Revisiting the Tigray War

Messay Kebede

 

According to the prevailing consensus, the Tigray war, which lasted for two years, has not only been one of the bloodiest armed confrontations in recent history, but it was also marked by numerous and gross human rights violations of civilian populations committed by all sides. Yet, this war between Ethiopia’s central government and the TPLF has also been controversial on some key issues. While a large portion of the international community blamed the central government, especially for the severe humanitarian violations, such as rape, looting, and indiscriminate killings, for their part, the Ethiopian federal government and most Ethiopians blamed the TPLF for starting the war and committing crimes against the civilian populations of the Amhara and Afar regions. To complicate matters further, the involvement of Eritrea on the side of the federal government resulted in even more severe abuses of ordinary Tigrayans. The point of my article is not to determine which side committed the crimes, since I believe that all involved in the war are responsible for the violations. Rather, it is to reexamine the dynamics and political calculations that led the three belligerents to engage in a deadly armed confrontation, with the hope of establishing the part played by each participant. To this end, the paper advances the thesis that the war was inevitable on the grounds that the TPLF, the Eritrean government, and the Ethiopian federal government are all responsible for setting the war in motion. So that, if many of us believed that the war could have been avoided, it is because we did not pay attention to all the machinations behind the scenes, in particular those devised by the Ethiopian Prime Minister.

 

The Abiy Factor

In whichever way we examine the prevailing situation at that time, we find that the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, is, if not the main, at least one of the main instigators of the events that led to the war. Acclaimed by many Ethiopians for his promises of democratization, economic prosperity, and national unity, and a recent laureate of the Nobel Prize for peace, Abiy appeared as nothing else than the messiah that Ethiopia had been waiting for a long time. Even though in the eyes of many Ethiopians a confrontation with the TPLF could not be ruled out, given the culture of absolute control and dominance of the latter, a large number of Ethiopians believed that Abiy would probably be the victim rather than the investigator. This shows how well the image of him as a man of peace and great hopes for Ethiopia was ingrained in the minds of many Ethiopians. Yet, nothing of the Tigray war is intelligible unless we admit that Abiy’s aspiration to absolute power and dominance was the centerpiece of the confrontation.

Many Ethiopians would now probably be inclined to concede that both Abiy and the TPLF should be equally blamed for the instigation and conduct of the war. The trouble, however, is that they do not go to the extent of openly adopting this perspective, preferring to stick to the old position of blaming one side for the provocation of the war. That is why most Tigrayans and non-Tigrayan Ethiopians still say, for the sake of consistency, that they were victims of a naked aggression, even though known facts contradict their belief and so confirm that their position is emotional rather than rational.

To deal properly with the war, some parameters must first be established, all related to Abiy’s character and political vision. Nowadays, it is almost common to read and hear people say that Abiy is obsessed with absolute power and that he uses profuse manipulations and lies to control and keep power. What is more, the messianic belief that God sent him to save and rebuild Ethiopia in Abiy’s image underpins this obsession with absolute power. Messianism combined with lust for absolute power explains Abiy’s recklessness and lack of compassion. Anything that does not agree with his plans and desires is interpreted as an attempt to block his mission, and so must be removed without mercy or ignored, even if it implicates a humanitarian crisis. Likewise, any pitfall caused by any of his actions or decisions is never viewed as a sign of recklessness on his part but as part of the divine drama, which always ends with him being the winner. The implication is that Abiy is always right and that all he needs to do is to persevere, even if his decisions entail more humanitarian suffering.

Along the same line, the use of manipulation to accomplish his goals, especially the practice of telling people what they want to hear, even if it is a blatant lie, does not constitute a moral breach, but is part of the method of first luring people into liking him before using them for his real purpose. In this way, Abiy removes any suspicion and hesitation they may have, and once he has disarmed them, he pushes his real purpose on them. By the time they wake up from their induced slumber, it is already too late to recover their initial freedom.

Naturally, Abiy’s mania for absolute power turns him into a consummate transactional leader. Those who support his mania are rewarded in exchange for their unconditional loyalty; those who stand in the way or are even suspected of doing so are punished without any regard for their elementary rights. So long as his subordinates are loyal to him, his “generosity” has no limits, even to the point of turning a blind eye to their lawless behaviors, such as corruption, embezzlement, and abuses of power. His transactional approach to people extends to his ideological commitments. It is pointless to say that Abiy is an Ethiopianist, an Oromo nationalist, a liberal, or a populist. He is any of these depending on the person or group he is dealing with. This means that it is all about himself, his power and every ideological commitment has value only so long as it serves his desire to control everything.

A perfect point in case is his now abandoned commitment to Ethiopianism. He presented himself as a staunch Ethiopianist when he needed to consolidate his power, principally by gaining the support of Amhara elites. However, because of changes in the balance of forces following the end of the war in Tigray, he shifted to the ideology of Oromuma to complete his absoluteness, a move deemed necessary to cut down the importance of Amhara elites and the fortified standing of Amhara militia and voluntary fighters known as Fano as a result of the war. Depending on his needs, the future could see another ideological shift, given that his ideological commitment is just a tool serving a fixed infatuation.

One outcome of the combination of messianism with the obsession with absolute power is that Abiy cannot help but be a conflicted leader. On the one hand, his craze for power drives him to seek no other relations with people than their submission; on the other hand, his messianic belief fills his mind with grandiose, even delusional projects for Ethiopia. Unfortunately, the two compulsions are incompatible: the need to subdue invariably triggers resistance and eventually war, which war goes against the grandiose projects by undermining peace and causing the destruction of human lives and infrastructures, not to mention ever-increasing military expenses that devastate the economy.

This is exactly what we see in Ethiopia today: the grandiose projects of food self-reliance and rapid industrialization, of becoming an exporter of goods rather than an importer, of national unity under the aegis of medemer (synergy) have become nothing more than a mockery. In their place, we have crippling inflation, spreading levels of abject poverty, expanding ethnic animosities and armed conflicts, and, last but not least, the emergence of a police state of the kind never seen before in Ethiopia. As though to aggravate further the plight of Ethiopians, all forms of embezzlement, displacement of people, and summary mass killings have become daily occurrences.

The irony of all this is that Abiy had told us in no uncertain terms what his vision of power is in a book he wrote before becoming prime minister, titled The Stirrup and the Throne (አርካብና መንበር). The book inaugurates with the blunt assertion that force is the avenue to power (“የስልጣንን ወንበር የሚያስገኘው ኃይል ነው” p. xv). However, realizing that force by itself is not enough to guarantee the continuity of power, the book recommends skillfulness in the use of power (“ኃይልን በቀጥታ ወስዶ ከመጣል ይልቅ በዘዴ መጠቀም ውጤታማ እያደርገ መጥቷል,” p. 34). True, the general view is that the best assurance to maintain power is to be loved by the people. While it is always good for a leader to be loved, it is even better, nay, more reliable to be feared (“ከፍቅር ይልቅ በትር ለመከበር የሚጫወተው ሚና ከፍተኛ ነው” p. 35). Still, the use of this Machiavellian principle of fear, no doubt necessary, is not enough: fear itself does not guarantee the conservation of power, otherwise, the highly feared Derg would not have fallen. According to Abiy, the skillful use of power must complement fear, for it puts at the leader’s disposal additional means to protect his/her power. Among these means, manipulation occupies a high rank. Thus, instead of imposing your wishes on people directly, keep in mind that humans are selfish and that you can easily convert them if, first, you entice them with what they want and then use the enticement to steer them towards your views and place them where you want them to be (“ሰዎች ራስ ወዳድ ናቸውና በጥቅም ሂድባቸው። የሚፈልጉትን ነገር እያሳየህ ወደ ምትፈልገው ስፍራ ውሰዳቸውና ጣላቸው” p. 38).

Had we given the book the attention it deserved, it would have provided us enough reason to be suspicious of Abiy’s promises of a bright future for Ethiopia. To confine ourselves to the issue of power, what should have jumped out clearly is the extent to which Abiy’s conception is at the antipodes of the modern understanding of state power. His narcissistic use of power to assuage personal obsessions further drifts his conception away from modern norms. Even though the book engages in a criticism of the radical stand of the student movement and intellectuals of the 60s and 70s, it invalidates their radicalism by endorsing their major belief taken from Mao’s teachings, which is that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Such an approach violates the condition under which power becomes legitimate, that is, the democratic principle of consent according to which the people are the source of power. This absolute right of the people has nothing to do with leaders being loved, still less with leaders being feared and using deceit to achieve their goals. Instead, it pertains to the unquestionable sovereignty of the people and its expression through free and fair elections. No wonder Abiy’s anachronistic conception of power dragged Ethiopia into a nightmarish tyranny.

In reconstructing the events that took place since Abiy came to power from the vantage point of the obsession with power and the use of deceitful means, one reaches a quite different arrangement of the events leading to the war, the very one that refuses to subscribe to the one-sided view that the TPLF carries the sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Reconstruction of events based on the idea of prior conspiracy, while it assigns different motives for the warring parties, makes them converge on one fundamental point, namely, on how inevitable the war was.

 

 

War and Abiy’s Mania for Absolute Power

The key to my position making Abiy as much as, if not more, responsible as the TPLF, for the outbreak of the war is none other than the mentioned ideological swing from Ethiopianism to Oromo nationalism just after the consummation of the military defeat of the TDF (Tigray’s Defense forces). Despite my resistance, the shift kept on bringing up a question to mind: What if Abiy used Ethiopianism for the goal of provoking the TPLF and setting the course of a confrontation? The fact that his every act and speech since the end of the war reversed a great part of his earlier ideological commitment, there was no reason not to take the question seriously, even if it looked shocking for all of us who supported the war efforts of the Ethiopian government. Let there be no misunderstanding: Abiy’s subsequent commitment to Oromo nationalism is no less a pretend creed than his earlier Ethiopianism. Being a transactional leader, his only concern is to use any belief to serve his true purpose, which is, his longing for absolute power.

Needless to say, in elevating Ethiopianism well above Oromo nationalism, even though the latter seemed to be the respectable position in his native region, Abiy knew which forces he was disappointing and which forces he was thrilling. In effect, many Oromo elite groups spoke of betrayal and became critical of his political vision, some of them going to the extent of taking arms to overthrow him. By contrast, Ethiopianists, from Amhara and other regions, welcomed him and came out in large support for his vision. Though he knew that his position could in the long run alienate his Oromo basis, in Abiy’s mind the greatest danger to his power came from the TPLF. Consequently, he could not afford to antagonize Ethiopianists, especially the Amhara elites, by venting Oromo nationalism, since they represent the bulk of the forces he needs to counter the TPLF. The tacit agreement binding Oromo nationalists with the TPLF, especially their shared determination to preserve ethnic federalism at all costs, convinced him that he could not expect the same support from his Oromo basis as the one he could obtain if he allied with Amhara elites.

For a leader obsessed with absolute power, as Abiy is, nothing could be more infuriating than defiance. As shown in some details in the next paragraph, it is no exaggeration to say that the TPLF did all it could do to challenge Abiy’s authority. While we could visualize the normal behavior of making mutual concessions to avoid confrontation, this possibility is unthinkable for a leader lusting for absolute power like Abiy, not to mention his fear that conceding to a challenger could encourage other regions to follow the same path.

The difficulty of the case was that Abiy had carefully hidden his dictatorial mindset by showing the face of a man of peace and a principled democrat, both to the Ethiopian people and the international community. Recall that, for pretending to have those attributes, he earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Since attacking directly the TPLF to obtain its submission would shatter his cultivated image, Abiy chose to engage in systematic provocations to force the Tigrayan leadership to war. Apart from some specific countries, he did not get from the international community the support that he anticipated when the TPLF attacked the northern army stationed in Tigray. He was, nevertheless, quite successful in convincing the Ethiopian people that his leadership and the attacked garrison were victims of unprovoked aggression and in putting rapidly the country on a war footing.

Here, the perplexing and somewhat unbearable question that jumps into one’s mind is whether the northern army was sacrificed on the altar of Abiy’s infatuation for absolute power. After all, if on both sides war preparations were underway and a confrontation looked inevitable, the statement that the Tigrayan attack came as a surprise is barely believable, unless one advances the possibility of inexcusable recklessness on the part of Abiy and his highest commanders. Seeing the ease with which civilians are killed in the war that is raging today in the Amhara region and taking into account that the driving principle of Abiy’s regime is that the end of power justifies all means, the most plausible explanation is to say that the attack was not really an unexpected occurrence. In the end, however, the question of who started the attack matters little. On both sides, the war was waged for the wrong reason: it was not about protecting Ethiopians or the Tigrayan people against harm; it was a power struggle between contending forces who were just looking out for themselves. From whichever angle we look at the war, it was not a just war for the people on either side.

Precisely, the point for Abiy was to make sure that the planned war did not appear as a war of choice. The TPLF’s unilateral attack enabled him to present his counterattack, not only as the last resort, but also as a decision to restore the federal order, as a “law-enforcement operation.” Abiy’s provocations amounted to a trap in which the TPLF fell for reasons analyzed below. Thanks to the stratagem, Abiy described his counterattack as a legitimate and standard reaction and the TPLF as the sole culprit.

Setting the Trap of War

To shore up this interpretation, let me show how some of these decisions and actions perfectly fit in Abiy’s scheme. As already mentioned, Abiy’s constant reference to Ethiopia and his attempts to restore its history and temper the negative views prevailing among Oromo and Tigrayan nationalists appeared to the latter as a rehabilitation of the past and a call for an alliance with Amhara elites. The path taken by Abiy could not but enrage the TPLF, which had from its inception worked so hard to paint the Amhara as expansionists, assimilationists, exploiters, and whatnot. To all appearances, the alliance with Amhara elites seemed to be heading towards a revision of the constitution, a prospect that is unacceptable to TPLF. Not only does the TPLF consider the constitution as its main and untouchable achievement and legacy, but it is also convinced that any revision will be done at its expense and that of Tigray. Indeed, change under the auspices of an alliance between Abiy and Amhara elites cannot but tilt towards greater centralization and unity. Its outcome would be the loss of regional autonomy and the marginalization of Tigray, given the fact that the latter will be downgraded to a minority status owing to its smaller population.

Let no one think that, without the provocations, the TPLF would not have jumped into war. To think so is to ignore the TPLF’s own impulse towards absolute control and domination. Its loss of power and of the privileges that it enjoyed when it was in control had without doubt angered it and stirred its determination to regain its lost position. That is why it was setting the ground for confrontation by, among other things, arranging and hosting meetings with “federalist forces”, which resulted in the creation of “The Coalition of Ethiopian Federalist Forces.” Moreover, there was no other way to recapture power than by military means, and this reconfirms the inevitability of the war. Another ingredient to consider is the TPLF’s open and repeated statements that when it comes to war, the courage and the commitment of the TPLF army are unsurpassed so that the march to Addis Ababa would be easy and short. The holding of a regional election despite Abiy’s express objection was another unacceptable defiance to his authority. Acknowledging the TPLF’s share in the outbreak of the war does not, however, diminish the input of Abiy. In fact, knowing his maliciousness, we can even say that he used his awareness of the TPLF’s drive to war to set the trap and precipitate the attack.

The important thing to keep in mind is that both Abiy’s Ethiopianism and his promise of constitutional revision towards greater unity and equality, as implied in the concept of synergy, were indeed acts of pure provocations for the obvious reason that Abiy was committed to none of them. He never intended to stand truly for Ethiopianism; nor did he contemplate overhauling the constitution in the direction of inclusion and equality. True, he spoke of his desire to reform the constitution but has never been specific about the nature of the change he had in mind, thereby letting everybody expect what they wanted. What he had really in mind was rather self-serving: the fulfillment of his deepest craving by erecting a tightly centralized system operated by his most loyal followers, many of them from Oromo extraction, that would give him absolute power.

The TPLF found confirmation of its fear of marginalization in the dissolution of the previous coalition of ethnic parties known as the EPRDF and its replacement by the Prosperity Party. The reformed party openly declared its goal of unification by transcending the previous coalition of regionally distinct ethnic parties. It became an organization directly controlled by Abiy who had the sweeping power of appointing or dismissing its leaders. Because these pillars of the modified party substantiated the fear of centralization and marginalization, the TPLF understandably rejected the invitation to join it. Even some members of the leadership of Abiy’s previous party either objected to the formation of the new party, for instance, Lemma Megersa, who was the then Defense Minister, or expressed serious reservations.

Another provocative act was the decision to dislodge high members of the TPLF from positions of authority in the federal government one by one, with some of them being even thrown to jail on charges of corruption and embezzlement as well as human rights violations. It was a provocation because Abiy did nothing of the kind as regards non- Tigrayans in positions of power, even though they too could be accused of similar misconduct and abuse of power. In selecting and targeting specifically Tigrayans, Abiy knew that he was pushing the TPLF towards the edge of confrontation. Moreover, it appeared to any Tigrayan that Abiy was shoring up his reputation by diabolizing exclusively the TPLF when in reality representatives of all ethnic groups partook, it is true with varying degrees, in various forms of misdemeanor and abuse of power.

 

Isaias’s Part in the War

A no less, if not more, instance of provocation was Abiy’s decision to initiate talks with Eritrea in view of achieving a peace agreement. What infuriated the TPLF was not the opening of a dialogue between the Prime Minister and Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean leader, but the fact that the Tigrayan leadership was not consulted beforehand, worse yet, was not invited to take part in the actual peace talks. In the eyes of the TPLF, the invitation to the peace talks should have come as a matter of course since, besides the unresolved territorial issues between Eritrea and Tigray, Isaias has displayed a deep animosity towards the Tigrayan leadership. On top of constantly criticizing the TPLF’s legacy of Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism and financing and training opposition armed groups on the Eritrean territory, he has set off the bloody Ethio-Eritrean war of 1998. These acts sufficiently establish that Isaias has done enough to become the worst enemy of the TPLF. Given this background, how else could the leadership of the TPLF interpret its exclusion from the peace talks but as a conspiracy between Abiy and Isaias? The more the two leaders publicized their rapprochement, the more the fear of insecurity and encirclement grew in Tigray.

The conspiratorial nature of the agreement between Abiy and Isaias came out in the open when it was realized that nothing written related to the terms of the reconciliation between the two countries was officially released. Apart from some vague statements indicating Abiy’s acceptance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision in 2002 to grant the disputed border town of Badme to Eritrea, nothing definitive and documented was made publicly available. How else could one characterize both the unofficial nature of the so-called peace agreement and the secrecy of the agreed terms but as a conspiracy?

That both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments denied the direct involvement of the Eritrean army in the war further strengthened the conspiratorial nature of the rapprochement between the two countries.  It is only under the pressure of undeniable facts gathered by the international community that both governments finally admitted the implication, which was decisive, of Eritrea, in the war. What is more, the reconciliation between the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments fell apart as soon as the war in Tigray ended. What else could one conjecture from this but that the so-called agreement had just the specific goal of forcing Tigray into a preventive attack?

Now, the question one must ask is why Isaias was so willing to involve his troops in the internal conflicts of a neighboring country. The answer is not hard to find, as enough reasons support the willingness of the Eritrean government to be part of the war. These reasons unquestionably establish the shared responsibility of the two governments for the outbreak of the war. Here we must keep in mind that we are dealing with dictatorial governments, that is, with governments that easily embark on war because the death and suffering of the people they rule mean little to them. Rather than war, what they dislike most is the peaceful method of negotiations and concessions for fear of looking weak.

For dictatorial governments, the precipitation to war becomes even more irresistible when they find excuses, like being attacked because of some border dispute or threatened in some way by a neighboring country. In effect, in the relations between Tigray and Eritrea, excuses to go to war were not hard to come by. To begin with, there is the fact that the TPLF, for motives difficult to explain rationally, fired rockets at Asmara, the Eritrean capital. For Isaias, the event was most opportune, since it provided the justification that he needed to frame his involvement in the war in terms of self-defense.

Another deeper reason for the Eritrean involvement has to do with settling scores over the 1998 war. So humiliating was the defeat of the Eritrean army in that war that Isaias and his government were waiting for the slightest occasion to take revenge against the TPLF, which led the operation in its capacity as the whole powerful dominant party. This reason had an additional goal, since participation in the war provided the perfect opportunity for Eritrea to recover the lands that it claimed in Tigray.

On top of all these motives, there was, of course, Isaias’s fundamental dislike of the TPLF. We have already alluded to Isaias’s opposition to ethnic federation, not because the system has no consideration for individual rights, but because it is a threat to national unity. Seeing the religious and ethnic diversity inside Eritrea itself, Isaias had every reason to fear a spillover of the same ideology into his country. Another reason for the animosity of the Eritrean leaders is their conviction that, since the fall of the Derg, the TPLF has done everything to bar Eritreans from having access to the vast Ethiopian market, its intention being to reserve it for itself. In the same way, the TPLF regime has used all its diplomatic means to isolate Eritrea from the international community by presenting it as a pariah and a menace to regional stability, with the outcome that Eritrea became the object of many sanctions.

Nothing could then be more in the interests of the Eritrean leadership than the defeat of the TPLF and its removal from its position of power in Ethiopia as well as in Tigray. Unfortunately for Isaias, Abiy and many Western countries had a different plan. In particular, Abiy wanted to defeat the TPLF just enough to diminish it with the hope of coopting it at some point as a counter to the other foe of Abiy and his Oromo followers, namely, the Amhara people. This is exactly what he did once the war ended: besides significantly cooling his relations with the Eritrean leader, he openly reconciled with the TPLF and even ignored the clause of the Pretoria agreement stipulating the disarmament of the TPLF’s army.

These decisions enabled him to move to his next agenda, which was disarming the Amhara militia and Fano fighters and establishing total control over the Amhara region. In many ways, the war now raging against the Amhara people is a repeat of the war in Tigray. That Abiy turned against the Amhara people after using the Amhara militia and Fano to defeat the TPLF, just as he used the Eritrean army, is little surprising for anyone who has some insight into his lust for absolute power.