# taz.de -- Interview on the Tigray conflict: „No chance for compromise“ | |
> How did Ethiopia slide from optimism to war? Tsedale Lemma, editor of the | |
> Addis Standard, dissects how Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed lost | |
> track. | |
Bild: Tsedale Lemma is one of Ethiopia's foremost journalists | |
This is the English original of the interview with Tsedale Lemma published | |
in German in the TAZ print edition of Monday 30 November 2020. For the | |
shorter German version, click here. | |
taz: Ms. Lemma, phone and internet connections to Tigray are cut off. What | |
do you know about what’s happening in Tigray? | |
Tsedale Lemma: Most reports are coming from rights organizations, | |
humanitarian agencies and journalists from international media who are | |
reporting from Sudan where more than 43,000 refugees from Tigray region are | |
sheltering. Going by these reports, the situation is grim; the massacre in | |
Mai-Kadra has claimed the lives of more than 600 civilians and there are | |
two sides of stories on who perpetrated the crime. Communication in Tigray | |
region remained cut off. | |
How did we get to this point? When Abiy came to power in April 2018 there | |
was lots of optimism and happiness. The term “Abiymania“ was coined. | |
It was true; even us critical journalists were happy and showed optimism to | |
a certain extent; but at the same time, we were also expressing | |
reservations at the early signs of a turn toward a one-man | |
authoritarianism. | |
You said you were cautiously optimistic when Abiy came to power. When did | |
that change? | |
That only lasted the first few months. Then the critics started getting | |
louder that the reform was losing its track. There is no roadmap to it. | |
Abiy kept on downplaying calls for a roadmap, for calls for negotiation, | |
settlement, compromise with all the opposition. He opened the space, the | |
political space, but there was no rule of law. And he never had any serious | |
conversation with the opposition and we kept calling and calling, we need | |
to talk out even as to how the election was going to take place in this | |
tense atmosphere, because the political space, which has been held so tight | |
for twenty seven years, is suddenly unleashed, and you need to have order | |
in it. That is when millions of Ethiopians started realizing that he's | |
really going the wrong direction. He did more to beautify Addis Abeba and | |
build public parks than tackling some of the most pressing issues for | |
example security. | |
In 2019 t he Nobel Committee gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for a peace | |
deal with Eritrea, a country Ethiopia had been in war with for two decades. | |
We never knew what was included in those peace agreements. We mentioned | |
that the people of Ethiopia need to know and that the deal should be | |
institutionalized. But that was never acted upon. The Ethiopian parliament | |
for example never approved anything. Abiy also bypassed the foreign | |
ministry, which normally should have been front and center of the peace | |
deal with a foreign country. It was just personal relationship between Abiy | |
and the Eritrea president. Us local critical journalists we were mentioning | |
those things. We were not as blinded as Oslo. | |
When Abiy came to power he aimed for a more centralized state and promised | |
unity. Was that naive? | |
Yes. There is Ethiopia’s multinational constitution and there is Abiy’s | |
book “Medemer“; if you read his book you will find out that it is the | |
antithesis of Ethiopia’s multinational federalism. There is a raging war of | |
vision on what kind of Ethiopia we want to build. The prime minister kept | |
on saying he's determined to the multinational federation. But what keeps | |
happening is his vision of state building which is tilted against his | |
rhetoric. What happened in the last two years is that there is no | |
autonomous region whose president is not assigned one way or another by the | |
prime minister. Except for Tigray, each and every region has its presidents | |
maneuvered and assigned by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. I want you to imagine | |
Angela Merkel calling the Bavarian president to her office and telling him | |
you're going to have to make your cabinet resign overnight. Abiy Ahmed did | |
that and it is a sign that he is in favour of a much centralized government | |
the kind of which he has unhinged power of influence and that runs contrary | |
to the way in which the Ethiopian state was last reconstituted after the | |
1995 constitution was adopted. | |
Ethiopia had one ruling party coalition, the EPRDF, ruling for three | |
decades and winning with over 90-something percent. Tigrayans had huge | |
influence although they make up only six percent of the population. Abiy in | |
2019 founded a new ruling party, the Prosperity Party (PP) that the TPLF | |
has never joined. Was his aim not to create a fairer representation? | |
You need to understand one thing: The EPRDF was detested, it was rotten | |
from deep inside. It was replete with cronyism, corruption, | |
authoritarianism and cruelty. As such, there was that need of undoing that | |
party, distancing himself from the legacy of the EPRDF. And so Abiy wanted | |
to dismantle it. That is understandable to a certain extent but it was | |
deeply problematic. | |
The problem being? | |
The problem is that the EPRDF itself, before Abiy Ahmed came, in December | |
of 2017, had a closed session. The presidents of all the four major parties | |
that make up the EPRDF sat down for 17 days and did a soul-search and they | |
came up with a list of things they needed to change in order to redeem the | |
party. There were major changes if they were followed through. These | |
changes included releasing prisoners; democratizing the politics; reforming | |
the judiciary; opening up the political space and reform the security and | |
all. Abiy Ahmed was placed in power to conduct those reform agendas and | |
lead the country to a democratic election but instead he opted to conduct | |
an abrupt and disorderly break up of an authoritarian party that ruled the | |
country with an iron fist. | |
What did he cause by dismantling the party? | |
In the process he disfigured the only political arrangement that the | |
country had for 27 years. Deeply entrenched, it takes really a very careful | |
unraveling of this party, but what he did was like hitting it with a brute | |
force. That of course led the party itself to get so fractured, so | |
fragmented, it led Abiy to lose his own closest ally, Lemma Megersa, the | |
president of the Oromia region, for example, a man who was so instrumental | |
in bringing Abiy himself to power, but someone who, as we speak, is placed | |
under house arrest. | |
What was Abiy’s aim by founding the PP? | |
His overwhelming driving force is power consolidation. The PP is a | |
structure to make it possible for few people to control ultimate power at | |
the center. It is unfortunate because the Ethiopian people fought so hard | |
against the consolidation and domination of power among the few elites only | |
to have it replaced by some elites from the Oromo, Abiy’s own ethnic group. | |
You have to be careful not to mistake the Oromo people with the few Oromo | |
elite consolidating power. The Oromo people are still waiting to get | |
answers for their questions for jobs, for the right to self-administration, | |
the right of their language to become the federal working language which | |
are not answered so far. | |
The PP, however, aimed for a fairer representation, didn’t it? | |
Of course, formerly marginalized regional states, for example, the Somali | |
regional state, could come to the center. The Somali regional state’s | |
president today sits in the executive of the new party, which was never the | |
case before. That was a good development, but it ended there and the party | |
structure was never completed. The party itself never had its founding | |
conference. There is no executive decision that is collectively taken by | |
the party so far. All the decisions that were taken after the Prosperity | |
Party was formed came from Abiy’s office. So they were just being the | |
symbolic cheerleaders. | |
The TPLF did not join the PP. How much backing does the TPLF have among | |
ordinary Tigrayans? | |
If you had asked me this question two and a half years ago when the prime | |
minister came into power, I would tell you it was a dwindling support that | |
they had. The Tigrayan people were growing unhappy about the way the TPLF | |
dominated government of the then EPRDF coalition led the federal federal | |
and regional (governments. The government was turning into a sheer | |
authoritarian regime and Tigrayans, along with the rest of Ethiopians, were | |
expressing their displeasure with their own party. | |
That changed? | |
It changed when Abiy Ahmed came into power and began to sideline and | |
prosecute TPLF officials from his circle, to press criminal and corruption | |
investigations. Others who have been equally, if not more, criminals than | |
the TPLF, were largely left untouched. The TPLF leaders became the target | |
of a crusade against corruption, and against human rights violations. The | |
TPLF leadership said they were being profiled and pushed, and that they | |
were being becoming the scapegoat for all the ills in the country. So they | |
left the center and stationed themselves in Mekelle, the Tigray region | |
capital which has contributed to bring them close to the people of Tigray | |
and continued to widen the political rift with Abiy and his government. | |
How did the relationship between Abiy and TP L F turn so sour? | |
The cascade of events that have played a role in widening the rift between | |
Abiy and the TPLF leadership are plenty. At time one is more belligerent | |
than the other; at time both seem determined to not give compromise a | |
chance. But once most of the TPLF leadership were purged from the center | |
the difference was not only a distance of the politics, it was also a | |
physical distance. And then, of course, there were the rhetoric, you know, | |
the media and the war of words and the exchange of these very tough | |
accusations, one after the other; these were all contributing to the | |
toxicity of the political environment between the federal government and | |
the regional government. And that was, of course, going south every day, | |
every month. The major turn of this deteriorating relationship came when | |
Abiy dismantled the EPRDF and formed the PP which TPLF rejected joining. | |
This was followed by another major difference when the federal government | |
postponed the much anticipated general elections due to COVID-19. The | |
relationship after that became irreversible when TPLF unilaterally | |
conducted its regional election in September. | |
There are now reports of ethnic Tigrayians targeted elsewhere. | |
Yes, there is enough evidence of both state sanctioned and a horizontal | |
ethnic profiling of Tigrayans especially in the last three weeks, not just | |
targeting of TPLF. It added toxic to the very bad situation. There are | |
verified reports of concerted efforts targeting ethnic Tigrayans, which is | |
institutionalized and sanctioned by the state. We receive a lot of | |
complaints from native Tigrayans in the capital Addis and elsewhere about | |
incidents when the police show up in the night to search their houses | |
without warrant papers. There are also reports of bank accounts being | |
frozen for no apparent reason. This is despicable and very sad. | |
What’s left of the peace deal with Eritrea, what is the situation like | |
today? | |
Right now, the area is a war zone. But until this war broke out – which the | |
government prefers to call “law and order operation“–the border was still | |
militarized. What we know is that all the five gates in the border between | |
the two countries were closed a few months into the peace deal. Not so much | |
by the Tigrayan side, but by the Eritrean government. | |
Is the Eritrean government involved in the current conflict? | |
Asmara and Addis Ababa deny it. But Ethiopians who have fled to Sudan say | |
that bombardment was coming from the Eritrean side as well, and that there | |
are Eritrean troops on the ground supporting the federal government. The | |
regional government itself is reporting drone attacks, which is most likely | |
because the UAE has a military base in Assab in Eritrea from which it | |
launches the drone attacks against the Huthi rebels in Yemen. And it's very | |
likely that the UAE is engaged in drone attacks against the TPLF. The TPLF | |
has also attacked Eritrea with rockets, saying it was in response to | |
Eritrea’s involvement. | |
Now the war has been going on for over three weeks. What needs to happen? | |
An immediate cessation of hostilities, because every passing day is | |
complicating this conflict, opening up the Pandora's Box for regional | |
rivalries. News of the UAE and its use of drones, if confirmed, is bad | |
signal for regional rivalries; Sudan, which is bordering the Tigray | |
regional state, has a state replete with mercenaries and many government | |
people who walk around with guns, with leverage that goes beyond the | |
Sudanese border. So every passing day is going to complicate the regional | |
dynamics of this war, but also it's making Ethiopia itself very vulnerable | |
internally. The social fabric is being ripped apart; polarization is at a | |
scale never seen before and repression is rearing its ugly heads once again | |
because that is what war does to a society. | |
How so? | |
We are receiving reports of massacres and an increased armed movements in | |
other parts of the country such as the southern region and western regions | |
that are not receiving media coverage.That means the federal army who are | |
now being moved north have left a security vacuum in these places. | |
Conflicts are flaring up with more intensity now than they already were. If | |
this continues unabated it will unravel the federation. This war has to | |
stop now, and cessation of hostilities must be implemented immediately. | |
before the right to life of thousand more Ethiopians is lost unnecessarily. | |
29 Nov 2020 | |
## AUTOREN | |
Benjamin Breitegger | |
## TAGS | |
Äthiopien | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Tsedale Lemma über den Äthiopienkrieg: „Äthiopien droht zu zerfallen“ | |
Regierungschef Abiy Ahmed erhielt den Nobelpreis. Nun führt er Krieg, um | |
seine Macht auszubauen, sagt die bekannte Journalistin Tsedale Lemma. |