What Ethiopia’s Brewing Conflict Means for the Country—and the Region

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Source: Small Wars | Aly Verjee and Susan Stigant | USIP Publication

A protracted conflict between the federal government and the Tigray region is still not inevitable, but it will require both sides to choose another path.

Violent conflict between the federal government of Ethiopia and the federal state of Tigray, in the country’s north, began November 4 and quickly escalated. USIP’s Aly Verjee and Susan Stigant discuss the crisis and identify what could be done to avoid further violent conflict in east Africa’s most populous country.

Unfortunately, violence is not new to Ethiopia; already, there are over 1.4 million conflict-affected internally displaced persons in the country. What is the broader significance of this latest violence between the federal government and the Tigray region?

Stigant: The rapidity of the escalation of violence between Tigray and Addis Ababa is concerning in itself, given the stakes for Ethiopia’s peace and stability. This conflict has the potential to quickly become more polarized and increase violence throughout Ethiopian society. Already, the Tigray region has called for the full mobilization of all citizens to fight. The federal government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has also used uncompromising language to justify his government’s actions. As the allegations and incidents mount—including possible war crimes—and the number of people affected increases, it will become much harder to find a peaceful solution.

At the same time, solely focusing on what is going on today in Tigray risks obscuring broader concerns about violence, democratic backsliding, and repression elsewhere in the country. As a horrific example of the type of violence in Ethiopia that has become all too common, on November 1, ethnically targeted killings left at least 54 people dead in a schoolyard in the Wollega zone of Oromia state. Throughout western Ethiopia, communal violence has only increased since 2018. In southern Ethiopia, tensions remain high, as the consequences of the model of ethnic federalism continue to unfold.

Verjee: As I warned in April 2019, tensions between the regions have the potential to overwhelm the political management capacity of the center. The conflict in Tigray has already pulled in forces from the neighboring Amhara Regional State to fight the Tigrayans. The leadership of the Somali Regional State has also taken the side of the federal government in the dispute. In the broader context, it does not really matter who is responsible for starting the violence; all Ethiopians, no matter their ethnicity, have to find a way to live side-by-side, which will not be accomplished by jailing or killing the political and military elite of Tigray. The ruling party of Tigray, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which once led the ruling party coalition that preceded the Abiy government, are no angels. But for the federal government to risk throwing the whole country into a protracted civil conflict—with significant cross-border consequences—is also highly unfortunate.

Already, a humanitarian crisis is in the making. More than 11,000 refugees have already crossed the border with Sudan, with thousands more almost certain to follow. Drawing in Eritrea and Sudan into the conflict may easily bring in other regional and extra-regional powers, leaving the Horn of Africa in a complicated, messy crisis from which it may take many years to recover, at a cost of thousands of lives. As the USIP Red Sea Senior Study Group recently warned, “Intrastate or interstate conflict would be catastrophic for Ethiopia’s people and for the region and would pose a direct threat to international peace and security.”

The dispute between Tigray and the federal government has been festering for some time. Could violence be avoided?

Stigant: The federal government has characterized its action as a rule of law operation to uphold the constitution, and that it would act with “utmost care for the overall wellbeing, safety and security of our citizens.” The federal government has described the September 2020 elections held by the Tigray region as illegitimate and has objected to equating the federal government to the TPLF. While there are more than two sides to every story, there is little doubt that relations were strained with Tigray. That said, the paramount constitutional right of any citizen is the right to life. Before resorting to military action and the attendant deaths of Ethiopian citizens, every other possibility needed to be exhausted, even if the Tigray authorities were being uncooperative. More pragmatically, the use of force rarely works to sustain a political settlement, as the history of Ethiopia has shown on numerous occasions.

As the cornerstone of his rule, Prime Minister Abiy set out a philosophy of medemer, or coming together, to overcome the divisions of the past. Less than a year ago, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Abiy mentioned the word love seven times, and the words forgiveness and reconciliation four times each. Ethiopia does not need Abiy to love Tigray, nor vice versa; but forgiveness and reconciliation cannot occur if belligerent parties do not show restraint.

Verjee: The federal government has already suspended fiscal transfers to Tigray and cut off communications and cross-border trade. Even if the allegation that the TPLF posed an imminent threat by its purported seizure of weapons and a military base is entirely accurate, a proportionate, limited response was the most that could be justified. Although the federal government has said that its operations will be time limited, Abiy has also said that he will not rest until the “the criminal junta is disarmed, legitimate administration in the region restored, and fugitives apprehended and brought to justice,” which are objectives that could take months, if not years, to achieve. Although the warning signs have been there for some time, a protracted violent conflict is still not inevitable, but it will require both sides to choose another path.

Abiy should also consider that his own position as head of the government comes in the context of an ongoing debate about the future of the constitutional order of Ethiopia. Were it not for COVID-19, Ethiopia should have held elections this year, in which Abiy would have had the opportunity to obtain a democratic mandate. Abiy may be prime minister and enjoy the powers of that office but should consider his administration bound by norms that limit the actions of an unelected official.

To date, the federal government has rejected mediation of this crisis. Going forward, what role should national and international actors play to try and de-escalate the situation?

Stigant: For years, Ethiopia has been at the heart of establishing regional and continental mechanisms for addressing violent conflict. These include the Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism of the regional intergovernmental organization IGAD, which Ethiopia chaired for years, and the Peace and Security Council and the Panel of the Wise of the African Union (AU). As the AU’s host nation, there is arguably a special responsibility on Ethiopia to call on these indigenous African institutions not as an intrusion on sovereignty, but to model exemplary behavior for all African states.

Domestically, there have been multiple calls for a national dialogue to forge a political agreement regarding the conduct of elections and then on the constitutional order following the elections. As violence escalates in the country, it becomes both more urgent and more challenging to move a dialogue process forward. While the federal government has already announced such an effort, any initiative will need to be revisited in light of the changing circumstances. Ultimately, the credibility of any dialogue will be judged on the extent to which it includes key groups, reaches agreement on preparatory steps and confidence-building measures, and demonstrates that people can have genuine, safe, and frank conversations.

Verjee: The United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, all leading humanitarian donors, should urgently articulate the acute priority of preserving and enhancing humanitarian access to Tigray on the ground, to internally displaced persons moving to other states of Ethiopia, and to the refugees in Sudan. There is no acceptable reason for impeding this kind of access.

More broadly, as USIP’s Payton Knopf has written, international inertia on Ethiopia cannot be justified by imperfect or incomplete information. While American leverage on Ethiopia has been damaged by President Trump’s remarks on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Ethiopia remains a vital strategic partner for the United States in matters of regional security, counterterrorism, migration, and peacekeeping. China is also massively invested in Ethiopia, in many deals that were reached in the days of the rule of the TPLF. Therefore, the United States, China, and others have a mutual interest in seeing a quick end to hostilities, creating the space for other forms of dialogue and discussion. While a formal international mediation process may not be necessary, honest international brokers should urgently convey to both sides, in unequivocal terms, their expectation and hope that hostilities should be halted without further delay.

Is the War in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Ending or Only Just Beginning?

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The Jamestown Foundation | Michael Horton

On November 28, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali declared victory in his government’s three- week-long war against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) (al-Jazeera, November 28). Abiy’s declaration followed the seizure by federal troops of Mekelle, which is the capital city of Ethiopia’s Tigray region (Nazret, November 28; Ethiopian News Agency, December 3). The fight for Mekelle, a city of over a half a million, was quickly concluded as TPLF troops carried out a strategic withdrawal from the city. The TPLF, which commands at least 100,000 fighters and possesses an abundance of heavy weaponry, could have fought to retain control of what has long been their seat of power. [1] Instead, they chose to retreat to the surrounding mountains.

This strategic retreat and the TPLF’s long and storied history as skilled guerrilla fighters does not bode well for Prime Minister Abiy’s hasty declaration of victory. Until 2018, the TPLF was the dominant political power in Ethiopia and has governed much of the Tigray region since its rise to prominence in the late 1970s. The armed forces loyal to the TPLF include many of Ethiopia’s most experienced and well-trained officers, NCOs, and enlisted men and women. The TPLF, which oversaw Ethiopia’s brutally efficient internal security service during its time as the country’s preeminent political party (1991-2018), can also draw on hundreds of well-trained intelligence officers and agents.

In addition to its thousands of soldiers, the TPLF has long had access to heavy and medium weaponry dating from its time as the predominant political power. For the three decades in which it dominated Ethiopian politics, the TPLF leadership made sure that ethnic Tigrayan troops received the best weapons and training. While there was an ethnic component to these efforts, the Tigray region shares a border with Eritrea. When the TPLF controlled Ethiopia, it oversaw a costly two-year long war (1998-2000) with Eritrea in which Tigrayan officers held many of the senior commands.

If the TPLF chooses to fight a protracted guerrilla war, it is well prepared to do so. Besides an abundance of capable fighters, intelligence officers, and caches of weaponry, the mountainous Tigray region is ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare. It is also doubtful that the TPLF would feel constrained to limit its attacks to targets within the Tigray region. The TPLF has the means to conduct covert attacks on soft targets throughout Ethiopia. [2]

A War Everyone Knew was Coming

Sidelining elites, especially when they have held power for three decades, is always fraught with potential blowback. Prime Minister Abiy’s rise to power within the ruling coalition party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), was swift. When Abiy assumed the office of prime minister in April 2018, he lost no time in enacting sweeping and much needed governmental, economic, and security sector reforms. The TPLF, which was the dominant member of the EPRDF governing coalition, had maintained a firm grip on the levers of power since its members overthrew Ethiopia’s Marxist Derg regime led by Mengitsu Haile Mariam in 1991. [3] While the overthrow of the Derg improved the lives of many Ethiopians, the TPLF leadership banned opposition parties, imprisoned dissidents, limited non-state sanctioned media, and was slow to enact needed economic reforms.

In his first months in office, Abiy’s government freed thousands of political prisoners, announced that it would amend Ethiopia’s harsh anti-terrorism law, and allowed for more press freedom. Abiy also tackled constitutional reform as he sought to move away from Ethiopia’s ethnically based federal system. On the international front, Abiy signed a Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship with Eritrea in July 2018, for which he won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In November 2019, the EPRDF ruling coalition was rolled into a political party called the Prosperity Party, led by Abiy. Notably, the TPLF refused to join the new Prosperity Party Coalition (Africa News, November 21, 2019).

The speed of Abiy’s reforms over the last three years has been nothing short of stunning. The refusal of the TPLF to join the newly formed Prosperity Party in late 2019 was a proverbial shot across the bow. In October 2020, the TPLF leadership denied the Abiy-led government’s right to rule stating that Abiy’s postponement of the August 2020 elections due to COVID-19 violated the constitution (Africa News, June 24; The Reporter May 9). The TPLF held its own regional elections in September of 2020 in the Tigray region (al-Jazeera, September 9; The East African, September 9). The central government in Addis Ababa ruled the election null and void (al-Jazeera, October 19).

While many of the Abiy government’s reforms are laudable, an undercurrent of fear runs alongside them. Many politicians within not only the TPLF, but also within other regional and ethnic political parties worry about the re-centralization of political power at the expense of regional level authority.

These fears were already pervasive in Tigray in September 2019, with many members of the TPLF and the armed forces it commands actively preparing for armed conflict with the national government. During this author’s trip to the Tigray region in September 2019, the tension in what were then TPLF controlled cites of Adwa, Mekelle and Axum was palpable. In the countryside, many communities—those that were able—were setting aside extra stores of grain to guard against shortages arising from a war that many thought imminent.

War and Legitimacy

Over the course of 2019 and into 2020, relations between the federal government and the TPLF steadily deteriorated. Open conflict began on November 4 when military forces loyal to the TPLF launched a preemptive attack on the Ethiopian National Defense Force’s (ENDF) Northern Command Headquarters near Tigray’s capital city of Mekelle (TRT World, December 3). TPLF forces rapidly overran the command headquarters and a number of minor outposts. However, ENDF units, which were prepositioned in preparation for such a conflict, launched successful counter-attacks on multiple fronts within 24 hours of the assault. Within hours ENDF mechanized units seized control of most of Route 1, a major road that connects Mekelle with points north and south, thereby cutting off the city. [4]

The outbreak of hostilities did not come as a surprise to Abiy’s government. Preparations for war by both the ENDF and the TPLF have been underway for months in the case of the former, and likely for much of the last year in the case of the latter. “Prime Minister Abiy and Debretsion Gebremichael (leader of the TPLF and president of the Tigray region) backed each other into a corner,” explained an Ethiopia-based analyst and former security official. “By moving slower with his reforms, especially with political reforms, Abiy could have achieved more and avoided war,” the same analyst explained. “Abiy put the old guard of the TPLF in a position where the only option left for them was to revert to what brought them to power in the first place: war.” [5]

The TPLF, which formed in 1975, grew from a few cells of no more than two hundred men and women into a highly capable political and military organization that would lead the effort to overthrow the Mengitsu regime in May 1991. [6] TPLF leaders combined political acumen with a sophisticated military strategy that embraced guerrilla warfare whilst also preparing and training its fighters to engage in traditional battles involving artillery and tanks. Simultaneously, the TPLF developed an extensive countrywide network of intelligence assets that helped its leaders to liaise with other groups battling the Derg and to coordinate attacks on regime targets.

Despite internecine fighting with rival groups like the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT) and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the TPLF retained and enhanced its role as Ethiopia’s preeminent rebel group. In 1988, the TPLF helped found the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the political coalition that dominated Ethiopian politics from the overthrow of Mengitsu in 1991 until its displacement in 2019 by the Prosperity Party.

The TPLF’s role within the EPRDF government was, for much of the last three decades, out of all proportion to the size of the population of Tigray. Tigrayans only make up six percent of Ethiopia’s population of 110 million. The TPLF long justified the disproportionate size of its role in government by pointing to the fact that TPLF fighters made up the largest contingent of those forces that opposed the Derg and battled Eritrea.

“Tigrayans and the TPLF view themselves as Ethiopia’s liberators from the Derg and as its defenders against outside enemies like the Eritreans,” a former member of the TPLF explained. “It is this position as Ethiopia’s liberators and defenders that the TPLF use to justify their power. They will fight to retain what they view as their hard-earned right to govern—at least in Tigray.”

Cycles of Violence: Igniting Ethiopia’s Ethnic and Inter-Religious Tinderbox

At a minimum, the TPLF wants to retain control of the Tigray region. Abiy’s proposed reforms to Ethiopia’s ethnic based federal system are viewed as a direct threat to the TPLF and to what many in the party and Tigray region see as de facto independence. These reforms which aim to weaken Ethiopia’s ethnically based federalism in favor of a pan-nationalist framework are also viewed as a threat to self-determination by other ethnic political parties. The TPLF has long enjoyed a free hand within Tigray where, under the federal system, it is charged with most administrative decisions and affairs. Additionally, the TPLF maintains control of regional police, security services, and militias.

Beyond retaining control of the Tigray region, it is unclear what the TPLF’s ultimate goal might be. The current Ethiopian Constitution, ratified in 1995, guarantees the right of self-determination—and even the right to secede—to every nation and people in Ethiopia. [7] The Abiy government’s declaration of the September 2020 Tigrayan elections as illegal and the suspension of the disbursement of federal funds to the region have both been viewed by the TPLF as attacks on regional autonomy (Ethiopia Insight, October 19).

The measures taken by the Abiy government, while possibly justified, will stoke resentment among Tigrayans. If these actions are followed by punitive military campaigns and ethnic profiling, the TPLF will have no shortage of support for what could be a long and costly war. Unfortunately, incidents of ethnic based violence by the TPLF, the Abiy government, the Ethiopian National Defense Force, and regional militias are already being reported.

TPLF-linked militias are accused of attacking day laborers who belong to the major ethnic Amhara group in the town of May Cadera with machetes. Unverified reports suggest that over 600 civilians were killed in the attack. [8] The attack follows reports of Tigrayans living outside of the Tigray region being imprisoned, fired from their jobs, and expelled from ethnically mixed communities in major cities. [9]  Some reports indicate that militias consisting of ethnic Amharas, known as the Fano, are fighting against the TPLF in southern Tigray. If such ethnic based attacks persist and worsen, the war in Tigray will spread beyond the region’s borders. The TPLF possesses the ability to launch retaliatory attacks on targets outside of Tigray and indeed, as evidenced by rocket attacks on the Eritrean capital of Asmara on November 14 and 27, outside of Ethiopia (al-Jazeera, November 29). [10] Ethnically-driven attacks by any of the warring parties could lead to spiraling violence. The Abiy government has previously accused the TPLF of stoking ethnic tensions in other parts of Ethiopia like Oromia, a regional state of the country, in a bid to destabilize Abiy’s government. [11]

Ethiopia is a tinderbox of ethnic tensions. A rebellion in Tigray and a heavy-handed response by the Abiy government could ignite tensions in other areas like the Oromia regional state, the ethnically Somali regional state in the Ogaden area, the Afar region, and the Gambella region. In the case of Oromia, inter-communal and inter-religious violence have already resulted in hundreds of dead and the internal displacement of thousands. Many of these areas, like most of Ethiopia, are underdeveloped and have derived limited benefit from Ethiopia’s recent economic boom. Most of the gains from the boom remain concentrated among Ethiopia’s elite (with Tigrayans still representing many of these elite stakeholders) in the national capital of Addis Ababa. While Ethiopia, like many African countries, has not suffered much of an impact from the coronavirus pandemic, the economic fallout from international efforts to combat the virus are taking a serious toll on the Ethiopian economy. A slowing economy and reduced international investment as well as rising food prices will further exacerbate ethnic and inter-religious tensions.

While many Ethiopians view the TPLF negatively due to its former primacy in national politics, others are sympathetic to the TPLF’s claim that it is defending regional autonomy. During the 1980s, the TPLF proved adept at building ties with other ethnically based political and rebel groups. [12] The TPLF will pursue a similar strategy if it fights a protracted war in Tigray. The leadership of the TPLF will build on its relations with other political and rebel groups in a bid to combat the Abiy government. Harsh responses by Ethiopia’s security services and military to local protests and/or armed factions will feed existing cycles of violence and start new ones.

Regional Implications

Ethiopia is the preeminent military and economic power in the Horn of Africa. Any serious instability in Ethiopia will impact neighboring countries and the broader region. The war in Tigray is already in danger of destabilizing parts of Kassala state in eastern Sudan which now hosts an estimated 50,000 refugees from Tigray. [13] The Tigray region itself was already home to over 100,000 Eritrean refugees.

The TPLF, which has twice fired rockets into Eritrea, claims that Eritrean troops are aiding Abiy’s war against them. TPLF leaders accuse the Eritrean Army of operating deep within Ethiopia’s northern border, something that U.S. officials have seemingly confirmed (al-Ahram, December 2). [14] The presence of Eritrean troops on Ethiopian territory could easily revive old and long-standing tensions over border areas.

Further afield, Ethiopia has withdrawn large numbers of troops from the ethnically Somali Ogaden to bolster its efforts in Tigray (Somali Affairs, November 3). These units police Ethiopia’s long border with Somalia and periodically operate within Somalia where they aid that country’s fight against al-Shabaab. The Ogaden is also home to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which has fought for the right of self-determination for the ethnic Somalis who inhabit the region. The ONLF declared a unilateral ceasefire in 2018 and recently called for all parties in the war in Tigray to negotiate. However, the ONLF, like other rebel groups active in Ethiopia, may take advantage of opportunities arising from a weakened Abiy government.

If the war persists, it has the potential to attract outside powers with an interest in aiding stability in Ethiopia or, conversely, instability. Instability can be easily encouraged through the covert provision of aid and arms to Ethiopia’s armed rebel groups. One need only look at the civil war in Yemen, where at least six outside powers are involved, to see how such events could play out in Ethiopia. Even at this early stage in the war in Tigray, there are unconfirmed reports that in addition to Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is involved, at least at a low level, in the conflict. [15]

Outlook

Barring deft and realistic negotiations between the warring parties, the TPLF leadership, or at least factions within the leadership, may launch a long and costly guerrilla war. The TPLF has the means and knowledge to fight a war that could persist—at least on a low level—for years. While the Ethiopian military is capable and well-equipped, it will struggle to contain an insurgency in Tigray’s mountainous terrain. If the Ethiopian military engages in ethnically driven attacks on suspected supporters of the TPLF, the insurgency will only grow and spread. A lengthy war in Tigray will seep into other Ethiopian regions and may attract the benign and malevolent interest of multiple outside powers.

Notes

[1] Estimates of TPLF troop strength range as high as 250,000. It is difficult to assess actual troop strength due to the presence of a large number of informal militias loyal to the TPLF. A more accurate and conservative estimate of the number of men and women in formal and informal fighting forces loyal to the TPLF is 100,000 to 125,000.

[2] Author interview with former government official, September 2019.

[3] The Derg, meaning committee or council, was officially called the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia.

[4] Author interview with multiple Ethiopia based analysts, December 2020.

[5] Author interview with former Ethiopia based security official, December 2020.

[6] See: John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975-1991 (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

[7] See: https://ethiopianembassy.be/wp-content/uploads/Constitution-of-the-FDRE.pdf

[8] See: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/11/ethiopia-investigation-reveals-evidence-that-scores-of-civilians-were-killed-in-massacre-in-tigray-state/

[9] See: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/03/28/the-unenviable-situation-of-tigreans-in-ethiopia/

[10] The TPLF is known to possess BM-21 rocket systems. However, the range on these systems, even with upgrades, is not long enough for the rockets to reach Asmara from Tigrayan territory. Therefore the TPLF’s arsenal may include some other typed of system such as the Chinese manufactured PHL-03 or the Russian made BM-30. Alternatively, the TPLF may have launched the rockets from within Eritrean territory.

[11] See: https://qz.com/africa/1936138/how-ethiopias-ethnic-power-politics-led-to-tigray-conflict/

[12] See: Jenny Hammond, Fire from the Ashes: A Chronicle of the Revolution in Tigray, Ethiopia, 1975-1991 (Red Sea Press, 1998).

[13] See: https://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/asset/2586/2586069/

[14] See: https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-conflict-eritrea/exclusive-u-s-thinks-eritrea-has-joined-ethiopian-war-diplomats-say-idUSKBN28I1OX

[15] The UAE has close military to military ties with the ENDF and with the Eritrean government and army. The UAE operates a base in the Eritrean town of Assab where it has based drones and aircraft for use in its war in Yemen. See: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2020/11/19/are-emirati-armed-drones-supporting-ethiopia-from-an-eritrean-air-base/

What Ethiopia’s Ethnic Unrest Means for China

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The Diplomat |  China’s massive investments in Ethiopia give it a lot to lose amid renewed sectarian violence.

Media reports have hardly mentioned what the latest episode of sectarian violence in Ethiopia could cost China. Few of the East African country’s foreign investors have more to lose, however. Officials in Beijing see Ethiopia as a hub for the Belt and Road Initiative, an ongoing project to expand China’s sphere of influence by bankrolling infrastructure throughout the Global South. China has poured money into the East African country in a bid to earn its goodwill, but ever-rising tensions between Ethiopian ethnic groups are undermining that strategy.

In early November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared war on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party of the Tigray Region. Abiy accused the TPLF – the most influential representative of Ethiopia’s Tigray minority group – of attacking an Ethiopian military base. The Ethiopian National Defense Force’s ensuing foray into the Tigray Region followed months of tensions between the TPLF-led local government and Ethiopia’s central government.

The subsequent conflict had immediate consequences for China, which raced to evacuate several hundred citizens from the Tigray Region. China Gezhouba Group Co. Ltd., a company linked to China’s government, pulled 402 workers from a project near the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle, and 187 employees of the Chinese state-owned enterprise China CAMC Engineering Co. Ltd. fled the area in vehicles. The Chinese Embassy in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa said that it assisted with the evacuations of Chinese citizens and other foreign nationals.

Abiy’s war on the TPLF has cast doubt on the future of foreign direct investment in the Tigray Region. The Chinese state-owned enterprise China Communications Construction Company Ltd. built Mekelle’s most important industrial park, and companies from Bangladesh, China, India, and the United Kingdom had expressed interest in operating there prior to Abiy’s offensive. The industrial park’s ability to attract foreign investors looks far less certain now.

Ethiopia seems to recognize the potential adverse effects that sectarian strife could have on its business relationship with China. “We know that safety and security, peace, and stability are key to foreign investors and that’s why we are trying to bring the situation back to normalcy, so that the economic and industrialization process that we have started in Ethiopia could continue without major disruption,” Teshome Toga Chanaka, the Ethiopian ambassador to China, said after announcing the successful evacuations of 600 Chinese from the Tigray Region.

Ethiopia’s military captured Mekelle from the TPLF in late November and appears to have all but defeated the group on the battlefield. Nonetheless, the prospect of a lengthy TPLF insurgency looks likely. This possibility raises the question of when Chinese companies can return to the Tigray Region. Gezhouba Group was working on what China’s state media called a $270 million “water supply project,” an enterprise that has become far riskier since November.

Even if Gezhouba Group does have to postpone or abandon that project, the Tigray Region represents just one aspect of China’s wider investment strategy in Ethiopia. By June 2020, Chinese companies had cemented plans to spend $2.7 billion in the East African country through no less than 1,500 initiatives. Ethiopia imports most of its goods from China and only exports more goods to the United States, China’s main rival in Africa. The East African country has also borrowed $16 billion from China, which amounts to half of Ethiopia’s national debt.

Though China’s wide-ranging financial ties to Ethiopia might cushion the economic fallout from the Tigrayan conflict, they could also become new vulnerabilities. To increase pressure on Abiy, the TPLF might choose to target Chinese projects well outside the Tigray Region. The TPLF’s battle with Ethiopian forces has already spilled into other areas, including the Amhara Region and even Ethiopia’s neighbor Eritrea, another key front for the Belt and Road Initiative.

In addition to the threat from the TPLF, Abiy is contending with an insurgency by the Oromo Liberation Front, which Ethiopian officials blamed for a massacre of civilians from the Amhara ethnic group in the Oromia Region in early November. If this type of sectarian violence becomes typical, China may rethink the wisdom of making further investments in Ethiopia.

China’s own ability to affect the outcomes of these conflicts remains limited. While the Belt and Road Initiative has given China a significant economic presence in Africa, Beijing had limited experience in mediating in the continent’s conflicts, in part due to its longstanding policy of “non-interference.” In a notable exception, China helped broker a fragile peace between Sudan and South Sudan, but internal ethnic conflicts – such as the ones plaguing Ethiopia – are more difficult for Beijing to handle from abroad.

In another telling example, Gezhouba Group and other Chinese companies are assisting Ethiopia with the construction of a controversial dam that contributed to a dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt. Yet American diplomats, not Chinese officials, have taken the lead in helping the two African countries resolve that disagreement.

Amid unrest in Ethiopia, Beijing may turn its attention to less problematic East African endeavors. Djibouti, which hosts a sprawling Chinese military base, looks like an obvious choice for continued investment. China has also attempted to strengthen its ties to Eritrea, where the China Shanghai Corporation for Foreign Economic and Technological Cooperation is building a major road.

Even if China chooses to explore opportunities elsewhere in East Africa, Ethiopia seems likely to top Chinese diplomats’ agenda for East Africa. China and Ethiopia have expressed their enthusiasm for expanding military ties, and officers from the Ethiopian military have even received training in China. The Tigrayan conflict and Oromo insurgency notwithstanding, Ethiopia also offers a much more promising environment for foreign direct investment than other East African countries where China has undertaken diplomatic and economic initiatives.

China’s attempt to invest in the petroleum industry in South Sudan, which has swung in and out of civil war for almost a decade, has yielded mixed results and even led to Chinese deaths. In Somalia, China has fared little better: the militant group al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, struck the Chinese embassy in Mogadishu with a car bomb back in 2015.

By comparison, Ethiopia’s challenges with militancy seem far easier to manage. In 2018, Abiy concluded peace treaties with Eritrea and a rebel group in the Ethiopian region of Ogaden, ending decades-long conflicts that foreign diplomats had considered intractable. If Abiy takes the same approach to the TPLF insurgency, China appears set to reward Ethiopia with greater investment in the immediate future and stronger diplomatic and military ties down the road.

 

The Ethiopian authorities announced the defeat of TPLF

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PRETORIA | TASS | The rebels are unable to organize any resistance, the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement.

The defeated structures of the rebels from theTigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) are unable to organize any resistance. This is stated in a statement released on Monday by the office of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

“The leaders of TPLF are spreading lies that its supporters are capable of creating a threat through prolonged resistance in the mountainous regions of Tigray,” the statement said.

The statement stated that the TPLF cannot be a party to the negotiations, its members will be arrested and brought to justice. “The leadership of the TPLF is trying to obtain international mediation in order to avoid responsibility and trial,” the document says. At the same time, it was emphasized that the government of Ethiopia in the very near future, in coordination with the UN, will begin to return the refugees who left Tigray during the hostilities to their homes, and will provide them with all the necessary assistance.

The federal military operation began in Tigray state on 4 November after rebels from the TPLF attacked Northern Command facilities a day earlier, killed the military who remained loyal to the central government and seized heavy weapons. The combat phase of the operation ended on November 28 with the capture of the capital of Tigraya Mekele by federal troops and the return of Addis Ababa control over all major cities and strategic facilities of the state. The Ethiopian Attorney General’s Office has issued an arrest warrant for about 70 people from the top leaders of the TPLF, they are accused of high treason.

The leaders of the TPLF left Mekele several hours before the federal troops entered the city. The head of the front, Debrezion Geberemichael, said that the fight against the federal government for Tigray’s self-determination will continue.

IPIS Briefing November 2020 – Ethiopia-Tigray Conflict

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Source: IPIS Briefing November 2020

Leader of Tigray’s forces tells Ethiopia PM to ‘stop the madness’ | 30 November 2020 | Al Jazeera

The defiant leader of Ethiopia’s rebellious Tigray region has called on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to “stop the madness” and withdraw troops from the region as he asserted that fighting continues “on every front”, two days after the government declared victory.

Ethiopia Rights Commission calls on gov’t to restore communications, basic services in Tigray; calls on independent, transparent investigation into grave rights violations | 30 November 2020 | Addis Standard

In a statement it released today, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that following the government’s November 28 announcement of “the completion of the final phase and cessation of the military operation in Tigray Region and the outlines of next steps listed therein,” it calls for the government to, among others, restore “telecommunications and provision of basic services,” as well as allow “access to independent and transparent investigation into conducts of grave human rights violations.”

Ethiopian military operation in Tigray is complete, prime minister says | 28 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Saturday that military operations in the restive region of Tigray are complete and federal troops control the regional capital, a major development in a three-week-old war that has shaken the Horn of Africa.

End of the road for TPLF? | 28 November 2020 | The Reporter (Ethiopia)

Surrounded by the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and the final assault on Mekele already underway, these look like the final days of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Even underneath the ardent defiance and unexpected claims of victory by the TPLF, there are some subtle admissions of an impending military defeat.

Ethiopia: A dispatch from West Tigray and North Amhara | 27 November 2020 | ICRC

In mid-November, after the first week of clashes in northern Ethiopia, an ICRC team traveled to North Amhara and West Tigray. In this account, Wilson Mondal, field team leader, describes what they saw.

The Situation in Ethiopia is a Unique War and the African Union Has a Legal Duty to Silence the Guns | 26 November 2020 | African Arguments

The onset of a shooting war between Ethiopia’s National Defense Force (ENDF) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which began on 4 November 2020, was predictable. The surprise so far has been the reluctance of Ethiopia’s leadership under Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali, to accommodate appeals for de-escalation. On 25 November, the Prime Minister took to his twitter-feed to urge “the international community, to refrain from any acts of unwelcome or unlawful interference and respect the fundamental principles of non-intervention under international law.”

Ethiopia’s Tigray crisis: Fears of ethnic profiling stalk conflict | 26 November 2020 | BBC

Some Tigrayans in Ethiopia have described to the BBC how they have been harassed, detained or discriminated against since fighting began in their home region on 4 November.

Why the third layer of Ethiopia’s conflict may be the most worrying | 26 November 2020 | African Arguments

The conflict between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is another tragic event for a nation reeling from ethnic-based violence and political assassinations. There have likely been thousands of casualties since the military campaign began on 4 November, and many more have had to flee their homes.

Who Benefits from the Destruction of Ethiopia? | 25 November 2020 | African Arguments

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the war in Ethiopia. Let me pose one more: who stands to gain across the region? Ten years ago the then-Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi told me, “my nightmare is that we should have an Egyptian agenda financed by Gulf money.” He didn’t foresee state-of-the-art military technology as part of that nightmare.

Q&A: Conflict in Ethiopia and International Law | 25 November 2020 | HRW

On November 4, 2020, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared on state television and acknowledged that he ordered the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) to commence operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in response to what he described as attacks by TPLF forces on Ethiopian military bases and federal forces in the regional capital of Mekelle, and at other camps in the Tigray region.

Crisis Group links deportation of analyst to comments on Tigray | 25 November 2020 | The East African

There are concerns that Ethiopian authorities are getting uncomfortable with foreign commentators on the ongoing conflicts in the northern region of Tigray, after an analyst was deported.

Éthiopie : une nouvelle guerre de sécession ? | 25 November 2020 | IRIS

Il y a un peu plus d’un an, le Premier ministre éthiopien Abiy Ahmed recevait le prix Nobel de la paix pour avoir enfin mis fin à la guerre avec son voisin érythréen, et pour avoir démocratisé un pays qui était particulièrement répressif. Aujourd’hui le même est à la tête d’un pays qui pourrait se livrer à des massacres de masse dans la région du Tigré.

Tigray Maikadra massacre of civilians is a crime of atrocity: Ethiopian Human Rights Commission | 24 November 2020 | Addis Standard

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found that an atrocious massacre of civilians has been committed by an informal group of Tigrayan youth known as ‘Samri’, aided and abetted by members of what was then the local administration and security establishment in Maikadra, in Tigray Region’s Western Zone, on November 9th, 2020.

As Ethiopia’s army declares daily victories, its people are being plunged into violence | 24 November 2020 | The Guardian

Stop War Crimes in Ethiopia Today | 23 November 2020 | African Arguments

Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed has promised military victory in Tigray. He says he will capture the capital, Mekelle, and the leadership of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which he calls a criminal junta. If he succeeds, it will be a pyrrhic victory – prospects for peace, democracy and protection from famine in Ethiopia will be set back a generation.

Ethiopia’s other conflicts | 23 November 2020 | The New Humanitarian

The conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has cost hundreds of lives and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing to Sudan over the past three weeks. But the region is just one of several in the country experiencing violent unrest amid a fraught political transition.

Ethiopia rejects African mediation, pushes toward rebel-held Tigray capital | 21 November 2020 | Reuters

The Ethiopian government rebuffed an African effort to mediate on Saturday, saying its troops had seized another town in their march towards the rebel-held capital of northern Tigray region.

Secret UN report reveals fears of long and bitter war in Ethiopia | 21 November 2020 | The Guardian

Ethiopian national forces are meeting heavy resistance and face a protracted “war of attrition” in the northern region of Tigray, a confidential United Nations assessment reveals.

The Tigrayan Conflict and the Laws of Humanitarian Assistance | 20 November 2020 | Opinio Juris

For over two weeks, violent and escalating clashes in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of displaced persons and ever growing humanitarian needs in this mountainous region of northern Ethiopia.

Tigray Population Movement Information bulletin (pdf) | 20 November 2020 | nternational Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

Since 3 November 2020, A series of escalating clashes between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray Regional Government has resulted in a growing humanitarian emergency including heavy casualties and population movements both internally and cross border. An estimated 9 million people within or near the Tigray region are at risk due to increasing confrontations.

WHO chief denies Ethiopia’s claim of backing Tigray region | 19 November 2020 | AP

The World Health Organization’s director-general on Thursday denied an allegation from his own country, Ethiopia, that he was lobbying neighboring nations to provide arms and other support to the defiant Tigray region, which has been clashing with the Ethiopian government for two weeks.

Ethiopia, led by a Nobel peace winner, is looking down the barrel of civil war | 19 November 2020 | The Guardian

The humanitarian tragedy is already stretching across borders: 27,000 Ethiopians have crossed the frontier into Sudan in two weeks, the largest influx in 20 years.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Trades His Nobel Peace Prize for Civil War | 19 November 2020 | Bloomberg

We may be long past holding laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize to its lofty standards — the cruel cynicism of Henry Kissinger and open bigotry of Aung San Suu Kyi are just two instances of honorees behaving dishonorably — but Abiy Ahmed’s belly flop from the pedestal is nonetheless remarkable. In less than a year since his uplift in Oslo, Ethiopia’s prime minister has embroiled his country in a civil war and brought the Horn of Africa to the edge of chaos.

Operational update on escalating fighting in Tigray and northern Ethiopia | 18 November 2020 | ICRC

In just two weeks, escalating fighting in Tigray and northern Ethiopia has triggered immense suffering and risks spiralling into a wider humanitarian crisis.

Digging Own Grave: The End Days of Ethiopia’s TPLF | 18 November 2020 | CounterCurrents

Previously in power for almost three decades, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) of Ethiopia finally is approaching their end days and as we say here in the Horn of Africa, “they are digging their own grave”.

Ethiopia Tigray crisis: Abiy issues ‘ultimatum’ as civilians flee fighting | 18 November 2020 | BBC

Ethiopia’s prime minister has said a military operation against rebel forces in the northern Tigray region is entering its “final phase”. Abiy Ahmed said a three-day deadline given for Tigray’s forces to surrender had now expired.

Ethiopia pushes for Tigray capital, denies ‘ethnic bias’ | 18 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian forces pushed towards the capital of the rebel Tigray region on Wednesday, ignoring international appeals for talks to end the conflict and denying it was targeting any ethnic group.

Peace was swift in Ethiopia under Abiy. War was, too | 17 November 2020 | AP

Abiy Ahmed left Ethiopians breathless when he became the prime minister in 2018, introducing a wave of political reforms in the long-repressive country and announcing a shocking peace with enemy Eritrea.

Factbox: The forces fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict | 17 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s military is fighting battle-hardened troops in the northern Tigray region, threatening stability around the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia resists mediation as it bombs Tigray capital | 17 November 2020 | DefenceWeb

Ethiopia resisted international pressure for mediation in a war in the country’s north on Monday as its air force bombed the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, according to diplomatic and military sources.

Tigrai National Government Statement (pdf) | 17 November 2020 | Tigrai National Government | Aiga Forum

Abiy Ahmed has regionalised and internationalised the war. But it will not save him from eventual defeat. Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael, President of the Regional State of Tigray has written to more than seventy Heads of states and leaders of regional and international organizations warning the further internationalisation of the war.

Ethiopia says its troops marching on Tigrayan capital | 17 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia said its troops were marching on the capital of the Tigray region on Tuesday after a deadline for rebel forces to surrender passed in a two-week conflict shaking the Horn of Africa and alarming the world.

Factbox: Which countries have stakes in Ethiopia’s war? | 17 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian troops are battling rebellious forces from the country’s northern Tigray region. Fallout from the conflict in Africa’s second most-populous nation is already spilling over into Ethiopia’s neighbours, threatening to further destabilise a fragile region.

The Ongoing Law Enforcement Operations in Tigray: Causes and Objectives | 17 November 2020 | Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia | Ethiopian News Agency

Causes of the Ongoing Law Enforcement Operations: What makes the Law Enforcement Operation directed against the extreme elements of the TPLF clique just and necessary?

Background to the war in Ethiopia for the international media | 17 November 2020 | Committee for Voice of Reason | Aiga Forum

The illegitimate Ethiopian government has imposed a complete shutdown of communication and transportation in and out of the State of Tigray. He has now declared war and mobilized ground and air attacks against the state. This illegitimate government has controlled the local media and is disseminating false information to the international community.

Ethiopian troops ‘liberate’ key town in Tigray, claim officials | 16 November 2020 | The Guardian

Ethiopian troops have advanced further into the northern region of Tigray, seizing a key town on the road to its capital, officials in Addis Ababa have said.

Abiy Ahmed Ali’s war on Tigrai: a guide to its genesis | 16 November 2020 | Yitbarek Mesfin | Aiga Forum

Ethiopia is a very complex country made up of 80 different linguistic groups. Some international reporters are at last beginning to understand the cause of the civil unrest in Ethiopia from the start of Abiy Ahmed’s premiership in 2018. But there is still misunderstanding about the country’s political problems.

Tigray crisis viewpoint: Why Ethiopia is spiralling out of control | 15 November 2020 | BBC

Ethiopia appears to be fast approaching civil war. Fighting between forces loyal to the federal government headed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has claimed hundreds of lives and is threatening to rip the country apart.

In escalation of Ethiopia war, Tigray leader says his forces fired rockets at Eritrea | 15 November 2020 | Reuters

The leader of Ethiopia’s rebellious Tigray region confirmed on Sunday that his forces had fired rockets at the airport in Eritrea’s capital, a major escalation that raises fears of a wider war in the Horn of Africa region.

Conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Widens as Missiles Are Fired at Airports | 14 November 2020 | NYT

Two airports in a state that neighbors Tigray, where Ethiopian troops are fighting local forces, were the targets of rocket fire late on Friday, the government said, as an 11-day conflict in the region widened.

How Abiy is heralding Eritreanization of Ethiopia! | 14 November 2020 | Tedros A. Tsegay | Aiga Forum

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Abiy Ahmed is at war with his own people. He has ordered all state power at his disposal to annihilate the Tigrayan People Liberation Front (TPLF) by opening war from almost all fronts, including from Eritrea using Eritrean soldiers according to eyewitness account, who crossed the border into the Sudan.

Rockets fired at Eritrean capital from Ethiopia, diplomats say | 14 November 2020 | Reuters

At least three rockets were fired at Eritrea’s capital from Ethiopia on Saturday night, five regional diplomats said, a major escalation of a conflict pitting Ethiopian government troops against rebellious local forces in the Tigray region.

Ethiopia: leaders of Tigray region admit they attacked neighbouring Amhara | 14 November 2020 | The Guardian

Leaders of Tigray in Ethiopia’s north on Saturday claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on two airports in a nearby region and threatened to strike neighbouring Eritrea, raising concerns that the escalating conflict could spread across national borders.

Ethiopia’s Tigray crisis: How the conflict could destabilise its neighbours | 14 November 2020 | BBC

The fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray state may not only have drastic implications for the future of the country but could also seriously affect its neighbours.

Ethiopia Tigray crisis: Rights commission to investigate ‘mass killings’ | 14 November 2020 | BBC

Ethiopia’s human rights commission has said it will send a team to investigate reports of mass killings of civilians in the northern Tigray state.

Ethiopian human rights commission says monitoring military operation | 14 November 2020 | New Business Ethiopia

Ethiopian Human Rights Commission Public Statement | 14 November 2020 | Facebook

In its statement the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) indicated that it has been monitoring closely and is in consultation with the relevant authorities regarding the risk of multidimensional human rights violations arising from the ongoing war in Tigray Region.

Refugee exodus to Sudan swells as war crimes feared in Ethiopia’s Tigray | 13 November 2020 | Reuters

The United Nations voiced concern on Friday that the conflict between Ethiopian government forces and insurgent northern leaders could spiral out of control and said war crimes may already have been committed.

Amnesty International’s Irresponsible Allegations | 13 November 2020 | Elias Dawit | Aiga Forum

Amnesty International, a global human rights organization, issued a statement saying “We have confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day labourers in no way involved in the ongoing military offensive. This is a horrific tragedy whose true extent only time will tell as communication in Tigray remains shut down,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa.

Ethiopian police seeking lists of ethnic Tigrayans – U.N. Report | 13 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian police visited a U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) office in Amhara region to request a list of ethnic Tigrayan staff, according to an internal U.N. security report seen by Reuters on Friday.

Ethiopians fleeing to Sudan describe air strikes and machete killings in Tigray | 13 November 2020 | Reuters

Civilians fleeing fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region described bombing by government warplanes, shooting on the streets and killings by machete, as they joined thousands of refugees crossing into neighbouring Sudan.

Tigray: How Ethiopia reached this crisis point and how it could get out | 13 November 2020 | African Arguments

The current crisis in Tigray has not appeared from the clear blue sky. Its roots are deep in Ethiopia’s history and its outcome will dictate the country’s future. It is unlikely Ethiopia will fall apart. But a period of violence is probable and will continue until there is a further adjustment of government at the centre and a rebalancing of the relationship with the regions. Increased democratisation is one potential solution, but by no means the only outcome.

Ethiopia: Protect People as Tigray Crisis Escalates | 13 November 2020 | HRW

The Ethiopian government and Tigray regional authorities should protect people and property at risk from the fighting. Amid credible reports of increasing casualties, the authorities on both sides should facilitate access for humanitarian groups, stop interrupting essential services, and immediately restore communication services in the region.

Ethiopia claims big advance in Tigray, Amnesty reports mass killing | 12 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia: Investigation reveals evidence that scores of civilians were killed in massacre in Tigray state | 12 November 2020 | Amnesty International

Ethiopia’s military has defeated local forces in the west of Tigray state, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday, accusing his foes of atrocities during a week of fighting that threatens to destabilise the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia’s Instability Threatens to Engulf Region | 11 November 2020 | VoA

In a country plagued by years of ethnic violence, analysts fear the latest fighting between government troops and regional paramilitary forces in Ethiopia could be the breaking point.

Ethiopian Human Rights Commission condemns more arrest of journalists as police keeps all incommunicado | 11 November 2020 | Addis Standard

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed that four more journalists were arrested overnight. They are Haftu Gebregzhiabher, Tsegaye Hadush, & Abreha Hagos from Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA’s) and Udi Mussa from Oromia Media Network (OMN).

Ethiopian journalists arrested as Tigray conflict worsens, refugees flee to Sudan | 11 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s human rights commission condemned the arrest of journalists as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pressed ahead with a military offensive in a northern region against local leaders defiant of his authority.

Thousands flee Ethiopia conflict, protests against Tigray’s leaders planned | 11 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian refugees were flooding into Sudan on Wednesday as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal troops battled well-armed local forces in Tigray and protests against the northern region’s leaders were planned elsewhere.

Clashes in Ethiopia’s Tigray region force thousands to flee to Sudan | 11 November 2020 | UNHCR

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is working with authorities in Sudan to provide lifesaving assistance to more than 7,000 refugees from Ethiopia, who have fled across the border in the past two days.

Experts react: Understanding the conflict in Tigray | 11 November 2020 | Atlantic Council

On November 4, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military offensive against forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is the governing authority of the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray. Coming after months of rising tensions between the TPLF and the Abiy administration, the latest military action was precipitated by an alleged surprise night-time assault by the TPLF on a major Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) base in Tigray that resulted in the killing of non-Tigrayan soldiers and the attempted looting of heavy artillery and weapons.

Police rearrest Addis Standard’s editor | 10 November 2020 | Addis Standard

The police on duty at Addis Abeba police station have this afternoon rearrested Medihane Ekubamichael, product editor at Addis Standard publication. Medihane was first detained on Saturday November 07 by members of the city’s police and take to undisclosed location.

Police detain Addis Standard’s editor, accuse him of attempt to dismantle the constitution | 9 November 2020 | Addis Standard

Members of Addis Abeba and federal police officer have on Saturday arrested Medihane Ekubamichael, product editor at Addis Standard publication. Jakenn Publishing PLC, the publishers of Addis Standard publication, confirmed that Medihane was arrested and initially taken to undisclosed location on Saturday November 07, from his house in Addis Abeba.

Concern of outright war in Ethiopia grows as PM presses military offensive | 9 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s prime minister stepped up a military offensive in the northern region of Tigray on Sunday with air strikes as part of what he called a “law enforcement operation”, increasing fears of outright civil war in Africa’s second-most populous country.

Violence worsens in Ethiopia as hundreds reported to have died in conflict | 9 November 2020 | Businesslive

An escalating conflict in Ethiopia’s restive Tigray region has killed hundreds of people, sources on the government’s side said, even as the prime minister sought on Monday to reassure the world his nation was not sliding into civil war.

Conflict in Ethiopia extends the Greater Middle East’s arc of crisis | 7 November 2020 | ModernDiplomacy

Ethiopia, an African darling of the international community, is sliding towards civil war as the coronavirus pandemic hardens ethnic fault lines. The consequences of prolonged hostilities could echo across East Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Ethiopia’s PM seeks to regain control over restive Tigray region | 7 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sought to re-establish authority over the northern Tigray region on Saturday, a day after launching air strikes amid reports that Tigrayan forces had seized control of federal military sites and weapons.

Timeline: Key events leading to Ethiopia’s crisis in Tigray | 6 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia is mobilising troops from around the country and sending them to the northern Tigray region to fight a powerful ethnic faction that led the ruling coalition for decades.

Ethiopia’s Abiy vows to disarm ‘fugitives from justice’ in Tigray campaign | 6 November 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s air force bombed arms depots and destroyed military hardware in the northern Tigray region on Friday, the prime minister said, escalating a war he launched this week against his former ruling coalition allies.

Ethiopia mobilises for war in northern region | 6 November 2020 | DefenceWeb

Ethiopia mobilised for war in the northern Tigray region on Thursday, dashing international hopes of averting a conflict between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the powerful ethnic faction that led the ruling coalition for decades.

U.N. chief ‘deeply alarmed’ by armed clashes in Ethiopia’s Tigray | 6 November 2020 | Reuters

The head of the United Nations said he was deeply alarmed by fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where federal troops have been exchanging fire with the powerful ethnic faction that led the ruling coalition for decades.

Ethiopia’s PM Abiy defends military operations, others call it war | 6 November 2020 | RFI

The “large-scale law enforcement operation” has “clear, limited and achievable objectives: to restore the rule of law and the constitutional order,” he said on Friday, calling out the Tigray region’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leadership as “fugitives from justice … using the civilian population as human shields.”

As more troops mobilized to northern Ethiopia to join “aimless war” PM Abiy assures operations have “clear, limited & achievable objectives” | 6 November 2020 | Addis Standard

As more troops are being mobilized to join the offensive against TPLF’s regional special forces, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said military operations by federal defense forces underway in Northern Ethiopia have “clear, limited & achievable objectives.”

Ethiopia’s Premier Orders Troops Into Once-powerful Tigray Region in Major Escalation | 4 November 2020 | VoA

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered the military to deploy to the Tigray region on Wednesday after accusing the government there of attacking federal troops, a major escalation of a row between the premier and the once-powerful region.

A statement from Jakenn Publishing PLC regarding the blockage of all means of communication in Tigray Regional State | 4 November 2020 | Addis Standard

Jakenn Publishing PLC, the publisher of Addis Standard online magazine expresses its deep regret that due to the blockage of internet, mobile and landline communications, its journalists are unable to provide an inclusive news on the ongoing military engagement between forces of the federal army and Tigray regional state.

National defense forces given order to “start military offensive against TPLF: PM Abiy Ahmed | 3 November 2020 | EthioExplorer

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has just announced that the National Defense Forces (ENDF), led by a command post, is given order to start military offensive against TPLF in Tigray regional state.

Political Parties Commend HPR Decision to Lift Immunity of 39 Members | 3 November 2020 | Ethiopian News Agency

Representatives of political parties have commended the resolution to lift the immunity of some members of the House of People’s and Representatives (HPR) today.

Army Made a Sharp Riposte against Defiant TPLF Attack | 2 November 2020 | Ethiopian News Agency

Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) has announced on Wednesday that it has successfully contained the attack from the defiance Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and advanced to counteract in a bid to protect the unity of the country.

“Crisis staring” Tigray, Federal governments “in the eye” as army is caught in the mix, relations plummet to new low | 31 October 2020 | Addis Standard

Tensions between the federal and the Tigray Regional State governments have picked up a new twist following a decision by the later to return Brigadier General Jamal Mohammed from Mekelle Alula Abanega Airport.

Splitting Southern Nations region into four can promote peace | 10 October 2020 | Ethiopia Insight

For more than two decades, the question of statehood formation has been raised by identiy-based zones in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS).

House of Federation speaker says establishing transitional government, dispatching federal security forces in Tigray among constitutional options | 2 October 2020 | Addis Standard

Adem Farah, Speaker of the House of Federation (HoF) says there are enough constitutional means to take measures against those endangering the constitution.

OFC calls for “genuine national dialogue” | 30 September 2020 | Oromo Federalist Congress | Addis Standard

“Ethiopia has entered a new year with all its heavy political burdens – with both hope and despair. And without a shadow of doubt, the hoped-for democratic transition is disturbingly failing,” said the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) in a statement.

Tigray region says it will defy federal laws enacted as of Oct. 05; EDP calls for transitional gov’t, inclusive dialogue & reconciliation | 29 September 2020 | Addis Standard

In an interview aired on Tigray Mass Media Agency, Asmelash Wolde Sellassie, executive member of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the governing party of Tigray regional state, said the region will not comply with laws, directives, and regulations, among others, to be enacted by the federal government after its current term in office came to an end on October 05/2020.

Ethiopia files terrorism charges against leading opposition activist | 19 September 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia has filed terrorism charges against a prominent media mogul and opposition politician from the Oromo ethnic group, Jawar Mohammed, the attorney general’s office said on Saturday.

Regional party wins vote in Ethiopia’s Tigray, challenging federal government | 11 September 2020 | Reuters

The regional ruling party has won a landslide election victory in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, officials said on Friday, as a confrontation looms with national authorities who have branded the vote illegal.

Ethiopia bars journalists from flying to Tigray regional vote, passengers say | 7 September 2020 | Reuters

At least 12 people, including four journalists and a senior think tank analyst, were barred on Monday from flying to Tigray, four of the passengers said, after Ethiopian security officials said the region’s elections later this week were illegal.

Ethiopia’s upper house rules Tigray regional vote unconstitutional | 5 September 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s upper house ruled on Saturday that plans by the Tigray region to hold an election on Sept. 9 were unconstitutional, setting up a potential clash between the central government and a powerful ethnic party.

Ethiopia’s Tigray region to holds poll, defying federal government | 4 September 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region will head to the polls on Wednesday in defiance of the federal government, the latest challenge to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed from a slew of regional leaders flexing their muscles ahead of next year’s national elections.

Ethiopia’s Tigray region eyes election in challenge to national unity | 5 May 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s Tigray region plans to hold elections, its main party said, setting it on a collision course with the federal government and testing the country’s fragile unity.

Ethiopia postpones August election due to coronavirus | 31 March 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia has postponed parliamentary elections scheduled for August due to the coronavirus outbreak, the electoral board said on Tuesday, a move endorsed by some key opposition parties.

Ethiopia passes gun control law to tackle surge in violence | 9 January 2020 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s parliament passed legislation on Thursday aimed at curbing gun ownership after a surge in regional ethnic violence blamed on a proliferation of small arms in private hands.

Voting for Internal Secession – Federalism and ethnicity in Ethiopia | 28 November 2019 | Verfassungsblog

20 November 2019 might go down in history as one of the turning points for federalism in Ethiopia. It was the day on which the unparalleled clause of the Ethiopian Constitution, which provides ethnic communities with the right to establish their own state (i.e. subnational unit), was put into practice. Finally, after clamoring for their own state for years, the Sidama, the fifth largest ethnic group in the country, were allowed to have their day in a referendum.

Ethiopia’s ruling coalition agrees to form single party ahead of 2020 vote | 21 November 2019 | Reuters

Ethiopia’s ruling coalition on Thursday approved the merger of three of its four ethnic-based parties into a single national one ahead of the 2020 elections, part of the prime minister’s efforts to unite the country, but one of the parties boycotted the meeting and vote.

Violence during Ethiopian protests was ethnically tinged, say eyewitnesses | 26 October 2019 | Reuters

Much of the fighting seen during protests in Ethiopia this week was ethnically tinged, eyewitnesses said on Saturday, describing attacks by young men from the Oromo ethnic group against people from other ethnic groups.

Abiy Ahmed and the struggle to keep Ethiopia together | 11 October 2019 | The Africa Report

Ethiopia’s ongoing liberalisation and ethnic federalism are creating a combustible situation as ethnic groups seek more autonomy on economic, political and security matters.

Ethiopia to hold autonomy referendum for ethnic Sidama in November | 29 August 2019 | Reuters

Ethiopia on Thursday granted its ethnic Sidama community a referendum in November on self-determination, with a view to creating the country’s 10th autonomous region, Fana news agency reported.

Ethiopia’s opposition parties criticize election law changes | 24 August 2019 | Reuters

Ethiopian lawmakers on Saturday revised election laws to pave the way for polls next year, but some opposition parties said the changes would make it more difficult for them to challenge the ruling coalition.

Regional power grab attempt causes rare discord in Ethiopia coalition | 12 July 2019 | Reuters

A failed regional coup in Ethiopia has exposed rare divisions in the alliance that has dominated the country for three decades, with two of the four ethnic parties that form the ruling coalition trading insults in a public feud.

Abiy Ahmed’s reforms in Ethiopia lift the lid on ethnic tensions | 29 June 2019 | BBC

After launching the most ambitious reforms in his country’s history Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, is under threat. The murder of his army chief of staff amid an alleged coup attempt in the Amhara region has highlighted the vulnerability of the reform process. The BBC’s Africa Editor, Fergal Keane, analyses the challenge facing the continent’s youngest leader.

Nearly 250 arrested in Ethiopia after foiled coup | 27 June 1019 | Reuters

Nearly 250 people have been arrested in Ethiopia’s capital and the main city in its Amhara region since a coup attempt was foiled, state TV reported on Thursday.

Ethiopia’s ethnic militias in the spotlight after failed coup | 24 June 1019 | Reuters

A foiled coup in the Ethiopian state of Amhara that left five senior officials dead, including the army’s chief of staff, has thrust ethnic militias in one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies into the spotlight.

Ethiopia opposition see dangers if 2020 vote delayed | 21 June 1019 | Reuters

Opposition politicians in Ethiopia are warning against a delay to national elections due in 2020 that would be the first under reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed but are under threat from an explosion of regional ethnic rivalries.

Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution | 23 January 2019 | Verfassungsblog

Lenin once famously said that ‘[t]here are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’. This aptly describes the dizzying political sea change that Ethiopia has been going through since 2 April 2018, the day that saw the election of Abiy Ahmed as the Prime Minister. Since then, the country has witnessed political reforms that, if sustained, will soon herald a new era of democratization and human rights.

‘Nobody will kneel’: Tigrayans defiant as Ethiopian leader cracks down | 16 December 2018 | Reuters

In the birthplace of the armed struggle that propelled Ethiopia’s ruling coalition to power 27 years ago, there is growing anger as the country’s new prime minister stages a crackdown on the region’s once-powerful leaders.

Secessionism, Federalism and Constitutionalism in Ethiopia | 15 August 2018 | Verfassungsblog

On the morning of 4 August 2018, troops were seen taking over key positions in Jijiga, a capital city of the State of Somali, one of the constituent units of the Ethiopian federation. Heavily armed military vehicles were stationed outside the state parliament, the offices of state government and the state TV station. It was not an invasion by a foreign force. It was a federal intervention.

‘These changes are unprecedented’: how Abiy is upending Ethiopian politics | 8 July 2018 | The Guardian

Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, has accelerated a radical reform programme that is overturning politics in the vast, strategically significant African country.

Abiy Ahmed sworn in as Ethiopia’s prime minister | 2 April 2018 | al Jazeera

Ethiopia’s parliament has elected Abiy Ahmed as the new prime minister, a week after the ruling coalition nominated him to succeed Hailemariam Desalegn. Abiy was sworn in on Monday shortly after his election to become Africa’s second-most populous country’s 16th prime minister and the first Oromo to hold Ethiopia’s top seat.

Russia counts on gradual stabilization of the situation in Ethiopia

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MOSCOW | TASS | The Russian Foreign Ministry also reaffirmed Russia’s adherence to the principles of respect for state sovereignty and respect for the territorial integrity of the republic.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a conversation on Wednesday with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Ethiopia Demeke Mekonnen, expressed the hope that the efforts of the leadership of this African country to resolve the internal conflict will provide positive results. This is stated in the message of the Russian Foreign Ministry following a telephone conversation between the parties.

“Demeke Mekonnen informed Sergei Lavrov about the development of the situation in Ethiopia and the government’s measures to restore constitutional order in the Tigray region. The unwavering commitment of the Russian Federation to the principles of respect for state sovereignty and observance of the territorial integrity of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia was confirmed. It was hoped that the efforts of the Ethiopian leadership to conflict will ensure a gradual stabilization of the situation in the country, “the ministry said.

The ministers also discussed issues of bilateral cooperation in various fields and reaffirmed their commitment to expanding trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation.

The conversation took place at the initiative of the Ethiopian side.

Ethiopia’s military operation began on 4 November after militants from the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked Northern Command facilities, killed military loyalists and seized heavy weapons. The combat phase of the operation ended 24 days later with the capture of the capital of Tigraya Mekele and the return of all major cities and strategic facilities in the region under the control of Addis Ababa. Ethiopia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has issued an arrest warrant for about 70 people from the top of the TPLF, they are accused of high treason.

Ethiopia’s Problems Will Not End with a Military Victory

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Substantial efforts are needed to reduce political tensions ahead of elections in 2021.

USIP Publication: Aly Verjee | Tuesday, November 24, 2020

As violence continues over control of the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, Ethiopia’s future remains unsettled, even if the conflict ends soon. Achieving the federal government’s security objectives in Tigray is unlikely to resolve both new and entrenched political challenges, and already delayed national elections, now expected in 2021, may prove a severe test of Ethiopia’s political order, and consequently affect broader regional stability. Reconciling the electoral process with efforts for reconciliation and national dialogue is now even more imperative.

The Conflict in Tigray

War sometimes starts like clockwork but predicting the date on which a conflict will end often leads to disappointment. Yet from the start of armed hostilities with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised the conflict would be swift and decisive. On November 6, Abiy wrote that “operations by federal defense forces underway in Northern Ethiopia have clear, limited and achievable objectives.” On November 9, the prime minister said the military operation “will wrap up soon,” and the next day, that “our law enforcement operations in Tigray are proceeding as planned: operations will cease as soon as the criminal junta is disarmed, legitimate administration in the region restored, and fugitives apprehended and brought to justice—all of them rapidly coming within reach.” Claims that the conflict will be short-lived have also been echoed by senior American officials: U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Michael Raynor told journalists on November 19 that “another aspect of this is the Ethiopian government continues to articulate a vision of the military conflict coming to an end fairly soon, a week or two from now.”

Despite limitations on independent reporting and the severing of most communications, the federal government has announced significant military advances, capturing a number of important towns and cities in Tigray, including Shire on November 17, Axum and Adwa on November 20, and Adigrat on November 21. The TPLF has made counterclaims: that it inflicted significant casualties on federal forces in Raya and to have repulsed federal forces in Mehoni and Zalambessa. For the federal government, taking control of the state capital of Tigray, and its largest city, Mekelle, is now the principal remaining tactical military objective.

However, even if Abiy’s military objectives are quickly achieved, experiences of warfare in northern Ethiopia dating back a century suggest that it is much easier to capture territory than it is to hold it. It is unclear what a successful strategy for the federal government will be if it is able to capture Tigray’s urban centers but cannot command the widespread acceptance of Tigray’s people. While the fighting of the last few weeks may have significantly degraded the TPLF’s military capacity, it is unlikely that the federal government can entirely subdue the TPLF as a political entity, which retains the support of a substantial number of Tigrayans. Further, the TPLF’s historic capacity to wage guerrilla warfare from the rural mountains of Tigray may not be definitively eroded by its losses in conventional warfare.

While some in the federal government have indicated that they would accept a refashioned TPLF led by moderates, external efforts to re-engineer the party may well be counterproductive and only risk further alienating some Tigrayan constituencies. Therefore, as focused on their immediate objectives and consequently as reluctant to seek dialogue and compromise as they may be, the parties in conflict may find that a negotiated settlement may ultimately be the only realistic choice, if not imminently, then in the months ahead. Moreover, the federal government must soon confront an even bigger problem in 2021: how to conduct peaceful and credible elections.

The Prospects and Difficulties of Elections

National elections are overdue and are now expected to be held next year. While in February 2020, the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that elections would be held in August 2020, by the end of March, the Board had decided to indefinitely delay the elections because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As NEBE explained, several important preparatory tasks were unable to be completed in March, meaning that the crucial voter registration exercise, which was expected to register tens of millions of prospective voters, was unable to commence in April.

Beyond the national polls, each regional state of Ethiopia is also due to hold elections for their state legislatures. It was the Tigray region’s decision to proceed with organizing its own elections in September, in defiance of the federal government and without the oversight and participation of the NEBE, that contributed to a deterioration of relations between Tigray and Addis Ababa, and which was a further step toward the violence now occurring.

Even without the impact of COVID-19 and the situation in Tigray, Ethiopia’s next national elections are fraught with difficulty. The polls are expected to be the first competitive elections since 2005 and raise fundamental questions about the future order of the Ethiopian state. Abiy’s new political vehicle, the Ethiopian Prosperity Party, is the national frontrunner, constructed from the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front ruling coalition, which was once led by the TPLF. Apart from the TPLF, a number of new opposition political parties are expected to contest the polls.

The challenges faced in administering elections are significant. The first problem is one of election administration, operations and reform: a rush to organize elections in early 2021, as some have suggested, may easily worsen the political situation across the country, as in such a limited time, elections are unlikely to be effectively administered. In May, the NEBE proposed two scenarios on which to base a prospective electoral calendar: the first required 224 days to prepare for and conduct elections, and the second required 276 days. However, at the end of October, NEBE proposed that the elections be held in late May or June 2021, contingent on beginning poll worker training in December and voter registration in January.

As early as December 2018, a USAID pre-elections assessment found that “there is a lack of consensus about specific solutions and timing of reforms in relation to the election cycle, and that information about and support for the reforms is inconsistent. The reform process has been largely elite-driven and concentrated in Addis Ababa, and there is a lack of clarity on a specific road map to achieving the goals set out by the prime minister.” While there has been some important progress since that assessment was made, conducting elections in Ethiopia will be the largest democratic exercise in the country’s history; the technical challenges should not be underestimated and cannot easily be expedited. More recently, NEBE has noted that the possibility of constitutional and electoral reform could also complicate the electoral calendar and has warned, “Preparations for electoral process based on [an] unstable timeline are not advisable. Only once these processes [of constitutional and electoral reform] are completed should an electoral timeline be consulted and announced, and preparations begin in earnest.”

The second, more profound problem in conducting elections concerns broader needs for security, trust, reconciliation, and the ability of Ethiopians to freely engage in open political discourse, debate, and campaigning. Even before the conflict with Tigray, there were more than 1.8 million internally displaced persons in Ethiopia. In May, Amnesty International reported that at least 10,000 people had been “arbitrarily arrested and detained last year as part of the government’s crackdown on armed attacks and violence in Oromia Region,” and in July, that another 5,000 had been arrested following protests the previous month. A number of prominent political figures and journalists were jailed before the Tigray conflict began, and more arrests of journalists have followed this month.

For their part, American officials have asserted that the conflict in Tigray has served to unite Ethiopians. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Tibor Nagy told journalists on November 19 that “it seems like [the conflict in Tigray] has brought the Ethiopian nation together, at least for the time being, in support of the prime minister …” Ambassador Raynor added that “the rest of the country actually remains quite calm at present, no indications of anyone taking up comparable actions elsewhere, and in fact the opposite. Seemingly both regional governments, federal governments, and large swaths of the people galvanizing around the [federal] government.”

Unfortunately, violence has continued elsewhere in Ethiopia. In a recent tragic incident, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission reported that at least 34 people were killed in a November 14 attack on a bus in Benishangul. Further, as the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs pointed out on November 20, “Humanitarian partners in Ethiopia are further concerned about the increasing report of violence in Oromia and Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) regions. Violent incidents involving unidentified armed groups have been reported on an almost daily basis, mainly in the Western Oromia region, while several thousand people were reportedly displaced by inter-communal violence in Konso zone, SNNPR on 16 November.” Alas, any short-term increase in perceived or real Ethiopian national unity resulting from the current Tigray confrontation does little to address the problems of arbitrary detention or intercommunal violence elsewhere in the country.

For successful elections to be held, credibly and non-coercively addressing both insecurity and the underlying grievances behind the violence will be essential. An adequate response necessitates efforts at reconciliation, justice, and inclusive dialogue. While wider questions of reconciliation, reform, and elections cannot be the first point on the agenda in any eventual negotiations between the federal government and the TPLF, discussing them cannot be indefinitely avoided, either. More importantly, discussions on such issues must include many more political and civil actors beyond those now in conflict if at least a degree of national consensus is to be achieved. Squaring the electoral preparations and timetable with a plan for reconciliation and national dialogue may thus be imperative for a peaceful future in Ethiopia.

‘Abiy Ahmed had to punish those seeking to break up Ethiopia’ – Djibouti President

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Source: The African Report

The deadly conflict between Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigrayan rebels continues to intensify, especially after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed issued a warning on Sunday to surrender within 72 hours. But despite international calls for a cease in action, many regional neighbours, including the small state of Djibouti, are supporting the PM’s stance.

With less than five months to go before the presidential election, Djibouti’s head of state takes stock of his efforts to tackle economic and social issues, internal opposition, a war in Ethiopia and the country’s relations with China, France and the United States.

The virus quietly arrived in Djibouti one evening in mid-March 2020, aboard a Spanish military plane that had taken off from Seville. Eight months later, the silent killer continues to lurk in spite of the health authorities’ swift implementation of the “three Ts” (test, trace and treat), with 8% of the country’s population tested to date, i.e., the highest rate in the region.

Economic slowdown

Though the government of this city-state with 1 million residents has taken an optimistic view of the future – it forecasts a return to growth in 2021 – the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is weighing heavily on its economy, which was in full swing before it ground to a halt. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway line, one of the country’s essential arteries, is running on a reduced schedule, while the stately hotel located in the continent’s largest free zone, just a few kilometres away from the capital, remains hopelessly empty.

But according to Aboubaker Omar Hadi, president of the Djibouti Ports & Free Zones Authority and one of Ismaïl Omar Guelleh’s closest associates, “It’s merely a setback, our fundamentals are strong.”

“Fundamentals”? The former French colony is ideally located along the world’s second-busiest shipping route, a gateway to trade with a wide swath of Africa, backed by a market of 400 million people. Its strategic geographic location is also a coveted spot for foreign military bases. Lastly, it also has political stability going for it: contrary to what happens elsewhere, Djibouti’s elections aren’t highly tense affairs.

Unshakeable calm

These advantages – combined with a government that the opposition calls authoritarian and which, it’s true, prioritises development and the fight against endemic poverty and unemployment over the expansion of freedoms – explain the unshakeable calm of President Guelleh, 73, who has been running the country since 1999.

Although he still refuses to say as much, no one in Djibouti has any doubt that the leader, who welcomed one of our reporters at the presidential palace for a long interview, will stand for re-election next April. He is the clear favourite, as if the exercise were a one-horse race.

Among the numerous Djibouti hub development projects you have launched in recent months in spite of the pandemic, ranging from the new Damerjog oil terminal to the capital’s business district, not to mention the ship maintenance yard, one in particular has attracted a lot of attention: the road corridor connecting the Port of Tadjoura to northern Ethiopia. Are you looking to gain a competitive edge over Eritrea’s Port of Massawa, which underwent a major renovation after the thaw in relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara?

Ismaïl Omar Guelleh: In the long run, yes, we always need to be a few steps ahead. But competition between Djibouti and Eritrea isn’t imminent: connecting Massawa via a modern railway line requires extremely costly and complex rehabilitation, upgrading and construction works given the region’s hilly topography.

Another competitor, one that poses a greater short-term challenge, is the Port of Berbera in Somaliland, in which your former partner, the Emirati company DP World, plans to invest massively.

Massively? I haven’t heard anything of the sort so far, other than project proposals. DP World excels at creating buzz, but then, in the end, nothing happens. You don’t even see the slightest crane in the sky. We are paid to know.

On that note, how is the commercial dispute between Djibouti and DP World, which you sidelined from managing the Port of Doraleh two years back, going?

The court proceedings are still under way in London and will perhaps begin soon in the United States. These people who stubbornly refuse to sit down and have a discussion with us aren’t interested in money. They’re too rich for that. What they want is for their old monopoly status to be fully reinstated. Their attitude stems from a desire to wield geopolitical control over all the region’s ports. But Djibouti isn’t just another square on a chessboard: we will not go back to the way things were.

In mid-September, you launched the Djibouti Sovereign Fund, which will be funded to the tune of $1.5bn over the next decade and whose sole shareholder is the government. Usually, sovereign wealth funds are the prerogative of rich countries. What is the point of the fund?

“We don’t have oil, but we have ideas”: do you remember that French saying from the 1970s? Well, that’s us, too. I asked Lionel Zinsou and Donald Kaberuka to conduct a feasibility study, one that draws on successful sovereign wealth funds, such as those created by Senegal and Singapore.
What we want to do is free ourselves somewhat from conventional debt-driven growth models, pool our domestic resources to create a leverage effect, attract new financing, promote business and job creation, and, lastly, increase our overall wealth.

The Djibouti Sovereign Fund is up and running now. The implementing decrees have been signed. The team is in place and headed by a former Senegalese official specialising in these matters, whom I poached from President Macky Sall with his authorisation. This fund, which I directly oversee, belongs to Djibouti and the Djiboutian people.

The debt Djibouti owes China has for a long time been seen as excessive. Is this still the case today?

Our “Chinese debt” is much lower than what some have said. It amounts to $450m, compared with Ethiopia’s $16bn and Kenya’s $20bn. We have worked really hard on debt restructuring and servicing. The company managing the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway line, which is the main source of this debt, will be privatised, with Ethiopia and Djibouti retaining ownership of the infrastructure.

Is the railway line profitable?

To make a profit, it needs to reach a frequency of 10 trains a day as soon as possible. That’s our aim. For the time being, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing a rate of two to three trains a day.

Youth employment and inclusive growth are the main challenges facing your country, which has a structural poverty rate that encompasses almost 40% of the population. How are you addressing these challenges?

We are constantly working to implement a wide range of measures in the areas of affordable housing, health, education and professional training. The share of the population suffering from what is called “multidimensional poverty” has decreased by more than 15% over the past eight years, especially in rural areas. GDP per capita, which indicates the purchasing power of Djiboutians, has risen by 10% over the same period.

These statistics are encouraging, but we’re not there yet. Our goal is to triple per capita income within 15 years. Social well-being needs to increase in line with our economic growth.

Are you starting to see the beginnings of a middle class?

“Beginnings” is the right word. The cost of living here is high, mostly due to the cost of energy, which is why there are a growing number of wind and solar energy projects.

Ethiopia is a key economic partner for Djibouti. Since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018, this country of 110 million people is caught between centrifugal forces that threaten its unity. Are you concerned about the situation?

Of course. From the days of the Ethiopian Empire through Meles Zenawi’s leadership, not to mention Mengistu Haile Mariam’s dictatorship, “togetherness” has always been the exception, not the rule, in the country. One group has always dominated another. Ahmed, whose intentions were good, tried to change that. He’s a born optimist, both a politician, military man and very devout evangelical Christian.

But he is coming up against heavy resistance, particularly in the Tigray region, where the population lives under the rule of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front [TPLF]. So, the situation is difficult. That said, our personal and bilateral relations are good.

On 4 November, Ahmed launched a military offensive against the Tigray forces. Was war the only solution?

Let’s try to put ourselves in Ahmed’s shoes. Ethiopia is faced with a major problem: a political organisation known as the TPLF is stripping its federal authority and has structured itself so as to bring the central government to its knees.

Ethiopia’s prime minister has two options to choose from: one, he can negotiate with Tigray’s government, with each party separate and on an equal footing. This can only lead to the partition of Ethiopia, as it will set a precedent under which other regional groups will be able to assert their own secessionist claims. Two, he can restore law and order at the federal level, and punish those seeking to break up the country.

I think Ahmed has taken the second route, which will allow the population to elect their own leaders. That’s why he moved to replace the regional administration and dissolved Tigray’s parliament. It’s clear that as a country that shares its borders with Ethiopia and could thus be impacted by the conflict, Djibouti has one single wish: that peace be restored.

Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group that holds sway in Somalia, is considered al-Qaida’s best organised and most active arm in the world. How is it that this militia continues to pose such a threat, despite the presence of a military mission of 22,000 men – including a contingent from Djibouti – and numerous US drone strikes?

We haven’t yet managed to eliminate the leaders of this terrorist group. But we must, because Al-Shabaab has expanded its influence to the criminal economy, to the extent that it has become a sort of mafia. In the Port of Mogadishu, few containers escape their control: they tax, racketeer, traffic and, more than anything else, corrupt many important figures. They use refugee camps as a recruitment channel, offering young unemployed people food while also indoctrinating, training and arming them.

Legislative elections are scheduled to be held in Somalia in 2021. I fear we will end up with a parliament indirectly controlled by Al-Shabaab because they’ll have bought the support of some of the MPs. The risk that this group poses for the entire region has never been greater.

And Djibouti, with its foreign military bases, is a choice target for these terrorists, who have previously attacked Kenya and Uganda . . .

Yes, that’s clear. They attacked us in 2014. But we’re extremely vigilant, and our intelligence and security agencies are always on high alert.

What gives us the upper hand is that these extremists have virtually no ties to our population: when they try to infiltrate our communities, they are quickly spotted. Also, to get to Djibouti, they have to slip through the net of the Puntland and Somaliland police forces.

Why has the restoration of diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea still not had the slightest positive effect on your relationship with Eritrea’s president, Issayas Afeworki?

I met with Issayas in Jeddah in September 2018, but neither the Saudi’s mediation team nor Ahmed’s efforts produced a “peace of the braves”. This is despite the fact that I took the step of releasing 19 Eritrean prisoners of war, which Asmara didn’t want, it seems.

The only explanation I see for this stonewalling is a psychological one: Issayas is unyielding and resentful, and we won’t repeat the exercise. The former Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, had warned me: “Once you’re mad at him, he never forgets.”

Several Arab Muslim countries – Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates – have announced they are normalising relations with Israel. Will Djibouti follow suit?

No, because the conditions aren’t ripe. We neither have a problem with the Jews as a people nor the Israelis as a nation. Some of them even come to Djibouti on business with their passport, and Djibouti’s citizens have been able to travel to Israel for 25 years now.

However, we take issue with the Israeli government because they’re denying Palestinians their inalienable rights. All we ask that the government do is make one gesture of peace, and we will make 10 in return. But I’m afraid they’ll never do that.

The US has raised concerns about your relations with China on several occasions. It has even been reported that an American general suggested that Beijing had “purchased” the Port of Djibouti. Have these suspicions been cleared up?

They were totally baseless, but I’m not sure they’ve gone away. For instance, we don’t understand why the $25m loan the World Bank promised us in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has taken so long to materialise. The president of the World Bank, David Malpass, is a US citizen. Is there a causal connection? I wonder.

And yet you agreed to let the US army occupy the largest foreign military base in Djibouti. Don’t these kinds of activities sometimes encroach on your sovereignty?

We see to it that that doesn’t happen, but it’s not always easy. In 2013, we allowed the United States to use the French military’s Chabelley Airfield, located some 10 kilometres from Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport, as a base for their unmanned aircraft. Since then, the base has become exclusively reserved for the US military.

No one can get in, neither us nor the French. It’s a problem we need to sort out.

You’ve often complained that France doesn’t show much interest in Djibouti, including economically speaking. Has that changed since French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit in March 2019?

Not really, unfortunately. In East Africa, the French only seem interested in Kenya and Ethiopia, with mixed results. Of course, the French electric utility company Engie is investing in Djibouti’s solar and wind power sector, and a delegation from MEDEF [a French business confederation] plans to pay us a visit in January. That’s better than nothing.

But I think that Paris should realise that Djibouti is more than just a strategic geographic location. Djibouti also has a position in the global economy. Others have come to this realisation, and an increasing number of young Djiboutians speak English, which is the language of business in our corner of the world.

Djibouti forcefully pushed to get a seat as a non-permanent member on the UN Security Council but was pipped at the post by Kenya last June. How did you feel about that?

We felt it was unfair and that the African Union had failed us, as they weren’t able to handle the problem. Kenya forced its way through, with the complicity of some Southern African countries, by casting aside every best practice. Nairobi spent a lot of money to get that seat. However, we did manage to prevent our rival from securing a majority and we’ve learned our lesson for next time. You can rest assured that we’ll try again.

Why are you so adamant about putting Djibouti on the world stage? You’ve opened close to 50 embassies, which is a substantial number for a small country of 1 million residents.

Because that’s the only way for us to avoid getting swallowed up in the melting pot of globalisation!

Thirty years ago, Djibouti was only on the map for the former colonial power. Today, we’re on the cusp of becoming a global hub. It’s a matter of political will.

Six months back, a Djiboutian air force pilot named Fouad Youssouf Ali was extradited from Ethiopia. He has been detained in Djibouti ever since, and his fate has troubled some members of the public as well as human rights activists, who consider him a political prisoner. When will he be tried?

He’ll be tried, but justice takes time here, just as in France. As for the rest, this person isn’t a prisoner of conscience. He’s a former air force lieutenant and deserter who tried to fly a plane to reach Eritrea, meaning hostile territory, but ultimately fled to Ethiopia. Can you name a single other country that wouldn’t have charged such a person under the same circumstances?

His prison conditions have sparked concern in Djibouti and Ali Sabieh, the city he’s from. Could the conflict between the Issa and Afar clans, which caused so much harm to the country at the beginning of the 1990s, rear its head again?

Over the past 20 or so years, we have made every effort to strengthen our sense of national unity and to instil a spirit of citizenship. There have never been more interclan marriages between the Issas and Afars than there are today. If there’s one point we are perfectly at ease with, it’s that one.

Why does Djibouti still not have any private, independent media outlets?

Because it’s expensive, quite simply, and the market is small. A few projects are under way in the digital sphere, but the financing capabilities in this area are nowhere near those of Somalia, where tribal solidarity is fully intact.

An online media outlet close to the opposition, “La voix de Djibouti” [The Voice of Djibouti], regularly complains that its journalists are harassed by the police. Isn’t such a practice counter to the principle of freedom of expression enshrined in Djibouti’s constitution?

That media outlet isn’t close to the opposition; it’s an opposition website based in Brussels, Belgium. The correspondents you are talking about aren’t registered journalists, but instead nobodies – some of whom are barely literate – presenting themselves as such. For that matter, we haven’t jailed anyone.

You’re confronted with a determined opposition, whose leaders are divided, including when it comes to their methods of action. Do you benefit from that?

I think it’s too bad. Every democracy needs an opposition that believes in discussion, comparing policies and the country’s future. Our opposition can be summed up by the slogan “Me or chaos”. Whether it’s Daher Ahmed Farah, Abdourahman Mohamed Guelleh or Adan Mohamed Abdou, none of them abide by the rules for forming a party. A party isn’t just some group you register with a founder and 10 or so members that never holds a convention. But we prefer to look the other way.

This state of things came about because the Islamist faction of this coalition, MoDeL [Movement for Democracy and Freedom] – the local chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood – used religion as a mobilising force. We have taken the necessary measures to reduce its impact. The coalition’s main leaders have left Djibouti for Turkey and Canada, where they have nothing other than Facebook to try to indoctrinate followers.

As for sermons, their content is strictly regulated and comes under the exclusive remit of the Ministry of Muslim Affairs. Sermons are sent to each mosque by email, and imams can’t add a single word to them during Friday prayers. I think the French authorities would do well to follow in our footsteps in this regard. It’s the only way to prevent extremism from thriving.

But there isn’t just the main weekly prayer. What about the other sermons?

In Djibouti, imams and muezzins are civil servants paid by the state. If they let a person use their platform to glorify violence and jihad and utter slogans and insults, they’ll be held accountable for it and immediately punished. In this sense, you could say that we have them by the strings. But there’s less and less of a need for us to do this because our religious leaders are increasingly better trained and educated. They realise that true Islam is about knowledge and tolerance.

The presidential election is scheduled to take place in April 2021. Will you stand for a fifth term?

I can’t state my position on that matter at this time. We have to let the country and administration do what they have to do. I’ll make an announcement very shortly, inshallah.

As you must know, no one in Djibouti has any doubt about your stance on that point . . .

Really? Well, give me a bit of time to answer.

‘We call on the EU to appoint a Horn of Africa envoy’

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EU Observer | Dear Excellencies Charles Michel (president of the EU Council), Ursula von der Leyen (president of the EU Commission) and David Sassoli (president of the European Parliament),

A call to the EU to urgently engage in peace efforts for the Horn of Africa.

The European Union must immediately appoint senior high-level envoys for the Horn of Africa to engage in and provide support to international, in particular African, efforts to curb the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

The UN has called for an immediate ceasefire of all hostilities.

According to the UN, 4,000 people a day are fleeing to Sudan from Ethiopia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has called for a humanitarian corridor to reach the 96,000 refugees and internally-displaced persons in refugee camps in Sudan and in northern Ethiopia.

The UN is already preparing to receive 200,000 refugees in Sudan. An old refugee camp, that served during the 1984 famine, is sadly brought in use again.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has stated the hope that “Ethiopia will be able to find the peace it needs for its development and the wellbeing of its people.”

This crisis rightly has the full attention of the African continent.

The chair of the African Union, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appointed three elderly statespersons as envoys: Joaquim Chissano, former president of the Republic of Mozambique; Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former president of the Republic of Liberia, and Kgalema Motlanthe, former president of the Republic of South Africa – as special envoys of the African Union. Their efforts should be supported.

Unfortunately, the military interventions are not the only problem in the region.

After the lost harvest due to the destruction by locust swarms, food reserves are in severe jeopardy.

The conflict is now contributing to an already dire situation.

A new famine of most severe proportions is looming. The current crisis comes on top of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving children out of school for six months already. It affects tens of thousands of children in precarious situations, often separated from parents and guardians.

Ethiopia is globally renowned for its world cultural heritage representing one of the oldest human civilisations of which Ethiopians and Africans are rightly proud.

The UNESCO world heritage site in Aksum, other heritage sites and religious centres are now under threat. This tragedy is compounded by a terrible loss of innocent lives, sexual violence and a destabilising refugee crisis.

This regional crisis in the Horn of Africa requires the immediate attention of the EU at the highest level. The EU should call on the experience of statespersons to contribute as high-level envoys to the efforts of the African Union and the UN.

Yours,

Professor Dr Mirjam van Reisen, professor of international relations, innovation and care, Tilburg University

Plus 51 other signatories.

U.N. Fears Ethiopia Purging Ethnic Tigrayan Officers From Its Peacekeeping Missions

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Foreign Policy | An internal United Nations document shows concern those troops could face torture or execution.

The Ethiopian government has been rounding up ethnic Tigrayan security forces deployed in United Nations and African peacekeeping missions abroad and forcing them onto flights to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where it is feared they may face torture or even execution, according to an internal U.N. account.

The moves come as Ethiopia is preparing a military offensive against the capital of the country’s Tigray region, Mekelle. Conflict erupted earlier this month between federal and Tigrayan forces in the ethnically divided nation, which for decades was under de facto rule by the minority Tigrayans. The alarm inside the U.N. suggests that Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, may be expanding the country’s weekslong conflict beyond the country’s borders. It has alarmed human rights advocates and U.N. officials, who fear that the U.N. blue helmets may be persecuted upon their arrival back in Ethiopia.

The targeting of Tigrayan military officers in foreign peacekeeping and military operations comes amid rising fears that an Ethiopian government offensive against Tigrayan rebels inside Ethiopia could devolve into ethnic cleansing, with atrocities reported on both sides. The human rights watchdog Amnesty International recently issued a report detailing “the massacre of a very large number of civilians” in northern Ethiopia earlier this month, allegedly by groups loyal to the Tigrayan forces, in a grim harbinger of violence to come. Meanwhile, refugees fleeing the violence said they were targeted because they were Tigrayan.

In South Sudan earlier this month, Ethiopian soldiers disarmed a senior ethnic Ethiopian Tigrayan officer, escorted him to the capital of Juba, and forced him onto a Nov. 11 Ethiopian Airlines flight to Addis Ababa, according to the internal account, which was reviewed by Foreign Policy.

Ten days later, the Ethiopian contingent at the U.N. base in Juba reportedly detained three other Tigrayan officers. The officers, according to the internal account, “were coerced to take the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Juba to Addis Ababa. As of now their whereabouts are unknown.”

The U.N. Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, “has become aware that three soldiers were repatriated back to their country on Saturday without the Mission’s knowledge,” a senior U.N. official at the mission said. “Our Human Rights Division is working to follow up on their situation.”

“If there are any incidents where personnel are discriminated against or have their rights violated because of their ethnicity or they have concerns about their situation, this may involve a human rights violation under international law,” the official added. “As a result, the UNMISS Human Rights Division is currently liaising with the Ethiopian peacekeeping command in South Sudan and has requested access to any contingent personnel who might, for any reason, be compelled to return home and be in need of protection.”

The crackdown has spread to other African countries where Ethiopian peacekeepers and troops are deployed, including in Abyei, a disputed territory claimed by Sudan and South Sudan, and Somalia, where thousands of Ethiopian troops have been helping the government fight Islamist al-Shabab militants. As many as 40 Tigrayan officers and soldiers serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia have also been recalled to Ethiopia, according to one diplomatic source.

At Ethiopia’s U.N. mission in New York, the senior military attaché who oversaw peacekeeping issues, a Tigrayan, was fired after just months on the job, precipitating the purge of other Tigrayan officers from peacekeeping missions abroad, diplomatic sources said.

Ethiopia has seen deepening conflict between the country’s Tigray minority—which accounts for just over 6 percent of the population but played a dominant role in Ethiopia’s political life for decades, and whose status was reinforced under Meles Zenawi, an ethnic Tigrayan who served as prime minister and president of Ethiopia from 1991 until his death in August 2012—and the country’s largest ethnic groups including the Amhara and Oromo, who account for more than 60 percent of the county’s population.

During Meles’s tenure, Tigrayans were given key posts in the government and the military, and they continue to hold key leadership positions in overseas peacekeeping missions, raising questions about the ability of Ethiopian contingents to function following a purge. But the Tigrayans’ privileged position has been threatened since the election of Abiy, an ethnic Oromo, in 2018.

The latest crisis follows a recent dispute between the federal government and the Tigrayan regional government over the decision to postpone national and regional elections in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Tigray’s local leaders went ahead with an election, which resulted in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) winning all the seats. The federal parliament declared the vote null, and federal troops are seeking to impose military control over the Tigray region.

The conflict in Ethiopia has killed hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of people and sparked a new refugee crisis in what is historically one of the most politically unstable regions of the world. Some 30,000 refugees have fled from Ethiopia into neighboring Sudan in recent weeks, fueling concerns that the new refugee influx could destabilize Sudan’s fragile transitional government.

Senior U.S. officials have called for an end to hostilities and independent investigations into the reports of civilian massacres.

“The ethnic dimension is one that everybody is very concerned about,” said Tibor Nagy, the top State Department diplomat on Africa, in a briefing with reporters on Nov. 19.

Nagy also condemned the TPLF’s reported missile attacks on neighboring Eritrea earlier this month, calling it an attempt to “internationalize the conflict” that “make[s] the situation more dangerous.”

The conflict has also taken on an economic lens. “This war is ultimately a battle for control of Ethiopia’s economy, its natural resources, and the billions of dollars the country receives annually from international donors and lenders,” Kassahun Melesse, an assistant professor of applied economics at Oregon State University, wrote recently in Foreign Policy. “Access to those riches is a function of who heads the federal government—which the TPLF controlled for nearly three decades before Abiy came to power in April 2018, following widespread protests against the TPLF-led government.”

“In other words, this is not a conflict over who gets to rule Tigray, a small region whose population accounts for a mere 6 percent of Ethiopia’s more than 110 million people,” Melesse wrote. “It is a fight over who gets to dominate the commanding heights of the country’s economy, a prize that Tigray’s regional leaders once held and are determined to recapture at any cost.”

That struggle is playing out in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

Ethiopia is one of the two largest contributors to U.N. peacekeeping missions, with more than 6,700 uniformed personnel, most serving in Darfur, Abyei, and South Sudan. Tigrayans have played a key role in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Earlier this month, Ethiopia recalled more than 3,000 troops from Somalia to reinforce its military operations against the Tigrayans. The government disarmed between 200 and 300 Tigrayan soldiers who were posted in Somalia, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

“The peacekeepers are not being disarmed due to ethnicity but due to infiltration of TPLF elements in various entities which is part of an ongoing investigation,” an Ethiopian government task force told Reuters, which previously reported on the Tigrayan soldiers in Somalia being disarmed.

“All officers and soldiers from Tigray were arrested and detained upon arrival in Addis,” according to the U.N. account reviewed by Foreign Policy. “There are reports that some have been subjected to torture and extra-judicial killing.”

Privately, U.S. officials fear that the massive withdrawal of troops will leave Somalia, already one of the world’s most fragile states, in a precarious position and vulnerable to new offensives from terrorist groups such as al-Shabab.

In Abyei, the U.N.’s Tigrayan deputy force commander, Brig. Gen. Negassi Tikue Lewte, disappeared from the U.N.’s radar after traveling to Addis Ababa earlier this month. The brigadier general—who is serving under a U.N. contract—made a request for leave on Nov. 15. Shortly after, Ethiopia sent the U.N. a diplomatic note informing it to find another officer to fill the position.

“He was apparently recalled to Ethiopia and since then his whereabouts seem unknown,” according to the internal U.N. account.

The purge has raised complicated legal and political challenges for the U.N., which traditionally defers to foreign military contingents to manage troop rotations and handle disciplinary issues. The Ethiopian government has privately insisted that the repatriated Tigrayan troops and officers are simply on leave. But at least one of the officers, the deputy force commander in Abyei, is serving under a U.N. contract, imposing a greater responsibility on the U.N. to ensure his protection.

The U.N.’s peacekeeping department’s spokesperson, Nick Birnback, confirmed that the organization is “aware of the issue; we are very concerned and we are taking this matter extremely seriously.”

“At the moment, we are ascertaining all the relevant facts and we are or will be in touch with all relevant peace operations and governments in this regard,” Birnback added. “All troop-contributing countries have obligations under applicable international law, in accordance with relevant norms, standards and instruments.”

The Ethiopian missions in the United States did not respond to requests for comment. But human rights advocates have voiced concern about the reports.

“If reports of discriminatory Ethiopian repatriation of ethnic Tigrayan peacekeepers are true, they are deeply disturbing, given credible reports of profiling and arbitrary arrest of ethnic Tigrayans in Ethiopia,” said Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director for Human Rights Watch.

“If the reports are confirmed, the U.N. should also consider suspending Ethiopian participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations,” Charbonneau added. “The U.N. needs to send a clear message to all governments that it will not ignore abuses against peacekeepers serving under the U.N. flag.”