Issue No. 219

Tigray in Uncharted Territory

Today's editorial in The Ethiopian Cable is written by Daniel Berhane.
 
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While the modern history of Tigray is undoubtedly fraught, the challenges it faces today appear the most substantial. Well over a year on from the signing of the Pretoria agreement in November 2022, the lack of progress on its implementation has made any return to normalcy illusory and kept the peace fragile. The failure to implement the agreement can be largely ascribed to an unwillingness of the signatories and their guarantors to enforce the Pretoria and Nairobi agreements.
 
The United States, though a de facto guarantor of the agreements, has never assumed the role formally or effectively. The convener of the talks, the African Union, simply lacks the interest to engage seriously with the complexities of post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. International humanitarian agencies, meanwhile, have redirected staff and funds to Ukraine and Gaza in droves, abandoning the worst humanitarian disaster in decades in Tigray. And the federal government lacks the political will to invest the vast socioeconomic resources required to support Tigray. Yet all these obstacles might have been mitigated had Tigray had a functioning government.
 
In March 2023, as per the Pretoria agreement, an Interim Administration of Tigray was established. Like much of the agreement, the provision was vague and open to misinterpretation, merely stating that the two signatory parties were to discuss and decide on the formation of the administration. The federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), however, agreed that the latter would form the regional administration with Addis's consent. Following the federal government's rejection of TPLF Chairman Debretision Gebremichael as its president, the TPLF's Central Committee narrowly voted to elect Getachew Reda to lead the interim administration.
 
This was consequential. Even though Getachew was a member of the TPLF's executive committee, Debretsion Gebremichael continued as party chairperson. As a party with Stalinist roots, accommodating multiple centres of power has proven unusual and paralysing. Two centres of power, in particular, have crystallised in recent months- one relatively younger headed up by Getachew, the other representing an older generation. These divisions, coupled with humanitarian emergencies and the occupation of swathes of the region, have brought Tigray to a standstill.
 
The TPLF itself remains in an awkward limbo. In May 2023, the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) declared federal elections would be held in Tigray between September 2023 and September 2024. The TPLF, however, has been 'dissolved' since January 2021 and is still unable to field candidates in elections. This issue is sure to re-emerge in the coming months, assuming elections are to take place.
 
To resolve the internal deadlock, current and former members of TPLF's Central Committee, along with senior Tigray Defence Force officials, have convened for much of the past two months. The meeting initially ended in mid-January, already one of the longest in the TPLF's history, and narrowly voted to demote Debretsion from Chairman. However, subsequent informal mediation in the following days saw the decision reversed over the weekend, and the attendees voted to promote Getachew to deputy chair of the TPLF. Like most political organisations with Stalinist origins, the TPLF's decisions are made behind closed doors before a purely ceremonial vote is taken. A reversal of a formal vote by mediation is highly unusual, as well as the extremely marginal votes that saw Getachew elevated and Debretsion briefly demoted.
 
One hopes that the latest resolutions could mark a new beginning for the TPLF, and for Tigray. Though they are competing factions within the TPLF in the broadest sense of the term, having multiple centres of power could potentially offer a path to a more democratic and liberal future in the region. And other nascent political parties in Tigray are increasingly proposing real alternatives to the TPLF. But to reach this point, local actors and foreign stakeholders need to consciously work to nurture it.
 
Yet Tigray is not an island. With Eritrea and Amhara forces still occupying a third of the region, hundreds of thousands of people remaining forcibly displaced from their homes, thousands of traumatised victims of sexual assault, and only a fraction of the food aid reaching the most vulnerable, it would be naive to expect stability. Moreover, democratic autonomy has a chequered history in Ethiopia; best encapsulated by the short-lived Eritrean democratic experiment in the 1950s that Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie crushed. It would be similarly fanciful to expect democratic liberalism to flourish in Tigray when its neighbouring administrations, like Eritrea, are authoritarian. With internal and external factors so anaemic to the democratic path, Tigray remains in unchartered waters.

Daniel Berhane is the author of 'War on Tigray. Genocidal Axis in the Horn of Africa.' He is a lawyer by training, a journalist by choice, and a prominent activist.