Two months after the ceasefire, how has the situation in Tigray changed?
For nearly two years, Ethiopia’s Tigray region has been plagued by a conflict that has claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 people, according to Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union’s chief mediator in the peace talks.
From 1991 to 2018, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – Tigray’s main political party – dominated Ethiopian national politics despite representing an ethnic minority in the country. The TPLF’ power began to wane in 2018 after Abiy Ahmed Ali became prime minister. Initially heralded as a peacemaker who could transcend ethnic divisions within Ethiopia, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for reaching a peace agreement with Eritrea. However, Abiy, while weakening the TPLF, began to consolidate his own power by delaying national elections and extending his first term as prime minister in June 2020. Three months later, the Tigray State Council defied federal orders and held parliamentary elections, raising concerns that it was preparing to become a breakaway state, thus increasing tensions between the region and the federal government. After the elections, Abiy accused Tigrayan troops of looting weapons from a federal military camp and began an offensive against regional troops in Tigray on 4 November 2020.
The war in Tigray is marked by its brutality. The UN Human Rights Council issued a report concluding that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Ethiopian federal governmen and its allies have committed crimes against humanity in Tigray, pointing to the withdrawal of basic services from the region, striking a refugee camp with an armed drone, and perpetrating sexual violence against Tigrayan civilians. The commission added that it also has reasonable grounds to believe that Tigrayan forces have committed war crimes and human rights violations during the conflict.
The conflict escalated in August 2022, but on 2 November 2022, the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan rebels signed a peace agreement in the hope of ending the war. Brokered by the African Union, the November ceasefire goes further than any other settlement attempt, with the TPLF and the Ethiopian federal government agreeing to a disarmament plan and the restoration of essential services. Since then, the situation has changed somewhat, with humanitarian aid reaching some, but not all, of the region, basic services restored, and the military ceasefire largely respected.
The ceasefire has been greeted with cautious optimism as previous settlements had failed, and Eritrea – a party in the conflict – was not represented at the peace talks. The ceasefire makes little provision for the role of Eritrea, which is neither a party to the agreement nor mentioned by name in the text. Jeffrey Feltman, former US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, argues that the international community should monitor the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Ethiopia, as Asmara 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.” The Embassy of Eritrea in the USA responded to Feltman in an open letter, saying that his “underlying and transparent intentions are to stoke a new and wider war in the region.”
There are conflicting reports as to whether all Eritrean troops are withdrawing from Tigray. According to Obasanjo, “ all Eritreans are at the border,” but not all troops have left the country. His words were contradicted by Getachew Reda, the advisor to the President of Tigray, who tweeted “No; Eritrean forces are digging in their heels big time. And the #AU-JVMC are nowhere near. Let them go there & do their job first before such remarks are made!” In early December 2022, Eritrean troops were reported seizing food, vehicles and gold from more than two dozen towns in northern Tigray despite the ceasefire. Nonetheless, on 30 December 2022, Eritrean soldiers, who fought in support of Ethiopia’s federal government, reportedly withdrew from two major towns and headed for the border. This is indicative of what appears to be a military de-escalation. Political leaders are also taking steps to signal it. On 26 December 2022, a delegation from the Ethiopian federal government, led by the speaker of the House of Representatives, Tagesse Chafo, travelled to the northern region of Tigray to oversee the implementation of the peace agreement. It was the first high-level federal delegation to visit the region in two years.
As a result of the ceasefire, Obasanjo estimates that “we have stopped 1,000 deaths every day,” although the media reported that civilians were still being killed in early December 2022, a month after the ceasefire.
Some Tigrayans, according to Foreign Policy, have expressed dissatisfaction that the agreement stipulates the disarmament of the TPLF without addressing the root causes of the war. In their view, this will only create a weak Tigray, with the causes of the war still present and latent. Moreover, while the TPLF claims to have withdrawn 65 percent of its forces from the front lines, Tadesse Wereda, the TPLF’s commander-in-chief said that the organisation was still maintaining fighters in some places “where there is a presence of anti-peace forces.” He did not name these locations. Nevertheless, Tigrayan forces began handing over their heavy weapons in mid-January, with Getachew Reda tweeting that the Tigray government “hope[s] & expect[s] this will go a long way in expediting the full implementation of the agreement.”
The war in Tigray has created a humanitarian catastrophe that leaves more than 13 million people in northern Ethiopia dependent on humanitarian aid, including more than 90 percent of Tigray’s 6 million inhabitants. When the peace deal was announced, the World Health Organization estimated that there were around 5.2 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Tigray, of whom 3.8 million required healthcare. No humanitarian assistance had reached the region for two months. Following the peace agreement, the World Food Programme (WFP) delivered more than 2,400 tonnes of food – enough to feed about 170,000 people – as well as medical, nutritional and other essential supplies, while the UN Humanitarian Air Service is operating in the region for the first time, carrying passengers and humanitarian aid. However, according to the WFP, deliveries were still below requirements on 25 November 2022. As of mid-January, humanitarian access, “particularly in border areas, areas off the main roads and locations requiring cross-line movements, continues to be challenging,” according to Tghat, a data collecting body in Tigray.
Banking services were suspended in Tigray during the war, further cutting the region off from international aid. Following the ceasefire, limited banking services returned in some parts of the region, allowing people to deposit money and receive it from abroad. The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia plans to restore services in all its branches if the conditions permit. Tigray’s dire economic situation extends beyond the banks, as large parts of the region need to be completely rebuilt. According to some estimates, reconstruction over the next three years is expected to cost more than $20 billion.
For much of the war, Tigray experienced a communications blackout that resulted in the “world’s longest uninterrupted shutdown,” according to the Internet rights group Access Now. In early December, Ethiopia’s electricity provider announced that the regional capital, Mekele, had been reconnected to the national power grid after more than a year of power cuts. Phone lines are beginning to be restored in the region, although areas under the control of Tigrayan forces are still cut off, while commercial flights have resumed between the Ethiopian federal capital Addis Ababa and Mekele. With some communication channels restored, people outside the region are only now beginning to learn what happened to their relatives. Restoring the social links between Tigray and the rest of Ethiopia is indicative of the overall changes taking place as a result of the ceasefire.
The security situation seems to be evolving as soldiers are withdrawing and the TPLF is disarming. Humanitarian aid is re-entering the region and the political structures overseeing the ceasefire seem to be respecting it. Nevertheless, the situation remains fraught. A ceasefire agreed upon in March 2022 reduced violence and allowed humanitarian aid to reach Tigray for five months until hostilities resumed.
In August 2022, as the first ceasefire collapsed, the TPLF demanded that the federal government restore essential services in Tigray, allow complete humanitarian access, be held accountable for war crimes, the withdrawal of foreign forces and the return of Western Tigray, which was under Amhara control. Some of these conditions appear stable under the current ceasefire, suggesting that it will be more durable than the one reached in August, but points of tension remain. The territorial dispute over Western Tigray remains unresolved, conflicting reports concerning the withdrawal of Eritrean troops suggest some are still present in the region, and the question of how to administer justice for alleged war crimes remains unanswered. Each of these elements could constitute a potential flashpoint in the future.