Issue No. 236

The Irob and the Algiers Agreement 

While progress is finally being made in dismantling the unconstitutional Amhara administrations occupying Southern and Western Tigray, much of the region's northern territory remains under Eritrean control. More than 16 months after the signing of the Pretoria Agreement that ended the Tigray War, communities under Eritrean occupation continue to report numerous incidents of abductions, looting, sexual violence, and other crimes by the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF).

Asmara has frequently cited the Algiers Agreement in 2000, which ended the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war, as justification for its occupation of Tigrayan territory. On 12 April 2024, Eritrea's Ministry of Information insisted that the international border between Eritrea and Ethiopia has been "demarcated for the last time in a way that will never be changed" and is based on the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission's (EEBC) rulings. The EEBC was established by the Algiers Agreement in April 2002, with a mandate of demarcating the international border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, the EEBC was never able to fully realise its mandate, and the border has remained contested, with both capitals seeking to undermine the Algiers Agreement for their own respective interests.

Today, Eritrean forces are present in a territory which extends far below the delineated boundary and areas awarded to Eritrea by the EEBC. Indeed, a recent detailed analysis by UMD Media, a Tigrayan news organisation, revealed that Eritrean troops are occupying 1,972 square kilometres of undisputed Ethiopian territory and 163 square kilometres of areas that were controlled by Eritrea before May 1998 but were awarded to Ethiopia in the EEBC ruling. Although Eritrean forces are present in territory awarded to Asmara by the EEBC, their seizure of Tigrayan areas violates the very first article of the Algiers Agreement. The article stipulates that the "parties shall permanently terminate military hostilities… each party shall refrain from the threat or use of force," a condition which Eritrea broke when it invaded Tigray in November 2020.

Under the Algiers Agreement, Asmara and Addis further agreed to the formation of the United Nations Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), which deployed over 4,000 peacekeeping forces to areas of Eritrea along the pre-May 1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian border. Over a period of years, however, Asmara systematically increased pressure and imposed restrictions on UNMEE. Beginning in 2004,  Eritrea began to increasingly limit UNMEE patrol movements and, in December 2005, expelled mission officials from a number of European countries, as well as Russia, the US, and Canada. By 2008, the pressure had risen to an unsustainable degree following a near-total restriction of fuel supplies and out of fears of risks to UN personnel, leading the UN Security Council to decide to terminate UNMEE's mandate on 30 July that year.

Other critical elements of the Algiers Agreement have been disregarded by Asmara, including the findings of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission that ruled that Eritrea's attack on Badme town in May 1998 violated Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. Eritrea was subsequently found liable to compensate Ethiopia for damages in excess of USD 170 million. The notion, therefore,  that Asmara is acting in accordance with the same Algiers Agreement that it has repeatedly undermined is patently ludicrous. And though Asmara is not itself a signatory to the Pretoria agreement, the presence of non-Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) troops in Tigray is in direct contravention of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.

For the Irob, a Christian and indigenous ethnic minority of just 50,000 people, the Eritrean occupation has been particularly devastating. The EDF is reported to be in total control of the Woreatele and Endalgeda kebeles within the Irob woreda, as well as the key supply road that links Adigrat and Irob. The EDF's control of the road has effectively severed these communities from the rest of Tigray– and access to humanitarian aid. The scale of the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Eritrean territories remains unknown, with aid officials having been repeatedly denied access to the areas, but the mountainous region that the Irob largely occupy is often prone to drought, and the hunger levels reported elsewhere in Tigray are believed to be even higher in the Irob woreda.

The Irob share many similarities with their Tigrayan neighbours, but the minority also have their own customs, including a form of communally-recited poetry known as 'Adar.' For centuries, the Irob have occupied the mountainous areas that now straddle Tigray and Eritrea, eking out a livelihood primarily as subsistence farmers. The Irob also participated in the armed resistance against the Italian colonisation of now-Eritrea and Ethiopia in the late 19th century, which eventually culminated in the defeat of the Italian invaders in the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Throughout Eritrea's history of Italian colonisation, its time of forcible integration with Ethiopia, and the post-1993 independence period, the Irob have never been part of Eritrean territory. The Irob's ancestral land has always been in Tigray.

During the 1998-2000 war, Irob communities faced heinous human rights violations at the hands of invading Eritrean forces, including mass displacement, enforced imposition of Eritrean citizenship, and widespread killings. Landmines were sown in Irob villages to prevent the return of the displaced communities, while Irob property was systematically looted. Many of the brutal tactics and war crimes carried out by the Eritrean invaders over 20 years ago were again revisited by EDF forces as part of its modus operandi during the 2020-2022 Tigray War. And there is little sign that the EDF has ameliorated its callous approach since fighting ceased after the Pretoria agreement in November 2022. In one alarming video that was widely circulated in April 2024, men in EDF uniforms were seen ordering villagers in occupied areas to "forget Tigray and think [about] Eritreanness and Eritrea." The military officials also told the villagers that they "have an obligation to provide national service" and that they had "to live the life of an Eritrean citizen." The video and similar other reports of forcible assimilation indicate that the Asmara regime has no intention of relinquishing these communities from Eritrean control.

The Algiers Agreement was never implemented by either Addis or Asmara. Consequently, Eritrea should not be allowed under false pretences to instrumentalise a two-decade-old peace agreement to subject a minority group to yet more state-directed violence. The Ethiopian federal government may be reticent to directly confront its former ally, but the status quo that is threatening the very existence of minority groups is untenable. While international attention is currently trained elsewhere in Tigray, those under Eritrean occupation deserve to be able to determine their own fate and should not be abandoned to a repressive Eritrean regime.

By the Ethiopian Cable team