The Decibel - The peace deal to end ‘world’s biggest war’ in Tigray

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Two weeks after a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Tigray was reached, humanitarian aid finally started to arrive in the Tigrayan region on Tuesday. It’s the first sign that Ethiopia’s blockade, cutting off food, medicine and communications, is ending. The brutal two-year-long civil war has led to the death of as many 600,000 people.The Globe and Mail’s Africa Bureau Chief, Geoffrey York explains why this deal is so desperately needed, how the arrival of aid is a step in the right direction and why a number of factors still exist that could threaten its implementation.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Maina Karaman-Welms, and you're listening to The Decibel. It's been two weeks since Ethiopia and the region of Tigray signed a peace agreement to end a brutal civil war. As many as 600,000 people have died, and more than 3 million have been displaced. But the people of Tigray continue to suffer. And you can imagine that many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation. Especially after the ceasefire agreement,

I was expecting that food and medicine would just flow immediately. Here's Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who's from Tigray. Everything that has happened in the last two years has been done in total darkness, and six million people have been completely separated, shut off from the rest of the world, as if they don't exist.

The Globe's Africa Bureau Chief, Jeffrey York, is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Today on the show, he tells us what's holding up this peace deal from bringing desperately needed relief to people in Tigray. This is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Jeff, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. The war between Tigray and Ethiopia has been going on since November 2020. How would you characterize this war?

Well, by many measurements, it's been the biggest war in the world in the past two years. I mean, even if you measure it by the number of casualties, the number of deaths, the estimates that we're seeing from independent researchers is that anywhere from 400,000 to 600,000 people have died so far in this war. That's from direct fighting and also from lack of food and from lack of health care. Those estimates are from independent sources that are trying to use a variety of sources, but the estimates are credible enough that they're now being adopted by, for example, the United States, their diplomats when they talk about the war. And in addition, if you look at it geopolitically, this war has been devastating for the whole Horn of Africa region. It's brought in Sudan and Somalia. It has really boosted the power of Eritrea, which is the most repressive regime in Africa, a complete dictatorship that now has a lot more power as a result of this war. It seems that Prime Minister Abiy was so desperate for military support that he needed the Eritrean military to come in and do a lot of the fighting and provide

a lot of the forces and a lot of the equipment. And geopolitically, let's remember that for many years, Ethiopia was considered the most stable kind of Western ally in a very unstable part of the world. And now it really lost that status and its economy is in deep trouble. It's really now a very unstable country in a very important part of the world. So really, it sounds like a pretty brutal war with a very high death toll there. Can you just remind us, Jeff, just tell us a little bit about the conflict here? Who is fighting and why? Well, it really began in 2020 when the Tigray region pushed for greater autonomy from the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian government tried to postpone the elections that were scheduled for 2020. And Tigray went ahead and had its own election in defiance of the Ethiopian government.

And so basically, it sounds like Tigray is the region of Ethiopia. It sounds like they were pushing for independence, essentially. Is that kind of fair to characterize it that way? Not for full independence. That was never an official demand. But they were concerned about losing power. They were concerned that they were going to be crushed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy's government. And this is a region and a party, the TPLF, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, which is the main political party in Tigray, had been running the country up until 2018 when Prime Minister Abiy was elected. So they lost a lot of their power, and they were afraid of losing more power. and they were afraid that Prime Minister Abiy was really going to target them to be completely wiped out. So to some extent, it was a battle for survival by the TPLF and a battle to reassert itself.

Okay. And do we know what life has been like for people living in that region during these two years of war? Well, the biggest factor has been the blockade. You know, for most of the past two years, with some exceptions, the Ethiopian authorities have imposed a blockade on communications, banking, humanitarian aid, medical aid, and so on. So it was basically under siege. And, you know, this continued for so long that human rights groups and, you know, human rights investigators were basically calling it a crime against humanity, deliberate starvation of the population, a kind of a form of collective punishment.

And is that a tool of war for on Ethiopia's part then? Well, that's the argument that has been made by many human rights groups, that this is a deliberate starvation and it's a war crime, basically. On the other hand, Ethiopia clearly knows that this is one of its main negotiating tools. It was one of its main pressure points. flowed as long as this latest military offensive has been in operation, the one that began in August. And only now with the peace agreement signed, and really only two weeks after the peace agreement was signed, are we now finally beginning to see the first signs of humanitarian aid getting in. We'll be right back. Okay, so two years into this war now, Jeff, why did the two sides decide to sign a peace deal now? So we've got Tigray and we've got Ethiopia. They came together a couple weeks ago. There was a peace deal signed.

Why this time? Well, there were ceasefires in the past. I mean, there was a ceasefire in March unofficially that lasted for five months. So this has happened before. But what's different now is this is an officially, formally written agreement with clauses that can be implemented and studied and discussed and so on. And the main reason is simply exhaustion on both sides. I mean, the Tigrayans have suffered the most, but the Ethiopian economy has been heavily damaged by this. They need more IMF loans.

GDP growth has been affected. It's been very difficult to get foreign investment into the entire Ethiopian economy when this war is going on. And at the same time, of course, on the other side, the Tigrayans have been absolutely exhausted by this war. There's been a massive mobilization of all of their young people, young men, into the Tigrayan defense forces. And at the same time, the blockade has continued without any sign of ending until this peace agreement was signed. So the Tigrayan side basically realized this was its best chance of lifting the blockade and reducing the suffering of its people. And I understand there were other international actors, including Canada, who were pushing for this peace deal. Can you tell me about that? There's been a lot of support, especially from

the European Union, especially from the United States. Now, Canada was also pushing for a ceasefire. Prime Minister Trudeau made a number of phone calls to Prime Minister Abiy over the past 18 months or so, pushing for a ceasefire in all of those phone calls. And he does have some influence. I mean, Prime Minister Trudeau was in Ethiopia in February of 2020 for an African Union meeting and spent a lot of time with Prime Minister Abiy and seems to have a good relationship with him. So we don't know exactly what kind of role Canada has been playing, but it's possible that was a factor as well. Yeah. Okay, so it's now been two weeks since this peace deal was signed between Ethiopia and Tigrayan authorities. What's actually changed in the region in that time?

The biggest change was on Tuesday when the first two trucks of humanitarian aid began to arrive. For the first time in months, trucks of medical aid were allowed into the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle. But this is only a start. The UN estimates that 100 trucks per day are needed. So two trucks is only a drop in the ocean, and it will remain to be seen how much humanitarian aid begins to flow. We also saw some very significant developments on Tuesday in the Ethiopian parliament when Prime Minister Abiy gave quite a lengthy and eloquent speech in support of this peace agreement. I've been listening to his remarks to the Ethiopian parliament, and he really did give a lengthy defense of peace as opposed to war.

Basically, he argued peace is profitable. Those were his words. And the fact that he had to give such a lengthy defense really tells us, though, that there still is a constituency for war in Ethiopia. There are still people in Ethiopia who are a bit puzzled by this peace agreement. The argument would be, why didn't Ethiopia go ahead and do what it always said it would do, which is to capture all of Tigray? But back then, in 2020, when Ethiopia captured Tigray, the Tigrayan forces just basically went into the mountains and it became a guerrilla war. And then eventually they regrouped and fought back. And within a few months, they had not only recaptured Tigray, but also moved into neighboring regions like Amhara and Afar, and were even

threatening to advance onto the capital Addis. Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Yes. So the war did shift a lot over the past two years. And it was always a possibility that if Ethiopia recaptured Bekele again now, the Tigrayan forces would simply again go back to the mountains and turn this into a guerrilla war, which would be never ending. I want to ask you about some of the actual points of the peace deal now, Jeff. In broad terms, the deal says that Tigrayan military forces must disarm within 30 days, that Tigray must be politically reintegrated back into Ethiopia, and that the Ethiopian military must be allowed to return to the region. This sounds basically like a Tigrayan surrender.

Is that how it's being seen? By some people in Tigray, yes. It's being seen as a, well, even the Tigrayan leaders called it painful concessions. And there is a lot of concern and distrust by Tigrayan people who are worried that if Ethiopia basically controls Tigray, there could be, again, atrocities, arrests, human rights abuses, and so on. So there's a lot of worry about what would happen if the Ethiopian military controls all of Tigray. But if you look at the agreement as a whole, it talks about Tigray being reintegrated into Ethiopia, elections being held, the TPLF no longer being designated as a terrorist organization. So theoretically, what could happen is another election, the TPLF could win that election, and they could form the regional government in Tigray. And under the constitution, regions are

given quite a bit of autonomy. So there's nothing in this agreement that prevents Tigray from maintaining a lot of autonomy from Ethiopia. Okay. And I guess where does it stand now when we're talking about soldiers disarming? Is that actually happening? Are we seeing progress to get to that 30-day mark where people will be disarmed by then? Yeah, I think very few people really believe this 30-day deadline. It will begin with the disarming of heavy weapons. That's a bit easier to do. We're talking about artillery and mortars and so on. And there's an agreement that the forces should sort of withdraw into four designated zones so they would not be in direct fighting contact. But the most important aspect of this disarmament agreement is that it should happen simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Eritrean and Amhara militias.

The Amhara, that's a region within Ethiopia neighboring the Tigray region. Yeah, and I think that's a really important point to make there because the agreement between Ethiopia and Tigray is as it stands now, but there's other players, it sounds like, in that region that could maybe potentially kind of have an impact going forward as well. Yes, exactly. Yeah. An element of this war that's been hard to control is hate speech. How has that been fueling this war? Well, it's had a huge impact, really. I mean, the hate speech has been quite dehumanizing. On the Ethiopian side, on the Amhara side, there has been on social media, you know, posts, many posts that have basically dehumanized the Tigrayans, called them weeds or cancer, basically seeing them as, you know, a pest that has to be eradicated. It's been very dehumanizing.

And that has certainly helped to fuel the conflict. The hate speech has also been directed at journalists. You know, people like myself and Lucy Casa have been subjected to thousands of hate speech posts on social media. It's basically been an attempt to silence independent voices, silence anyone who points out the human cost of the war. There's been just huge anger on social media at journalists who point out the humanitarian blockade or talk about war crimes or massacres and so on. So that's why in the November 2nd peace agreement in Pretoria, there was a specific clause, an agreement between the two sides, they will do their best to reduce and eliminate this hate speech, because it's very clear that it's been fueling the war. Yeah. And as you mentioned, Lucy Kassa, who's an Ethiopian journalist that we did talk to last year, both you and her have

also reported on the widespread sexual violence during this conflict. I wonder, is there anything in the peace deal that addresses this? Well, it talks about civilian protection. So that would be the main clause that could be used there. There is a commitment from both sides to protect civilians. But one of the most key aspects of the future of this peace agreement is whether there's any justice and accountability. A lot of people are now saying that there needs to be justice and accountability for war crimes, for massacres, for sexual violence, and so on. And it's not clear if there will be. as there's no accountability and no justice, that will remain a clear source of potential tension and potential fighting in the future. And so you say potential war crimes,

I guess, how do we know or how is that determined if these were war crimes or not? Well, it hasn't gone to the International Criminal Court yet. And that's the court that decides whether these are war crimes or not. But there's been testimony at a Canadian parliamentary committee that the situation in Tsingrai can be classified as a genocide. Obviously, that's a war crime. But there are experts, people who've studied genocide in the past in other parts of the world, like Cambodia and Darfur and so on, who say that the conflict in Tigray can be described as a genocide. So there's a lot of evidence of that. It has not gone to the International Criminal Court, but a lot of people have been calling for that. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.