tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/isaias-afwerki-35686/articlesIsaias Afwerki – The Conversation2022-11-02T14:55:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1936362022-11-02T14:55:54Z2022-11-02T14:55:54ZEthiopia-Tigray war parties agree pause: expert insights into two years of devastating conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492781/original/file-20221101-18-5aqn3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Atlantide Phototravel via GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The main combatants in the two-year Ethiopia-Tigray war have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/african-union-parties-ethiopia-conflict-have-agreed-cease-hostilities-2022-11-02/">announced</a> a dramatic pause in hostilities. What started on November 3 2020 as a <a href="https://twitter.com/abiyahmedali/status/1326069599994056705?lang=en">swift armed mission</a> by Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed to bring the rebellious state of Tigray to order soon degenerated into a humanitarian nightmare in which innocent civilians have been killed and many more rendered homeless or destitute. </p>
<p>As many as <a href="https://martinplaut.com/2022/03/13/breaking-tigray-war-mortality-half-a-million-people-ghent-university/">500,000 people had died</a> as a result of war-related violence and famine by late 2022. In 2021, Ethiopia reported 5.1 million internally displaced people in 12 months. This, according to a <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ethiopia">report</a>, is the highest number internally displaced in any country in any single year. Millions more have fled to Sudan as northern Ethiopia, especially Tigray, remains cut off from food, water and medical aid.</p>
<p>Over the course of the war, various scholars have written important articles for The Conversation Africa on the war and its devastating consequences. Here are five essential reads.</p>
<h2>1. African Union’s failure to broker peace</h2>
<p>The African Union pledged in 2016 to “silence the guns” by the end of 2020: to end armed conflict on the continent. But until now the AU has not exerted its influence to broker a ceasefire or find peace over the past two years. </p>
<p>Most international actors, such as the UN, the US, the EU and the UK, condemned the resumption of hostilities in recent months and the involvement of Eritrea in the war. But the AU did not.</p>
<p>Mulugeta G Berhe <a href="https://theconversation.com/tigray-war-two-years-on-the-au-has-failed-to-broker-peace-and-silence-the-guns-192420">writes</a> that the AU’s chairperson and his high representative failed Africa at a critical moment.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/tigray-war-two-years-on-the-au-has-failed-to-broker-peace-and-silence-the-guns-192420">Tigray war: two years on, the AU has failed to broker peace and silence the guns</a>
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<h2>2. Why Tigray’s army is holding off the onslaught</h2>
<p>For almost two years, the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea – along with Amhara regional forces and militia – have waged war against Tigray’s regional government and society. Tigray is a tiny ethnonational group that makes up about 6% of Ethiopia’s population of 121 million. Yet it has been able to hold off well-armed military forces.</p>
<p>Asafa Jalata, a sociologist who has written extensively on the cultures of nationalism in the region, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tigray-has-resisted-ethiopias-far-greater-military-might-for-two-years-heres-why-neither-side-is-giving-in-192252">sets out</a> the historical roots of Tigray’s resolve to keep at bay a far greater military might than its own.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tigray-has-resisted-ethiopias-far-greater-military-might-for-two-years-heres-why-neither-side-is-giving-in-192252">Tigray has resisted Ethiopia's far greater military might for two years -- here's why neither side is giving in</a>
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<h2>3. The history behind aid blockades</h2>
<p>Nearly 40% of northern Ethiopia’s six million inhabitants face “an extreme lack of food”. This is not the result of a natural disaster, <a href="https://theconversation.com/famine-in-ethiopia-the-roots-lie-in-eritreas-long-running-feud-with-tigrayans-181866">writes</a> Martin Plaut: </p>
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<p>it is a famine induced by the closure of the borders of Tigray by Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali forces, reinforced by militia from Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar ethnic groups.</p>
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<p>Asmara’s determination to crush the Tigrayans stems from the longstanding, complex and visceral enmity between the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front - now renamed the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice - and the governing Tigray People’s Liberation Front.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/famine-in-ethiopia-the-roots-lie-in-eritreas-long-running-feud-with-tigrayans-181866">Famine in Ethiopia: the roots lie in Eritrea's long-running feud with Tigrayans</a>
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<h2>4. Healthcare workers are ‘fair game’</h2>
<p>Tragic stories of human suffering have emerged from Tigray since 2020 – such as women’s malnutrition resulting in childbirth complications and deaths. It’s not only the patients who are suffering, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tigrays-healthcare-workers-havent-been-paid-in-over-a-year-and-bear-the-brunt-of-the-war-192344">write</a> Hailay Gesesew, Fasika Amdesellassie and Fisaha Tesfay. Despite being protected by international laws, healthcare workers and health facilities in the region are extremely vulnerable. Since the war broke out, healthcare workers have lost their jobs, been displaced, and been wounded, threatened or killed.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/tigrays-healthcare-workers-havent-been-paid-in-over-a-year-and-bear-the-brunt-of-the-war-192344">Tigray's healthcare workers haven't been paid in over a year -- and bear the brunt of the war</a>
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<h2>5. Centuries of the world’s history at risk</h2>
<p>The Tigray region’s heritage sites have been deliberately targeted. The bombing and destruction of centuries-old churches, as well as other religious sites, strikes at traditional power structures. To appreciate the weight of these attacks, the role and influence of the church in Ethiopia needs to be understood, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-war-in-tigray-risks-wiping-out-centuries-of-the-worlds-history-179829">explains</a> Hagos Abrha Abay. The church underpins historical and modern claims of political and military authority in Ethiopia. It has shaped community identity and informed cultural narratives.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-war-in-tigray-risks-wiping-out-centuries-of-the-worlds-history-179829">Ethiopia's war in Tigray risks wiping out centuries of the world's history</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Parties to the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have agreed to end hostilities after two years. Here is a selection of previously published articles on its devastating consequences.Julius Maina, Regional Editor East AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1922522022-10-16T07:51:53Z2022-10-16T07:51:53ZTigray has resisted Ethiopia’s far greater military might for two years – here’s why neither side is giving in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489408/original/file-20221012-20-g31ivm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters in the UK demonstrate against Ethiopia's Tigray war in October 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/tigray-has-resisted-ethiopias-far-greater-military-might-for-two-years-heres-why-neither-side-is-giving-in-192252&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>The Ethio-Tigray war started on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378">4 November 2020</a>. For almost two years, the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea – along with Amhara regional forces and militia – have waged war against Tigray’s regional government and society. </p>
<p>Tigray is a tiny ethnonational group that makes up about <a href="https://www.atlasofhumanity.com/tigray">6%</a> of Ethiopia’s population of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ethiopia-population/">121 million</a>. Yet, it has been able to hold off well-armed military forces.</p>
<p>As a sociologist who has <a href="https://works.bepress.com/asafa_jalata/">written extensively</a> on the cultures of nationalism in the region, I have studied the deep and complex roots of this conflict. I believe that understanding its history is key to comprehending how Tigray has developed the resolve to hold off a far greater military might than its own.</p>
<p>Neither the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea nor those of Tigray accept the principles of compromise, peaceful coexistence or equal partnership. According to their political cultures, winners take all. It’s zero-sum politics.</p>
<h2>The war today</h2>
<p>The Ethiopian National Defence Force <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/battle-mekelle-and-its-implications-ethiopia">captured Mekelle</a>, Tigray’s capital city, on 28 November 2020. The Ethiopian army was helped by Eritrean and Amhara military forces. </p>
<p>Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, congratulated his army and allied forces for what looked like a quick victory. </p>
<p>However, the Tigrayan Defence Force made a <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/battle-mekelle-and-its-implications-ethiopia">tactical retreat</a>. Its troops moved to rural areas and used guerrilla operations supported by war veterans. This strategy demonstrated Tigray’s effective fighting force, which was first developed in the 1970s.</p>
<p>As a result, eight months after the start of the war, Tigrayan troops returned to their capital. The Ethiopian army <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/world/asia/tigray-mekelle-ethiopia-retreat.html">retreated</a> from Mekelle and other cities.</p>
<p>Tigrayan troops then invaded the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, and almost made it into Finfinnee (<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/tigrayan-forces-advance-toward-ethiopian-capital/av-59712725">Addis Ababa</a>) in November 2021. However, they soon retreated to their region.</p>
<p>Since then, Tigrayan forces have controlled and administered most of Tigray. </p>
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<p>The Ethio-Tigray war has been <a href="https://mereja.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=305544#p1331271">devastating</a> for Tigrayans. They have faced mass killings, military bombardment, rape, looting and the destruction of property. The conflict has denied them access to food, electricity, telecommunications, medicine, banking services and other necessities. </p>
<p>Yet they support the Tigray Defence Force. To understand why requires a deeper reading of Ethiopia’s history.</p>
<h2>A complex history</h2>
<p>Two Amhara emperors and one Tigrayan emperor laid the foundation of the modern imperial state of Ethiopia. The first emperor of Abyssinia/Ethiopia was Tewodros (1855-1868). He was followed by Yohannes IV (1872-1889) of Tigray and then Menelik II (1889-1913). </p>
<p>Under Menelik II, the Amhara state elite replaced Tigray’s leaders. They made Tigrayan society a junior partner in building the Ethiopian empire. </p>
<p>But Tigrayan nationalists believe their society was the foundation of the Ethiopian state. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-war-in-tigray-risks-wiping-out-centuries-of-the-worlds-history-179829">Ethiopia's war in Tigray risks wiping out centuries of the world's history</a>
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<p>In the last decades of the 1800s, the Ethiopian empire <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9781685855772/html?lang=en">expanded</a> from its northern core of Tigray and Amhara by colonising the Oromo and other ethnonational groups. </p>
<p>It established slavery, the nafxanya-gabbar system (semi-slavery) and the colonial land-holding system by taking the land of conquered people. </p>
<p>The nafxanya (gun-carrying settlers) elite – led by the Amhara – dislodged the Tigrayan elite from Ethiopian state power. Tigray was pushed to the periphery of an Amhara-dominated society. This created <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9781685855772/html?lang=en">political rivalry</a> between the two groups. </p>
<p>The status and living conditions of the Tigrayan elite and people deteriorated. This, along with several wars in the region, aggravated political, economic and social problems. </p>
<p>Accumulated grievances and many forms of resistance produced the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in 1975. It aimed to <a href="https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/a-political-history-of-the-tigray-peoples-liberation-front-1975-1">liberate Tigrayans</a> from Amhara-led governments. This helped develop Tigrayan nationalism. </p>
<h2>Tigray’s two nationalisms</h2>
<p>Tigrayans maintain two forms of nationalism. </p>
<p>The first promotes Tigrayan autonomy, self-reliance and development. </p>
<p>The second is Tigrayan Ethiopianism. This theoretically maintains Ethiopia’s current geopolitical boundary, with its decentralised political structures where different population groups have some autonomy. </p>
<p>After building military power in the 1980s, Tigrayan elite <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Capital-and-Prospects-for-Democracy-in-Botswana-and-Ethiopia/Jalata/p/book/9780367786373">dominated</a> other ethnonational groups, particularly the Oromo, the empire’s largest ethnonational group. </p>
<p>Between 1991 and 2018, the Tigrayan elite <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-the-war-in-tigray-150147">controlled</a> state power and the political economy. The Tigrayan elite created a pseudo-democracy. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front was the mover and shaker of the Ethiopian state. </p>
<p>The Oromo expressed their collective grievances with this political arrangement through the struggles of the Oromo Liberation Front. The Qeerroo/Qarree (Oromo youth) movement got involved between 2014 and 2018. This eventually <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-oromo-protests-mark-a-change-in-ethiopias-political-landscape-63779">dislodged Tigrayan leadership</a> from Ethiopian central power in 2018. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-young-ethiopians-in-oromia-and-sidama-fought-for-change-161440">Why young Ethiopians in Oromia and Sidama fought for change</a>
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<p>Abiy was a member of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation, a subsidiary political party of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The Tigrayan Front, alongside its allied organisations, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/28/abiy-ahmed-elected-as-chairman-of-ethiopias-ruling-coalition">elected Abiy</a> as Ethiopia’s prime minister in April 2018. He later turned on his support base. </p>
<p>Once he came to power, Abiy and his allies believed they wouldn’t stay in control if they did not destroy Tigrayan and Oromo nationalists. These were symbolised by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo youth movement. </p>
<h2>Zero-sum politics</h2>
<p>Tigrayan and Amhara elites express and practice Ethiopianism differently.</p>
<p>The Amhara elite dominated Ethiopia from 1889 to 1991. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front overthrew them in 1991. </p>
<p>The wealth and experience Tigrayan elite accumulated over nearly three decades increased their national organisational capacity. This has helped them in the current war. </p>
<p>The Oromo have rejected the dominance and tyranny of both these groups. They have carried out their <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-oromo-protests-mark-a-change-in-ethiopias-political-landscape-63779">liberation struggle</a>.</p>
<p>Abiy and his Amhara collaborators are fighting Tigrayans, Oromos and others to control Ethiopian state power. Their winning the war in Tigray and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-other-conflict-whats-driving-the-violence-in-oromia-187035">Oromia</a> would allow the Abiy regime to continue a modified version of Ethiopia’s pre-1991 policy. </p>
<p>For Tigrayans, losing this battle would be equivalent to losing political power and returning to victimisation, poverty and the threat of annihilation. </p>
<h2>Uncertain future</h2>
<p>Given their complicated political history, reconciling the central government and the Tigrayan regional government is challenging. Even if these two groups negotiate a peace deal, conflict will continue if the Oromo are left out of the process. </p>
<p>If Tigray and Oromia’s political problems aren’t correctly understood and resolved, conflicts will continue until the collapse of the Ethiopian state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asafa Jalata does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leaders at the centre of the Ethio-Tigray war don’t believe in equal partnership. In their political cultures, winners take all.Asafa Jalata, Professor of Sociology and Global and Africana Studies, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1839622022-05-30T14:10:56Z2022-05-30T14:10:56ZWhat US re-entry into Somalia means for the Horn of Africa and for bigger powers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465988/original/file-20220530-26-gv2m4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US Navy sailors for the Combined Joint Task Force in the Horn of Africa off the coast of Djibouti.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The US has announced it will resume a limited military presence in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/us/politics/biden-military-somalia.html">Somalia</a>. The former administration withdrew troops from the country in 2020. The mission of the American soldiers is still what it has been for the last <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-somalia/exclusive-u-s-discloses-secret-somalia-military-presence-up-to-120-troops-idINKBN0F800V20140703">15 years</a>: to advise and assist Somali forces. US troops will not be directly involved in conflict. Their number, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/16/biden-approves-deployment-of-hundreds-of-us-troops-to-somalia">450 to 500</a>, is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55196130">smaller</a> than the last deployment. </p>
<p>The decision to redeploy in Somalia might appear to be surprising, for two important reasons. First, US president Joe Biden promised during his campaign to avoid the <a href="https://joebiden.com/americanleadership/">“forever wars”</a> against terror lasting since 2002. None of these wars were <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2021.1959130">ever fully won</a> and remain unpopular with the US electorate. It is also surprising in the light of moves <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/marine-corps-radical-shift-toward-china">to restructure the US military to meet a threat from China</a>. </p>
<p>What better explains this decision, however, is the <a href="https://www.state.gov/united-with-ukraine/">renewed emphasis</a> on the old rivalry with Russia since Russia’s Ukrainian intervention. </p>
<p>Announcing the redeployment, the Pentagon <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3033345/us-to-resume-small-persistent-presence-in-somalia/">claimed</a> it was partly for operational security. After their withdrawal in 2020, American special forces continued to train Somali soldiers outside Somalia, and at times travelled in and out of the country. The Pentagon said the redeployment would end the ad hoc support by creating bases inside Somalia.</p>
<p>Unofficially, American officials have claimed that the redeployment is due to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/16/us-troops-somalia-return/">worsening security conditions in Somalia</a>. This argument is open to question: the security situation is in reality relatively stable. </p>
<p>What is without doubt is that the deployment will have a direct influence on US-Russian rivalries in the region. </p>
<h2>Military situation in Somalia</h2>
<p>Somalia’s security landscape has not changed much since the US pullout over the previous year. The frontlines between the al-Qaida affiliated Harakat al-Shabaab, the Somali government, and the Forces of the African Union in Somalia have remained largely the same during the American absence. So has the rate of <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-terrorism-index-2022">terror attacks</a>. Al-Shabaab <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2021.1959130">has not expanded</a> its territories though it does exercise control in areas supposedly under government control. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/17330-into-darkness-scrutinizing-economic-explanations-for-african-jihad">Several researchers</a> have reported that al-Shabaab is booming economically and is able to infiltrate the Somali security services. But this was also the case before the American withdrawal from Somalia.</p>
<p>What has changed is the international setting. Over the past few years the China-US rivalry has intensified. And over the past year, the US-Russia rivalry has exploded, partly influenced by the outbreak of the Ukraine war. These rivalries have large scale impacts at the Horn of Africa.</p>
<p>It is notable that the American redeployment announcement came days after the electoral defeat of Somali president <a href="https://raadinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/a_near_end_to_somali_election.pdf">Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (“Farmaajo”)</a>. The former Somali president was a close ally of Russia’s new friends in the Horn of Africa – Ethiopia and Eritrea. The <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/15/somalia-elects-hassan-sheikh-mohamud-as-president">newly elected</a> Somali president is much cooler towards Ethiopia and Eritrea. He has also pointedly <a href="https://twitter.com/TheVillaSomalia/status/1526546816275255297?s=20&t=by7gPoc3Q4IRp6KfFv07Xw">welcomed</a> the US redeployment. </p>
<h2>Post-Ukrainian reality in the Horn of Africa</h2>
<p>Farmaajo enjoyed a close alliance with Ethiopian president Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea’s president Issayas Afeworki. Ethiopian forces <a href="https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/potential-impact-ethiopias-war-tigray-somali-stability-28933">helped</a> Farmaajo insert his candidates in states hostile to him by, for example, suppressing his opponents. This was the case in Somalia’s south west regional state during the election there in 2018. They also backed Farmaajo against his political rival president Ahmed “Madobe” of the Somali Jubaland regional-state in 2019.</p>
<p>In return, Farmaajo sent his Somali forces to <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20210609-un-report-says-somali-army-participated-in-tigray-war">fight on the side of Abiy Ahmed</a> in the Ethiopian civil war. And Issayas Afeworki <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/foreign-powers-are-intervening-in-ethiopia-they-may-only-make-the-conflict-worse/2021/11/19/55266426-487d-11ec-95dc-5f2a96e00fa3_story.html">intervened</a> in Ethiopia’s civil war and <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/africa_clandestine-training-somali-forces-eritrea-stirs-families-concern/6202295.html">trained Somali forces</a>. </p>
<p>The Ethiopian civil war and the Ukrainian war increasingly saw the United States at odds with this tripartite alliance. First the US criticised the Ethiopian government for its actions in Tigray, which the United States saw as heavy handed and filled with human rights transgressions. The US special envoy to the Horn of Africa <a href="https://www.state.gov/a-perspective-on-the-ethiopian-u-s-relationship-after-a-year-of-conflict/">stated</a>:</p>
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<p>As the war approaches its one-year anniversary, the United States and others cannot continue ‘business as usual’ relations with the government of Ethiopia. </p>
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<p>The worsening US-Ethiopian relations were also fuelled by a Russian military cooperation <a href="https://anchor.fm/krulak-center/episodes/MES-Research-Talk---Dr--Stig-Jarle-Hansen--Phoenix-Rising-U-S--Strategic-Competition-in-the-Red-Sea-Zone--Horn-of-Africa-with-China-and-Russia-e1f03du">agreement</a> with Ethiopia. This came in a period when Ethiopia had lost a lot of Russian produced materials in the battlefields of Tigray. Anti-American demonstrations took place in Addis Ababa, with Russian flags and <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/05/31/why-are-protestors-in-ethiopia-and-mali-waving-russian-flags/">pro-Russian slogans</a>. And the US imposed sanctions on Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders.</p>
<p>The relationship between the US and Eritrea and Ethiopia was worsening before the Ukrainian war. When the Ukrainian war broke out, Eritrea <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2022/03/09/figure-of-the-week-african-countries-votes-on-the-un-resolution-condemning-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/">fully supported</a> Russia at the United Nations while Ethiopia abstained from a vote condemning the action. That’s not all. The US was also worried about <a href="https://anchor.fm/krulak-center/episodes/MES-Research-Talk---Dr--Stig-Jarle-Hansen--Phoenix-Rising-U-S--Strategic-Competition-in-the-Red-Sea-Zone--Horn-of-Africa-with-China-and-Russia-e1f03du" title=") in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and [Russian attempts](https://anchor.fm/krulak-center/episodes/MES-Research-Talk---Dr--Stig-Jarle-Hansen--Phoenix-Rising-U-S--Strategic-Competition-in-the-Red-Sea-Zone--Horn-of-Africa-with-China-and-Russia-e1f03du ">Chinese investments</a> to secure a naval base in Eritrea.</p>
<h2>US deployment timing</h2>
<p>The timing of the American redeployment in Somalia has two possible explanations in my view. It might have been delayed until after the recent elections in order to insulate it from local politics. Or one could see it as the US way to shore up a president with the will and potential to withstand the Russian-backed alliance of Eritrea and Ethiopia in the Horn. That would in turn shore up the US and its allies against Russia. </p>
<p>The latter point will be an outcome of the deployment anyway. It may well turn out to be the most important outcome, given that US engagement over 13 years has failed to bring about the end of al-Shabaab. The insurgents remain strong, and rich, but short of the ability to overrun the Somali government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stig Jarle Hansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decision to redeploy in Somalia represents a renewed emphasis on the old rivalry with Russia.Stig Jarle Hansen, Associate Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Life SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1818662022-05-09T13:35:17Z2022-05-09T13:35:17ZFamine in Ethiopia: the roots lie in Eritrea’s long-running feud with Tigrayans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461524/original/file-20220505-14-mcsp8r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman receives food aid at a distribution centre in Ethiopia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jemal Countess/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The war in northern Ethiopia that began in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378">November 2020</a> has left millions in Tigray on the brink of famine. </p>
<p><a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/aid-convoys-ethiopias-tigray-truce-180227148.html?guccounter=1">Reports</a> suggest that nearly 40% of the region’s six million inhabitants face “an extreme lack of food”. Shortages have forced aid workers to deliver medicines and other crucial supplies “sometimes by foot”. </p>
<p>A few convoys have been allowed to enter Tigray, but the United Nations <a href="https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/ethiopia">says</a> convoys of at least 115 trucks are required daily, yet the entire region is classified “hard to reach”. This indicates that it is effectively inaccessible. </p>
<p>This is not the result of a natural disaster: it is a famine induced by the closure of the borders of Tigray by Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali forces, reinforced by militia from Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar ethnic groups. </p>
<p>Since the Tigrayans’ army <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/20/tplf-rebels-announce-retreat-to-ethiopias-tigray-region">retreated</a> into their region in December 2021, they have been surrounded by armies that have blockaded Tigray. </p>
<p>A handful of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/aid-convoy-enters-ethiopian-territory-controlled-by-tigray-forces-first-time-3-2022-04-01/">aid convoys</a> have been allowed through. They have been far fewer than the humanitarian assistance required daily to feed the population. </p>
<p>The blockade and resulting famine are well recognised. What is poorly understood are the origins of this crisis. </p>
<p>They lie in a bitter feud between Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki and Tigrayans that dates back to the 1970s, and the president’s determination not to allow them to rebuild their forces by cutting their supply lines to Sudan. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03071847.2021.1981630?src=&journalCode=rusi20">paper</a> I wrote last year, <a href="https://eritreahub.org/the-tigray-famine-lessons-from-1984-85">I revisited this history</a>, in particular the seminal moment in relations between the Eritrean and Tigrayan liberation movements. </p>
<h2>Lessons from the 1983-1985 famine</h2>
<p>The Ethiopian famine of 1983 to 1985 was the result of a combination of a devastating drought and a ferocious war as Eritreans fought for their independence and Tigrayans for their rights. </p>
<p>Both liberation movements used a lifeline through Sudan to provide aid to millions. They also brought in supplies essential for their war efforts. </p>
<p>It is the memory of the utility of these supply lines that explains why the Eritrean, Ethiopian and Somali <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/is-another-regional-alliance-what-the-horn-needs">alliance</a> fought so hard to sever ties between Tigray and Sudan when the current conflict began in November 2020. </p>
<p>Their aim was clear: to cut possible routes to Sudan, as well as meet the grievances of the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/28/ethiopia-tigray-war-amhara-abiy-ahmed-expansionism/">Amhara community,</a> who claimed that Western Tigray was part of its ancestral lands. </p>
<p>Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/11/ethiopia-unlawful-shelling-tigray-urban-areas">reported</a> that the attack on Humera (at the tri-point of Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea) began on 9 November 2020. Within two days, the town was in the hands of the invading forces. </p>
<p>Tigrayan forces were forced northwards and eastwards. Tens of thousands of Tigrayan civilians were <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/over-1-million-people-displaced-due-conflict-northern-ethiopia-iom-dtm">forcibly expelled</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-people-from-war-torn-tigray-told-us-about-the-state-of-their-lives-amid-the-war-180594">What people from war-torn Tigray told us about the state of their lives amid the war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Afwerki’s determination to crush the Tigrayans – who are, after all, the government of a region in a neighbouring state – needs unravelling. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2003.9659773">enmity</a> between the Afwerki-led Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) – now renamed the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice – and the governing Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is longstanding, complex and visceral. </p>
<h2>A toxic fued between rebel groups</h2>
<p>Afwerki’s loathing came about because of deep-seated differences over political strategy, which originated in student politics in Addis Ababa in the <a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/without-troops-and-tanks-humanitarian-intervention-in-ethiopia-and-eritrea-by-mark-duffield-john-prendergast-hardcover/">1970s</a>. But – perhaps above all else – there was the question of which liberation movement was the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/peasant-revolution-in-ethiopia/E3B7988793DC3063511E3765B026EE16">region’s ‘top dog’</a>. </p>
<p>This feud festered over time, but came to the fore at the worst possible moment: the famine that struck Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in 1983 to 1985. Their quarrel peaked just as huge quantities of aid were being trucked from Sudan into the remote areas of Eritrea and Tigray held by the respective liberation movements. </p>
<p>Both rebel groups had established relief subsidiaries – the Eritrean Relief Association and the Relief Society of Tigray – to work with international humanitarian organisations to provide the resources needed to feed their people. They were remarkably successful. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legal-implications-of-humanitarian-aid-blockades-154847">The legal implications of humanitarian aid blockades</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Some three-quarters of a million tonnes of supplies, worth around $350 million at the time, were transported into rebel-held areas from Sudan before, during and after the famine, from 1981 to 1991. </p>
<p>The relief operation was not immune to divisions between the Eritrean and Tigrayan political organisations that had established them. </p>
<p>In the mid-1980s, these divisions spilled over into an open dispute. There was a complete <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10149208-historical-dictionary-of-eritrea">suspension of communication</a> between the Eritrean and Tigrayan liberation fronts from 1985 to 1988. </p>
<p>Afwerki, determined to show the Tigrayans that the Eritrean movement was the most powerful actor in the region, ordered his forces in 1985 to cut the road through territory they held and on which vital supplies from Sudan got into Tigray.</p>
<p>Closing the border became etched on Tigrayan consciousness. Recalling the suffering the Eritreans inflicted, a Tigrayan leader <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/alemseged-abay-identity-jilted-or-reimagining-identity-the-divergent-paths-of-the-eritrean-and-tigrayan-nationalist-struggles-trenton-nj-red-sea-press-1998-232-pp-1499-isbn-1-56902-072-8-paperback/5EFF1C492081169A49828C0EAB235BB7">declared</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not hesitate to categorise it a ‘savage act’. It must be recorded in history like that! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tekleweini Assefa, the head of the Relief Society of Tigray, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/alemseged-abay-identity-jilted-or-reimagining-identity-the-divergent-paths-of-the-eritrean-and-tigrayan-nationalist-struggles-trenton-nj-red-sea-press-1998-232-pp-1499-isbn-1-56902-072-8-paperback/5EFF1C492081169A49828C0EAB235BB7">made clear</a> the bitterness he felt about the Eritrean front’s decision.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They closed the road for about two years and we had no access to the Sudan for one month until we built a new road ourselves. And that was at the height of the famine!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Tigrayan movement was forced to march more than 100,000 Tigrayans across the difficult terrain of western Tigray into Sudan where they could receive international assistance. Many of those who made the journey were old, children, frail or ill. As many as 13,000 people are <a href="http://www.harep.org/Africa/7219.pdf">reported</a> to have died along the way. </p>
<p>Relations were eventually repaired and the two movements went on to coordinate their offensives against the Ethiopian government. This culminated in the capture of their respective capitals in coordinated operations in 1991. The Eritrean liberation front was in power in Eritrea, while the Tigrayan front led a coalition government in Ethiopia. </p>
<p>But the rift never really healed. Rather, the wounds festered, leading to the disastrous <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44004212">Ethiopia-Eritrea border war</a> of 1998 to 2000. It also underlies Afwerki’s unwavering determination to destroy the Tigrayans as a political force. </p>
<h2>Unresolved tensions</h2>
<p>In 2018, Afwerki welcomed the end of the Tigray-led government and the entry of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea was <a href="https://www.ethioembassy.org.uk/ethiopia-and-eritrea-sign-peace-agreement-in-saudi-arabia/">sealed</a> in Saudi Arabia on 16 September 2018. </p>
<p>However, Afwerki continued to plot against the Tigrayans. In his <a href="http://www.afrikakomitee.ch/eritrea/2018_08_Eritrea-Ethiopia.pdf">2018 speech</a> to the Eritrean nation, he declared that <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-of-Contemporary-Ethiopia-Ethnic-Federalism-and-Authoritarian/Gedamu/p/book/9781032029047">their loss of power</a> had critical implications for the region and that the “TPLF’s toxic and malignant legacy” needed to be removed. It was an attitude that contributed to the November 2020 war. </p>
<p>But Afwerki knew from experience that winning that war required cutting the links between Tigray and Sudan. </p>
<p>Western Tigray, linking the region and Sudan, remains the most deeply contested question and will be extraordinarily difficult to resolve. It is claimed by both the Tigrayan and Amhara people. </p>
<p>Whoever holds Western Tigray holds the future of Tigray. This is the key lesson from the famine of 1983-85 and one reason it is such a complex question. As the Crisis Group <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ethiopia/building-ethiopias-fragile-truce">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The future of Amhara-occupied Western Tigray is the thorniest issue to resolve.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181866/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies of the University of London</span></em></p>The origins of Ethiopia’s food crisis can be traced to a bitter feud between Eritrean and Tigrayan liberation fighters.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1755912022-01-30T07:32:59Z2022-01-30T07:32:59ZEritrea is involved in Tigray to boost its stature. Why the strategy could backfire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442673/original/file-20220126-19-1el1euu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki (L) and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at an event in Ethiopia in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Eritrean military has been involved in the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region since the conflict broke out <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378">in November 2020</a>. Eritrea shares a <a href="https://sovereignlimits.com/boundaries/eritrea-ethiopia-land">1,000 km border with Ethiopia</a>, including with Tigray. It sent thousands of soldiers in support of the Ethiopian federal forces in their operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.</p>
<p>These actions have both prolonged and worsened the hugely <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ethiopia/b171-ethiopias-tigray-war-deadly-dangerous-stalemate#:%7E:text=Ethiopia%E2%80%99s%20Tigray%20War%3A%20A%20Deadly%2C%20Dangerous%20Stalemate%20Both,the%20war%20zone%2C%20while%20maintaining%20pressure%20for%20talks.">destructive conflict</a>. </p>
<p>Eritrea’s involvement also has wider implications. It represents an attempt by Asmara to reassert itself on the regional stage, following two decades of relative diplomatic isolation.</p>
<p>The large-scale commitment of soldiers – as well as logistical and political support for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed – is the result of a remarkable turnaround in relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa. After almost two decades of hostility, Abiy struck a peace deal with Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-legal-materials/article/joint-declaration-of-peace-and-friendship-between-eritrea-and-ethiopia/76C651A25602F6DF3E2D62B01BC5984E">July 2018 </a>. This appeared to usher in a new era of stability and cooperation. </p>
<p>But that’s not what transpired. In the following months, Abiy intensified his programme of political reform in Ethiopia. He <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ethiopia/269-managing-ethiopias-unsettled-transition">consolidated his power</a> at the expense of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The movement had <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/understanding-contemporary-ethiopia/">dominated politics in Ethiopia since 1991</a>.</p>
<p>The front was also Eritrea’s bitterest enemy. There had been a troubled history of relations between it and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front dating back to the 1970s. This antagonism culminated in a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/0384AC30F3C8F59E15F88AE823623DA7/S000197200009166Xa.pdf/old_problems_in_new_conflicts_some_observations_on_eritrea_and_its_relations_with_tigray_from_liberation_struggle_to_interstate_war.pdf">between 1998 and 2000</a>.</p>
<p>The outbreak of the war in Tigray served a number of purposes for Isaias. Firstly, it gave him the opportunity to end Eritrea’s long-standing international isolation. It did this by enabling him to exercise influence in a conflict which threatened to completely destabilise the region. This was a deeply worrying prospect to a range of international actors.</p>
<p>Secondly, it reasserted his influence in Ethiopia’s internal affairs. </p>
<p>And lastly it provided an opportunity to seek revenge on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The front’s leadership outwitted and outgunned Eritrea militarily in the 1998-2000 war. It also outmanoeuvred Eritrea diplomatically in the years following the conflict.</p>
<h2>Eritrea’s opportunistic policy</h2>
<p>The government in Asmara has pursued an opportunistic foreign policy. Its aim has essentially been to gain regional superiority at <a href="https://libcat.simmons.edu/Record/b2158131/TOC">Ethiopia’s</a> expense. </p>
<p>Eritrea has sought to exercise leverage by getting involved in others’ conflicts. For much of the 2000s and 2010s, for instance, Asmara defied the international consensus on Somalia. This consensus was primarily orchestrated by the government in Ethiopia, at the time led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Reaching the consensus involved the creation of a Transitional Federal Government with broad international support. </p>
<p>Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers, supported in the air by the US, launched offensives against al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group which Eritrea was accused of supporting.</p>
<p>This led to the 2009 imposition of <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2009/sc9833.doc.htm">sanctions on Eritrea</a>. There were also interventions in Darfur and eastern Sudan by the Eritrean government.</p>
<p>Eritrea’s regional policy has largely been influenced by Ethiopia, its much more powerful southerly neighbour. But Ethiopia has represented both an obstacle and an opportunity in the pursuit of regional dominance. </p>
<p>In many respects, the single biggest obstacle facing the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front regime in Asmara is a strong, united Ethiopia. A country capable of dominating the region in economic, military and diplomatic terms – and especially one covertly or overtly hostile to Eritrea itself. This was the case under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Africa/bpethiopiaeritrea.pdf">regime</a> led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. </p>
<p>A weakened and disunited Ethiopia – with at least some political actors who are easy to influence – therefore represents an opportunity for Eritrea’s interests. This is because the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’s vision for the country is as regional gatekeeper and pivot – secure in itself, cohesive and militarily potent. </p>
<p>In search of that status, the best scenario is to have Ethiopia unstable enough to allow opportunities for intervention and influence. Asmara would also want to be able to justify prolonged militarisation, which has become the hallmark of independent Eritrean nationhood. But, it wants to avoid Ethiopia’s total collapse. </p>
<p>Asmara’s best-case scenario is a prolonged, unresolved conflict in Ethiopia in which the presence of Eritrean forces and political support are still required by Addis Ababa. </p>
<p>Abiy’s assent to power and the marginalisation of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front – combined with widespread and growing political protest in the preceding years – presented just such an opportunity. </p>
<h2>Risky strategy</h2>
<p>But this is a risky strategy. </p>
<p>Isaias has essentially harnessed his cause to that of Abiy. When things were going well against the Tigrayan forces – as in late 2020 and early 2021 – it looked like a justifiable policy, however catastrophic for the civilian population. But it could backfire. </p>
<p>There have been signs that negotiations between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan leadership may be <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ethiopia/rare-chance-peace-ethiopia#:%7E:text=A%20Rare%20Chance%20for%20Peace%20in%20Ethiopia%20Tigray%E2%80%99s,should%20step%20up%20to%20provide%20support%20for%20talks.">possible</a>. </p>
<p>If there is to be serious dialogue between Addis Ababa and Mekele, the Tigrayan leadership will demand the withdrawal of Eritrean forces and Isaias’ removal from discussions over Ethiopia’s future. Abiy will need to concede this. In such a scenario, Isaias will quickly find himself isolated. This would take him back to the pariah status he has occupied for most of the last two <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/eritrea/eritrea-siege-state">decades</a>. </p>
<p>Further, in the longer term, an Ethiopia where various parties are reconciled to one another’s legitimacy could once again become a hostile entity on Eritrea’s southern flank. </p>
<p>Involvement in other people’s wars is inherently risky business. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front regime has frequently played with fire. It has done so domestically and regionally. Yet, to date, it has seemingly defied geopolitical gravity.</p>
<p>But the Eritrean army’s disproportionately violent and inhumane intervention in Ethiopia in pursuit of payback against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the regional stature Isaias has long craved could result in the most destructive blowback imaginable: a coalescence of Ethiopian antagonists and domestic opposition that presents an existential threat to the Eritrean government itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Reid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The war in Tigray appears to have boosted Eritrea’s efforts at regional pre-eminence. But it could backfire.Richard Reid, Professor of African History, St Cross College, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1510422020-11-30T09:24:17Z2020-11-30T09:24:17ZConflict between Tigray and Eritrea – the long standing faultline in Ethiopian politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371758/original/file-20201127-24-m81m1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Ethiopan soldier mans a position near Zala Anbesa in the northern Tigray region of the country, about 1,6 kilometres from the Eritrean border.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20201115-rockets-fired-from-ethiopia-s-tigray-region-hit-eritrea-capital-govt-source">missile attack</a> by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front on Eritrea in mid-November transformed an internal Ethiopian crisis into a transnational one. In the midst of escalating internal conflict between Ethiopia’s northernmost province, Tigray, and the federal government, it was a stark reminder of a historical rivalry that continues to shape and reshape Ethiopia.</p>
<p>The rivalry between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the movement which has governed Eritrea in all but name for the past 30 years – the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front – goes back several decades. </p>
<p>The histories of Eritrea and Ethiopia have long been closely intertwined. This is especially true of Tigray and central Eritrea. These territories occupy the central massif of the Horn of Africa. Tigrinya-speakers are the predominant ethnic group in both Tigray and in the adjacent Eritrean highlands. </p>
<p>The enmity between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front dates to the mid-1970s, when the Tigrayan front was founded in the midst of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/peasant-revolution-in-ethiopia/E3B7988793DC3063511E3765B026EE16">political turmoil in Ethiopia</a>. The authoritarian Marxist regime – known as <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ethiopia/history-dergue.htm">the Derg</a> (Amharic for ‘committee’) – inflicted violence upon millions of its own citizens. It was soon confronted with a range of armed insurgencies and socio-political movements. These included Tigray and Eritrea, where the resistance was most ferocious.</p>
<p>The Tigrayan front was at first close to the Eritrean front, which had been founded in 1970 to fight for independence from Ethiopia. Indeed, the Eritreans helped train some of the first Tigrayan recruits in 1975-6, in their shared struggle against Ethiopian government forces for social revolution and the right to self-determination. </p>
<p>But in the midst of the war against the Derg regime, the relationship quickly soured over ethnic and national identity. There were also differences over the demarcation of borders, military tactics and ideology. The Tigrayan front eventually recognised the Eritreans’ right to self-determination, if grudgingly, and resolved to fight for the liberation of all Ethiopian peoples from the tyranny of the Derg regime.</p>
<p>Each achieved seminal victories in the late 1980s. Together the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and the Eritrean front overthrew the Derg in May 1991. The Tigrayan-led front formed government in Addis Ababa while the Eritrean front liberated Eritrea which became an independent state.</p>
<p>But this was just the start of a new phase of a deep-rooted rivalry. This continued between the governments until the recent entry of prime minister Abiy Ahmed. </p>
<p>If there’s any lesson to be learnt from years of military and political manoeuvrings, it is that conflict in Tigray is unavoidably a matter of intense interest to the Eritrean leadership. And Abiy would do well to remember that conflict between Eritrea and Tigray has long represented a destabilising fault line for Ethiopia as well as for the wider region. </p>
<h2>Reconciliation and new beginnings</h2>
<p>In the early 1990s, there was much talk of reconciliation and new beginnings between Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afeworki of Eritrea. The two governments <a href="http://africaworldpressbooks.com/eritrea-even-the-stones-are-burning-by-roy-pateman/#:%7E:text=In%20Eritrea%3A%20Even%20the%20Stones%20Are%20Burning%2C%20Professor,and%20other%20developments%20in%20the%20last%20two%20decades.">signed</a> a range of agreements on economic cooperation, defence and citizenship. It seemed as though the enmity of the liberation war was behind them. </p>
<p>Meles <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Eritrean_Struggle_for_Independence.html?id=ee6nFgq4-TkC&redir_esc=y">declared as much</a> at the 1993 Eritrean independence celebrations, at which he was a notable guest. </p>
<p>But deep-rooted tensions soon resurfaced. In the course of 1997, unresolved border disputes were exacerbated by Eritrea’s introduction of a new currency. This had been anticipated in a 1993 economic agreement. But in the event Tigrayan traders often refused to recognise it, and it caused a collapse in commerce.</p>
<p>Full-scale war <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Brothers+at+War">erupted</a> over the contested border hamlet of Badme in May 1998. The fighting swiftly spread to other stretches of the shared, 1,000 km long frontier. Air strikes were launched on both sides. </p>
<p>It was quickly clear, too, that this was only superficially about borders. It was more substantively about regional power and long standing antagonisms that ran along ethnic lines. </p>
<p>The Eritrean government’s indignant anti-Tigray front rhetoric had its echo in the popular contempt for so-called Agame, the term Eritreans used for Tigrayan <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/shallow-graves/">migrant labourers</a>.</p>
<p>For the Tigray front, the Eritrean front was the clearest expression of perceived Eritrean arrogance. </p>
<p>As for Isaias himself, regarded as a crazed warlord who had led Eritrea down a path which defied economic and political logic, it was hubris personified. </p>
<p>Ethiopia deported tens of thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean descent. </p>
<p>Ethiopia’s decisive final offensive in May 2000 forced the Eritrean army to fall back deep into their own territory. Although the Ethiopians were halted, and a ceasefire put in place after bitter fighting on a number of fronts, Eritrea had been devastated by the conflict.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/3df4be2e14.html">Algiers Agreement of December 2000</a> was followed by years of standoff, occasional skirmishes, and the periodic exchange of insults. </p>
<p>During this period Ethiopia consolidated its position as a dominant power in the region. And Meles as one of the continent’s representatives on the global stage. </p>
<p>For its part Eritrea retreated into a militaristic, authoritarian solipsism. Its domestic policy centred on open-ended national service for the young. Its foreign policy was largely concerned with undermining the Ethiopian government across the region. This was most obvious in Somalia, where its alleged support for al-Shabaab led to the imposition of sanctions on Asmara.</p>
<p>The ‘no war-no peace’ scenario continued even after Meles’s sudden death in 2012. The situation only began to shift with the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn against a backdrop of mounting protest across Ethiopia, especially among the Oromo and the Amhara, and the rise to power of Abiy. </p>
<p>What followed was the effective overthrow of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which had been the dominant force in the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front coalition since 1991. </p>
<p>This provided Isaias with a clear incentive to respond to Abiy’s overtures.</p>
<h2>Tigray’s loss, Eritrea’s gain</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cen5x5l99w1t/ethiopia-and-eritrea-peace-agreement">peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea,</a> was signed in July 2018 by Abiy and Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki. It formally ended their 1998-2000 war. It also sealed the marginalisation of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Many in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were unenthusiastic about allowing Isaias in from the cold.</p>
<p>Since the 1998-2000 war, in large part thanks to the astute manoeuvres of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Eritrea had been exactly where the Tigray People’s Liberation Front wanted it: an isolated pariah state with little diplomatic clout. Indeed, it is unlikely that Isaias would have been as receptive to the deal had it not involved the further sidelining of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, something which Abiy presumably understood. </p>
<p>Isaias had eschewed the possibility of talks with Abiy’s predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn. But Abiy was a different matter. A political reformer, and a member of the largest but long-subjugated ethnic group in Ethiopia, the Oromo, he was determined to end the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s domination of Ethiopian politics. </p>
<p>This was effectively achieved in December 2019 when <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-new-party-is-welcome-news-but-faces-big-hurdles-128551">he abolished</a> the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and replaced it with the Prosperity Party.</p>
<p>The Tigray People’s Liberation Front declined to join with the visible results of the current conflict.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/residual-anger-driven-by-the-politics-of-power-has-boiled-over-into-conflict-in-ethiopia-150327">Residual anger driven by the politics of power has boiled over into conflict in Ethiopia</a>
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<p>Every effort to engage with the Tigrayan leadership – including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front – in pursuit of a peaceful resolution must also mean keeping Eritrea out of the conflict. </p>
<p>Unless Isaias is willing to play a constructive role – he does not have a good track record anywhere in the region in this regard – he must be kept at arm’s length, not least to protect the 2018 peace agreement itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Reid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conflict between Eritrea and Tigray has long represented a destabilising fault line for Ethiopia as well as for the wider region.Richard Reid, Professor of African History, St Cross College, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251602019-10-11T11:31:54Z2019-10-11T11:31:54ZAbiy Ahmed has won the Nobel Peace Prize: but big challenges still await Ethiopia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296650/original/file-20191011-96235-grwz6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C0%2C5472%2C3514&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/nobel-peace-prize-2019-winner-dle-scli-intl/index.html">has won</a> the Nobel Peace Prize. He becomes the 100th Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the first Ethiopian to receive the accolade. </p>
<p>Abiy is the 12th winner from Africa to be awarded the prize. Last year it was won by medical doctor Denis Mukwege from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other African winners have included Albert Luthuli, Anwar al-Sadat, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Kofi Annan, Wangari Maathai, Mohamed ElBaradei, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet won it in 2015.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296674/original/file-20191011-96235-1a2hug9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Office of the Prime Minister reacts on twitter to the announcement.</span>
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<p>The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 under the instructions of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will. The Peace Prize is awarded to the person who, in the preceding year, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/facts-on-the-nobel-peace-prize/">has</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2019/press-release/">formal announcement</a> by the Nobel Prize said that Abiy was awarded the prize for:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>his important work to promote reconciliation, solidarity and social justice. The prize is also meant to recognise all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions…efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But who is Abiy Ahmed? Does he deserve an international accolade? And what of the challenges still facing the country he leads? </p>
<p>Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, commented in her announcement speech that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… many challenges remain unresolved. Ethnic strife continues to escalate, and we have seen troubling examples of this in recent weeks and months.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unexpected rise to power</h2>
<p>Barely two years ago Abiy Ahmed was largely an unknown figure. In early 2017 a couple of YouTube clips started to circulate on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6NkiTpyRSs">social media</a> that showed him gathered with veteran leaders at a party meeting. He came onto the scene with a simple, but powerful, message of togetherness.</p>
<p>At the time he was a political leader at regional and cabinet levels. But he didn’t sound like one. He comes across as remarkably authentic and his approach was distinct. At a time of elevated fear that the nation might head into disintegration, his message soared above the popular anxiety of possible conflict.</p>
<p>Unlike Ethiopian politicians of the past four decades his rhetoric mimicked neither Albanian Marxism nor Maoism. He has anchored his story on local cultural and religious sensibilities. </p>
<h2>Delicate course</h2>
<p>Abiy’s extraordinary rise to power, as well as his ability to steer a more peaceful political course in Ethiopia, is remarkable given the tensions and complexities of the country’s politics.</p>
<p>He has distanced himself, at least in his political outlook, from his party’s maligned old guard. He has had to steer a delicate course to keep various factions of the political coalition that has ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – on board. The ruling elites from this party have never tolerated dissent. There have been <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr25/4178/2016/en/">numerous accusations</a> levelled against them of human rights abuses and the imprisonment of journalists who criticised the regime. </p>
<p>Instead of dismantling the existing system, Abiy opted for internal transformation.</p>
<p>It has taken tremendous courage to break away from a powerful political machine while remaining within the system. But he has stuck to his beliefs, even promoting the notion of “Medemer” – synergy and togetherness – while remaining within the party. </p>
<h2>Hopeful times</h2>
<p>Abiy inherited a nation that was in political disarray. Hundreds of people <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43073285">had died</a> in three years of anti-government protests.</p>
<p>But shortly after taking office from Hailemariam Desalegn in April 2018, Abiy began to move ahead rapidly with political reforms. He released political prisoners, unfairly incarcerated journalists and activists. He opened the door for political dissidents. </p>
<p>His message was that the country needed to win through bold ideas, not through the barrel of a gun. </p>
<p>He also showed his intention to build institutions. One example was the appointment of the well-known political dissident <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46301112">Birtukan Mideksa</a> as the head the electoral board. </p>
<p>He has also <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ethiopias-progressive-premier-is-levelling-the-gender-playing-field-106365">championed</a> the role of women, including in politics. He appointed women in the positions of president, chief justice and press secretary. He also brought their share in his cabinet to 50%. </p>
<h2>International diplomacy</h2>
<p>But arguably his biggest achievements have been in international diplomacy. Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea share a common culture, language and ways of life. But a decades-long conflict between the two nations has brought immense misery to people who live on the border, and to families split by the fighting. </p>
<p>Abiy brought the conflict with <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/after-making-peace-ethiopia-and-eritrea-now-focus-development">Eritrea to an end</a>. A treaty ended the state of war between Eritrea and Ethiopia and declared a new era of peace, friendship and comprehensive cooperation. A lot remains to be done, though. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-glow-of-the-historic-accord-between-ethiopia-and-eritrea-has-faded-119931">How glow of the historic accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea has faded</a>
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<p>He also played a crucial role in regional politics. He was key to bringing leaders of <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/ethiopias-abiy-sudan-broker-talks">Sudan and South Sudan</a> to the negotiating table and helped mediate between Kenya and Somalia in a maritime territory dispute. </p>
<p>His popularity in the region and further abroad is evident when he’s travelling. He’s often greeted more like a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHSRxVNcj5o">rock star</a> than a head of state. But maintaining the same image at home has been more complicated. </p>
<h2>Challenges ahead</h2>
<p>The Nobel Prize is an acknowledgement of Abiy’s achievements over the past two years. But it doesn’t guarantee his future success. </p>
<p>A case in point is Myanmar’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/what-happened-to-aung-san-suu-kyi/594781/">Aung San Suu kyi</a>. After surviving house arrest, and attacks on her life by the ruling junta, she won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. But her fortunes turned after her party won a national election. It now stands accused of carrying out what the United Nations high commissioner for human rights has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya Muslims. </p>
<p>There are a great many troubling issues still unresolved in Ethiopia and tense times ahead with an election due next year. Abiy also has many enemies. These include agitators who try to use ethnic fault-lines for their own political ends, powerful ethno-nationalist activists who thrive on division and political entrepreneurs who only see politics as a means of personal enrichment. All are relentlessly working to exploit a fragile situation. Securing the safety of the citizens is the bare minimum he needs to do.</p>
<p>In my view he needs to accept the Nobel Peace Prize as acknowledgement of what he’s achieved, as well as a mandate to champion equality, justice and lasting unity in Ethiopia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mohammed Girma is affiliated with International Bible Advocacy Centre (IBAC).</span></em></p>Abiy Ahmed was awarded the prize for efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.Mohammed Girma, Research associate, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1199312019-07-07T09:03:33Z2019-07-07T09:03:33ZHow glow of the historic accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea has faded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282851/original/file-20190705-51305-n6h8ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (left) and Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki at the re-opening of the Eritrean embassy in Addis Ababa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Exactly a year ago Eritreans could hardly contain their joy as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/ethiopia-pm-abiy-ahmed-eritrea-landmark-visit-180708083000438.html">touched down in Asmara</a>. The city had seen nothing like it in a generation that knew war rather than peace. Men and women lined the streets and waved Ethiopian flags as Abiy arrived to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44764597">seal a peace deal</a>. </p>
<p>Less than a week later Eritrea’s president Isaias Afwerki made a reciprocal visit, landing in Addis Ababa to an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44824676">equally rapturous welcome</a>. In September a formal treaty was signed between the two leaders in the Saudi capital, Jeddah, witnessed by King Salman and the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who described it as an <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/node/1372886/saudi-arabia">“historic event.”</a></p>
<p>The treaty <a href="http://shabait.com/news/local-news/27076-agreement-on-peace-friendship-and-comprehensive-cooperation-between-the-federal-democratic-republic-of-ethiopia-and-the-state-of-eritrea-">covered a number of things</a>. It ended the state of war between Eritrea and Ethiopia; declaring a new era of peace, friendship and comprehensive cooperation.</p>
<p>As part of this deal, there were two important provisions. One called for “the establishment of joint special economic zones. The other was a pledge to establish a high-level joint committee, as well as sub-committees where needed to guide and oversee the implementation of this agreement.</p>
<p>But there has been little apparent progress on either front. Economic co-operation was probably one of the key drivers of this reconciliation. These included plans to develop a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-23/eritrea-mulls-new-port-as-ethiopia-rapprochement-spurs-investors">massive potash mine that would straddle the border</a>. But little has been heard of the project in recent months.</p>
<p>Much the same can be said of the joint committees that were given the job of sorting out the many issues bedevilling relations between the two countries. </p>
<p>What’s become clear is that the warmth of a year ago has largely gone. With little progress on implementing and institutionalising the relations between the two countries an air of uncertainty and suspicion is <a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2019/01/31/politicized-eritrea-peace-perpetuates-conflict-cycle/">creeping back</a>.</p>
<h2>Disputed border</h2>
<p>One of the sticking points between the two countries is the disputed border. The border was <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/eritrea/eritrea-ethiopia-boundary-commission-decision-regarding-delimitation-border">formally designated</a> by the Boundary Commission established after the 1998–2000 border war. The conflict had many causes: rivalry between the liberation movements that had been operating in both countries and economic competition. But it was competing claims to the insignificant border town of Badme that was the spark that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/why-eritrea-border-ethiopia-conflict-zone-469739">ignited the war.</a> </p>
<p>The two countries signed what became known as the Algiers Peace Agreement in 2000. The agreement made clear that the boundary commission could only make decisions based strictly on legal and historical grounds. This barred it from being able to allow for what might be considered just and fair – what’s known as <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/eritrea_ethiopia_12122000.pdf">ex aequo et bono</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, the border the Boundary Commission came up with resulted in settlements being dissected and villagers separated from their farmlands. And it left some people on both sides of the border concerned at being transferred from one state to the other. </p>
<p>Changes could only be made by both countries agreeing to any adjustments. This was one of the questions that the joint commissions agreed to in Jeddah was meant to resolve. Others included the terms of trade between Eritrea and Ethiopia, for example exchange rates and economic relations which were seen as important <a href="http://www.dehai.org/conflict/analysis/alemsghed2.html">contributing factors</a> in the 1988 – 2000 border war.</p>
<h2>Distractions</h2>
<p>Rather than working to consolidate the peace, the leaders of both countries have drifted elsewhere. Ethiopia has been caught up in increasingly <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/ethiopia/ethiopia-needs-act-fast-solve-its-internal-displacement-problem">complex and bloody ethnic conflicts</a> that have driven more than a million people from their homes. Coming to grips with this is taking much of Abiy’s time and attention. </p>
<p>He has also been working <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXHBo4Sug6k">on behalf of the African Union</a> to help resolve the political crisis in Sudan. Eritrea’s Isaias has also been to Sudan, but with a rather different remit. <a href="http://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article67719">Welcomed warmly by</a> by the deputy chairman of the Transitional Military Council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo "Hemetti”, Isaias issued a statement that showed his agenda was quite <a href="http://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article67719">different</a>, as shown by his recent statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Government of Eritrea requests the AU to refrain from internationalising and exacerbating the situation in Sudan. </p>
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<p>His approach isn’t difficult to understand. Isaias enjoys <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201904110180.html">strong relations</a> with Saudi Arabia and the UAE both of which have been embroiled in a war in Yemen. Eritrea has <a href="http://www.madote.com/2016/09/how-eritreas-assab-port-became-major.html">allowed its ports and airfields</a> to be used by both countries to prosecute this war. At the same time the Sudanese military <a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article67591">provide troops</a> to fight in Yemen and have been open in their support for the Saudi and UAE in their war aims. </p>
<p>Saudi Arabia was therefore <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/05/saudi-arabia-sudan-uprising-omar-al-bashir">alarmed</a> at the challenge posed to the Sudanese government by the popular uprising in Khartoum and other Sudanese towns and cities. </p>
<h2>Border remains tense</h2>
<p>Even though the glow of last year’s events has faced, Eritrea has nevertheless reaped many gains from the rapprochement with Ethiopia. One consequence is that it <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47934398">signalled</a> the end of its international isolation. Limited United Nations sanctions were <a href="https://theconversation.com/sanctions-are-being-lifted-against-eritrea-heres-why-106881">lifted</a> and the country now holds a <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/eritrea-in-the-un-human-rights-council-fox-guarding-the-henhouse/a-49378901">seat on the UN Human Rights Council</a>, a body that frequently criticised its lack of adherence to international human rights norms.</p>
<p>Eritrea has also taken the chair of the <a href="https://www.khartoumprocess.net/about/actors-and-governance">Khartoum Process</a>. This is a critical position, since it is the key forum in which African states negotiate with the European Union.</p>
<p>But the situation along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border remains tense. The Ethiopian government attempted to move its heavy artillery away from the border, but this was <a href="https://ecadforum.com/2019/01/09/military-trucks-blocked-in-tigray-region/">blocked by local residents</a> of Tigray, fearful that there might be renewed conflict with Eritrea. </p>
<p>Their concerns are hardly surprising. Isaias has made <a href="http://www.shabait.com/news/local-news/26520-president-isaias-speech-on-martyrs-day">vituperative statements</a> about his immediate neighbours, describing the Trigrayan ruling party - the TPLF – as “vultures”, and accusing them of following a “toxic and malignan” agenda.</p>
<p>It is difficult to know how relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara will develop. The fear is that Isaias has gone back to his unpredictable ways, making any predictions difficult.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>It’s unclear how relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara will develop but the warmth has largely gone.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1068812018-11-14T09:00:12Z2018-11-14T09:00:12ZSanctions are being lifted against Eritrea. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245332/original/file-20181113-194503-z44yzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rapprochement between Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki has changed the dynamics in the region. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/STRINGER</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United Nations Security Council is <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSKCN1NH2C2?fbclid=IwAR0QTcwmqV08AQft11WIYhf6asD8ommfa0jRg5EcrRG0gjG_7AU9FmYJWUs">about to lift an arms embargo and targeted sanctions</a> against Eritrea. UN Security Council <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1907%282009%29">resolution 1907</a>, which was passed in 2009, noted that the Eritrean government was backing Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia government as well as other movements attempting to undermine the Ethiopian state. </p>
<p>The sanctions were <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/2023%282011%29">strengthened</a> over the years, particularly following Eritrea’s refusal to resolve its border dispute with Djibouti in 2011.</p>
<p>The Eritrean government has routinely denied allegations that it armed these groups. To bolster its case it has pointed to the assessment of long-time ally, former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, who <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/eritrea-sanctions-pure-bullying-herman-cohen/">declared</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All accusations against Eritrea regarding alleged assistance to the Islamist terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia have never been substantiated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Security Council established an expert monitoring group to report on the evidence of Eritrean activities. Over the years it has produced extensive reports, running into hundreds of pages. These gave the council plenty of reasons to ratchet up its isolation of the country.</p>
<p>So what’s changed? There have been three fundamental shifts. First, evidence that Eritrea is supporting Al-Shabaab has becoming increasingly thin. Second, the country is no longer as isolated as it used to be. Finally, the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea has changed the region’s dynamics.</p>
<h2>The evidence</h2>
<p>The monitoring group’s <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2011/433">2011 report</a> was particularly important in presenting the case of Eritrean involvement in Somalia and its backing for Al-Shabaab. </p>
<p>The experts obtained what the monitors described as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>firm evidence of Eritrean support for armed opposition groups throughout the region, including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Sudan. Support for these groups also involves Eritrean diplomatic, intelligence and PFDJ-affiliated networks in Kenya, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The monitors went on to say that the: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Government of Eritrea acknowledges that it maintains relationships with Somali armed opposition groups, including Al-Shabaab, but characterises these linkages as political (and, in one particular case, as “humanitarian”), while denying that it provides any military, material or financial support. Evidence and testimony obtained by the Monitoring Group, including records of financial payments, interviews with eyewitnesses and data relating to maritime and aviation movements, all indicate that Eritrean support for Somali armed opposition groups is not limited to the political or humanitarian dimensions. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The monitors’ description of training facilities was said to be based largely, but not exclusively, on interviews with more than 100 former members of six armed opposition groups, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Al-Shabaab</p></li>
<li><p>Hisb’ul Islam/Somali Islamic Front</p></li>
<li><p>Hisb’ul Islam / ARS Asmara</p></li>
<li><p>Ogaden National Liberation Front </p></li>
<li><p>Oromo Liberation Front, and </p></li>
<li><p>Front Pour le Restauration de la Démocratie </p></li>
</ul>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/28/eritrea-planned-ethopia-bomb-attack">an appendix</a> to the report the experts provided details that backed their conclusions. These including photographs of the groups undergoing training and details of a planned attack by the Oromo Liberation Front on the African Union Summit in 2011.</p>
<h2>What did sanctions do?</h2>
<p>The sanctions were always <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/751/resolutions?page=1">limited in their scope</a>. They sought to halt weapons supplies and to impede key government officials’ travel plans and economic interests.</p>
<p>Eritrea complained that the sanctions resulted in real harm to its <a href="http://www.africanews.com/2018/10/06/eritrea-outlines-economic-injuries-caused-by-un-sanctions/">economic interests</a>. In reality, however, the impact was weak. </p>
<p>Eritrea managed to use its network of contacts among the diaspora around the world to evade most of their effects. They were nevertheless an irritant, suggesting as they did that the government was a pariah state. </p>
<p>This, together with the government’s record of human rights abuses, resulted in scathing findings by the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIEritrea/Pages/commissioninquiryonhrinEritrea.aspx">UN Commission on Human Rights</a>.</p>
<h2>Behind the lifting</h2>
<p>There are three reasons for the ending of sanctions. </p>
<p>Firstly, the UN <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/security-council-intention-review-eritrea-sanctions/">accepted some years ago</a> that there is no longer evidence of Eritrean support for al-Shabaab.</p>
<p>Secondly, Eritrea has broken out of international isolation. It is now a key ally of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their war in Yemen. Eritrea provides <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44500455">bases from which both operate</a>.</p>
<p>Europe, too, has embraced the Eritrean government. This is an attempt <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/eritrea/tackling-root-causes-human-trafficking-and-smuggling-eritrea-need-empirically">to halt the flow </a> of Eritrean refugees across the Mediterranean and into Italy. </p>
<p>Thirdly, and most importantly, there has been a reconciliation between the formerly warring parties in the Horn of Africa. The breakthrough came from an initiative by Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Dr Abiy Ahmed, who ended hostilities with his neighbour. His visit to the Eritrean capital, Asmara, in June received a huge <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/ethiopia-pm-abiy-ahmed-eritrea-landmark-visit-180708083000438.html">popular welcome</a>. </p>
<p>This was followed by visits by Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki to Addis Ababa and finally to a <a href="http://www.africanews.com/2018/11/10/eritrea-ethiopia-pledge-to-respect-somalia-s-sovereignty/">tripartite meeting</a> between the leaders of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.</p>
<p>In the past Somalia and Ethiopia were – along with Djibouti – the main proponents of sanctions against Eritrea. Now that they’ve reconciled, international support for UN sanctions has evaporated.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>The Eritrean government is likely to celebrate the lifting of sanctions as a major achievement. But their problems will not be at an end. </p>
<p>Unlike neighbouring Ethiopia, the Eritrean government has not introduced a programme of democratic reforms or improved its human rights. The opening of the border with Ethiopia has resulted in thousands of Eritreans streaming out of the country. <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/ethiopia/ethiopia-eritrean-refugee-influx-dg-echo-unhcr-nrc-echo-daily-flash-26-september">Up to 500</a> are crossing daily into Ethiopia.</p>
<p>Nor will all pressure on the Eritrean government end. The US continues to list Eritrea as among <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2018USCIRFAR.pdf">the worst states</a> for religious persecution. As a result, Washington will continue to deny visas to a range of senior Eritrean government officials. Other nations, such as the Netherlands, may also maintain a range of measures. </p>
<p>In the long run, however, the response of the Eritrean public will determine just how significant a moment this will be for President Afwerki and his government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>The lifting of UN Sanctions is unlikely to end internal and external pressure for reform and greater democracy in Eritrea.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1029162018-09-11T07:15:20Z2018-09-11T07:15:20ZPeace prospects are much higher in the Horn of Africa. But obstacles remain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235566/original/file-20180910-123134-1slze0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (left) and Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki re-opening the Eritrean embassy in Addis Ababa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s just five months since Abiy Ahmed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/abiye-ahmed-sworn-ethiopia-prime-minister-180402082621161.html">took over</a> as Ethiopian Prime Minister yet the pace of change in the Horn of Africa has been simply staggering. Insuperable obstacles have been swept away. So many hurdles have been vaulted that it’s difficult to keep track.</p>
<p>First, Ethiopia and Eritrea ended <a href="https://theconversation.com/eritrea-and-ethiopia-have-made-peace-how-it-happened-and-what-next-99683">years of hostilities</a>. And just two months after Abiy’s first path-breaking visit to Eritrea <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN1LN0RN-OZATP">meetings have been held in Djibouti</a> to try and eliminate some of the major international problems besetting the region. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1631&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1631&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235588/original/file-20180910-123101-115yhor.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The background to the Djibouti mission was the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-40340210">conflict between Eritrea and Djibouti that erupted in 2008</a>. For many years it was unresolved and there was a serious <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/unresolved-eritrea-djibouti-tensions-threaten-strides-toward-regional-peace/4513779.html">source of tension in the region</a>. The Djibouti-Eritrea issue was also the reason why United Nations sanctions against Eritrea were not lifted – <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13440.doc.htm">despite UN monitors declaring</a> that Eritrea was no longer aiding the Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab.</p>
<p>The armed confrontations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and between Eritrea and Djibouti, have now vanished in a puff of smoke. Or so it would appear.</p>
<p>It would be a mistake to ridicule what has been achieved. Eritrea seems to have genuinely dropped its hostility towards its southern and its eastern neighbour. But it’s also prudent to note the obstacles that remain.</p>
<p>Eritrea is still locked in a confrontation with its western neighbour, Sudan. In January Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir closed the country’s border with Eritrea, <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/sudan-shuts-border-with-eritrea-state-media-20180106-2">sending crack troops to patrol the frontier</a>. The dispute was <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201712220195.html">never officially explained</a> and seems to have been parked for now. But others remain. </p>
<p>Abiy is aware that a lot still needs to be done. As he put it <a href="https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2018/09/07/abiy-ahmed-in-his-words-full-translation-of-first-press-conference/">recently</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the time came both peoples Eritrea and Ethiopia woke up from their sleep and said enough is enough and brought back their peace. The next question will be not about who contributed how much to the peace deal, it should be on how to keep and sustain the peace, because the peace needs to be maintained. So, all people have to work together to sustain it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition, for the peace efforts to stick both Ethiopia and Eritrea must complete internal reforms. Abiy has pushed Ethiopia much further down the road of reform while Eritrea still has a long way to go. Consolidating democracy and internal peace building will be needed if the dramatic pace of change is to hold in the region.</p>
<h2>What still needs to be done</h2>
<p>As Abiy rightly says, a great deal still needs to be done to sustain the peace. People and villages all along the Ethiopian border need to be assigned to their respective countries, as the new border comes into force. Tens of thousands of troops will have to be withdrawn from the trenches they have inhabited since the end of the border war of 1998–2000. A host of customs arrangements and immigration issues must be resolved. This is the hard graft that needs to follow the handshakes and smiles of the leaders.</p>
<p>Then there are internal reforms in both Ethiopia and Eritrea that have to be addressed if peace and security are to be consolidated.</p>
<p>Ethiopia has made considerable progress on this front. Journalists have been freed from jail, the internet restrictions lifted and media regulations relaxed. Political prisoners have been released and opposition leaders have come home.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.africanews.com/2018/09/03/ethiopia-s-ex-rebel-group-ginbot-7-returns-from-eritrea-base/">Even hardline rebels based in Eritrea have returned</a>. <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/nega-berhanu-1958">Berhanu Nega</a>, the elected mayor of Addis Ababa, who <a href="https://addisstandard.com/the-interview-every-society-has-to-have-some-kind-of-moral-compass-to-exist-our-moral-compass-has-been-lost-berhanu-nega/">fled into exile</a> in the US, has arrived home. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/afrique/45465083">Speaking to the BBC</a> he described Ethiopia as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a fundamentally changed country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These developments have transformed the atmosphere in the capital. But in the rest of Ethiopia there are still major issues confronting the government. More than two million people have been <a href="https://www.acaps.org/country/ethiopia/special-reports#container-1042">displaced in recent ethnic clashes</a>. The Tigrayans, who ruled the country after seizing the capital in 1991, are <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ren-lefort/pacified-politics-or-risk-disintegration-race-against-time-in-ethiopia">smarting from their loss of influence</a>.</p>
<h2>Still some way to go in Eritrea</h2>
<p>In Eritrea there have only been the most feeble of moves towards reform. Bloomberg reported that the government is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-02/eritrea-may-change-army-draft-that-spurred-thousands-to-europe">“definitely studying”</a> the possibility of demobilisation of its vast army of national service conscripts. In an interview the Minister for Labour and Human Welfare Luul Gebreab said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Definitely a small army will remain, and the others will concentrate on the developmental work as planned. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When this might take place is not clear.</p>
<p>On other reforms, including the implementation of the country’s constitution, the freeing of political prisoners and the lifting of the ban on independent media and all opposition political parties, there is a stony silence from the Eritrean government.</p>
<p>Herman Cohen, the former US Secretary of State for African Affairs who brokered an end to the Eritrean-Ethiopian War in 1991 has offered encouragement. He has <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/peace-democratic-reform-ethiopia-eritrea/">has argued </a> that President Isaias “should not fear a more open Eritrea system. Now would be a good time to start the process.” </p>
<p>There are no signs of this taking place and as a result no drop in the number of Eritreans fleeing to neighbouring Ethiopia. The UN Refugee agency registered 1,738 in July this year – <a href="https://eritreahub.org/un-confirms-no-fall-in-eritrean-refugees-arriving-in-ethiopia">very much on trend with previous years</a>.</p>
<h2>Welcome developments</h2>
<p>The developments between states in the Horn of Africa are clearly very welcome. The question now is whether they can be translated into reality on the ground, and whether the international developments will be reflected in internal reforms. </p>
<p>Once both of these steps have been taken it would be possible to conclude that the region has truly been transformed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Commonwealth Institute of the University of London, the Royal African Society and Chatham House.</span></em></p>It would be a mistake to ridicule what’s been achieved in the Horn of Africa, but obstacles remain.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1000632018-07-19T12:39:03Z2018-07-19T12:39:03ZWhat peace will mean for Eritrea – Africa’s ‘North Korea’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228390/original/file-20180719-142414-1avdarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An abandoned tank by the roadside in Eritrea. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The end of hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been met with relief in the region as well as globally. But what does it mean for Eritrea, which has been dubbed the North Korea of Africa. The Conversation Africa’s Julius Maina spoke to Martin Plaut about the implications for the small and reclusive state.</em></p>
<p><strong>How did Eritrea earn its reputation as a reclusive state?</strong></p>
<p>Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean president, has operated on the presumption that no-one would come to Eritrea’s aid after it launched its armed struggle for independence from Ethiopia in 1961. It was never entirely true, but they certainly didn’t have the support of any major power. </p>
<p>When Eritrea gained its <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13349078">independence in 1993</a> he saw no reason to alter his view. As a result, major international aid agencies were made unwelcome. Even the United Nations has found it <a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/184/34015.html">difficult</a> to work in the country. </p>
<p>After 2001, when the president cracked down on all opposition – including from within his own party – all major news organisations, including the BBC, Reuters and AFP – were <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3644630.stm">banned from having offices in the country</a>. International journalists have only been allowed to visit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YW95Zn4wII">sporadically</a>. This has left Eritrea under-reported. </p>
<p>Isaias is moody and reclusive by nature. Since the regime is a dictatorship which has never allowed elections of any kind, the country reflects the politics of its leader.</p>
<p><strong>The country has been named as a sponsor of regional terrorism. To what extent is this still the case?</strong></p>
<p>Following Eritrea’s bitter border war with Ethiopia between 1998 and 2000, the government in Asmara became a <a href="https://eritreahub.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Monitors-2011.pdf">sponsor</a> of the Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, and a number of Ethiopian rebel groups . It did so to undermine the Ethiopian government, which was <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/ethiopia-troops-somalia-offensive-al-shabab/4095621.html">fighting a war in Somalia</a> against the Islamists. Eritrea’s support for Ethiopian rebel groups had a similar aim in mind. </p>
<p>These activities – as well as a border clash with Djibouti – led to the UN Security Council<a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1907%282009%29"> imposing an arms embargo</a> against Eritrea in 2009. The embargo didn’t include economic sanctions. </p>
<p>UN appointed experts monitored the arms and logistical support Eritrea provided to Al-Shabaab <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/751/work-and-mandate/reports">in great detail</a>. In recent years they’ve reported back that they have no evidence of current Eritrean backing for Al-Shabaab. </p>
<p>In the last few weeks the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has said he thinks the sanctions regime will <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-eritrea-un-sanctions/u-n-chief-says-sanctions-on-eritrea-likely-to-become-obsolete-idUSKBN1JZ1UG">become obsolete</a>, since Eritrea and Ethiopia have resolved their differences. </p>
<p><strong>How will recent events affect politics and commerce in the Horn?</strong></p>
<p>The prospects for the Horn could be transformed if the Ethiopia-Eritrea rapprochement holds and their border dispute is truly resolved. </p>
<p>The closure of their mutual frontier for the past two decades has had a terrible effect on people all along the 1,000 km long border. Family ties and trade patterns were severely disrupted. </p>
<p>The people of the two countries have never been at loggerheads: there is little real animosity between them. The divisions have been between the ruling parties of both countries. </p>
<p>With these apparently resolved, life in the Horn can resume as normal. The Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab will hum with life once more, as Ethiopian trade flows through them. And the potash deposits on their border can be developed. Since Ethiopia is currently Africa’s fastest growing economy this could ease bottlenecks such as international investment in Eritrea which will no longer be viewed as a war-risk. And instead of competing to fund and support rebel movements in each other’s countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea can combine to tackle the real enemy: poverty.</p>
<p><strong>What will the impact be on Eritrean society?</strong></p>
<p>This is the most difficult question and predictions are fraught with difficulty. Having been such a closed dictatorship it is impossible to say with any certainty how the country will be transformed. </p>
<p>On the one hand, Isaias could allow democracy to emerge, since he no longer has a foreign enemy on his doorstep. The constitution, which was <a href="http://www.ahrlj.up.ac.za/images/ahrlj/2008/ahrlj_vol8_no1_2008_simon_m_weldehaimanot.pdf">ratified by the National Assembly</a>, could be implemented. Free and fair elections could be held and a multi-party system allowed to emerge. The president might even decide to retire now that peace has been achieved – he is 72 years old. </p>
<p>This is all possible. But it’s not very likely. The president is extremely cautious and believes he is indispensable to the country: without him it will lose its way. He is more likely to move only gradually towards allowing limited freedoms. This could include ending <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/eritrea-refugees-fleeing-indefinite-conscription-must-be-given-safe-haven/">indefinite conscription</a>, since the rationale for this has ended. Such an approach would be consistent with his past behaviour.
But it might result in growing frustration from citizens who have accepted economic hardship and a lack of democracy during a time of war, but might do so no longer. What forces this might unleash and how the citizens will react, only time will tell.</p>
<p><strong>How do these developments affect Eritrea’s refugee outflow?</strong></p>
<p>The end of hostilities should mean that Eritrea’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eritrea-politics-insight/eritrea-wont-shorten-national-service-despite-migration-fears-idUSKCN0VY0M5">indefinite National Service</a> is ended. National Service (or conscription) is required of all citizens between 18 and 40 years old. In theory this lasts for no longer than 18 months. Yet many Eritreans have served for 20 years and more. Pay is minimal and conditions harsh: for women there is the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/eritrea">threat of rape or sexual abuse</a>. This has been – by a long shot – the main driver of the refugee exodus that has seen up to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/eritrea-refugees-fleeing-indefinite-conscription-must-be-given-safe-haven/">5,000 people leaving the country every month</a>. </p>
<p>Freed from conscription, some servicemen and women will return to their farms or seek employment in towns. One possible consequence is that unemployment could become serious, unless inward investment takes up the slack. </p>
<p>If the border with Ethiopia is opened up again thousands of people in refugee camps in Ethiopia might return home. The refugee outflow might even be reversed. This is an optimistic prognosis. More likely, refugees who have risked everything to reach safety will remain in the camps until the outcome of the dramatic changes can be assessed and the transformation is made permanent. </p>
<p>Eritrea’s refugee outflow will only end when <em>both</em> prosperity <em>and</em> freedom become established facts. Until then it is likely that some will continue to seek a better life abroad, even if in smaller numbers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>The Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab will hum with life once more as trade flows through them.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/996832018-07-10T08:34:32Z2018-07-10T08:34:32ZEritrea and Ethiopia have made peace. How it happened and what next<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226906/original/file-20180710-70072-6mpvs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed visited neighbouring Eritrea, to be greeted by President Isaias Afwerki. The vast crowds that thronged the normally quiet streets of Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, were simply overjoyed. They sang and they danced as Abiy’s car drove past. Few believed they would ever see such an extraordinarily rapid end to two decades of vituperation and hostility between their countries. </p>
<p>After talks the president and prime minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/09/ethiopia-and-eritrea-restore-ties-after-20-years-of-enmity">signed a declaration</a>, ending 20 years of hostility and restoring diplomatic relations and normal ties between the countries.</p>
<p>The first indication that these historic events might be possible came on June 4. Abiy declared that he would accept the outcome of an international commission’s finding over a disputed border between the two countries. It was the border conflict of 1998-2000, and Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the commission’s ruling, that was behind two decades of armed confrontation. With this out of the way, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44376298">everything began to fall into place</a>.</p>
<p>The two countries are now formally at peace. Airlines will connect their capitals once more, Ethiopia will use Eritrea’s ports again – its natural outlet to the sea – and diplomatic relations will be resumed. </p>
<p>Perhaps most important of all, the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/09/africa/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-eritrea-war-intl/index.html">border will be demarcated</a>. This won’t be an easy task. Populations who thought themselves citizens of one country could find themselves in another. This could provoke strong reactions, unless both sides show flexibility and compassion.</p>
<p>For Eritrea there are real benefits - not only the revenues from Ethiopian trade through its ports, but also the potential of very <a href="http://www.danakali.com.au/the-colluli-project">substantial potash developments</a> on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border that could be very lucrative. </p>
<p>For Ethiopia, there would be the end to Eritrean subversion, with rebel movements deprived of a rear base from which to attack the government in Addis Ababa. In return, there is every chance that Ethiopia will now push for an end to the <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/sc13065.doc.htm">UN arms embargo</a> against the Eritrean government.</p>
<p>This breakthrough didn’t just happen. It has been months in the making. </p>
<h2>The deal</h2>
<p>Some of the first moves <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/eritrean-orthodox-tewahdo-church-hosts-wcc-delegation">came quietly from religious groups</a>. In September last year the World Council of Churches sent a team to see what common ground there was on both sides. Donald Yamamoto, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, and one of America’s most experienced Africa hands, played a major role. </p>
<p>Diplomatic sources suggest he held talks in Washington at which both sides were represented. The Eritrean minister of foreign affairs, Osman Saleh, is said to have been present, accompanied by Yemane Gebreab, President Isaias’s long-standing adviser. They are said to have met the former Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, laying the groundwork for the deal. Yamamoto <a href="http://www.janes.com/article/79538/top-us-official-s-visit-to-eritrea-indicates-renewed-relations-assisting-sanctions-lifting-investment-and-ethiopian-peace-talks">visited both Eritrea and Ethiopia</a> in April. </p>
<p>Although next to nothing was announced following the visits, they are said to have been important in firming up the dialogue.</p>
<p>But achieving reconciliation after so many years took more than American diplomatic muscle. </p>
<p>Eritrea’s Arab allies also played a key role. Shortly after the Yamamoto visit, President Isaias <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/president-isaias-pay-state-visit-to-saudi-arabia/">paid a visit to Saudi Arabia</a>. Ethiopia – aware of the trip – encouraged the Saudi crown prince to get the Eritrean president to pick up the phone and talk to him. President Isaias declined, but – as Abiy Ahmed later explained – he was <a href="http://www.aigaforum.com/news2018/conversation-with-pm-abiy.htm">“hopeful with Saudi and US help the issue will be resolved soon.”</a> </p>
<p>So it was, but one other actor played a part: the UAE. Earlier this month <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/abu-dhabi-crown-prince-receives-eritrean-president/">President Isaias visited the Emirates</a>. There are suggestions that large sums of money were offered to help Eritrea develop its economy and infrastructure.</p>
<p>Finally, behind the scenes, the UN and the African Union have been encouraging both sides to resolve their differences. This culminated in the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, <a href="http://www.africanews.com/2018/07/09/un-chief-to-meet-ethiopia-s-pm-on-monday-after-peace-breakthrough-with-eritrea/">flying to Addis Ababa for a meeting on Monday</a> – just hours after the joint declaration. Guterres told reporters that in his view the sanctions against Eritrea could soon be lifted since they would soon likely become <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-eritrea-un-sanctions/u-n-chief-says-sanctions-on-eritrea-likely-to-become-obsolete-idUSKBN1JZ1UG">“obsolete.”</a></p>
<p>It has been an impressive combined effort by the international community, who have for once acted in unison to try to resolve a regional issue that has festered for years.</p>
<h2>Risks and dividends</h2>
<p>For Isaias these developments also bring some element of risk. Peace would mean no longer having the excuse of a national security threat to postpone the implementation of basic freedoms. If the tens of thousands of conscripts, trapped in indefinite national service are allowed to go home, what jobs await them? When will the country have a working constitution, free elections, an independent media and judiciary? Many political prisoners have been jailed for years without trail. Will they now be released?</p>
<p>For Ethiopia, the dividends of peace would be a relaxation of tension along its northern border and an alternative route to the sea. Families on both sides of the border would be reunited and social life and religious ceremonies, many of which go back for centuries, could resume. </p>
<p>But the Tigrayan movement – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) - that was dominant force in Ethiopian politics until the election of Prime Minister Aiby in February, has been side-lined. It was their quarrel with the Eritrean government that led to the 1998–2000 border war. </p>
<p>The Eritrean authorities have rejoiced in their demise. “From this day forward, TPLF as a political entity is dead,” declared a semi-official website, describing the movement as a ‘zombie’ whose <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/eritrea-ends-second-operation-fenkil/">“soul has been bound in hell”</a>. Such crowing is hardly appropriate if differences are to be resolved. The front is still a significant force in Ethiopia and could attempt to frustrate the peace deal.</p>
<p>These are just some of the problems that lie ahead. There is no guarantee that the whole edifice won’t collapse, as the complex details of the relationship are worked out. There are many issues that have to be resolved before relations between the two countries can be returned to normal. But with goodwill these can be overcome, ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity from which the entire region would benefit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>Few believed they would see an end to two decades of hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/726362017-02-09T15:12:53Z2017-02-09T15:12:53ZFaith and money from the Middle East fuelling tensions in the Horn of Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156015/original/image-20170208-9117-1gb0cd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A squadron of UAE Mirage fighter planes such as this one at the Dubai Airshow are stationed in Eritrea for Yemeni operations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Caren Firouz </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Relations between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula go back centuries, with trade playing a key component in binding their people
together. Religion has also played a part. The expansion of <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-isis-how-saudi-arabia-exported-main-source-global-terrorism">Wahhabism</a> – the interpretation of Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia – has been funded by the massive oil wealth of the kingdom.</p>
<p>Mosques, Koranic schools and Imams have been provided with support over many years. Gradually this authoritarian form of Islam <a href="http://africacenter.org/publication/islamist-extremism-east-africa/">began to take hold</a> in the Horn. While some embraced it, others didn’t.</p>
<p>Somalia is an example. While most Somalis practised a moderate form of Suffi Islam, the Islamic fundamentalists of al-Shabaab didn’t. Soon after taking control of parts of central and southern Somalia in 2009 they began imposing a much more severe form of the faith. Mosques were destroyed and the shrines of revered Suffi leaders were <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8077725.stm">desecrated</a>. </p>
<p>The export of faith has been followed by arms. Today the Saudis and their allies in the United Arab Emirates are exerting <a href="http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20161224-uae-discreet-yet-powerful-player-horn-africa">increasing military influence</a> in the region. </p>
<p>But Saudi Arabia and other Arabian gulf states aren’t the only Muslim countries that have sought influence in the region. Iran, for example, has also been an active player. In the case of Eritrea, a struggle for influence between Riyadh and Tehran has played out over the past few years. This has also been true in neighbouring Somaliland and the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland.</p>
<p>These are troubled times in the Horn of Africa. The instability that’s resulted from Islamic fundamentalism, of which al-Shabaab are the best known proponents, have left the region open to outside influences. The French have traditionally had a base in Djibouti, but they have now been joined by the <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-strategic-attractions-djibouti-15533">Americans</a> and the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-builds-first-overseas-military-outpost-1471622690">Chinese</a>.</p>
<p>The growing Arab military, political and religious influence is only the latest example of an external force taking hold in the region.</p>
<h2>New powerful forces in the region</h2>
<p>The Eritreans had been <a href="http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers_and_reports/yemen_african_dimension_0">close to Iran</a> and supported their Houthi allies in the Yemeni conflict. This was of deep concern to the Saudis, who are locked in conflict with Tehran. This is a battle for influence that pits Iranian Shias against Saudi Sunnis. Eritrea is just one of the fields on which it’s being played out.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10ASMARA33_a.html">US cable</a> leaked to Wikileaks put it in 2010, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Saudi ambassador to Eritrea is concerned about Iranian influence, says Iran has supplied materiel to the Eritrean navy, and recently ran into an Iranian delegation visiting Asmara. He claims Yemeni Houthi rebels were present in Eritrea in 2009 (but is not sure if they still are), and reported that the Isaias regime this week arrested six Eritrean employees of the Saudi embassy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since then Eritrea has switched sides. Eritrean President, Isaias Afwerki paid a <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/president-isaias-pay-state-visit-to-saudi-arabia/">state visit to Saudi Arabia</a> in April 2015. Not long afterwards Eritrea signed a 30-year lease on the port of Assab with the Saudis and their allies in the Emirates. The port has become a base from which to prosecute the war in Yemen. The United Nations <a href="http://untribune.com/un-report-uae-saudi-leasing-eritean-port-using-eritrean-land-sea-airspace-and-possibly-troops-in-yemen-battle/">reported</a> that 400 Eritrean troops were now in Yemen supporting the Saudi alliance.</p>
<p>The United Arab Emirates has constructed a <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/analysis-uae-military-base-assab-eritrea/">major base</a> in Assab – complete with tanks, helicopters and barracks. In November 2016 it was reported that a squadron of nine UAE Mirage fighter planes were <a href="http://www.defenseworld.net/news/17633/UAE_Deploys_Mirage_2000_Jets_To_Support_Yemen_Ops#.WJhh8xCKSMk">deployed to Eritrea</a> from where they could attack Houthi targets on the other side of the Red Sea. In return the Gulf states <a href="http://www.madote.com/2015/05/djibouti-uae-diplomatic-crisis-brings.html">agreed</a> to modernise Asmara International Airport, increase fuel supplies to Eritrea and provide President Isaias with further funding.</p>
<p>Since then the United Arab Emirates has announced its intention to increase its military presence in the Horn. In January it signed an agreement to manage the Somaliland port of Berbera for 30 years. It also sought permission to have a naval base, Somaliland foreign minister Sa’ad Ali Shire <a href="https://www.alleastafrica.com/2017/01/11/uae-seeks-to-open-military-base-in-somaliland/">told reporters</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s true that the United Arab Emirates has submitted a formal request seeking permission to open a military base in Somaliland</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The UAE are also <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2016/09/west-of-suez-for-the-united-arab-emirates/">active</a> in the neighbouring Puntland. They have been paying for and training anti-piracy forces for years, while also financing and training its intelligence services. </p>
<p>They are a powerful force in the region, projecting an Arab influence as far as Madagascar and the Seychelles. It’s not surprising that the United Arab Emirates was labelled <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/15/3-ways-the-u-a-e-is-the-sparta-of-the-modern-day-middle-east/?utm_term=.d353884f8103">“Little Sparta”</a> by General James Mattis – now President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defence.</p>
<h2>Ethiopian concerns</h2>
<p>These are worrying times for the Ethiopian foreign ministry. Once the dominant force in the region, its influence over the Horn is now in question.</p>
<p>To its north the Eritreans remain implacable foes, as they have been since the <a href="http://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2492&context=faculty_publications">border war</a> of 1998-2000 that left these neighbours in a cold no-war, no-peace confrontation. </p>
<p>Addis Ababa is concerned that Eritrea’s hand has become stronger in recent years. Its mining sector is looking <a href="https://www.tesfanews.net/eritrea-approves-social-and-environmental-impact-assessment-for-colluli-potash-project/">increasingly attractive</a> with Canadian based firms now joined by Australian and Chinese companies. </p>
<p>Asmara’s role in the ongoing war in Yemen has allowed Eritrea to escape diplomatic isolation. The government in Asmara is now benefiting from funds and weapons, <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/eritrea-yemen-un-idINKBN12Z2JQ">despite UN sanctions</a> designed to prevent this from taking place. </p>
<p>To Ethiopia’s west lies Sudan, which is also now involved in the war in Yemen, <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/400-more-sudanese-troops-arrive-yemen-1210506015">providing troops</a> to the Saudi and United Arab Emirates backed government. These ties are said to have been cemented after the Saudis pumped a billion dollars into the Sudanese central bank. In return the Sudanese <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/sudan-siding-with-saudi-arabia-long-term-ally-iran">turned their backs</a> on their former Iranian allies.</p>
<p>To Ethiopia’s east the situation in Somalia is also of concern. No Ethiopian minister can forget the <a href="http://www.coldwar.org/articles/70s/SomaliaEthiopiaandTheOgadenWar1977.asp">invasion of the Ogaden</a> under President Siad Barre in 1977, when Somalia attempted to re-capture the lands lost to their neighbours during the expansionist policies of Emperor Menelik II in the nineteenth century. Siad Barre may be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/03/obituaries/somalia-s-overthrown-dictator-mohammed-siad-barre-is-dead.html">long gone</a> but Ethiopian policy since the invasion has been to keep Somalia as weak and fragmented as possible.</p>
<p>Ethiopia has intervened repeatedly in Somalia to hold al-Shabaab at bay as well as to maintain the security of its eastern region. Addis Ababa’s policy of encouraging the inherent fragmentary tendencies of the Somalis has paid dividends: the country is <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Somalia-s-regions-slowly-evolve-into-federal-states-/2558-2833956-snxq7e/index.html">now a federation</a> of states and regions. Some of these only nominally recognise the authority of the government in Mogadishu. Somaliland, in the north is close to being recognised as an independent nation. Others, like Jubaland along the Kenyan border, are under Nairobi’s influence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Royal African Society</span></em></p>The growing Arab military, political and religious influence is only the latest example of an external force taking hold in the Horn of Africa.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.