Asmelash Yohannes Teklu (PhD)
Mekelle, Tigray
Another round of fighting has erupted.
Who started the war again? Tigray’s Central Command issued a statement on August 24, 2022, blaming the federal government for violating the temporary humanitarian ceasefire that had been in place for five months. However, the federal government responded by issuing a statement that contradicted Tigray’s statement and directly blamed Tigray forces for starting the war. We’ve returned to the same circle of blaming and counter-blaming as in the November 2020 scenario. It could take months to figure out who fired the first shot on November 24, 2022.
However, if we focus on who broke the humanitarian truce, we will be drawn into an endless cycle of blame and counter-blame. This is dangerous in my opinion, and it must be stopped immediately. What matters most is who was dragging its feet in order to create every impediment to a peaceful resolution to the war, which resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives and the destruction of property worth billions of dollars.
The questions that must be answered
We must ask who condemned a population of 7 million people to death as a result of hunger, a lack of medicine, and denial of basic services. We need to find out who was impeding the safe entry of humanitarian aid into Tigray. We must investigate who is to blame for Tigray’s massive humanitarian crisis. We need to know who prevented UN agencies and other credible humanitarian organisations from travelling to Tigray to investigate the atrocities. We must inquire as to who has isolated Tigray from the rest of the world by refusing to resume banking, Internet, and telecommunication services.
We need to find out who made it illegal to send money to starving family in Tigray in the absence of a written law.
We must inquire as to who invited foreign forces into Tigray and permitted them to occupy a large swath of land in Western and North Western Tigray.
We need to find out who committed all international crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide) in Tigray. We need to know who is holding hundreds of thousands of innocent Tigrayans in Nazi-style concentration camps across Ethiopia.
The answers to the preceding questions all pointed in the same direction. The brutal government of the Abiy regime should be held accountable for the failure of the so-called “humanitarian truce.” Abiy and his cronies were content with the siege imposed on a population of 7 million people. As a result, they were laughing and bluffing whenever the Tigrayans made a peace gesture.
Putting the onus on the international community
Abiy and his brutal allies launched a devastating war on Tigray that has now lasted nearly two years. That crime was committed with impunity. They were not held responsible for this. This has given them confidence that the international community will still stand by and watch if they attempt to exterminate Tigrayans again. They were dissatisfied with the ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the deaths of over 500,000 Tigrayans in the first round of the war. They have begun a new round of attrition warfare.
The international community has tried and failed in vain to persuade the Abiy regime to resume basic services in Tigray. A recent joint statement by delegations from the United States, and the European Union demonstrates this. Their pleading, however, fell on deaf ears. Why? To answer this question would be to state the obvious.
The international community cannot claim that it did not foresee the return of a devastating war. Everyone could see the writing on the wall. After a brief respite, it appeared that a second round of devastating war was on the horizon. Another round of humanitarian crisis, destruction, looting, and death has already begun.
With the flare of a new round of atrocity, misleading statements from the international community began to emerge from everywhere. Secretary Blinken’s deceptive claim that the humanitarian truce “saved” lives is false and fails to reflect the reality in Tigray. The humanitarian truce did not result in any lives being saved. It only changes the manner in which people died. The sounds of barrels may have stopped for a few months, but the death toll from Tigray’s deadly siege continued unabated. Efforts to end the war should have been redoubled not now, but before the warring parties pulled the triggers. ‘Concerns’ and empty ‘deeply shocked’ statements do not save lives. This type of rhetoric emboldens the Abiy regime to tighten the noose around millions of innocent Tigrayans.
Aside from these meaningless statements, the international community showed little or no interest in alleviating Tigrayans’ plight. It used the nonsense rhetoric of “African solutions for African problems.” This is an obnoxious statement. When the West does not want to get involved, this mantra is used. When the West’s interests are at stake, they offer a Western solution to an African problem. This has happened in Libya and throughout Africa! Only fools will believe that Former Libyan leader Mohamed Gadafi was deposed with the assistance of the West after vowing to “crush the “cockroaches” who were behind the revolution in Libya”. They would have acted in a similar way when Abiy promised to wipe out Tigrayans and delivered by turning Tigray into a nothingness. But Tigray is not Libya! Oil speaks louder than atrocities!
The question of survival
The international community may have forgotten the war, but Tigrayans have not. How could they forget when they see their dear once and neighbours die every day? No, Tigrayans have not forgotten the war. They have endured enough. Nobody wanted to hear about their anguish and suffering. They were trapped, with no way out of the noose around their neck.
Tigrayans fight for their freedom! They fight to free themselves from the shackles of oppression and the deadly siege. The question of who started the war again is irrelevant to the people of Tigray.
Abiy made it clear in a recent speech to the youth in Addis Ababa that he was willing to drag negotiations out for ten years. However, given the current death rate of Tigrayans due to starvation and other causes, it is unlikely that half of Tigray’s population will survive in about five years. Tigrayans’ survival has been called into question. In order to talk and negotiate, they must first survive. However, the Abiy regime has blocked every route that would ensure the Tigrayan people’s survival.
Finding long-term peace?
When people are dying every day, there can be no peace talks. You would negotiate for peace in order to prevent deaths. In Tigray, however, people are already dying. What is the point of negotiating if it cannot save people’s lives?
Is it still possible to put a stop to the war? Yes, but only if the international community applies the greatest amount of pressure on Abiy and his brutal allies to negotiate. The people of Tigray’s demand for the restoration of basic services cannot be considered a condition. It is a matter of survival that must be met at any cost.