Almost two months after the resumption of fighting in the northern region of Ethiopia, voices are raised to denounce the catastrophic situation that continues to worsen in Tigray. The UN described the conflict as “uncontrollable” and denounced the massive mobilization of military forces by both the federal government and the rebels, which could lead to an even more tense escalation of the conflict.
Since August 24, and after 5 months of truce, the fighting resumed in Tigray, the northern region of Ethiopia where the central government of Addis Ababa is facing the Tigreño rebels for control of the territory.
This Tuesday, October 18, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that all parties to the conflict continue to mobilize soldiers and fighters en masse, indicating that the risk of an escalation of the conflict is great.
On Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the situation in Ethiopia was now “uncontrollable”.
“The hostilities in Tigray must end now,” Guterres said in New York. “Violence and destruction are reaching alarming levels,” said the United Nations secretary-general, stressing the “terrible price paid by civilians” and the “nightmare” that the Ethiopian population is experiencing.
The international community was alarmed this weekend by the situation in Shire, a city in Tigray located about 40 kilometers south of the border with Eritrea, which has been the target of intense bombardment in recent days, according to humanitarian sources on the ground. .
On Sunday, the president of the African Union (AU) Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, expressed concern about “reports of increased fighting in the Tigray region.” The Commission president “strongly calls for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and the resumption of humanitarian services,” the AU said in an official statement.
A proposal that the rebels said they were willing to accept, but this Monday, the Ethiopian federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, announced that it would continue its military operations in the region.
In a statement, the federal Executive said it was “obliged to take defensive measures to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country” in the face of “repeated attacks” by the Tigray rebels, in “active collusion” with “hostile foreign powers.”
A conflict that has lasted for almost two years
Tigray is one of the 10 regions of Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa with more than 110 million inhabitants. This northern region has almost six million people, most of whom are of the Tigreña ethnic group.
When the current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, came to power in 2018, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) party reproached him for marginalizing them, as Fisseha explains. Tekle, from the NGO Amnesty International. In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government twice postponed the elections. The TPLF leaders decided to hold their own elections in September 2020 and won them, but Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, ruled that the elections were illegal.
The central Executive accused the TPLF forces of attacking the Army based in Tigray, and decided to launch an offensive in the region on the night of November 3-4, 2020 to take control of the territory. Federal forces and those from Amhara, a border region of Tigray, have taken control of Western Tigray, which has been placed under a new Administration.
Since then, the goal of the Abiy Ahmed government has been to drive the Tigrean population out of the region while the rebels fight to reclaim their land.
An ethnic conflict that brings together several actors
The Amhara and Afar regions, bordering Tigray, have become militarily involved on the ground and are fighting alongside the Ethiopian Army. They participated in transforming the political conflict into an ethnic conflict.
According to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, meetings were held in which officials from the Amhara region discussed plans to eliminate the Tigreños and the restrictions they placed on their language as evidence of ethnic cleansing.
“Since November 2020, Amhara authorities and security forces have waged a relentless campaign of ethnic cleansing to drive Tigreños from their homes in Western Tigray,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Another actor involved in the conflict is Eritrea, a neighboring country and a former enemy of the TPLF. The rapprochement between the Ethiopian and Eritrean federal governments is largely explained by the desire to dislodge the Tigrean elite from power in Ethiopia. After denying it for a long time, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed finally admitted the involvement of Eritrean troops in Tigray.
A humanitarian catastrophe behind closed doors
Although the exact figures are not known, it is known that the violence as a result of the civil war has left thousands dead and at least two million displaced.
Humanitarian aid hardly reaches Tigray, although some 22 million people urgently need it, according to Amnesty International. With the cessation of agricultural activity during the fighting and the drought that has plagued the region in recent years, famine threatens.
According to Amnesty International, “in all the regions affected by the war, hospitals, when they have not been completely destroyed by bombing or vandalized, no longer have the means to function and access to education has been interrupted”.
All parties involved in the conflict have committed serious human rights violations, such as mass executions and sexual assault, which are used by both sides as a weapon of war.
This conflict takes place without the presence of journalists on the ground, which makes it impossible to clarify the facts and makes the international community disinterested in the war.
According to Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, “the response of Ethiopia’s international and regional partners falls short of the seriousness of the crimes that continue to be committed in western Tigray.”
With EFE and AFP
