after those elections. I felt the perceptions (if not also reality) that the TPLF had eyes and ears everywhere and that neighbors policed neighbors. I, like most others, spoke only in hushed voices and then still in code when speaking about politics in any way that could be construed as critical. I’m aware that many Oromos felt that, despite their plurality status demographically, they were underrepresented in political power in the TPLF-dominated Ethiopia. I understand that, despite a constitution based on ethnic federalism, Oromos felt that the TPLF-controlled federal government did not bring redress to their century-old grievance of being ostracized and denigrated as a culture and language.

I also want to be clear that I am not outright anti-Abiy; in fact, I was initially very hopeful about the future of Ethiopia under his leadership. As with many Ethiopians, I too celebrated Abiy Ahmed’s appointment as Prime Minister in the spring of 2018. I applauded his liberalizing efforts, the release of journalists, political prisoners and opposition voices from jail, the overtures to formerly-outlawed political leaders in exile, the new freedoms of the press and of political expression. I was emotionally moved by the peace agreement with Eritrea, the opening of that border, and the stories of people in Addis randomly calling Asmara mobile numbers just to say hello. I cheered the greater gender equality in the federal government cabinet, and the increased ethnic diversity of government officials and civil servants. I was hopeful, looking forward to the scheduled 2020 elections, which were promised to be democratically free and fair. I was proud of Ethiopia when Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ideological Context and Events that Precipitated Armed Hostilities

Prime Minister Abiy and his newly formed national Prosperity Party (PP) advocate for a new vision of the Ethiopian state using the Amharic term medemer, which translates literally as “addition,” but carries the implication of “adding together” or “joining together”. The idea here is one of national unity and a common national identity. They argue that medemer represents the end of an era of ideologically driven, ethnic-based, zero-sum politics for Ethiopia. They promote a more pragmatic policy approach that considers the good of the Ethiopian nation and upholds and promotes the rights of Ethiopians as individual citizens of the same country, rather than focusing on ethnic group rights, and ethnic-based identities. They argue -- and, on the face of it I must acknowledge the merits of their argument -- that the ideology of ethnic federalism and the system of regional, ethnic-based political parties, has created an Ethiopia that is deeply divided along ethnic lines, and where ethnic identity and ethnic interests are valued above Ethiopian identity and national interests. Prime Minister Abiy’s vision of medemer is supposed to rise above the ethnic identity politics of the TPLF-dominated era, and call all the people of Ethiopia to a future of peace, unity and prosperity together.

While there is much to applaud about this idea of medemer, the vision is perhaps naive about the realities of governing a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-linguistic nation with generations of inter-ethnic grievances. But perhaps the bigger issue with the idea of medemer is that a call for national unity is understood by many in Ethiopia as code for a form of ethnic-politics of a different sort. To take a country of 80+ unique languages, ethnicities and cultures and promote some sort of homogeneous Ethiopian-ness requires the suppression of cultures and ethnic groups that don’t fit the ruling vision of Ethiopia. Since the borders of modern Ethiopia took roughly the shape they are today under the conquests of Emperor Menilik in the late 19th century, the concept of a unified Ethiopian state is really one that’s been imposed from the center upon the periphery. That center is fixed in a vision of Ethiopian identity rooted largely in the Amhara-based ruling classes that ruled over the Kingdom of Abyssinia for centuries from first the Amhara heartland of Gondar and then from the Shewan plateau at the geographic center of the modern country. Until 1974, at the top of this largely Amhara ruling class was the so-called Solomonic Dynasty, which, though it claimed ancient roots from the Axumite Kingdom, was, and remained for most of its history, an Amhara-based dynasty founded in the 13th century. Though there were non-Amharas with positions of influence within this ruling class, they usually gained that influence to the degree that they were able to assimilate into the taken-for-granted Amhara culture of the empire. Under the modernization efforts of Haile Selasse, the last Ethiopian Emperor in the mid-20th century, though the political influence of the hereditary aristocracy declined, Amhara language and culture still dominated the appointed governors and ministers and hired civil servants of the emperor’s centralized government. Amharic was also the language of curriculum and instruction in schools throughout Ethiopia during the Selassie era, and other languages, including Afaan Oromoo, the most widely spoken first language in Ethiopia, were suppressed. Imperial Ethiopia was largely one of Amharic language and Amhara culture.

Even after the overthrow of the Emperor and during the rule of the military Derg regime, though it emphasized a socialist class-based revolution and promoted a policy of Ethiopia Tikdem (Ethiopia First), by de-emphasizing ethnicity, the Derg era largely maintained the dominant Amhara cultural hegemony. The Derg also sought to solidify and expand centralized state power, and it viewed all grievances and movements from “minority” ethnic groups as a threat to that centralized power. The Derg’s socialist class-based Ethiopian revolution required a common sense of “Ethiopian” and thus, by default, the vision of what was meant by the Ethiopian nation during the Derg era remained a nation of Amharic-speakers rooted in historically Amhara culture.

The PP’s political vision of national unity must be understood within this history and context. Support for its idea of medemer primarily emanates from the center, finding support amongst the Amharic-speaking, educated urbanites of Addis Ababa. It has also found strong support among the political leadership of the Amhara regional state because they recognize the politics of national unity as an opportunity for Amhara culture and language to reestablish and expand its centrality in the Ethiopian state and national identity. There is a strong movement of Amhara nationalism supporting Abiy and the PP, and, as a side note that I’ll return to, one must not ignore this fact when evaluating the role of Amhara regional forces and militias in the conflict with Tigray since last Nov.

This underlying code of Amhara-dominated politics is why, though he came to power on the back of several years of large-scale Oromo protests in an effort to respond to Oromo demands for greater political representation, and though he was welcomed by those of the Oromo protest movement, Abiy has since fallen out of favor with many people in Oromia, particularly the younger generation or those who consider themselves part of the Oromo Qeerroo movement. Some key Oromo political parties, such as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), initially found much common ground with Abiy, but have since directly opposed him. Though his PP performed well in the recent national elections in Oromia (at least in the constituencies where the election was held), this was, at least in part, because the popular OFC, including its popular and influential member, Jawar Mohammed, did not participate in the election, nor did the long-established and influential OLF. This is the context for the military operation into the region of Tigray on Nov. 4, 2020; it’s a debate about the future of the Ethiopian state. It’s a debate between the “ethnic federalism” of the current FDRE constitution, an ideology and government structure developed by the TPLF-led EPRDF, and that of medemer, the national unity ideology of Prime Minister Abiy’s Prosperity Party. But this political debate, though it’s contentious, does not fully explain how the country ended up embroiled in months of military conflict. To understand this, we need to briefly review the more immediate causes that led to the federal government’s decision to enter Tigray militarily on Nov. 4.

After dominating politics in Ethiopia for 30 years, in December 2019, the EPRDF, a political party consisting of a confederation of several regional and ethnic-based autonomous political parties, was dissolved when Prime Minister Abiy formed a new national party that he called the Prosperity Party. All of the former EPRDF parties agreed to disband as regional, ethnic-based parties and join the national unity PP party except the TPLF. This effectively pushed the TPLF out of political power at the federal level, but they still retained power over the Tigray regional state. Many of the formerly federal TPLF officials left Addis and regrouped in Mekele, the capital of the Tigray regional state. A federal election was scheduled for Aug. 2020, but, in May 2020, stating concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ethiopian parliament, controlled by Abiy’s new PP, voted to postpone the election until 2021. The TPLF in Mekele refused this election postponement and defiantly proceeded with its own regional elections, unapproved by the National Election Board, in Sep. 2020. Abiy’s government considered this election illegal and called the mandate won by the TPLF in the regional election illegitimate. In Oct., the TPLF-led Tigray regional government concluded that, since the Prime Minister’s constitutional mandate had expired without a new election, the Tigray regional state would no longer abide by directives from the federal government in Addis. They stood their ground on this in late Oct. when the federal government reorganized the command structure of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) and attempted to replace the generals in command of the ENDF Northern Command, based in Mekele. The Tigray regional government refused to accept the newly appointed generals and even put one of them on a return flight back to Addis as soon as he landed in Mekele. Finally, according to the federal government, the TPLF organized and implemented a coordinated attack on Northern Command bases on the night of Nov. 3-4. Though little is known about the events that night, given the long influence of the TPLF within Ethiopia’s defense forces, it is likely that this attack was partly coordinated from within the Northern Command itself. The Ethiopian federal government, therefore, argues that it entered Tigray militarily on Nov. 4 in order to arrest the perpetrators of an attack on / mutiny within the ENDF Northern Command, and put down an armed rebellion of the TPLF-led, illegitimate, Tigray regional government.

Of course, the TPLF has a different version of events. It argues that its leadership was forced out of Addis and had to regroup in Mekele because of a political witch-hunt by Prime Minister Abiy’s government. They argue that Abiy was using the guise of rooting out corruption to arrest TPLF leaders and key Tigrayan military officers in an effort to consolidate his own power and further sideline the TPLF. They suggest that the postponement of the 2020 election was unconstitutional, and that rather than being because of COVID-19 concerns, was actually about giving Abiy and the PP more time to consolidate power and organize itself to dominate the elections. The TPLF stated that Abiy’s constitutional mandate expired on Oct. 4, 2020, since the constitution requires a federal election every 5 years, and therefore the authority of his government no longer held constitutional legitimacy, especially to do something so significant as to reorganize the ENDF command structure. They suggested that this ENDF reorganization was an attempt to further sideline high-ranking Tigrayan officers within the military. They believe that the federal government was already mobilizing ENDF forces for an attack on Tigray prior to the night of Nov. 3, that an attack on the Tigray regional state was imminent, and that their operations against and within Northern Command bases on the night of Nov. 3-4 were a preemptive strike for their own self-defense.

My Concerns

My purpose in this post is not to debate the merits of each side’s version of events, nor to attempt to determine the rights and wrongs of each side in this conflict. As I stated above, I do not believe the TPLF to be the heroes of this story. My concern is over the way in which Prime Minister Abiy and the federal government have stubbornly pursued a poorly executed military solution to this crisis and how this military path could end very badly for the country, causing a great deal of suffering for many Ethiopian citizens along the way. Below I will initially outline my two main concerns, which are a) the heavy reliance on Amhara regional security forces and militias, and b) inviting or permitting the involvement of Eritrean forces. I will then provide a third concern, that of the federal government's lack of transparency to the Ethiopian people throughout this conflict.

I believe the first major misjudgment was the heavy reliance on Amhara regional security forces and Amhara militia forces, including the Fano militia, in the operation in western Tigray and then also in southern Tigray, in the areas known as Raya. While I recognize the federal government’s need to quickly mobilize fighting forces given the events of the night of Nov. 3-4, the involvement of these Amhara forces immediately added an ethno-nationalist element to the military campaign, which has only served to augment Tigrayan resolve against the federal government and increase its support for the TPLF-led resistance and counter offensive. By involving significant numbers of non-ENDF forces from the Amhara region, Abiy’s claim that the offensive was merely a “law-and-order campaign” rang hollow from the beginning. There has long been a significant movement among Amhara nationalists to claim this territory for the Amhara regional state. They argue that these were areas of the former province of Begemder, which had historically been governed from the old Amhara-imperial city of Gondar. Many of these Amhara forces, especially the militia forces, such as those associated with Fano, joined the fight with an interest to “reclaim” this territory, especially the areas of Welkait-Tegede and Raya. Clashes between Amhara and Tigray militias had been happening for several years already over this territory, and at least one key Fano leader clearly stated in March 2020 that Fano would continue to refused to disarm unless these territories in western Tigray and Raya in southern Tigray, were joined to the Amhara regional state. These were not forces answering the call of the federal government to assist in a “law and order” campaign; these were not forces joining the fight for the good of the Ethiopian nation. These were forces joining the fight for their own ethnic-territorial interests. Even for the Amhara regional leaders who were not as strongly nationalist, the invasion of Tigray regional territory bordering with the Amhara region was a convenient way to satisfy the louder nationalists elements, such as those in the Fano movement, who wanted to assert Amhara control over these regions.

Involving Amhara forces in the initial invasion into western Tigray through Dansha and northward to Humera, and then using those Amhara forces to occupy these territories as the main advance turned eastward, and then doing the same in the Raya area of southern Tigray, led to several very predictable, but devastating outcomes. First, it immediately set the tone for the Tigray population in Tigray that this was an invading force -- with federal government sanction -- out to take territory, mete out revenge, and drive them out of, or subjugate them within, their towns and villages. Rather than embracing the federal allied forces as liberators, as Abiy wanted to believe they would, this immediately turned the Tigray population against the Ethiopian federal government. If some Tigrayans believed, prior to the war, that the federal government wanted to protect the rights of each and every Ethiopian citizen, including those who were Tigrayan, involving Amhara forces immediately convinced them otherwise.

Second, the decision to involve Amhara forces so extensively turned the military operations immediately into an ethno-territorial war. The thousands of Tigrayans who fled into Sudan for refuge did so not just out of fear of the flying bullets and falling mortar shells; they continued to flee into Sudan long after the front-line fighting had stopped and moved on. These refugees fled because of the ethnic-based intimidation and outright atrocities, both real and perceived, that they feared under the new military control of Amhara forces. The fact that the Amhara forces put up Amhara regional flags, and painted over signs on towns and administrative buildings with Amharic to show Amhara control, shows that their intention was to annex the territories into the Amhara regional state. The Amhara regional government itself has admitted that it now considers the territory that was western Tigray to be part of the Amhara region and under its regional government authority. There was never any intention of a temporary occupation for the sake of “law and order.”

The third problem with involving Amhara regional forces is that it stoked the animosity that has led to ethnic-based revenge atrocities and counter-atrocities. Probably the most well reported massacre of the conflict has been that of Mai Kadra. While the details of what happened are unclear, it seems that Tigrayan fighters in Mai Kadra, perhaps a rogue mob, perhaps informal militia fighters, attacked Amhara residents of the town, some with knives and machetes, before withdrawing from the town in front of the ENDF / Amhara advance from south of the town. While there is no excuse for this kind of barbarity, it is likely that such an attack would not have transpired had the Tigrayan population not perceived the military campaign as a federal government sanctioned Amhara invasion. One must also look at the numerous reports of atrocities committed -- massacres of Tigrayan residents in Humera, systematic sexual abuse and rape, just to name a couple of examples -- either as direct revenge for Mai Kadra, or as part of the ongoing efforts to entrench Amhara control over what was western Tigray. Ethnic-based atrocities have been committed by both sides and I believe this ethnic hatred was exacerbated by the federal government allying with Amhara forces to execute this military operation.

My second major concern regarding Abiy’s implementation of this operation has been the involvement of Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF). There are some who see evidence of a coordinated advance plan between Abiy and Isaias, President of Eritrea, to destroy the TPLF. I have not seen sufficient evidence to say that claim is true. Another narrative I’ve heard is that some forces loyal to the federal government within the ENDF fled across the border into Eritrea after the TPLF attack on / mutiny within the Northern Command on the night of Nov. 3-4. In this explanation, Eritrean involvement was a strategic decision to help those loyal ENDF forces re-enter Tigray and fight their way through to join back up with the main ENDF columns coming northward from Amhara. As with the use of Amhara regional forces, it makes sense, if we assume that fairly significant numbers within the Northern Command joined the TPLF side, and perhaps additional significant numbers within the Northern Command were captured and disarmed, that the federal government forces were simply short on numbers and agreed to support from Eritrea to bolster those numbers. I suppose another possibility is that Eritrean involvement was never planned or wanted by Abiy, but was rather just a matter of Eritrean forces taking advantage of a suddenly undefended border, and a weakened long-time enemy -- the TPLF -- to enter Tigray, reclaim contested border areas, help strike a blow to that old enemy, and loot all the property they could. However it came about that Eritrean forces engaged in combat within Tigray, and that Eritrean forces actively controlled large sections of Tigray for several months, agreeing to this, allowing it to happen, or being unable to prevent it, seems to me a great shame on the Ethiopian federal government, and certainly another tactical mistake in the operation. This was a mistake for several reasons.

Permitting the involvement of Eritrean forces was a mistake first of all because it overlooked the decades of bad blood between the military forces and armed militia groups on both sides of the border. The 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea border war was a bloody one, with somewhere in the range of 50 - 100 thousand killed because of it. Since 2000, the border region has remained highly militarized and tense with periodic skirmishes and outbreaks of fighting. Despite the summer of 2018 peace deal between Addis Ababa and Asmara, the border region remained militarized on both sides, and the actual border disagreements remained unresolved. Many within the officier core of the EDF would have jumped at the opportunity to open artillery fire at the other side, or blaze across the border and wreak some havoc on the residents of Tigray. And this seems to be exactly what they did. There may or may not have been formal reassurances from Isaias that Eritrean presence in Tigray was temporary and was to operate alongside and to assist the ENDF-led operation, but all reports from the ground indicate that Eritrean troops acted as a rogue force following their own agenda of looting and revenge. There are countless reports of massacres and systematic rape perpetrated by Eritrean soldiers upon Tigray residents. There are also reports of capture and refoulement of Eritrean refugees from the Hitsats and Shimelba refugee camps in Tigray. One of the reports of atrocities, which has been well documented, relates to the massacre of civilians in Axum in late Nov. 2020, including shooting people dead in the street and going door-to-door through the city. Estimates are that the number of civilians killed over the course of a couple of days was in the hundreds. There are other reports of whole caravans of trucks, and even camels, loaded with looted items making their way northward back across the Eritrean border. Given the decades of bad blood between the armed forces on both sides of the border, it is not surprising that such atrocities took place and it seems grossly negligent that the Ethiopian federal government either agreed to allow this or was powerless to stop it.

A second reason why Eritrean involvement was a mistake is that, as with the involvement of Amhara forces, it made it impossible for the Ethiopian federal government to maintain any sense of a moral high ground, let alone attempt to win over support from the people of Tigray. Any interim government established by the federal government in Mekele was doomed to fail given the atrocities committed on the federal government’s watch. From the perspective of the people of Tigray, the Ethiopian government utterly betrayed them by standing by as a foreign military force, a sworn enemy of Ethiopia for two decades, crossed over Ethiopia’s national borders and operated with complete impunity for months. How is it that Prime Minister Abiy can speak of Ethiopian sovereignty, its right to deal with its own internal issues, and the problem of foreign meddling in its affairs, all the while allowing a foreign country to violate its sovereign borders and then grossly violate its citizens? Given these circumstances, it is no wonder that the people of Tigray feel that Ethiopia, their own country, has stabbed them in the back; it is no wonder that they’ve joined the TPLF-led forces in large numbers to fight back. Prime Minister Abiy has acted somehow surprised and dismayed that the people of Tigray did not celebrate the federal-allied forces and did not welcome the transitional regional government installed in Mekele. But how could he possibly be surprised that the people of Tigray would respond in any way but arm resistance given the make-up, the motivations and the behavior of those “allied forces”?

I’ve spoken above of the missteps of involving Amhara regional forces and allowing the engagement of Eritrean forces as two separate issues, but combined, these two missteps have had a compounding detrimental effect. The wounds that have been inflicted upon the people of Tigray are such that the various possible outcomes of the conflict all look quite dire for any sense of national unity in the Ethiopian state. I have a hard time imagining Tigray as a part of Ethiopia for at least a generation. I can only foresee the following possible results of this conflict, all of which entail a significant reshaping of the Ethiopian state as we know it. One option assumes that the federal government and its allied forces are able to regain the upper-hand in this conflict, push the TPLF-led forces back across the border into Tigray, defeat those forces, reinstall its own transitional government in Tigray, and then hold that control. Given the resolve that the TPLF-led armed resistance and counter offensive has shown over the last couple of months, to accomplish this would require an all-out, massively destructive war effort that will kill many, both combatants and civilians, and destroy Tigray. Surviving elements of the TPLF would likely still manage to continue a protracted insurgency for years requiring the federal government to maintain a large and costly military presence in Tigray. The Tigray people would no longer be considered citizens of the Ethiopian state; rather, they’d be a subjugated and occupied territory.

This above possible outcome assumes that the federal government has the capacity to defeat the TPLF-led forces. That’s definitely not assured; they certainly haven’t demonstrated that capacity as of yet. Despite the reasons stated by federal officials for the withdrawal from Mekele in June -- that it was a humanitarian withdrawal to allow Tigrayan farmers the rainy season to plant their crop, or that it was a strategic decision because Mekele was no longer the focal point of Ethiopia's security concerns -- it seems likely that the withdrawal was, at least in part, because ENDF forces suffered a string of defeats in late May and June and were at risk of being surrounded and cut off in Mekele. What seems a possibility is that the conflict eventually results in some sort of negotiated solution that separates Tigray from the rest of Ethiopia as some sort of extra-autonomous territory, or even some sort of independent state. Whether Tigray ends up as a highly militarized subjugated territory, or some sort of independent state, either way, Abiy’s vision for a future with a nationally unified Ethiopia has been struck a major blow. The Tigray region is the birthplace of the Ethiopian national origin story. Some richness of Ethiopian national identity will certainly be lost if the ancient city of Axum, the Ark of the Covenant at Mary of Zion Church, the al-Nejashi mosque, Debra Damo monastery, the cliff churches of Gheralta and the battlefield of Adwa are no longer an integral part of Ethiopia.

The above outcomes assume that Prime Minister Abiy and his government will politically survive this; that’s not a foregone conclusion. I do not wish for the collapse of Abiy’s government as that would only usher in more instability for the country, but this possibility is a real concern. The TPLF-led forces seem to be only growing in strength, now taking control over numerous positions outside of Tigray in both Amhara and Afar while the federal government also has a growing military uprising on its hands in Oromia with the OLA. Meanwhile, the economy -- which had been the fastest growing on the African continent for over a decade -- has stumbled badly for the past two years due to both the COVID-19 pandemic and this conflict. Lenders -- including those in China -- are starting to withhold further finance, western donors such as the US and EU have frozen direct aid to the Ethiopian government, Ethiopia has requested debt restructuring under a G20 / Paris Club protocol, credit rating agencies have downgraded Ethiopia, the central bank has forced domestic banks to freeze payouts on loans, the government is closing 30 embassies and missions around the world citing budgetary restraints, the Ethiopian birr has been in a steady slide, and inflation hit 26.4% in July. Combined, these are issues that are severely undercutting the stability of Abiy’s government.

My final concern regarding the execution of this conflict by Abiy’s government has to do with the lack of transparency to the Ethiopian people throughout. From the outset, both sides of this conflict have waged a vicious propaganda war in an attempt to control information and shape the narrative. The propaganda war was made possible in part due to the complete communications black-out across Tigray. While communications were restored to some extent in some areas once the federal government controlled Mekele, it remained inconsistent at best, and large areas remained on blackout. Furthermore, for much of the past 10 months, access to Tigray by journalists has been severely restricted. I recognize that the TPLF has pushed its own propaganda. I will also acknowledge that many of the claims that have trended on twitter, much of which comes out of the Tigrayan and larger Ethiopian diaspora around the world, have been unfounded nonsense. Due to this, I can perhaps understand the government’s desire to counter these elements of misinformation with its own, but the effect has been an on-going sense that the federal government is outright deceiving the Ethiopian people.

Early on, the Ethiopian people were told that this was merely a “law and order operation” to capture and arrest the leaders of the TPLF. At the end of Nov. when ENDF forces took control of Mekele, Abiy even claimed that not a single civilian had been killed by federal forces during the nearly month-long operation up to that point. And yet, reports were coming out even at the time, and have since been repeatedly documented, of atrocities committed against civilians during the initial 3-4 weeks of the operations; revelations of atrocities committed since the initial operation in Nov. have only continued. Furthermore, the federal government repeatedly made the claim that the TPLF resistance to the operation in Nov. was weak, that the federal forces had gutted TPLF capabilities and leadership, and that all that remained were mop up operations, and yet sporadic fighting continued for months with growing evidence that the TPLF-led armed resistance (which some have started to call the Tigray Defense Forces) was growing in strength. Then in June the TPLF-led armed resistance launched operations that won them a string of victories north and northwest of Mekele. Then suddenly at the end of June, the federal government announced a complete withdrawal from Tigray and a unilateral ceasefire. Both ENDF and Eritrean forces withdrew and the TPLF-led armed resistance entered Mekele and other major towns and cities across the region. Though the federal government claimed that they withdrew because they believed the TPLF was no longer a threat and there were other security concerns elsewhere, there is evidence that the withdrawal was really a retreat in the face of the TPLF-led armed resistance that threatened to surround and cut-off the federal forces in Mekele. The eight month operation from Nov. - Jun., rather than being a precision “law and order operation,” instead showed all the signs of an outright civil war, and one in which the federal forces were not doing a great job at winning. Despite the claims by the federal government that Mekele was no longer Ethiopia’s pivotal security concern, the TPLF-led resistance has continued the fight since, pushing beyond Tigray’s regional borders well into the Afar and Amhara regions. There is little doubt that this on-going conflict with Tigray forces is indeed Ethiopia’s number one security concern.

It was also deeply troubling that Prime Minister Abiy and his government persistently denied any involvement of Eritrean forces in Tigray from Nov. through Mar., despite eye-witness reports, photographs and satellite imagery as evidence of their presence all the way back to the battle in Humera during the second week of the conflict. Abiy finally admitted their presence in late March and stated that they would be immediately withdrawing. However, in June, Eritrean forces were still controlling many sections of northern Tigray, including major cities. It wasn’t until Ethiopia’s announcement of a full withdrawal from Tigray in late June that Eritrean forces finally withdrew back to the border areas. As mentioned above, the fact that Eritrean forces, a foreign power, were either invited or permitted to cross into Ethiopian territory and commit atrocities, including massacres, looting, sexual assult and rape, upon Ethiopian citizens is a shame upon the Ethiopian government. It is deeply troubling that Prime Minister Abiy continued in a bold-faced lie about their involvement for months before finally admitting their presence in Tigray.

Conclusion

So what’s the solution? Well, I don’t have one, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s unfair of me to point fingers without being able to provide alternatives; it’s far easier to be a critic than it is to propose solutions. At this point, however, this war does not seem to me as one that is winnable for the federal government. Continuing to execute this war, relying heavily on Amhara regional forces and the motivation of Amhara nationalism will only serve to further entrench the ethnic nature of the conflict. In this climate, we’ll continue to see ethnic-based revenge atrocities. In my view, continuing to attempt a military solution to this conflict will either create a bloody, costly, protracted civil war, or it will result in the collapse of Abiy’s government altogether. While the collapse of Abiy’s government is clearly a bad thing for Prime Minister Abiy himself, it would also be destabilizing for Ethiopia as a whole and set back the country from the progress it’s made towards democratic political reforms, economic growth and reductions in poverty. As Paul Collier wrote in The Bottom Billion in 2007, protracted war and conflict constituted one of the major “poverty traps” that continued to hold back sub-Saharan African countries from economic development in the 1990s and 2000s, while other parts of the globe saw significant growth and reductions in poverty. War is costly, not only in the costs of arming and mobilizing military troops and hardware, but also the disruptions war causes to productive activities, including industry, tourism and agriculture, not to mention the economic devastation war causes on infrastructure, resources, and human lives. War and the instability caused by protracted war also discourages much needed investment and financing for the country. Ethiopia has made significant economic strides in the past couple of decades, posting an average of nearly 10% annual GDP growth for a decade and a half, and greatly reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty. A protracted civil war will set Ethiopia back economically and lead to the greater suffering of many well beyond the front lines of the conflict. The protests and uprisings across Ethiopia in recent years are definitely driven in part by deep ethnic divisions and grievances, but they are also partly economic. When people, especially young people, feel hopeless about their futures because of a lack of opportunities and high unemployment, they are susceptible to the scape-goating rhetoric of ethnic nationalism. Just as Ethiopia needs to focus on improving the quality of education, promoting small and medium sized business enterprises, and increasing job growth, it is instead distracted by a resource-draining, economy-sucking war.

This war is also only deepening the ethnic divisions and wounds in the country, which is tragically ironic given Abiy’s vision of medemer. We’ve seen numerous reports over the past month, as the TPLF-led Tigrayan forces push into Afar and Amhara, of ethnic-based violence perpetrated back and forth between groups in revenge attacks. Now that there is some sort of cooperative agreement between the TPLF and the OLA, and the OLA seems to be successfully exerting strength in western Oromia, the ethnic dynamics have only increased with the insertion of an Oromo nationalist element as well. These are wounds that will not be healed quickly. These are wounds that could be fatal to any idea of a future of Ethiopian national unity.

Furthermore, Ethiopia is surrounded by regional security concerns. Tensions remain high with Sudan and Egypt over the GERD, South Sudan remains a tinderbox, and al-Shabaab and other Islamist groups continue to operate over Ethiopia’s south-eastern borders in Somalia. Just this week there are reports of Ethiopia moving large numbers of troops out of the AMISOM mission in Somalia and redeploying them for the fight against Tigray. The same was done last Nov. during the initial operation. This leaves Ethiopia vulnerable to al-Shabaab attacks from Somalia. In light of these regional external threats, Ethiopia cannot afford to be further weakened internally.

There is no easy path back from this brink for Ethiopia; there will be major consequences of any resolution. But in my opinion, continuing to seek a resolution through military means will not solve this crisis. It is clear that Prime Minister Abiy and the key government leaders close to him are in a fight for their own political survival. That reality is perhaps clouding their ability to make decisions for the good of the country; their decisions currently seem desperate. Calls for an end of the conflict from outside are falling on deaf ears. I hope that some more objective voices internally may be able to prevail upon Abiy’s government to reconsider its current course of action, because I worry for my friends, colleagues and the country I called home.

Nathan Haines