Ethiopia returns to the brink of civil war

Newshour

This episode of NewsHour covers a series of significant global developments, beginning with the escalating conflict in Ethiopia between fede

Key takeaways

• The 2022 Pretoria peace deal in Ethiopia has failed to be properly implemented, leading to renewed clashes in Tigray.
• Jane Perlez reports that President Xi Jinping's US visit yielded little substantial policy progress on issues like AI or Taiwan.

Main topics

• Ethiopian Civil War
• China-US Diplomacy

Notable quotes

War is war. And war claims human lives.

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive overview of high-stakes global sh

Transcript preview

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Speaker 2 (1:11) Hello and welcome to NewsHour, live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. We begin the programme today with news from Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa and concerns that the north of the country may be on the brink of sliding back into civil war. Tensions have been rising for a while in the region of Tigray between regional forces and the National Army, but this week there have been multiple clashes, including today. It's very difficult to get an accurate picture of what's happened. Internet services have also been disrupted. But we've had reports of heavy fighting between forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the TPLF, which dominates the region, and also government forces. These local people managed to make contact with the BBC's Tigrinya service. Speaker 7 (2:02) They Speaker 1 (2:02) were shelling with heavy artillery. We kept hearing heavy thuds. Yesterday there was a drone strike and today fierce fighting broke out from all directions around the Tokolosh, Korom and Sakota areas. Speaker 3 (2:16) I've Speaker 6 (2:16) heard a report that forces from the Tigray are fighting along the Afar region. I personally know what war is really like. It weighed heavily on me. War is war. And war claims human lives, especially right now in Tigray. Young people are not joining into this conflict by choice, but they are forcibly recruited. Speaker 2 (2:37) Well, earlier I spoke to Alex Davao. He's executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University in Massachusetts in the US. And he's an expert on Tigray. I asked him first, what's his understanding of what's actually happening on the ground? Speaker 3 (2:53) Over the last couple of months, there's been something of a creeping war, an undeclared conflict with low-level skirmishes and a few clashes and drone strikes between the Tigray Defence Forces under the TPLF and the federal government of Addis Ababa. And this crossed a threshold in the last week, and there were more clashes than battle. but fighting in four different locations on the borders of Tigray between Tigrayan forces allied with some of their former enemies in the Amhara region there, the Fano insurgency, and a group in Afar on the eastern side against Ethiopian national defense forces, another Tigrayan group, the Tigray Peace Force, that is more aligned with Addis Ababa. and other sundry forces aligned with the government. Speaker 2 (3:51) There had been a peace deal in place before this. What's the broader background to this conflict? Speaker 3 (3:57) So there was a terrible war between November 2020 and November 2022, in which hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians, died, both in massacres and in starvation. And that was brought to an end by a peace settlement, more of a truce, really, that was signed in Pretoria in South Africa in November of 2022. And the idea was that that would settle the war. It would put in place an interim government. It would begin rehabilitation of the region. Now, that deal was never properly implemented. The resources simply weren't put in place. The guarantors of the deal, which were the African Union and the United States, did not put in the mechanisms to make sure it was properly implemented. And so both sides were backsliding. And then the last six months, what we've seen is on the Tigrayan side. The TPLF, which had sort of become very marginalized by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, pushing back, taking over the government in Tigray, and then actually saying that the deal was dead, repudiating it, and saying that they were restoring the government that existed in Tigray before that war began back in 2020. Speaker 2 (5:17) So a few minutes ago, we actually got through to Bahane Gebre Christos, who is a former official foreign spokesperson for the Tigray People's Liberation Front. He's currently based in the US. But I asked him why the forces of the TPLF were fighting with the federal government forces now. Speaker 7 (5:38) The Ethiopian government has been preparing for offensive for the last one year. They deployed over 80 % of their troops to the Tigrayan border nine, ten months ago. And they started attacking Tigray and conduct what they started in 2020. Speaker 2 (5:54) You're saying that they fired first? Speaker 7 (5:57) Absolutely. As you know, they attacked the Tigrayan forces in western Tigray, in Sharirina. They attacked them in northwestern Tigray last month. And now, since August, they have been... striking civilians, infrastructure, schools with drones and fighter jets. So they have been conducting war for a long time. But now definitely the ground troops started to move. There Speaker 2 (6:24) had been a peace deal arranged after the last war. Can you tell us what happened with that deal? Speaker 7 (6:31) The Ethiopian government have never been committed to this agreement since day one. And they came up. and said that the TPLF is illegal. How can one abolish or make illegal a partner that has signed in an agreement? Then it follows they did a series of things not to implement the agreement. They didn't return Western Tigray. The 1.2, 1.3 million displaced people from Western Tigray are still in shelters, in transit camps. So, you know, they haven't shown any interest of doing that. Speaker 2 (7:09) Some of your leaders have said that the aim of the TPLF is actually to take the capital, Addis Ababa. Speaker 7 (7:15) The entire Ethiopian population is under existential threat. Every group in Ethiopia. So what has happened is... All armed opposition groups who have different objectives and goals have agreed to resist together. Speaker 2 (7:37) I mean, is it true that fighters from Eritrea are actually helping your forces at the moment? I mean, they're an old enemy, aren't they? Civilians might be very surprised to hear that there is this alliance going on, given the atrocities and the level of brutality in the last war that your forces had with Eritrea. Speaker 7 (7:55) What's happening is there has been an attempt to improve the neighbourly relations between peoples. This is people-to-people relationships that they are trying to establish. Speaker 2 (8:05) OK, so you say there's interaction between people, but for many civilians who are pretty exhausted of war already, there's food insecurity in the region. How many of those people have appetite for further war? And I come back to my previous question about the aim to try to reach the capital, Addis Ababa, and take it over. I mean, is that just a fanciful dream? Speaker 7 (8:28) Rebecca, you have raised an important issue. The people of Ethiopia. and includes the people of Tigray, do not want war. They know the consequences of war. The issue is there is a government that does not care at all about its peoples, and it's wiping them out. If there is any possibility of reaching a real peaceful settlement of this problem, they are ready. In the meantime, one has to understand that... What's happening in Ethiopia is not sustainable. It has to stop. In order to stop, we have to have an all-inclusive political process that would lead us into election and settle our differences and our problems with the decision of the people. If this is done, definitely the Ethiopian people are for it. It's not a political issue today in Ethiopia. It is about existence. You know, the people of Tigray have suffered a lot. There was a genocide that has taken place in Tigray that has to be recognised. Speaker 2 (9:31) So that was Bahane Gebre Christos there, former official spokesperson for the TPLF based in the USA. And Alex Duval is still with us. Alex, he mentioned there genocide. Is that an accepted definition of what happened? I mean, there were certainly investigations into war crimes. Speaker 3 (9:49) Well, there were investigations that were ongoing and they were blocked by the Ethiopian government. And most of those involved in the investigations believe that there was a very strong case to be made for genocide against both the Ethiopian government and its then allies in Eritrea, the Eritrean government. Speaker 2 (10:08) And he also talked about the TPLF working with other groups. How significant is that? And he also said Ethiopians generally want change. Speaker 3 (10:19) I think it's clear that Ethiopians want change. They have seen their country being changed from a beacon of developmentalism and hope. to one of decay, fragmentation, and very real prospect with major harvest failures of this year, of famine next year. But this alliance is really a tactical alliance. There is no shared political vision among these disparate groups. And the conductor of this orchestra is the Eritrean government, headed by President Isaias Afowoki, who since 2022 has... changed his position from being a friend and ally of Abiy Ahmed to becoming an adversary. And the two countries now in a state of proxy war, trying to undermine one another. And one of the criticisms, as you've mentioned, of the TPLF is that it is now in bed with a government that is ruthless and has committed untold atrocities against the Tigrayan people. Speaker 2 (11:25) Are you surprised that they are? Speaker 3 (11:27) So I think what Berhane is not saying is that it was not the TPLF that saved the Tigrayan people. The Tigrayan people in 2020-2021 rose up. in a remarkable solidarity against the extraordinary abuses that were being inflicted upon them. And having pushed out the Ethiopian federal forces and the Eritreans from Tigray, the next logical step would have been for the TPLF to say, thank you to the people of Tigray. Now we go for democracy. We go for reform. They didn't do that. And so what we see is a deeply corrupt... elite in power that has been involved in all sorts of trading gold through Eritrea in cahoots with Eritrean generals, people smuggling, and a number of different corrupt activities aimed really at enriching themselves rather than serving the people. Speaker 2 (12:25) And clearly, we've lost the line to Mr. Pahani, so he's not here to answer those criticisms. But in terms of what the Ethiopian government is saying at this point, what do you read into that? Speaker 3 (12:38) So the Ethiopian government is treading a fine line here, because strategically, it wants to remain on good terms with the United States. And the... Eritrean government has very recently mended fences with the US. And the main reason for that is that Eritrea has a very strategic coastline on the Red Sea, immediately opposite Yemen, where the Houthis are in control of the other shore. So, Abiy... is not in a position where his earlier rhetoric that he wants to go and seize the coastline of the Red Sea from Eritrea is going to get him any support in the international community, especially not