Tag Archive for: Tigray War

Silencing of guns in Africa remains a pipe dream

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IOL | The African Union set itself a goal of silencing guns on the continent by 2020 but has failed to achieve that goal dismally. Guns are still blazing in the DRC, CAR, Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Nigeria.

Instead, there is the potential of new wars coming on board in 2021 between Sudan and Ethiopia, and Western Sahara-Morocco, where we could see much bloodshed soon. Why is Africa constantly under such pressures of war?

A closer look at the situations in each country tells us a story of foreign interference and manipulations, so that they gain access to our resources and loot. Our enemies are willing to sponsor some of these wars so that in the midst of the chaos created by them, they can steal our resources.

If we are to examine each situation prevailing in any of these countries, we will notice that the real problem is resources. Instead of a country having pride in their God-given resources, it has now become a curse on them. This is very true with the DRC, for example, Africa’s richest country in terms of resources, which has never known any peace from independence up to this day. I mean, how do we explain the lack of development in the DRC?

Some western countries and their proxies on the continent have joined hands to exploit the DRCs resources. Countries that have no recorded diamonds deposits on their territories are selling the mineral on the world market. Where are they getting the diamonds from is the question?

The same can be said of what is going on in the Central African Republic (CAR). The country, as poor as it is, does possess a lot of natural resources. It was ruled by a man called Emperor Bokassa. This man was one of the richest on the continent. He lived more affluently than some of the European leaders.

The truth is that, like the DRC, CAR is one of the richest countries in terms of natural resources. It has diamonds, gold, and other western sought-after minerals in abundance. As a result of that, the French and the Russians have all lined up deploying their militaries to the CAR on the side of the government under the guise of fighting the rebels when in actual fact, they also bolster the different rebels’ groups inciting them to cause chaos.

Amid the chaos, it gives them the chance to loot in daylight. Over the weekend, the UN troops in CAR, had to retake control of a city in the Central African Republic captured two weeks ago by armed groups waging an offensive against the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera. Rebels abandoned their positions in Bangassou, 750km east of the capital, Bangui, and fled the city following an ultimatum on Friday from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA, the mission’s spokesperson Vladimir Monteiro said late on Saturday.

The incumbent, who is mainly supported by the Russians and the French, is their chosen puppet giving them free access to the country’s resources. Where on earth does the CAR find the money to buy all those expensive weaponry that is being supplied by the Russians and the French? This puppet leader has mortgaged the country’s natural resources, and the people of CAR may never enjoy their God-given resources. Its just absurd to see a naturally rich country live in perpetual poverty forever.

The same is true with regards to Mozambique. Immediately after oil and LNG was discovered in Cabo Delgado, ISIS appeared. All of a sudden, it was Jihadists wanting to set up a caliphate ruled by Islamic shari’ah.

There is also a new wave of instability being imposed on Africa. This is coming from the so-called normalisations going on the continent and in the Gulf countries. Whether people agree with me or not, I remain convinced that, the normalisations are, in themselves, instabilities. The reason being that they are not based on truth and fairness, so, they are bound to collapse, sooner or later.

Their collapse will certainly not just happen in a vacuum, it will bring a lot of instabilities, wherever it happens. You cannot build peace based on falsehood and unfairness. How can a man pretend to have peace with his neighbours when, in reality, he doesn’t have peace in his own house?

The silencing of guns on the continent will not come about until our leadership really look close at what its real causes are. I believe most of our leaders are aware of the real causes of instability on our continent, but the problem is the nature of politics that they practice.

The politics of lies and deceit are the real problem. Ten or 20 years from now, when the lies are declassified, it is when the people get to know the truth, that is unacceptable. Why not let the people know the truth now? It affects them now, and must be solved now.

My advice to our leaders in Africa is, break away from western toxic politics and practice the truth period! As a warning, the new crop of youth rising is aware of these things, and if you do not change the way you are doing things, it will be a disaster. Stand up to these powers and announce your break away from the way they do things. Aluta Continua! (The struggle continues).

* Dr Mustafa Mheta is a senior researcher and head of the Africa Desk at the Media Review Network.

On ‘Rooftop of Africa,’ Ethiopia’s Troops Hunt Fugitive Former Rulers

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NYT | Politicians and military commanders who once led Ethiopia are being tracked down, caught and sometimes killed by their own country’s soldiers in the war in the Tigray region.

By Simon Marks and Declan Walsh

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — For two decades, as foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin was Ethiopia’s face to the world — a personable and soft-spoken diplomat who brokered peace in neighboring war-torn countries, delivered speeches at the United Nations and helped establish his country as a weighty African power.

That distinguished career came to an ignominious end last week when Ethiopian soldiers tracked down Mr. Seyoum, now labeled an enemy of the state, and killed him in a muddy and remote corner of the mountainous north of the country. The government said he died in a shootout, but Mr. Seyoum’s allies say he was executed.

The former foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin was killed last week by the Ethiopian military. | via NYT | ©Reuters

Mr. Seyoum, 71, was the most prominent casualty yet of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s 11-week-old war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. The main target of Mr. Abiy’s military campaign is not a ragtag group of provincial rebels, but the politicians and generals of Tigray, who ruled Africa’s second-most populous country for much of the past three decades through their political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or T.P.L.F.

Now Ethiopia’s former rulers are on the run in their Tigray heartland, and on the defensive against the forces they once commanded. Since Jan. 7, Ethiopia’s military has killed or captured at least 47 people from a most-wanted list of 167 senior leaders of the T.P.L.F., including four of the party’s nine-member executive committee, according to Ethiopian state media reports.

When Mr. Abiy came to power in 2018, his government quickly unseated many of these T.P.L.F. leaders, who over 27 years had overseen impressive economic growth, but ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist. Several were charged with corruption and human rights abuses, and some of them fled or retreated to their home base in Tigray.

Mr. Abiy has portrayed his military campaign as a law-enforcement drive against Tigray’s fugitive politicians, who are backed by their own seasoned military force. The Tigrayan leaders went ahead with a regional election in September, in defiance of Mr. Abiy’s order to postpone the vote due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He said he launched his military operation on Nov. 4 in response to an attack on a federal military base in Tigray.

“The government is engaged in a stabilizing mission for a month now while it continues to bring to justice perpetrators,” Billene Seyoum, Mr. Abiy’s spokeswoman, said in a statement.

But the T.P.L.F. says that Mr. Abiy, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for resolving a long-running conflict with Eritrea, is revealing himself as yet another power-hungry autocrat. Thousands of people have died in the fighting, by most estimates, and the handful of aid workers who have been permitted to enter Tigray report human rights abuses, burned refugee camps, looted hospitals and a swelling humanitarian crisis that could lead to mass starvation.

Refugees in Tigray are “emaciated, begging for aid that is not available,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a statement last week.

Despite Mr. Abiy’s recent military successes, the swift and bloodless victory he once promised in Tigray remains far from his grasp. The T.P.L.F. has retreated to the mountains, alongside thousands of heavily armed fighters.

Fighting has raged across the region in recent weeks, according to U.N. security reports seen by The New York Times. Human rights groups have shared accounts of atrocities against civilians, including plunder, sexual violence and killings.

And as Mr. Abiy ramps up his assault on the T.P.L.F., brushing aside international pleas to start peace talks, experts warn that he risks boosting public support for the rebels inside Tigray, and plunging his country deeper into a protracted conflict with an enemy that is unlikely to give up easily.

The T.P.L.F. “is an organization in which the guerrilla ethos of not bowing to external pressure, even when cornered and pressured, is very much in its DNA,” said Rashid Abdi of Sahan, a Kenya-based conflict analysis group specializing in the Horn of Africa. “They have said they will die to the last person. People should not underestimate that.”

Mr. Abiy’s forces — with the help of Eritrean troops — hold the regional capital, Mekelle, and much of northern and western Tigray. But sporadic fighting has continued in rural areas across Tigray, and on roads leading to Mekelle, according to Western diplomats and U.N. security assessments.

Although analysts initially estimated the T.P.L.F. had 250,000 men under arms, it quickly became clear that its force was much smaller. Government soldiers and allied ethnic militias surrounded the T.P.L.F.’s forces by sealing Ethiopia’s borders with Eritrea and Sudan, effectively severing the rebels’ supply lines.

And the T.P.L.F. received an unexpected blow when soldiers from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s former enemy, crossed into Tigray to fight alongside Mr. Abiy’s forces. In such conditions, experts say, it’s unclear how long the T.P.L.F. can hold out.

Still, the situation is fluid and unpredictable. Border clashes between Ethiopia and Sudan in recent weeks, over a patch of disputed farmland, could play to the advantage of the T.P.LF. if Sudan helps the rebels to resupply.

And the top military commanders of the T.P.L.F. remain at large. Two Western officials and one with the T.P.L.F., who were not authorized to speak publicly, identified Lt. Gen. Tsadkan Gebretensae, a former head of the Ethiopian military, as a senior rebel leader.

General Tsadkan led Ethiopia into combat against Eritrea during the two countries’ brutal border war between 1998 and 2000. In recent years, after retiring from the army, he ran a small brewery. Now 66, he is back in the fight with the newly formed Tigray Defense Forces, battling the Ethiopian army he once commanded.

One T.P.L.F. stronghold, the Western officials said, is in the Tembien mountains, a cluster of jagged hills and narrow winding roads in central Tigray — part of a highland massif often called the “rooftop of Africa.”

Kjetil Tronvoll, an expert on the T.P.L.F. at Bjorknes University College in Oslo, said the party’s leadership has likely dispersed in small groups, to spread the risk of capture.

It was in Tigray’s central hills near the Tekeze River that Mr. Abiy’s force scored a symbolic coup earlier this month, when they captured Sebhat Nega, an octogenarian founding member of the T.P.L.F.

Ethiopian federal troops crossed tributaries of the Tekeze and hiked up steep hillsides in search of Mr. Sebhat, according to accounts on Ethiopian state television and a former T.P.L.F. official who had been in touch with Mr. Sebhat. After scaling a precipitous slope with ropes, they discovered Mr. Sebhat in a cave with his wife and sister.

Footage broadcast on state media showed a disheveled, white-bearded man in a tracksuit, being led in handcuffs off a military transport plane at Addis Ababa International Airport. Ethiopian leaders were jubilant.

“It was difficult to believe a human could live in the mountain where we found him,” said Maj. Gen. Mesele Meseret, who led the operation.

The triumphal capture of Mr. Sebhat contrasted with the more muted announcement of Mr. Seyoum’s death, which was shrouded in recriminations and conflicting accounts.

The Ethiopian government said Mr. Seyoum, a T.P.L.F. leader, died during a gunfight between his bodyguards and government soldiers. But the T.P.L.F. insisted he had been summarily executed, pointing to a photo circulating online that showed Mr. Seyoum, his eyes closed, with blood streaming from a bullet-sized wound in his forehead.

“Seyoum deserved to end his days in comfortable retirement with all the respect due to a statesman and patriot,” said Alex de Waal, a Horn of Africa scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, who knew Mr. Seyoum, and called for an international investigation into his death. “His killing should be a red line.”

But Mr. Abiy shows little sign of backing down. On Tuesday, Ethiopia’s election board formally barred the Tigrayan party from elections that Mr. Abiy has set for June 5. Some had hoped the elections might act as a spur to peace talks.

The government accuses Western media of falsely portraying Mr. Abiy as a warmonger. Critics say he is hewing to the traditions of a political culture that prizes dominance.

“Abiy is buying into an old, aggressive warrior tradition in which you vanquish your enemy,” said Mr. Abdi, the analyst. “In countries like Kenya, you weaken your enemy in order to negotiate with him later. In Ethiopia, you obliterate him.”

In Somalia, mothers fear sons were sent to Ethiopia conflict

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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP | Washington Post) — Pressure is growing on Somalia’s government amid allegations that Somali soldiers have been sent to fight in neighboring Ethiopia’s deadly Tigray conflict.

Mothers have held rare protests in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere, demanding to know the fate of their children who originally were sent to Eritrea for military training. They fear their children have been deployed to the Tigray region, where Ethiopian forces have been fighting Tigray ones since November in a conflict that threatens to destabilize the Horn of Africa.

“I heard that our children who were sent to Eritrea for military training have been taken and their responsibility was turned over to (Ethiopian Prime Minister) Abiy Ahmed to fight for him,” Fatuma Moallim Abdulle, the mother of 20-year-old soldier Ahmed Ibrahim Jumaleh, told The Associated Press.

“According to the information I gathered, our children were taken straight to Mekele city,” the capital of the Tigray region, she said. “You may understand how I feel, I am a mother who carried her child for nine months in my belly, that’s my blood and flesh.”

Ethiopia this week denied reports of the presence of Somali soldiers in Tigray, and it continued to deny the presence of Eritrean ones.

Abiy made peace with neighboring Eritrea in 2018, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now critics say Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have teamed up in the conflict against a common enemy in the now-fugitive Tigray leaders, who dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades before Abiy took office and embarked on around of regional peacemaking that included Somalia.

Somalia President Abdullahi Mohamed Abdullahi has been asked by the head of the country’s parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, Abdulqadir Ossoble Ali, to investigate allegations of participation in the Tigray conflict.

“We have the oversight right to check what our government is doing,” Ali wrote in the letter distributed to media outlets.

And the former deputy director for Somalia’s intelligence agency, Ismael Dahir Osman, has said “it is a question worth asking why these soldiers are not yet back home after more than a year when their training would have concluded long ago.”

Somalia’s information minister, Osman Abokor Dubbe, this week denied the “propaganda” that Somali soldiers who had been outside the country for training have been involved in the Tigray conflict.

“There are no Somali troops requested by the Ethiopian government to fight for them and fight in Tigray,” he said.

The issue has emerged at a sensitive time in Somalia. The country is set to hold national elections in the coming weeks, but two federal states have refused to participate and the opposition accuses the president of trying to push ahead with a partial vote.

“The parents of those children keep calling us and they don’t have any contact with their children, and some of them were told that their boys have died,” one opposition presidential candidate, Abdurahman Abdishakur Warsame, told the AP. “According to the information we’re receiving, those boys were taken to the war in northern Ethiopia. We’re calling for an independent national commission to investigate the matter, and if it is proven to be true, it will amount to treason of national scale.”

Could a National Dialogue Solve Ethiopia’s Political Crisis?

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USIP | It is time to talk about the common challenges that every Ethiopian faces.

While the recent conflict in Tigray renewed international focus on Ethiopia, more challenges lie ahead, including elections now scheduled for June 5. The state of Ethiopia’s political transition is contested, and the country remains polarized. However, as Ethiopian scholars Emebet Getachew, Mehari Taddele Maru, and Yohannes Gedamu discuss, a national dialogue process may have the potential to address the country’s dilemmas.

What is the current state of Ethiopia’s political transition?

Emebet: The political transition underway since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power is not Ethiopia’s first. Transition should be considered a recurrent Ethiopian phenomenon which, unfortunately, has rarely occurred peacefully. As with the 1974 revolution toppling Emperor Haile Selassie and the 1991 overthrow of the Derg military government, the consequences of the 2018 transition claimed many lives, even if the transfer of power itself was generally peaceful.

This transition means different things to different people. The initial euphoria that greeted the transition was short-lived. There was limited consensus to propel change. Critics were left out of the transition process leading to avoidable conflicts. The transition thus faces an uphill battle to stabilize and effectively govern the country, especially since reconciliation has not been high on the agenda.

Mehari: Ethiopia faces a “war of visions” as to its future. One vision is of centralization, the basis of which is to reclaim quasi-unitarist powers that have been—at least de jure—dismantled over decades. This vision recalls Ethiopia’s contested history of forcible assimilation. The same unitarist governance style, albeit with some aspects of decentralization, is now in the making. Proponents of this vision employ both constitutional norms, and when they deem necessary, unconstitutional, oppressive means including war on those who resist. This vision of centralization is undemocratic and antagonistic to multiculturalism.

On the other side is a vision of federalism, greater devolution of power, more autonomy, confederal arrangements, self-determination and even, potentially, secession. There are also middle positions between the two extremes with overlapping visions, based on maintaining the current constitution, with some tweaks. Ethiopia’s current system of multinational federalism still partially addresses the country’s historical problems, although it is also responsible for spawning new local conflicts.

By appointing new regional state presidents and councils, the prime minister’s office is replacing federalism with centralization. Supporters of Abiy back these actions as part of the transition to democracy and the preservation of the state, seemingly even at the cost of political instability, military confrontation, and the death of civilians. Choreographed narratives of national unity undermine the need for the constitutionally guaranteed governance of diversity. Political leaders of the most critical opposition to Abiy are in jail. Ethiopia has shut down independent and critical local media outlets, increased censorship and state propaganda, and reduced academic freedom. As a consequence, the Ethiopian state is in a precarious situation. The recent announcement of the election calendar only makes the state more fragile.

Yohannes: Reforms by Abiy’s administration were initially fast paced, although this has since slowed. But many key promises were fulfilled. In the first year of reforms, prisoners were released, the media revived, and exiled opposition returned to the country. A reformed ruling party has been established, which created inclusive politics by better involving regional political parties than previously. True, there have been serious peace and security challenges: repeated violence in Benishangul-Gumuz, Guji, and Wollega. Sadly, internal displacement and massacres on the basis of identity are now common. The government lost patience and even arrested some opposition leaders. However, the government continued to enact security sector reforms, long-term economic plans and other meaningful development programs, including environmental initiatives such as the Green Legacy Initiative.

Ethno-nationalist political narratives have increased ethnic polarization, inter-communal intolerance and violence, and are antagonistic to Abiy’s hope for unity. Such narratives that pit one group against another were exploited by some of Abiy’s opposition. Now that a date for a vote has been set, the 2021 elections will be another major test for Ethiopia’s future.

Given Ethiopia’s many challenges, is there a place for a national dialogue process?

Mehari: There is no military solution to a war of visions. Any government that fails to recognize the precedence of politics over military action risks facing protracted armed resistance and insurrection.

The Ethiopian government rejected calls for dialogue during the constitutional crisis in Ethiopia, when it became clear that elections would not be held on schedule and that the constitutional term of office of the government would soon expire. The government rejected dialogue to resolve the conflict with the Tigray region. Now, the solution lies in building bridges between communities and narrowing the gulf between the different political visions. Since existing institutions like the reconciliation commission are distrusted, a new process is required. A national dialogue is the best option of all, although it will not necessarily resolve all the problems Ethiopia faces.

Yohannes: Yes, there is always a place for national dialogue, as long as there is genuine commitment. Past Ethiopian regimes, including the one led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) before 2018, downplayed the need for such dialogue by saying that the timing was not right, and that Ethiopia faced too many challenges at that moment. The Abiy government is the first in Ethiopian history to have established a reconciliation commission to study and recommend solutions. As with his other initiatives, however, some of Abiy’s opponents undermined the idea of this commission. However, I have hope that this is a good place from which dialogue can start, if people agree that reconciliation is also about looking forward rather than just arguing about the past. It is time to talk about the common challenges that every Ethiopian faces, not only concentrate on particular, group-based grievances.

Emebet: Initiatives that foster national dialogue are needed more than ever in Ethiopia. Existing civil society initiatives should not be overlooked. One such initiative is the Multi-stakeholder Initiative for National Dialogue (MIND), a coalition of Yehasab Me’ad (Plate of Ideas), Destiny Ethiopia and the Political Parties’ Joint Council, endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Peace. MIND intends to bring “contentious issues to the table and discuss them one by one to create a common understanding step by step.” Led by civil society, MIND aims to build confidence in the concept of dialogue among participants. An inclusive national dialogue could help MIND strengthen its attempts to resolve challenges to peace and security.

How could a successful national dialogue process for Ethiopia be designed?

Yohannes: Work could start with the reconciliation commission, which could educate the public about the dimensions of reconciliation and what the commission aims to achieve. Some critical differences among groups and parties must be examined, and a task force that involves all stakeholders organized to debate and reach at least partial consensus. The goal should be to arrive at a common national agenda.

Emebet: For a national dialogue to succeed, five aspects must be considered:

  • Credibility of the conveners: Public trust in who convenes a national dialogue is especially critical in a deeply polarized society like Ethiopia. The whole process depends on the integrity, impartiality, and public perception of the convener(s).
  • Inclusivity: If critical participants are excluded from the process, the credibility and legitimacy of the process will be reduced. Inclusion is an ongoing process, and broad-based consultations are necessary if people are to feel they are represented in both the process and the outcomes of the dialogue. A commitment to inclusivity requires both formal (track 1) and informal (track 2) efforts. It also requires being gender and conflict sensitive.
  • Institutional linkages: Dialogue does not occur in a vacuum. Thinking how the process involves, for example, regional governments and processes, such as the elections and the reconciliation commission, will strengthen the coherence of the effort. Critically, it is unlikely that dialogue can be sustained if past grievances and serious human rights violations are ignored, so links to the institutions responsible for these processes is also needed.
  • How dialogue outcomes will be implemented: A dialogue process will not in itself solve the problems of the country. Effective implementation of the dialogue’s outcomes is needed, including of any recommendations to amend policy and legislation as well as on accountability and reconciliation. The high expectations of the process must be managed.
  • Mobilizing resources: Significant technical and financial resources are needed to involve large number of participants and multiple consultations.

Mehari: Dialogue design must be a guided by the goals of the process. Further, the process must account for realities on the ground, in particular, the war in Tigray and conflicts elsewhere in Ethiopia, the detentions and stifling of critical voices in the political opposition, political prisoners, and recent atrocities, assassinations, and displacement.

There should be a pre-dialogue to consult stakeholders and to solicit views on the central issues to be addressed. These consultations should also inform the dialogue’s design. The design of the dialogue needs to consider structure and rules; the core agenda; criteria for determining the participants, who may include, but not be limited to, political parties and armed groups; seating arrangements; and a realistic timeline, all outlined in an implementation roadmap. A sound communications strategy is vital to build and maintain trust, publicize progress, address dis- and misinformation and where necessary, change behavior.

Ultimately, Ethiopian ownership of the process, participants’ political will, and determination to ensure implementation will be intrinsic to the success of any dialogue process.

 

Emebet Getachew is country program manager at the Life & Peace Institute in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mehari Taddele Maru is a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Yohannes Gedamu is a lecturer in political science at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

The views expressed by the authors are their own.

‘Disturbing’ allegations of rape in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict, UN

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AFP | Yahoo News

The UN says it has received “disturbing” reports of sexual violence and abuse in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray region, including of individuals forced to rape members of their own family.

Pramila Patten, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said she was greatly concerned by serious allegations from the northern region, including “a high number of alleged rapes” in the Tigrayan capital Mekele.

“There are also disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence,” Patten said in a statement Thursday.

“Some women have also reportedly been forced by military elements to have sex in exchange for basic commodities.”

Patten called on all parties involved in the hostilities to commit to a zero-tolerance policy for crimes of sexual violence.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, announced military operations in Tigray in early November, saying they came in response to attacks by the regional ruling party on federal army camps.

Abiy declared victory after federal forces entered the regional capital in late November, though leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) remain on the run and have vowed to fight on.

Patten noted that “medical centres have indicated an increase in the demand for emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) which is often an indicator of sexual violence in conflict.”

She called for full humanitarian access to Tigray, including camps for displaced people “and refugee camps where new arrivals have allegedly reported cases of sexual violence.”

– Disease fears –

Patten voiced concern about “more than 5,000 Eritrean refugees in and around the area of Shire living in dire conditions, many of them reportedly sleeping in an open field with no water or food, as well as the more than 59,000 Ethiopians who have fled the country into neighbouring Sudan.”

The caretaker administration in Tigray did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, state television broadcast footage of a meeting during which an unidentified man in a military uniform expressed concern about rapes in Mekele.

“Why are women being raped in Mekele city?” the man said.

“It wouldn’t be shocking had it been happening during the war, because it is not manageable so it could be expected. But at this moment while federal police and local police are back in town, it is still happening.”

A doctor in Mekele told AFP earlier this month his hospital had treated 15 rape victims in late November and December, though he noted that “most do not come to hospital.”

Thousands have died in the Tigray conflict, according to the International Crisis Group, though a communications blackout and media and humanitarian access restrictions have made it difficult to assess the situation on the ground.

As a result of the fighting in the region “many hospitals and clinics are only partially functioning or had to close” and “health care workers have been displaced,” Dr Ibrahima Soce Fall, assistant director general for emergency response at the World Health Organization (WHO), said during a briefing Friday in Geneva.

“Due to the conflict and disruptions, we are concerned about the potential for a number of diseases to spread in this region, including malaria, COVID-19, measles, cholera, meningitis and yellow fever,” Fall said, adding that access remained a “major” challenge.

After two months of war, Tigray faces starvation

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The Economist | Ethiopia’s government appears to be blocking food deliveries to the region

No image better symbolises the fall from power of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (tplf), the party that had called the shots in Ethiopia for almost three decades. Sebhat Nega, one of its founders, was pictured this month in handcuffs, wearing a rumpled tracksuit and a single sock. The 86-year-old, long one of Ethiopia’s most powerful men, had been captured by the army. His party, which was pushed out of power amid massive protests in 2018, has been fighting the government led by Abiy Ahmed for the past two months. It is not going well.

Several other senior tplf figures have been killed by the army. Among them was Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s longest-serving foreign minister. The killings and arrests appear to have left the tplf in disarray. Its leaders, including the ousted president of the Tigray region, Debretsion Gebremichael, have been in hiding for over a month. Although the tplf still controls sizeable swathes of rural Tigray, it holds no towns or cities. Allies of Abiy, who has already declared victory, believe it is only a matter of time before the rest of what he calls the “junta” are captured or killed.

But time is not a luxury Tigrayans can afford. For weeks the vast majority of the region’s roughly 6m people have been without adequate food, water or medicine. According to the interim administration of Tigray, which Abiy appointed last month, more than 2m civilians have been driven from their homes. The state-appointed human-rights commission has warned of a “humanitarian crisis”. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, run by the American government, parts of central and eastern Tigray are probably one step from famine. “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months,” frets a Western diplomat.

It is impossible to know how bad the crisis is because phone lines are down and the government has barred journalists from going to most of Tigray. It also restricts the movement of aid workers. But accounts are trickling out. In some places, especially in the north, crops have been burnt. In others, farmers abandoned their fields before the harvest.

Even where food is still available, many people have no means of getting it. Banks are closed across Tigray (apart from in Mekelle, the region’s capital). So are markets and shops. In many places fuel has run out. Inflation is rampant. “Even if you have the money, you don’t have a bank,” says Kibrom, who fled from Tigray to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, last month. “If you have grain, you don’t have a mill. If you have a mill, you don’t have power.”

Hospitals are also running out of supplies. In most, such as the one in Humera, a town close to Sudan and Eritrea, staff have not been paid since October. A lack of electricity means medicines are spoiling—if there are any left at all. When Médecins Sans Frontières (msf), an international charity, arrived at the hospital in Adwa earlier this month, its staff found that it had been almost completely looted. “How are we going to do blood transfusions that save lives if we don’t have a refrigerator?” asks Mari Carmen Viñoles, the head of msf’s emergency unit.

The federal government disputes such accounts. “There is no starvation in Ethiopia,” said a spokesman for the federal disaster management agency on January 19th. It claims to have distributed aid to nearly 2m people in northern Ethiopia (though it is unclear how many of those were actually in Tigray).

Muferiat Kamil, the minister of peace, says her ministry is reaching citizens even in the central areas of Tigray, which are largely under the control of the tplf. This is implausible. A senior humanitarian official notes that civilians in these places are “effectively trapped”. tplf forces regularly attack military convoys, which makes it impossible for the government to deliver supplies safely. An agreement signed with the un last month to allow aid groups to travel unhindered throughout the region is not being honoured. This is probably because officials do not want them to expose war crimes or the presence of thousands of troops from neighbouring Eritrea (who are helping the government). Four un staff were shot at and detained last month for entering areas where a government official said “they were not supposed to go”.

Lorries carrying emergency supplies are also being stopped. Despite some recent improvements, the system for getting permits to let them into Tigray is slow and complex. Even when permission is granted by the central government, local authorities in neighbouring regions halt shipments, saying that they too have to give permission. Once the lorries arrive in Tigray, local army commanders stop them, citing security or perhaps because they think the food will end up in rebel hands.

It is possible that Ethiopia’s government is too incompetent to realise that its actions are likely to cause starvation. But it seems more likely that the authorities are deliberately holding back food in an effort to starve the rebels out. “The lack of humanitarian access is part and parcel of the war campaign,” says a un diplomat. Even before the war began there was an effort to blockade Tigray to weaken its leaders. In October the federal government stopped welfare payments to poor farmers.

For decades Ethiopian governments have been guilty of putting politics before people. A famine in 1973 was covered up to avoid embarrassing the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. A decade later a Marxist military dictatorship burned crops and restricted aid to Tigray in an attempt to defeat the tplf, then a ragtag band of guerrillas. There is not yet a fully-fledged famine in Tigray. But there is a real danger that history will repeat itself. ■

UK backs Sudan economic reforms with over $50 million

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Source: AP | Noha Elhennawy 

Britain’s foreign secretary announced Thursday that his government would offer more than $50 million to help poor Sudanese families as their government embarks upon major austerity measures to revive its battered economy, Sudan’s state news agency reported.

On a visit to Khartoum, Dominic Raab and Sudanese Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Heba Mohamed Ali Ahmed signed a memorandum of understanding under which Britain commits to disbursing economic aid worth 40 million British pounds, or about $54.8 million, to the African country, SUNA reported.

Sudan is on a fragile path to democratic rule after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, after nearly three decades of rule. A military-civilian government is now in power but struggles with a wide range of economic challenges, including crippling debt, widespread shortages of essential goods such as fuel, bread and medicine, and a three-digit inflation rate.

“This is the first visit by a British foreign secretary to Sudan in more than ten years,” said Rosie Diyas, Britain’s spokesperson for the Mideast and North Africa. “The visit aims at supporting Sudan’s transition to democracy and civilian rule.”

The British aid will finance cash handouts to 1.6 million poor Sudanese, said Diyas. Aid recipients are expected to be those most hit by the economic reforms, slashing of subsidies and the reduction of public spending that the Sudanese government is expected to implement in order to reduce its huge public deficit.

Sudan’s transitional government has been racing against the clock to garner economic and political support of Western powers in order to end decades of its pariah status and secure reliefs of its crippling debt.

In the weeks before leaving office, former President Donald Trump removed Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that allows Khartoum to get international loans. Sudan’s economy has suffered from decades of U.S. sanctions and mismanagement under al-Bashir, who had ruled the country since a 1989 Islamist-backed military coup. The removal of the terror designation came after Sudan followed in the footsteps of other key Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, by normalizing relations with Israel.

Last year, Western and Arab countries pledged a total of $1.8 billion in aid to back Sudan at a donor meeting in Berlin. At the time, Britain pledged 66 million euros, more than $186 million.

According to Diyas, the U.K. has also offered another $6.87 million in aid to address Sudan’s urgent needs emanating from the influx of more than 50,000 Ethiopian refugees, who have recently fled their country following the eruption of war in Ethiopia’s Tigray province.

Shortly before boarding his Ethiopia-bound plane, Raab told reporters at Khartoum’s airport that his government hopes Ethiopia and Sudan can resolve the ongoing border dispute in “a sensible way”.

In recent weeks, the Sudanese army has deployed thousands of troops along the Ethiopian border and reclaimed territories controlled by Ethiopian militias. The Sudanese advances came on the heels of cross-border attacks that killed and wounded many Sudanese troops. The border tension raised concerns over a potential military conflict between the neighboring countries.

“We have a longstanding friendship with Sudan and likewise a strong partnership with Ethiopia. Our message is, let’s not at this precarious moment for the region see an escalation of tension,” said Raab, adding that he would reiterate the same message to the Ethiopians during his visit there.

SUNA reported that Raab had met with Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of Sudan’s ruling sovereign council, Sudan’s prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and acting Foreign Minister Omar Qamar al-Din.

Raab had also meant to discuss with Sudanese officials the ongoing water dispute between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, SUNA reported earlier. The news agency did not later say if anything came out of those discussions. The dispute is about Ethiopia’s construction of a controversial dam on the Blue Nile River, the main tributary of the Nile, which Egypt says endangers its critical share of the Nile waters.

Ethiopia’s government appears to be wielding hunger as a weapon – Famine crimes

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The Economist | A rebel region is being starved into submission

Ethiopia has suffered famines in the past. Many foreigners know this; in 1985 about one-third of the world’s population watched a pop concert to raise money for starving Ethiopians. What is less well understood is that poor harvests lead to famine only when malign rulers allow it. It was not the weather that killed perhaps 1m people in 1983-85. It was the policies of a Marxist dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who forced peasants at gunpoint onto collective farms. Mengistu also tried to crush an insurgency in the northern region of Tigray by burning crops, destroying grain stores and slaughtering livestock. When the head of his own government’s humanitarian agency begged him for cash to feed the starving, he dismissed him with a memorably callous phrase: “Don’t let these petty human problems…consume you.”

Things were supposed to be different under Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister who was hailed as a reformer when he took charge in 2018, and who won the Nobel peace prize the following year. Yet once again it looks as if hunger is being used as a weapon in Africa’s second-most-populous nation. And once again the scene of the horror is Tigray. Since fighting broke out in November between federal forces and those of Tigray’s rebellious former ruling party, perhaps 2m out of 6m Tigrayans are thought to have fled their homes. Many could now starve because the government has let so little food into the region (see article).

Aid agencies guess that between 2m and 4.5m people need urgent assistance. They cannot be more precise because the phone networks are down and the government has barred reporters from entering Tigray. The few who make it in return with horrifying accounts of ethnic killings, mass rapes—and starvation.

Plenty of food is available. Charities and un agencies have been trying to get supplies through for months. But Ethiopia’s Orwellian Ministry of Peace has sent them on a paperchase for permits. “For more than two months there has been essentially no access to Tigray,” says Mark Lowcock, the un’s humanitarian chief. “There are 450 tonnes of supplies we’ve been trying to get in that are stuck.” On those occasions when the federal government grants permission for an aid lorry to pass, it is typically stopped en route by regional governments, which insist that they, too, need to give permission, or halted by troops inside Tigray. Meanwhile there are credible reports of government forces or their allies killing livestock and burning crops. If true, both the perpetrators and those who gave the orders are guilty of war crimes.

Abiy insists that his troops are respecting humanitarian law. The conflict is not a civil war, but a mere police action, he claims. His government claims that restrictions on aid workers are for their own safety. Few believe him. Moreover, many observers fear that the fighting has grown too complex for the government to control. Troops from neighbouring Eritrea have joined the fray, as have militias from a rival ethnic group, the Amharas.

Outsiders should press all parties to let civilians eat. Josep Borrell, the eu’s foreign-policy chief, has suspended €88m ($107m) of budget support until aid agencies are given access to Tigray. This is a good first step. Others, such as America and Britain, should add financial pressure. Ethiopia is desperately short of foreign currency, and depends on loans and grants from the imf and World Bank. Until its government allows food into Tigray, donors should not give it another dollar.

Ethiopia Denies Somalia Forces Involved in Fighting in Tigray

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Bloomberg | By Simon Marks and Mohammed Omar Ahmed

  • Somali lawmaker has asked president to investigate issue
  • Claim follows reports that Eritrea forces deployed in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s government denied that Somali soldiers fought alongside federal troops in the ongoing conflict in its Tigray region.

The head of Somalia’s parliamentary committee on foreign affairs on Jan. 18 asked Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed to investigate complaints by family members that their sons had gone missing while fighting in Ethiopia. Somalia’s former deputy spy chief said in an interview this week with local broadcaster GoobJoog TV that hundreds of Somali soldiers may have died in the clashes.

The use of Somali troops would provide more evidence that the war in Tigray, which the Ethiopian government has characterized as a domestic issue, has grown into a regional confrontation. Tigray’s leaders last year alleged that troops from neighboring Eritrea were also involved in the conflict, prompting the U.S. to call for their withdrawal.

“We have seen reports about Eritrean troops that have crossed into Ethiopia,” Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said in a statement. “We are also witnessing similar reports about Somalian soldiers participating in the same campaign. Both of these claims are false and unfounded.”

Regional Ties

The involvement of Somali troops, if confirmed, could stem from a tripartite accord signed between the leaders of Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea in 2018 aimed at strengthening regional security and economic ties, said Omar Mahmood, a senior Somalia analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“One outgrowth of this has been the Eritrean training of Somali troops,” Mahmood said. “It is these troops that are now alleged to have been present during the fighting in Tigray, and suffered high casualties.”

Somali Information Minister Osman Dubbe told reporters in Mogadishu earlier that reports of its fighters going missing were “fabricated” for political reasons. Somalia is preparing to hold presidential elections next month.

The Ethiopian government and the dissident Tigray People’s Liberation Front have been at war since Nov. 4. Many of the TPLF’s senior leaders are still at large, though several key members of the party — including four of its nine-member executive committee — have been either captured or killed in the past two weeks.

The conflict has threatened to spill into neighboring Sudan. Earlier this month, it and Ethiopia traded accusations of breaching each other’s border, leading to deadly clashes around al-Fashqa, an area of fertile farming land that straddles the two nations.

U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, speaking Thursday during a trip to Sudan for talks with the transitional government, called for the two countries to avoid escalating tensions. He’s due in Ethiopia later in the day.

— With assistance by Michael Gunn

Western concern mounts over Ethiopian crisis

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©FT | UK, US and EU push for humanitarian relief to get to the war-ravaged Tigray region

Ethiopia’s reputation is “being tarnished” by the military conflict, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab has said, ahead of his visit to the east African country on Friday to urge Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to allow unrestricted humanitarian access to the Tigray region.

Mr Raab has joined a chorus of senior western diplomats, including US secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken and the EU minister for foreign affairs Josep Borrell, who have all expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in the war-ravaged northern region.

“Until this conflagration, [Ethiopia] has had a, if you like, a reputation as a beacon, and of course it’s being tarnished. There’s no doubt, there’s no escaping it. I want to talk to Prime Minister Abiy. But above all, what we want to focus on right now is getting humanitarian relief,” Mr Raab told the Financial Times during the first leg of a tour that will take him to Sudan and Ethiopia, where aid agencies have expressed concerns about limited access to impoverished Tigray.

Addis Ababa launched a military campaign on November 4 against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the movement that governed Ethiopia for almost three decades until Mr Abiy took office in 2018, seeking to push through liberal economic reforms. Saying the offensive was a response to TPLF attacks on federal forces in the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, Mr Abiy — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 — launched “a law enforcement” operation that included air strikes and ground troops.

While the government has declared the war over, the conflict in Tigray has exposed ethnic faultlines, with ethnic-motivated attacks still being reported in parts of Ethiopia, and tens of thousands of refugees heading across the border into Sudan. Western donors say the delivery of humanitarian aid has been hindered by ongoing bouts of violence.

In a US Senate hearing this week Mr Blinken said that “we have seen a number of deeply, deeply concerning atrocities directed at both people in Tigray, directed at Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, I think we need to see much greater access to the region, accountability . . . we need to see restoration of communications, we need to see access for humanitarian assistance in the region”.

“The situation on the ground goes well beyond a purely internal ‘law and order’ operation,” Mr Borrell said last week, freezing €88m in budget support for Ethiopia, until aid agencies were granted better access to the region.

“We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, massive looting, rapes, forceful returns of refugees and possible war crimes,” he said. “More than two million people have been internally displaced. And while people are in dire need of aid, access to the affected region remains limited, which makes it very difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance.”

There have been recent reports of “additional military incursions”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, said last week. These were “consistent with open source satellite imagery showing new fires burning and other fresh signs of destruction” at two camps hosting nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray, who have fled Eritrea over the years, he said.

Some Eritrean refugees were being forced to return to the repressive state, he added, amid growing reports of involvement of Eritrean forces, a longstanding enemy of the TPLF, in the Tigray conflict. “Clear evidence exists,” said a senior US diplomat, “of Eritrean direct involvement.”

Ethiopia’s government said this week that it had been working with humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to 1.8m people.