A Deep Dive into the Tigray Crisis: Causes, Effects, and What the Future Holds
By Xiao Ke-Lu ‘24
Early in the morning on November 4, 2020, forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an attack on the Northern headquarters of the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF). This incident would mark the beginning of a conflict which continues to devastate Tigray. Almost five months after the war started, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali’s forces have largely taken control of the region, but reports of extrajudicial killings and humanitarian crisis remain abound.
Understanding the Inception of the Conflict
Ethiopia borders Eritrea on the horn of Africa, and is highly ethnically and culturally diverse. 34.4% of the population are Oromo, 27% are Amhara, and 6.1% are Tigrayan. The TPLF claims to represent the Tigrayan people, and was formed in 1975 in opposition to the ruling military junta. The group was extremely successful, and grew to become the dominant political force in Ethiopia. Notably, the TPLF oversaw the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia, remained in power as relations between the two states deteriorated, and fought and won the Eritrean-Ethiopian war in 1998.
After almost 30 years of single-party rule by the TPLF, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018 to become the first Prime Minister of Ethiopia of Oromo and Amharic background. His election was extremely well-received: he promised to usher in a bright new democratic dawn for Ethiopia. Just months after he entered office, Abiy brokered peace with long-time enemy Eritrea, and Tigrayans hoped that his victory meant they could finally escape false accusations of socioeconomic privilege.
This auspicious beginning was ultimately short-lived. Abiy Ahmed is a politician who has exhibited signs of demagoguery for some time; he emulates much-loved leaders like Hailemariam and Meles in his speech and garb, and professes to adhere to a political strategy of appeasing every possible ideology. Upon entering office, Abiy used anti-TPLF rhetoric to stir up Amhara and Oromo majority crowds, and this gradually bled into language against Tigrayans in general. The sense of betrayal this created bled into rising tensions between Abiy Ahmed’s government and the TPLF. A few specific instances acted as tipping points in this process. First, a Tigrayan Major-General turned over by Tigrayan authorities on corruption charges was paraded about on national television like a prisoner of war. Second, Abiy Ahmed postponed national elections in April 2020, citing COVID concerns, and responded to local elections held unilaterally in Tigray by the TPLF by denouncing them as illegitimate and blocking deliveries of essential supplies like locust spray and COVID-19 testing kits. As the TPLF grew more and more belligerent, Abiy coordinated with the Eritrean government to move troops to the North and South of Tigray. Former Eritrean defense minister Mesfin Hagos claimed that this exercise was conducted with the explicit intent of “striking [the TPLF] out of existence.” TPLF officers claimed that they chose to strike at ENDF forces first to pre-empt this attack; things have now come full circle, to the November 4th skirmish which sparked the Tigray crisis.
How Did Things Get So Bad?
The resistance posed by the TPLF likely contributed to the severity and scale of the Tigrayan crisis. Instead of a quick, cut-and-dry operation, Ethiopian forces faced fierce resistance. The fighting spread, and Abiy Ahmed let Eritrean troops into the country in order to eradicate the TPLF and establish control. The absence of a cogent plan and separate chains of command meant that troops were disorganised and systems of accountability extremely weak. Accounts of mass killings, sexual violence, and ethnic cleansing by both sides began to surface.
A second significant factor contributing to the human cost of the Tigray crisis is hunger. Violence broke out as the primarily agricultural region entered harvest season. Farmers were forced to abandon their crops to rot in their fields as they fled the fighting; opposition parties claim that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces burned crops and deliberately killed cattle. This exacerbated existing problems to create a massive food shortage– Tigray had been struggling with the worst locust outbreak in 25 years and extreme weather even before the conflict began.
Tigrayans have also been unable to access much needed food and humanitarian aid. Reports by the UN and Red Cross indicate that bureaucratic red tape, ongoing fighting, and the complicated patchwork of local powers in Tigray mean that millions of people remain out of reach of aid workers, and tens of thousands could die of acute malnutrition within the month as the region edges closer to the brink of famine.
It is still unclear what the exact human cost of this war has been. Opposition parties in Tigray have estimated a death toll of at least 52,000. The Ethiopian government, however, denies these deaths, and human rights organizations like Amnesty International claim that it’s impossible to know the exact figure. What international sources are certain of has been gleaned from satellite footage and refugees’ firsthand accounts: whole villages have been burned down, sexual assault has been used as a tool of terror, and people are starving to death as much as they are being shot and killed.
This ambiguity is a symptom of one of the factors which contributed to the direness of the crisis. There has been a journalistic blackout in Tigray since the conflict started. This is not only because heavy fighting made many parts of the region inaccessible, but also because of a deliberate attempt by the government to lock out international media and conceal information about the scale and severity of violence in Tigray. Foreign members of the press were generally safe from harm, but government forces jailed local journalists and “fixers” suspected of helping foreign journalists to deter future collaboration. Even now that foreign journalists and aid workers have been allowed into the Tigray region, they are hampered by the absence of translators and guides.
Ambiguity led to inaction. Abiy Ahmed was still shielded by the halo of the Nobel Peace Prize he had won just last year. Governments and newspapers hesitated to place blame on a man they had recently recognized as a champion of peace and democracy. The international community should have intervened when the democratically elected Prime Minister of one of the largest countries in Africa withheld testing kits in the middle of a pandemic and locust spray just before harvest season out of apparent spite. Reports of civil war had been circulating since November of 2020, but international pressure did not begin to build until March, when reporters were finally let into the region and concrete reports of atrocities began to trickle into the world.
What’s Next?
After months of denying that Eritrean forces were active in the Tigray conflict, Abiy Ahmed bowed to international pressure and announced on the 26th of March that Eritrean troops would be pulling out of the region. This is a critical first step to ending the bloodshed in Tigray, since eyewitness accounts suggest that they are responsible for a majority of the atrocities committed, but it is nowhere near enough.
Moving quickly to avert the looming famine should be a key priority. For this to happen, the Ethiopian federal government needs to stabilize Tigray and grant international aid organisations access to the region. This is easier said than done, given that the ENDF’s methods of control have been draconian. Curfews have been strictly enforced, and citizens have been killed for minor infractions in Mekelle, Tigray’s largest city. This violence could be mitigated by the presence of peacekeepers. However, backlash in recent months and demands that Ethiopia unconditionally allow the entry of foreign actors mean that Abiy’s administration is growing increasingly wary and defensive towards the international community.
Foreign interference in domestic conflicts has not always gone well in the past, but in this case humanitarian aid and third-party troops to bolster and check against ENDF forces are prerequisites to alleviating massive suffering. The local government has neither the material nor the political resources to carry out the necessary mass aid distribution program on its own. Abiy Ahmed might prefer not to let outsiders meddle with domestic affairs, but the counterfactual risks the lives of tens of thousands of his people. If he proves recalcitrant, the international community can commit to holding off on sanctions to assure Abiy’s Prosperity Party that they do not risk deposition by allowing international intervention. At the end of the day, sanctions have proven to be counterproductive more often than not, frequently hurting the civilians they are supposed to help and deepening anti-Western sentiment in embattled states.
The Ethiopian government will also be hard-pressed to prevent cycles of retaliation in the aftermath of this conflict. A war which ostensibly started out as political has devolved into violence along ethnic lines: soldiers deliberately targeted religious and cultural heritage sites, and people die every day in skirmishes across Ethiopia. These wounds will not heal overnight – the international community should push for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which would allow victims to move towards closure. It is praiseworthy that Abiy’s Prosperity Party has attempted to run community reconciliation programs and peace forums for some time, but it is crucial that they stop arming ethnically-organised militias, even for self-defense reasons, as that has led to dangerous escalation.
It will be hard to rebuild Tigray and its people in the aftermath of this tragedy. Aid organization Médecins sans Frontières reports that the majority of healthcare facilities in the region have been reduced to rubble. Millions of people have been displaced, refugee camps burned down, and families irreversibly torn apart. Picking up the pieces afterwards will be a daunting task, but if local and international actors cooperate, swift and efficient action can still save thousands of lives.