By Fred Harter
Nearly two years after a cease-fire ended one of the most devastating wars of recent times, a fragile peace prevails in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. But while there has been no major fighting in Tigray since negotiators inked the deal in Pretoria, South Africa, in November 2022, the aftershocks of the conflict continue to be felt.
Beginning in November 2020, the war between the federal military and rebels led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, killed an estimated 600,000 people and at one point threatened to bring down the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa. It also drew in troops from Eritrea and Ethiopia’s Amhara region, south of Tigray, both fighting on the side of the government.
A panel of United Nations experts found that all sides committed potential war crimes. The Eritreans, the investigators said, waged a campaign of sexual slavery in Tigray, while the Ethiopian government used “starvation as a method of warfare” by blocking sorely needed aid. The Tigray side was accused of abuses, too.
Although aid can now reach much of Tigray, the humanitarian situation remains dire. Plentiful rain fell during this summer’s rainy season, but parts of the region are still reeling from a historic drought. In some areas, farmers have not been able to harvest for years. Many others lost their agricultural equipment to rampant looting during the war.
A nine-month aid suspension by the U.N. and the U.S. over widespread corruption in 2023 deepened the impact of the drought. With their coping mechanisms already exhausted by the war, many farming communities are resorting to eating wild berries and roots to survive.
At the beginning of this year, regional officials were warning of famine unless aid was urgently scaled up. The federal government in Addis Ababa accused them of politicizing the crisis, although its own ombudsman said in January it had verified the starvation deaths of 351 people in Tigray. The same agency reported another 44 hunger deaths in the neighboring Amhara region.
Thanks to the recent rains, the situation should improve once farmers can bring in the harvest, starting this month. And emergency grain is now reaching remote villages since aid deliveries were resumed in the first months of 2024. Yet the humanitarian response is plagued by funding shortfalls. So far, the U.N. has received just 21 percent of the $3.2 billion it needs to feed hungry people in Ethiopia in 2024.
Moreover, the western part of Tigray remains under the control of Amhara forces and is still cut off from aid deliveries. This area is known for producing sesame, a valuable cash crop, as well as for its deposits of gold. When the war broke out in November 2020, Amhara militia seized the region, claiming it was rightfully theirs. They forcibly evicted hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans in a brutal campaign characterized by massacres, sexual violence, torture and arbitrary detention, drawing condemnations of “ethnic cleansing” from the U.S. State Department.
The future status of western Tigray and southern Tigray, another disputed area, remains unsettled. Abiy has promised to hold a referendum to determine their fate. But this idea is unpopular among the Amhara, who are now fighting their own regional rebellion against the federal government. Although they fought alongside Ethiopia’s military against Tigray, they were not party to the Pretoria cease-fire and view the deal as a stab in the back.
The lack of a discernible peace dividend is fueling disillusionment among young Tigrayans, especially those who fought in the war.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people evicted from western Tigray still languish in improvised camps. Cut off from their farms and businesses, they were the hardest hit by the aid pause. On May 31, the Tigrayan authorities unveiled a plan to return 690,000 displaced people to their homes in southern and western Tigray. Little progress has been made, however. Some 3,700 displaced people were returned in June and July, but even this small-scale initiative was held up by wrangling over the status of returning Tigrayan militia members. It is not clear whether Abiy’s referendum will be held after all the displaced people go home.
If it is not resolved soon, this dispute could derail the Pretoria agreement. This was underscored earlier this year, when clashes between Tigrayan and Amhara fighters erupted in several districts of southern Tigray. Making matters even worse, Eritrean forces still occupy several border regions of Tigray, where they continue to kidnap civilians and loot their properties.
Their presence is hindering the demobilization of Tigray’s roughly 275,000-strong rebel fighting force. Under an implementation accord struck by military leaders shortly after the Pretoria cease-fire, disarmament was to be carried out “concurrently with the withdrawal of foreign and [non-governmental] forces from the region.” With Amhara militiamen still in western and southern Tigray, and Eritrean troops still inside the border, this condition has not been met. Tigray’s leaders are reluctant to disband their fighting force in case fresh conflict erupts.
Like aid deliveries, the demobilization process is also hamstrung by a lack of funds. The U.N. says it will cost $849 million over a four- to five-year period, a huge sum that would make the demobilization program the largest in the world. Ethiopia’s government plans to foot around 15 percent of the bill, with donors expected to come up with the rest. A comprehensive plan for sending the fighters home has been drawn up with help from the U.N.’s Development Programme, but recent small-scale pledges by Canada, Japan and the European Union fall far short of what is needed.
The same is true for Tigray’s industry and its health and education systems. Factories, schools and other infrastructure have not been repaired, with the total value of infrastructure destroyed in the war estimated at $22.7 billion.
Instead, Abiy is pouring billions into beautifying the capital, Addis Ababa, in a bid to revamp the economy by attracting foreign investors and tourists. With Ethiopia experiencing its worst economic crisis in decades—it secured a $3.4 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in July—citizens are questioning if this is the best use of public funds.
Another thorny issue is transitional justice. Throughout the conflict, Abiy’s government flatly denied accusations that its troops and allies were committing human rights violations. It imposed a severe communications blackout on Tigray to prevent news from seeping out to the world, cutting off the region’s mobile phone network and internet. From the beginning, it has also sought to control the transitional justice process and has denied international investigators permission to visit Tigray.
In October 2023, Ethiopia successfully lobbied to end the U.N. probe into human rights abuses committed during the conflict. It is developing its own national transitional justice process, which should be finalized in the coming months. Based on the government’s previous track record of denying war crimes, human rights monitors have raised questions about its commitment to true accountability. In particular, there is little prospect that Eritrean troops will face justice for their crimes in Tigray, since Ethiopia’s national courts will have no jurisdiction over them.
The lack of a discernible peace dividend is fueling disillusionment among young Tigrayans, especially those who fought in the war. Meanwhile, Tigray is gripped by a political crisis, with rival TPLF factions no longer united by a common enemy and jostling for power. At its annual conference last month, the party voted to suspend the membership of Tigray’s interim regional president, Getachew Reda, with members particularly unhappy over the lack of progress in holding a new regional election, a key provision of the Pretoria deal.
For Tigray, all of this makes for an ominous picture. The bloodshed is over, but the region still lies in ruins. With its leaders embroiled in political squabbles, some observers fear the drums of war may soon be beating again.
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