Exposed: Abiy Ahmed's plot to "wipe out" Tigrayans

NAIROBI, Kenya - The conflict in the Tigray region may have been planned by authorities in Addis Ababa, a top official from Finland has claimed, long before even the Ethiopian National Defense Forces [ENDF] were deployed to the region after the attack on Northern Command.

For close to eight months, ENDF with reinforcement from Eritrean troops, have descended on the Tigray region, triggering a humanitarian crisis, which has attracted international attention. It's believed that thousands of Tigrayans have been killed in what some people call genocide.

But Pekka Haavisto, the Finish Foreign Affairs Minister, claims the Ethiopian leadership hinted to him of plans to wipe out Tigrayans, an ethnic group in North of Ethiopia, which has since pulled out of government after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took over in 2018.

While addressing the Finish parliament, Haavisto, who previously served as European Union envoy to Addis Ababa, gave an in-depth brief of the current situation in Ethiopia, particularly in the Tigray region. According to him, the conflict might prolong, adding that violence against women in Tigray "is something that has never been before".

The Minister said, in February, he had two intensive days in substantive meetings with Abiy Ahmed and key Ministers about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Tigray where thousands died and millions are starving. The worst famines have the potential to hit.

“When I met the Ethiopian leadership in February, they used this kind of language, that they are going to destroy the Tigrayans, they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years and so forth,” Haavisto said, giving a preview on the conflict that has been termed as "genocide".

After the EU put pressure on Abiy, he claimed, the PM started to use hostile language towards the western and initiated a hate campaign." The 'Abiy government' want to flag out that they have other friends and investors, they have China and Russia and so forth," he adds.

Haavisto states that the Ethiopia crisis is interlinked to Somalia's situation and a bizarre new triangle that is not friendly but rather challenging the regional cooperation. Somalia is witnessing almost a similar political crisis, which almost escalated after Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo attempted to extend his term by two years.

"That is the reason we have put a lot of pressure on Farmaajo to held the election and return to the electoral process," he adds. The Minister also praised the role of Prime Minister Mohamed Roble in steering the election process and is optimistic that it would be some light to Somalia and Kenya ties.

Abiy won Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, has been accused of a plot to exterminate the Tigray community, which he believes is opposed to his leadership. He's yet to sanction the withdrawal of Eritrea troops from Ethiopia despite calls from the international community.

But the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has dismissed Haavisto's statement as "irresponsible and undiplomatic" while giving a breakdown of what they believe was unjustified vilification by the Finish minister.

His statement clearly shows his lack of context and understanding of Ethiopia. Undoubtedly, his self-assured confidence to claim understanding of the country and its people in two visits is not only flawed but also smacks of a colonial mindset," MFA said.

Ethiopia however, pledged to continue working with European Union but insisted that the body should consider working with impartial people who have an understanding of what is happening in the country rather than "rumor mongers".

The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have both criticized international calls for a ceasefire, dialogue, or a negotiated outcome to the conflict in Tigray, claiming that this inappropriately puts the TPLF and the Ethiopian state on equal footing.

By keeping engagement with the international community over Ethiopia’s stability focused on Tigray, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has deflected scrutiny of the country’s broader political challenges in the run-up to next week’s twice-delayed elections, says Jason Mosley is an Associate Senior Researcher with SIPRI's Conflict, Peace and Security area, working on the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region.

Conflict more than Tigray crisis

Mosley further notes the problems facing the government of Abiy Ahmed are more than the current crisis in the Tigray region, arguing that the social-economic conflict triggered by the current administration, coupled with ethnic cleansing, may escalate to the high-level crisis in the Horn of Africa.

In particular, he says, the conflict in Tigray has dramatically accelerated shifts in Ethiopia’s political economy, with elites competing for spaces created by the destruction of the TPLF’s economic infrastructure and the displacement of well-positioned businesses associated with the TPLF-affiliated Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray [EFFORT].

Shifts within the former ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front [EPRDF] coalition saw the TPLF sidelined by cooperation between the Oromo and Amhara coalition parties to elect Abiy as chairman [and thus prime minister] in 2018. The erosion of the TPLF’s position set in motion a new phase of competition for access and opportunity.

Widespread episodes of violence and conflict—including inter-communal violence and attacks on local minorities—have also distracted observers’ attention from elite economic competition. The spread of violence outside Tigray has remained significant and similar in distribution, both before and since the outbreak of the Tigray conflict in November 2020.

Although Abiy rose to power as an ‘Oromo’ politician in the context of Ethiopia’s federal politics, following up widespread protests that affected much of the Oromia region, his more centralized vision of the nation-state did not sit well with Oromo nationalist politicians and the established Oromo opposition parties, he says.

The Oromo Liberation Army [OLA] was also declared a terrorist organization in May, alongside the TPLF. The OLA, or ‘Shene’, has clashed repeatedly with the national army and Oromo regional security forces in the last three years, including in the days before the conflict broke out in Tigray.

Leaders of the main Oromo opposition parties have been in jail since mid-2020, following widespread violence in the wake of the assassination of a popular Oromo singer and activist, Hachalu Hundessa. Some of those facing the wrath of Abiy's administration include his clansman Jawar Mohammed.

If Abiy and the Prosperity Party capture enough constituencies in the Amhara region and Oromia, as well as significant parts of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples region, this will ensure continued control at the federal level, the analyst further says.

The TPLF’s retreat from the national stage to Tigray was cemented—and the stage set for the conflict—by November 2019, when Abiy pushed through the merger of the EPRDF’s constituent and allied parties into a single Prosperity Party, leaving the TPLF in opposition in the federal parliament for the first time since it was established.

For its part, the TPLF’s hard-line approach to its marginalization from national politics, including increasingly bellicose rhetoric and unilateral actions during 2020, helped to sow the seeds of the current conflict—and seems to be limiting the appetite for de-escalation in Ethiopia more broadly.

External engagement

The humanitarian disaster unfolding in Tigray could have been avoided, but for failures of leadership in Mekelle and Addis Ababa since 2018. However, Ethiopia’s partners risk exacerbating the tragedy in Tigray, and increasing instability in Ethiopia, if the focus of external engagement is not broadened to reflect the widespread challenges that the country faces.

The country’s transitional moment was lost, but partners should focus on ways to incentivize a move away from zero-sum politics by Ethiopia’s elites—most likely some form of truly national dialogue, as recently discussed by Emebet Getachew, Mehari Taddele Maru, and Yohannes Gedamu, among others.

While speaking to an immediate moral imperative and to the plight of civilians in Tigray, imposing sanctions is likely to see Ethiopia’s elites entrench their current positions—particularly in the context of tensions over the development of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

In the short term, the best hope is that having engineered the conditions to ensure the Prosperity Party will remain in control following the elections, Abiy and Ethiopia’s elites will then be open to compromise. In the meantime, a more confrontational stance by Ethiopia’s donors will frustrate only those seeking to de-escalate the crisis in Tigray, Mosley says.

The UN is under pressure to discuss the current conflict in the Tigray region but it's yet to hold formal sitting in the UNSC over the matter. Already, the African Union has formed a task force team that will assess the situation in the region before giving a report that will be used to make a decision at the General Assembly meeting.

GAROWE ONLINE