Five years ago, the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the State of Eritrea went to war against Tigray.
Three years ago, the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front declared a truce. The Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in Pretoria was imperfect but better than continued war and genocide.
Today, Tigray is utterly defeated. Tigray’s own leaders have turned a truce into a defeat.
Shame on those leaders of the TPLF. Shame on them for betrayal, venality, selfishness and short-sightedness.
In 2020, the TPLF led Tigray into the war—a war not of its own making, but a war that it could have avoided or at least prepared for.
From November 2020 to November 2022, Tigray lost one in six of its people from war and war crimes including starvation and disease. The basic social and economic infrastructure of the region including public and privately owned businesses were destroyed. Reconstruction costs are estimated at more than $30 billion. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls were raped. The psycho-social trauma has incalculable costs. The number of casualties mean that Tigray faces a missing generation.
During eight months of occupation, the people of Tigray organized a resistance and escaped from the horrors. The TPLF followed the people. The victory of July 2021 was a people’s victory. The TPLF had the opportunity to redeem itself and to recognize the leadership of the Tigrayan people. But when the TPLF should have been humble and should have subjected their own performance to critical scrutiny, instead they claimed the triumph as their own. They then squandered the solidarity and sacrifice of the people and goodwill of their friends by reckless military adventurism.
After another year of needless bloodshed and starvation—for which they were not the chief culprit, but neither were they innocent—the TPLF sued for peace. The Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was the TPLF’s second opportunity to redeem itself. Again, it squandered the opportunity.
Three years on, there is no functioning government in Tigray. Civil servants’ salaries have not been paid for sixteen months. Tigrayan generals have teamed up with others, including Eritreans, in illegal mining, human trafficking, and other forms of illicit trade. There is no progress on reconstruction. There is not even a proper humanitarian aid program.
In the past, faced with war and hunger, Tigrayans did their utmost to come together and solve their problems. Today their leaders have descended into petty infighting and pointing the finger at everyone except themselves.
There is a real threat of another war, and instead of doing their utmost to prevent such a calamity, each senior member of the TPLF and other splinter groups is scheming for how to position himself or herself to gain personal benefit.
Abiy Ahmed, Isaias Afewerki and their allies, subordinates and minions committed the crime of genocide against the people of Tigray. Genocide is a crime perpetrated with the intent to destroy a people, as such, in whole or in part. It does not require the perpetrator to kill all or most of the targeted people. It requires them to destroy the group as a group, a moral community bound together by shared values and practices, a people who believe in their future. According to Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term, the crime of genocide consists of two parts: stage one is the destruction of the target group’s social, political, and cultural identity, and stage two is the imposition of the socio-political pattern of the perpetrator. The pattern of Isaias and Abiy is a division, demoralization and dehumanization.
Three years after active fighting and massacres finished, the TPLF is completing the job of dividing, demoralizing and dehumanizing the people of Tigray. It is collaborating in the ongoing genocide of their own people.
The TPLF senior officials and those who have splintered from them should be utterly ashamed. They have betrayed the people’s trust. It is time for them to go.
What is to Be Done?
Those responsible for the war, the war crimes, the genocide, and the crimes and betrayals since the end of the war, will be called to account. If they are not called to answer before a court of law, they will be judged by the court of history. Let the high-ranking politicians in Tigray take this final chance to find redemption and be remembered in history for their virtues and not their vices.
We propose the following three steps.
First, all Tigrayan party leaders, senior officials and military officers should disavow any military alliance with warmakers in Addis Ababa or Asmara. If Abiy Ahmed and/or Isaias Afewerki want another war, let them not fire a single bullet on Tigrayan territory and not shed a single drop of Tigrayan blood.
Second, let the commanders of the Tigray Defense Force and the Tigray People’s Force meet and agree that they will under no circumstances fight one another, and set up a coordination and monitoring mechanism to ensure that this pact is respected.
Third, let the final action of the departing leaders be to convene an all-inclusive national conference for the people of Tigray.
The Tigray All-Inclusive National Conference should be organized through a transparent process agreed by all existing political parties in Tigray. Its agenda and format should be organized by an independent body comprised of prominent Tigrayans and youth. No single political grouping should control the process. No agenda item should be disbarred.
We recognize that this will not be an easy process. But we contend that it is an essential step and will remain so. With each passing week, avoiding war and achieving reconciliation is getting more difficult. Therefore, whatever the difficulties, it cannot be delayed.
This will be the opportunity for the current leaders to say farewell and ask the people for forgiveness. The people of Tigray, tired of war, hunger and hopelessness, will surely be merciful towards those who choose to step aside from politics this way.
