A SERIES OF NOTES ON THE GLOBAL FRONTIER OF DEVELOPMENT. NOTES FROM AFRICA 1: Ethiopia (Part II)
Map of Ethiopia, Administrative Division. Library of Congress, USA / Joe Studwell
THE SECRET AND DANGEROUS PLAN OF ABIY AHMED ALI
The great mistake of Meles Zenawi, who passed away in 2012, was — in the context of a savage civil war — to promise a federal constitution under which every ethnic group, bar the Tigrayans, simmered with resentment that its narrow racial interests were not being given their due. The Ethiopian nation-building of Menelik, Haile Selassie, and even the Derg went on the back burner.
Meles’ economic policies set the standard in Africa for development of smallholder agriculture, and now manufacturing, but after his death ethnic tensions in the 2010s became increasingly violent.
It was in this context that Meles’ chosen successor, Hailemariam Desalegn, from a small lowland ethnic group called Wolayta, who was manipulated in office by the Tigrayans, decided to step down in February 2018 and make way for the Oromo former intelligence officer and cybersecurity chief Abiy.
No one but Abiy knows the mental process he went through in deciding how to confront the TPLF. Early in his administration, he conjured with Oromo nationalism. But the characters this brought to the fore were as ugly as anything seen in Amhara or Tigrayan nationalism. Abiy switched tracks.
In June 2020, he locked up Oromo peddlers of ethnic hatred like the Oromo Federalist Congress’s (OFC) Jawar Mohammed. Recently, the detainees went on hunger strike, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, they ended the strike before anyone died.
As is so often the case, there is a bourgeois and profoundly self-seeking quality about the manipulators of racial populism in Ethiopia, including the Stanford-educated Jawar.
Abiy’s most practical problem in taking on the TPLF was that Tigrayans were in possession of most of the army’s weaponry; many estimates suggest they control four-fifths of federal small arms and artillery.
Hence, Abiy’s «federal» army faced a domestic enemy with more firepower. It appears he, therefore, determined to construct the largest possible coalition against the almost universally resented Tigrayans. In doing so, Abiy took risks that looked to many observers to be reckless.
In July 2018, the new prime minister, only four months into his term, stunned the world by cutting a peace deal with Eritrea, two decades after the brutal Ethiopian-Eritrean border war.
There is no complete public record of the deal made with the three-decade totalitarian leader of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, but it appears to include access for landlocked Ethiopia to Eritrean ports and the expulsion from Asmara of Oromo irredentists of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), who were long cosseted by Afwerki.
In October 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reconciling with Isaias Afwerki, once a friend and comrade of Meles Zenawi in the fight against the Derg.
It seems now, however, that peace was not the only thing on Abiy’s mind when engaging the deeply embittered Afwerki, a man who instituted open-ended military conscription in Eritrea since 2001, built a standing army of 200,000 in a nation of 3.5 million and is rumored to suffer from a hereditary and degenerative mental illness.
In taking on the TPLF, Abiy wanted the use of Afwerki’s army, one raised on a diet of extremist, anti-Tigrayan indoctrination. In 1991, the TPLF had used Afwerki and a much larger Eritrean military force than their own to take Addis from the Derg.
Abiy’s extraordinary gamble in November 2020 was to use Afwerki’s army to take down the TPLF. In Ethiopia, what goes around comes around.
The team that Abiy ended up with included perhaps half of Afwerki’s army — 100,000 Eritrean troops deployed inside Tigray. Then there are Amhara federal forces, special forces, and a smorgasbord of violent young Amhara militia groups
The Amhara want what they regard as their lebensraum in mixed Amhara and Tigrayan western Tigray, some of which were demarcated as Tigrayan territory by the TPLF-dominated federal government.
Then, there are federal troops from Ethiopia’s 90 other ethnic groups. And, finally, the Sudanese military government, which potentially offers the TPLF the only border across which it can resupply fuel, food, and ammunition, and which both Abiy and Afwerki have pressured and cajoled to cut the Tigrayans off.The upshot has been an utterly brutal conflict in which atrocities have been committed on all sides.
The TPLF destroyed roads, bridges, and other infrastructure to impede its enemies’ advance (and, coincidentally, humanitarian relief supplies), retreated to the caves and forests the TPLF knows intimately from the struggle against the Derg, and handed out large amounts of surplus firearms to civilians. The Eritreans poured across the border into eastern and central Tigray.
Today, the African Union comprises 55 member states from across the continent, organized into 8 distinct regional economic blocs. At times, the drive for integration is so strong that discussions even arise about introducing a single pan-African currency.
The African Union’s headquarters is located in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. This choice is no coincidence: Ethiopia’s economy is currently the fastest-growing on the continent and one of the most rapidly developing in the world
Asked by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Abiy «guaranteed» there were no Eritrean troops there. In reality, they led the fighting and the atrocities. In Aksum, Eritrean forces murdered hundreds of civilians. In Adrigrat, there were multiple credible reports of more civilian murder, widespread rape, and looting of everything from private homes to hospitals.
Mark Lowcock, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, told the UN Security Council on March 4 that «multiple credible and widely corroborated reports from Tigray… speak of widespread atrocities, involving mass killings, rapes, and abductions of civilians». He cited reports of «large-scale, organized, and systematic sexual violence».
The butchery has continued for four months already, with satellite images showing that Eritrean troops have systematically burned fields and orchards, increasing the likelihood of famine. South-west of the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, around Gijet, analysis of satellite images taken on February 20 and February 22 revealed 508 burned-out buildings in that recent period alone. Abiy claimed that fighting stopped in late November; this is as much of a lie as his assertion that there are no Eritreans involved.
A significant advantage for Africa is its so-called «demographic dividend». For comparison, China’s population today is approximately 1.5 billion, while Africa’s is about 1.3 billion. However, by the end of the 21st century, Africa’s population is projected to reach 4.4 billion, accounting for 40% of the world’s population (currently 15%).
Moreover, this will be the youngest population on the planet. African youth, on average, are better educated than their parents and aspire to higher levels of consumption. The middle class is also expanding, with estimates ranging from 250 to 300 million people
In western Tigray, regular Amhara forces and, particularly, militia behaved with similar brutality against ethnic Tigrayans. The same pattern of murder of civilians, endemic rape, and burning of crops occurred. Amhara militia also entered the fertile, disputed al-Fashqa Triangle on the Sudanese side of the border, where Tigray, Eritrea, and Sudan met and fought with Sudanese troops.
Eritrean forces are likely also involved, raising the possibility of regional conflagration. Superficially, what is happening in Tigray is ethnic conflict. In reality, it is a struggle for land and power among men who are defined by selfishness rather than ethnicity.
Indeed, it is striking how the past and present actors in this «ethnic» war are almost all mixed race, or at least of confused ethnic loyalties.
Meles Zenawi, TPLF leader and architect of Tigrayan hegemony, had an Eritrean mother. Bereket Simon, Meles’ university friend turned right hand man, is a pure Eritrean raised in Gondar who supported the TPLF war against Eritrea; Abiy has put him in gaol. Tewodros Hagos, the super-nationalist head of the the TPLF office in Tigray (now also in gaol) is half-Eritrean.
Afwerki, the totalitarian leader of Eritrea, had a Tigrayan mother. His right-hand man, Yemane Gebreab, Head of Political Affairs and Presidential Adviser, is said to be part or all of Amhara. Abiy Ahmed’s father, Ahmed Ali, is an Oromo Muslim, and his mother, Tezeta Wolde, is an Amhara Coptic Christian.
THE CLAIM THAT THIS CONFLICT IS ABOUT RACE OR RELIGION IS A PALPABLE FARCE
Similarly, the notion that the TPLF is the defender of the interests of ordinary Tigrayans does not bear scrutiny. Under the premierships of Meles and Hailemariam Desalegn, almost the entire Tigrayan elite migrated to Addis Ababa, leaving Tigray and its capital, Mekelle, as a backwater.
Even before November’s assault, Mekelle was a run-down town without a functioning water system and with a large contingent of malnourished Tigrayan migrants from the countryside being fed by international aid groups. TPLF leaders didn’t much care. They preferred the five-star hotels in Addis.
Despite all this, Abiy Ahmed has created a situation where Tigrayan support for the TPLF is almost universal. As a former federal cabinet member who believes a negotiated settlement with the TPLF was possible (he is not himself Tigrayan) puts it: «The Tigrayan people support the TPLF 100 percent, and that means they will get [food] supplies, one way or the other. And you know why the Tigrayan people support them 100 percent? Because of Eritrean involvement».
Similarly, Aaron Maasho, the Amharic-Tigrayan-Eritrean spokesperson for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, notes that Abiy failed to set down any ground rules for the involvement of Eritrean forces indoctrinated by Afwerki to believe that every problem in their country is the fault of Tigrayans: «He gave them carte blanche».
On March 2, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Abiy to demand that Eritrean forces leave Tigray and that he pursue a negotiated settlement. This is what ought to happen, however it is unclear if the Biden administration and the rest of the international community will bring sufficient pressure to bear.
Ethiopia remains the key US ally in the Horn of Africa, giving Abiy room to resist pressure for peace and continue military operations. However, it is far from clear the TPLF can be defeated militarily.
The Tigrayans are likely too well-armed, too savvy in guerrilla tactics, and too well-supported by their civilian population. This war needs to end soon, or it may go on for a very long time.
The keys to ending the conflict are to get the Eritreans and the Amhara militias out, to disarm all militia groups and civilians, and to seek political compromise with the more centrist, anti-independence elements of the TPLF.
In addition, there needs to be a full and thorough investigation of war crimes that holds those responsible to account and punishes them. The kind of ignore-and-forget approach to genocide that the international community sanctioned in, for instance, South Sudan will only lead to the same festering vendettas and more violence in the future.
US leadership and US money for reconstruction will be critical if Ethiopia is to escape the Tigrayan hex on its enormous developmental potential, which could and should be a beacon for the rest of the African continent.
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