On Tuesday, the African Union (AU) led peace talks between the Government of the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) started in South Africa with an aim of ending the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.
The talks are facilitated by Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa and former President of Nigeria, along with former President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and former Deputy President of South Africa Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, according to Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat.
Representatives of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the United Nations (UN) and the Government of the United States of America (USA) are participating as observers to the AU-led peace process.
The talks come amid renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia, and reports that Ethiopian defense forces are steadily eroding TPLF’s fighting capabilities, liberating strategic locations, and closing in on its command centers.
The genesis of the war stems from the time TPLF’s nearly three-decade absolute dominance over the Ethiopian State ended at the start of a dramatic political opening in 2018. Shortly after, hundreds of resentful veterans regrouped in Tigray, from where they carried out meticulously planned pre-emptive strikes on the national army on the 4th of November 2020.
Their objective was defeating the army and marching back to the capital to resecure unfettered privileges. If things did not go to plan, they publicly vowed to destroy the nation they once ruled and build a new one to their taste.
The November 2020 episode was neither isolated nor spontaneous. The incident was inspired by TPLF’s long-pursued strategy of using violence as a viable and primary means for achieving political objectives.
Attesting to this reality, TPLF commanders’ ambush of thousands of soldiers on the consequential night happened after they rejected more than ten dialogue initiatives from state and civil society actors. It did not stop there. They resumed hostilities in June 2021 and August 2022, interrupting relative periods of calm after dismissing the federal government’s declaration of a ceasefire as “a sick joke.”
They also escalated the violence by invading and destroying several towns and villages in the Afar and Amhara regions and provoking Eritrea by threatening annihilation and firing rocket missiles into its residential areas.
The group, which was designated by the Parliament as a terrorist organization, in August this year resumed fighting in Tigray undermining calls and efforts aimed at peaceful resolution of the conflict in Tigray.
In March this year, the Federal Government of Ethiopia led by Prime Minister, Dr Abiy Ahmed, declared an indefinite humanitarian truce to facilitate the free flow of humanitarian aid into Tigray region as well as giving an opportunity to peaceful negotiations.
While announcing the humanitarian truce, government said thousands of people from Tigray were trekking into neighboring regions in search for assistance.
Considering this fact, government said, the situation warranted urgent measures to assist the locals, thus committing to exert maximum effort to facilitate the free flow of the needed aid.
This happened at the backdrop of the fact that TPLF uses starvation through interrupting the flow of humanitarian support into the Northern region, stealing the ready to harvest food and consuming the stockpiled one.
Much as government asked TPLF to desist from acts of aggression and withdraw from areas they occupied in neighboring regions, no signs of such were seen. TPLF still occupied some areas in Afar and Amhara regions and as well continued with provocations.
They on several occasions, commandeered humanitarian vehicles that entered Mekelle. It is worth noting that the group also rejected to observe the government declared Unilateral Ceasefire in June 2021.
TPLF’s belief that continued fighting in Tigray and neighbouring regions would pressure Addis Ababa to succumb and give-in to the North. It is unlikely that they will concur with a contrary decision in the South Africa talks.
Why reintroducing TPLF as a viable political entity should be a no go area?
Legally, TPLF is designated a terrorist organization. It has been accused of committing treasonous and brutal acts on the national army; compromising the State’s sovereignty by colluding with Ethiopia’s strategic rivals; and inflicting grave harm to countless lives, critical infrastructure, and the nation’s social fabric.
Its leaders have been determined responsible for coercing minors and other civilians into their extremely costly military swarming operations, appropriating humanitarian supplies for war activities, and crafting and sponsoring intercommunal conflicts and violent insurgencies in other parts of Ethiopia. The gravity of these crimes and many more, including massacres committed before and after the start of the war in November 2020, have scarred society’s consciousness.
Therefore, the government carries weighty moral and constitutional obligations to demonstrably ensure that truth is sought and justice is done to the extent that public trust in all branches of the government is maintained.
Aside from the moral and legal issues, TPLF is not operating as a viable political body. It lost its political capital long ago and has since depended on ethnic agitation and violence to survive and restore its prominence.
It’s violent subversive activities, relentless propaganda, and frantic insistence for foreign support demonstrate the organization’s impotence and rejection in Ethiopia’s larger political context. Even in Tigray, the region that TPLF claims as its social base, the veterans had to instill fear and employ violence to maintain control.
TPLF’s structure has crumbled as an organization, and the leadership is depleted and confused. Its political activity is mainly carried out by former members and sympathizer groups in the diaspora, who are insistently soliciting support from Western actors.
Also, the leaders lack a defined political purpose. They seem to pursue the objectives of reclaiming a monopoly of power, dissolving the Ethiopian State, breaking away and reintegrating Tigray, and invading Eritrea simultaneously.
Their claim of fighting to avert extermination and break a siege on Tigray is not genuine. There is no proof that the Ethiopian government intends to harm compatriots in Tigray.
TPLF veterans are the ones who launched the conflict, disrupting services, inflicting infrastructural damage, and impeding the federal government’s essential activities, putting the region on a lockdown.
The issue is rooted in their political objective of re-establishing supremacy, which is difficult to state in public while professing to fight for Tigray.
The federal government may not trust the group with governmental responsibilities at any level of the state structure. The challenges are clear.
After ambushing uniformed troops, sabotaging the economy, and conspiring with strategic adversaries, the leadership would not be trusted to engage in Ethiopia’s security, financial, and political processes.
They may fail to convince the government and the public that they have abandoned violence, including their ambition to defeat the Amhara and dissolve Ethiopia and they now support political and economic reforms.