Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday summoned “all capable” citizens to war, urging them to join the military and stop resurgent forces from the embattled Tigray region “once and for all,” abandoning the unilateral cease-fire it declared in June as its military retreated from Tigray, while deadly fighting now spreads into other regions.
The Tigray conflict now affects all of Ethiopia’s 110 million people, and the Tigray forces are no longer on the defensive in a war that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, once declared would be over within weeks.
Spokespeople for Abiy’s office, the military and the Tigray emergency task force did not respond to questions as Africa’s second-most populous country showed a further risk of fracturing at the heart of the Horn of Africa region.
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Ethiopia’s sharply worded statement came after weeks of mobilization by the federal government, including military recruiting and blood donation drives, as Tigray forces pushed into Ethiopia’s neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions following the stunning turn in the nine-month conflict in June.
“If his government topples, that’s icing on the cake,” spokesman for the Tigray forces Getachew Reda told The Associated Press last week. On Tuesday, Getachew told the AP the prime minister “wants to send militia to the war front as cannon fodder” and called it unfortunate that “ill-trained, ill-equipped people” are now being pressed into the fight.
Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for nearly three decades, embittering many across the country by helping to put in place a system of ethnic federalism that led to ethnic tensions. Now the Tigray forces, whose leaders were sidelined when Abiy came to office, are hoping for public support as they vow to press to the capital, Addis Ababa if needed.
And like Ethiopia’s government, they could use deprivation as pressure. Last week, Getachew confirmed that the Tigray forces’ aim in the Afar region is to control a crucial supply line to the rest of Ethiopia from neighbouring Djibouti, on a major shipping lane. He called it “part of the game,” saying people in Tigray are starving. “It’s not to spite the other parts of Ethiopia,” he said.
Thousands of people have been killed in Tigray since November, and hundreds of thousands face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Last week the United Nations and the United States sent high-level officials to press Ethiopia’s government for more access to the region, where telephone, internet and banking services remain cut off.
But Ethiopia’s government has been angered by the international pressure over Tigray, especially as the fighting spreads. Some 300,000 people have now been displaced outside Tigray, and this week the U.N. said it was “extremely alarmed” by reports that more than 200 people had been killed in attacks on displaced people in Afar. Ethiopia’s government blamed the Tigray forces, whose spokesman denied it.
The new statement from the prime minister’s office takes aim at some in the international community, blaming them for the “machinations of foreign hands” in the war, and alleging without evidence that some had been caught “red-handed supporting the (Tigray forces) under the disguise of humanitarian aid.” The government has suspended the operations of Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Committee, accusing them of “disseminating misinformation,” further complicating efforts to deliver aid.
Tuesday’s statement also signalled even more pressure on ethnic Tigrayans across the country, calling on all Ethiopians to be “the eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose spies and agents” of the Tigray forces. Witnesses and lawyers have said thousands of ethnic Tigrayans have already been detained during the conflict for their identity alone.
The prime minister last month referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and “cancer,” bringing a swift warning from the U.S. about “dehumanizing rhetoric.” Since then, Ethiopia’s government has repeatedly said it is targeting the Tigray forces alone.
“The battle is not with Tigray but with the terrorist forces,” its new statement said. Ethiopia’s government earlier this year declared the Tigray People’s Liberation Front a terrorist group.
Now fears are growing as more of the country is involved.
“We know the TPLF is well-armed and the losers would again be the Amhara people,” Demissie Alemayehu, a U.S.-based professor who was born in the Amhara region, told the AP shortly after the prime minister’s call to war.
Without addressing Ethiopia’s root problems, including a constitution based on ethnic differences, he said, it will be “very difficult to talk about peace.” [MSN]
