Issue No. 224

Deceit and deflection: Eritrean forces in Tigray

On 28 February, the Eritrean regime publicly admitted for the first time that its army is still present in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. In an extraordinary statement by the Eritrean Embassy to the United Kingdom and Ireland, the embassy lashed out at alleged "hired lobbyists" of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) for "regurgitating revisionist narratives on the war." Among these narratives perpetuated by unspecified articles in "The Statesman; Gray Dynamics; World Peace Foundation," the embassy claimed that these lobbyists have falsely accused Eritrean troops of occupying parts of Tigray.
 
Instead, the embassy falsely asserted that Eritrean forces were stationed solely within the country's sovereign territory and in line with the Algiers Agreement in 2000 that concluded the Eritrean-Ethiopian 1998-2000 war. The Algiers Agreement established a Boundary Commission to demarcate the Eritrean-Ethiopian border, which eventually, and contentiously, awarded the currently Eritrean-occupied town of Badme to Asmara, among other border areas.
 
The embassy's claim that Eritrean troops are solely stationed on Eritrean land and not in Ethiopia is demonstrably false. The brutal and continued occupation of swathes of Tigray by Eritrean forces goes well beyond the territories awarded by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission; areas that Ethiopia still administered. Rather, the embassy's statement is another attempt to mask the ongoing human rights violations being committed by Eritrea's army over 15 months from the signing of the Pretoria agreement in November 2022. Nor does the Algiers Agreement provide any sort of justification for the extreme violence that Eritrean forces have committed.
 
Civil society organisations have documented Eritrean full or partial occupation of multiple Tigray districts, including, but not limited to, Zalambesa, Addis Tesfa, and Addis Alem in the Eastern Zone. Eritrean troops have also been reported post-Pretoria in districts such as Rural Badme, Badme Town, and Gemhalo in the North Western Zone, as well as Erdi Genanu, Hoya Medeb, and Kushet Egri Sebeya in the Central Zone.
 
Numerous credible reports from international organisations, humanitarian agencies, and independent journalists have further corroborated the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray. Satellite imagery has also captured Eritrean military convoys crossing the border into Tigray. One recent aid memo on 31 January, based on United Nations agency assessments of two Tigray sub-districts near the Eritrean border, documented both recent abductions and systematic looting by Eritrean soldiers. In one incident on 22 January, 8 herders were seized by soldiers, along with their livestock. In early December, multiple incidents were reported of Eritrean forces stealing dozens of animals from Tigrayan civilians.
 
These two sub-districts, Shimblina and Ademeyti, are just the tip of the iceberg, however. Since the conclusion of the destructive Tigray war, Eritrean forces have continued their campaign of sexual violence, looting, and violence against Tigrayan civilians, albeit at a reduced scale. The occupation of numerous districts has further compounded the humanitarian and starvation crisis currently engulfing Tigray. Eritrean forces have been documented denying critical humanitarian aid from reaching communities under their control, as well as refusing to allow displaced individuals to return and cultivate their fallow fields. The leaked aid memo reports that at least 50 people have subsequently died of starvation in Shimblina and Ademeyti.
 
Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, has refuted these and similar reports. So did Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki when he downplayed reports of Eritrean forces committing human rights violations in February 2023. While calling the reports "nonsense" to media in Nairobi, Isaias tellingly asked why the reporter was "bothered about Eritrean troops who are there or not there, who come out or do not come out." The presence of non-Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) in Tigray is a direct contravention of the Pretoria agreement, the fragile Cessation of Hostilities Agreement that the Eritrean regime has worked to undermine.
 
The Eritrean embassy's recent statement is part of a decades-long pattern of violence followed by denial and obfuscation from Asmara, not just in Tigray but within its own borders as well. During the Tigray war, Eritrean forces were responsible for many of the most heinous human rights violations. The Axum massacre, where hundreds of civilians were executed on 28-29 November 2020, was carried out by the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF). Throughout the conflict, sexual violence was used as a weapon of war by the EDF to target Tigrayan women and girls, and there are reports of women still being held in sexual slavery in Eritrean-occupied areas. There are Tigrayan children being taught an Eritrean curriculum in grades 5-8 where their fate will likely be to join sawa, Eritrea's indefinite military conscription. Other war crimes, including torture and ethnic cleansing, were also committed-- with little suggestion of any legal recourse or justice for the EDF's many victims on the horizon. The countless first-hand testimonies are harrowing and should dispel any doubts about Eritrea's close involvement in the conflict, as well as their ongoing attempts to spoil the tentative truce today.
 
The Eritrean embassy's statement should be disregarded out of hand. The regime's history of dubious territorial disputes, military aggression, and destabilisation of its neighbours make it a dubious witness to its own involvement in Tigray. What should not be ignored, though, is the ongoing contravention of the Pretoria agreement and human rights violations by the EDF. Crucial mediated talks are continuing between the Tigray Interim Administration and the federal government in the presence of African Union officials to resolve the flawed implementation of the Pretoria agreement. High on the agenda in these discussions will surely be Eritrea's occupation of Tigray territory, which continues to curtail the effective administration of Tigray. Removing the EDF presence will be challenging, but Eritrea's military presence on Tigray and Ethiopian soil cannot continue.

By the Ethiopian Cable team