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[sarcasm]

Ethiopia’s Hard Road to Peace
The Country’s Problems Go Far Beyond Tigray
By Jeffrey Feltman
December 26, 2022


Abiy has assured me and others that he can manage the Eritreans, to the point of expelling them militarily from Tigray if necessary.

Rape, extrajudicial killing, manmade famine, denial of medical aid and services, and expulsions described by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “ethnic cleansing” are among the horrors of the brutal war that exploded in Ethiopia’s northern highlands in November 2020. Up to 600,000 people, mostly ethnic Tigrayans, are estimated to have died, the majority from starvation and disease. For close to two years, Western and regional powers wrung their hands but did little to halt the violence or prevent Africa’s second most populous state from disintegrating.

Then in November 2022, the African Union made an unexpected breakthrough, facilitating a cease-fire agreement between the Ethiopian government and the rebel Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. The deal and a subsequent plan for its implementation are far from perfect and leave unresolved many thorny questions of peace. Even more troubling, they all but ignore the largest potential spoiler. Eritrea, which has been fighting alongside the Ethiopian government in Tigray, is neither a party to the agreement nor mentioned by name in the text. Although Asmara has been aligned with Addis Ababa throughout the conflict, it views the TPLF as an existential threat and may not be content with a peace deal that leaves the organization intact and its leaders alive.

Still, there are things that Ethiopia’s international partners can do to support the peace deal and give it the best chance of succeeding. They can seek to create as much momentum for the agreement as possible, coming together to provide unified support for its implementation and using their limited leverage to dissuade Eritrea and other potential spoilers from prolonging the conflict. By accelerating lifesaving humanitarian aid, pushing for a credible monitoring and verification mechanism, and encouraging the warring parties to supplement the cease-fire implementation talks with a political process, foreign powers can reinforce what so far is an encouraging but fragile Ethiopian bid for peace.

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At the end of the day, however, the Ethiopian government will have to earn the support of its international partners through good-faith implementation of the agreement. Benchmarks the international community should monitor include the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Ethiopia and of local Amhara forces from Tigray, the initiation of credible transitional justice and accountability mechanisms, and the establishment of a political process that builds on and protects the cease-fire arrangement from spoilers and that addresses tensions and violence in other parts of Ethiopia. Only once Ethiopia’s international partners are satisfied that Addis Ababa is making steady progress in these areas should they restore all the economic and development assistance they suspended in the early stages of the war.

CASCADING CONFLICTS
The war in Tigray has caused unimaginable suffering. All sides stand accused of committing war crimes against civilians, with the Tigrayans bearing the brunt of the violence. Throughout the conflict, the Ethiopian government and regional administrations in Afar and Amhara used a variety of means to severely restrict the delivery of food, medicine, and services to Tigray, essentially putting the region’s six million residents under a siege that appeared to violate a UN Security Council prohibition of using food as a weapon of war.

The Ethiopian government also stoked popular anger against the TPLF, often using egregiously dehumanizing language about all Tigrayans. (Millions of Ethiopians already loathe the TPLF because it dominated the country’s repressive government from 1991 until 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power). With Internet and power services cut inside Tigray, Tigrayan leaders were less able to shape popular narratives of the war, but the Tigrayan diaspora stepped into the vacuum with inflammatory vitriol against Abiy and his government.

Most serious for Ethiopia’s internal security, the government’s overriding focus on the war in the north caused it to neglect rising tensions and violence elsewhere in the country, an uneasy amalgam of some 90 ethnic groups. As Ethiopia’s impressive prewar economic growth slowed under the burden of war and COVID-19 disruptions, long-simmering conflicts in the regions of Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, and Oromia have started to boil over. In June, hundreds of Amhara civilians living in Oromia were massacred in an attack for which Ethiopian officials and Oromo fighters each blame the other.

SANCTIONS VS. DRONES
Despite strong statements from some countries at the beginning of the war, the international response has been lackluster. Led by the United States and the European Union, most Western donors suspended some economic and development assistance to Ethiopia in the spring and summer of 2021. And in June of that year, the G-7 called for a negotiated settlement to end the war and preserve the unity of the Ethiopian state.

Continue reading https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ethiopia ... road-peace

[Abe Abraham]

Ambassador Redwan : the Americans ( Feltman !! ) wanted us to attack Eritrea but that is not going to happen.