Peace Conference Scheduled for Tigray War
Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, meets with his closest ally in the war, President of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, to discuss war-time politics. Photo: Mulugeta Ayene/AP Newsroom
Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) agreed to negotiations led by the African Union, Ethiopia’s National Security Advisor said on Wednesday. Who added, “We have accepted this invitation which is in line with our principled position regarding the peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
The TPLF also pledged their involvement in the AU-led peace conference. There is a high degree of cautious optimism surrounding the conference, which hopes to end a two-year long war in Africa’s second most populous country.
In November 2020, the Tigray War - as the current civil conflict in Ethiopia has come to be known - began when the TPLF declared war on the Ethiopian federal government after a series of structural and governmental reforms threatened its long-held political status.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front is a left-wing ethnonationalist political party which claims to represent the Tigrayan people, an ethnic group known for its regional language, communitarian culture, and distinct religious practices. The party’s platform champions autonomy for the country’s ethnic groups, and declares opposition to any centralisation efforts.
After rebelling against and subsequently toppling a Marxist military dictatorship in the late 1970’s, the TPLF led a dominant post-war governing coalition until 2018, when current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was elected by the nation’s house of representatives.
In 2018, Abiy Ahmed was elected via a parliamentary election after running on a platform focused on distancing Ethiopia from ethnic federalism, and centralising the country instead. Ahmed’s administration advanced many reforms, concentrating power on the federal level and ending restrictions on the economy, both policies the TPLF expressed deep opposition towards.
When the Ethiopian government, led by Prime Minister Ahmed, postponed the 2020 elections due to COVID-19, the TPLF took the opportunity to declare the sitting government illegal and hold elections in Tigray anyway. This led the federal government to label the TPLF as the illegitimate regional government of Tigray, prompting a mobilisation on both sides and sparking a war that has led to mass famine, destruction, and systematic human rights violations committed by both Ahmed’s government and the TPLF.
The Tigray Liberation Front is not the only ethnic group to disapprove of Prime Minister Ahmed’s centralisation and reform policy. Parties of Oromo, Benishangul, Sidama, Qemant, Afar, Gambella, and Somali ethnicity joined the TPLF’s coalition of anti-federal forces. In response, Ethiopia called upon Eritrean forces to help them with the calamity. Eritrean forces obliged, as they have significant strategic interests in the Ethiopia-Eritrea border region.
The Tigray Conflict is a guerilla war, with federal forces in control of most of Ethiopia’s urban centres and resources, however, anti-government militias are heavily-armed and have so-far brought the war to a near-stand-still conflict.
The war in Tigray has also made the proper use of infrastructure impossible, and many key supply routes around the country unusable. This, along with a lack of security for aid groups and increased scarcity of resources, has caused a humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations, nine million people are starving and more than 4 million have been displaced. Half a million people are estimated to have died in the war, many of them children, who are increasingly being used as soldiers.
Residents shift through the rubble in their town, Mekele, after a strike by Ethiopian Federal forces. Photo: AP Newsroom
Despite upcoming peace talks, hope for the conflict to end is limited. Disagreements over details of the proposed peace talks have already begun to fracture its negotiators, with many experts convinced that the Eritrean Government may seek to continue fighting, and the Ethiopian Federal Government claiming that it will refuse to go to any conference with “preconditions.” Both sides are also at odds over who should mediate the talks, and what basic services should be restored to break-away regions.
Moreover, the fundamental political conflict that started the Tigray War has yet to be resolved. Experts say, if the ethnic group-based guerilla fighters recognise the government’s centralisation reform, they will lose enormous legitimacy, having not achieved their principal goal. And if the federal government repeals their reform, they will have failed to achieve a critical campaign promise.
No date has been set yet, but diplomats hope that peace talks can begin sooner rather than later.