Issue No. 277

 

In late October 2022, Tigrayan and Ethiopian federal representatives met in Pretoria, South Africa, under the auspices of the African Union, amidst the raging Tigray war. Back-door US diplomacy in Djibouti and the Seychelles in mid-2022 had failed to produce anything of note, and brutal fighting had renewed in late August. Calculating they could no longer bear such devastating human costs—costs Addis and Asmara seemed willing to absorb—the Tigrayan delegation arrived in Pretoria ready to make peace and reluctantly accepted terms far from ideal.

Since then, a common refrain amongst international and domestic Ethiopian actors has been to call for the 'full implementation of Pretoria.' They often cite the currently riven politics of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the threat of looming war between Eritrea and Ethiopia as a consequence of the failure to see through the accord. There is much truth in this, with the Debretsion Gebremichael TPLF faction usurping the Tigray Interim Administration's (TIA) authority in part due to a failure to return displaced Tigrayans and expel the occupying Amhara and Eritrean forces within its territory.

Debretsion's faction and the TIA, formerly led by Getachew Reda, were also sharply divided over Tigray's relationship with Addis vis-a-vis Pretoria and key elements of its implementation, including staggering the demobilisation of Tigrayan forces after the withdrawal of non-federal troops from the region. The contested formation of the Tigray Interim Administration in March 2023 was a consequence of a vague provision within the Pretoria agreement that the TPLF and Addis have both disputed. Further, the collapse of the 2018 Addis-Asmara rapprochement-- later revealed to be a security pact-- can be partially attributed to the fallout from Pretoria, which did not acknowledge Eritrea's role or interests in the conflict.

But it is also worth returning to the document itself and the process with which it came about. Despite much pessimism, an agreement was delivered in Pretoria and supplemented in Nairobi in late 2022, with the active fighting between the Tigrayan forces and the Ethiopian federal government concluded. But it remains a lopsided, unwieldy agreement. From the start, the 'Permanent Cessation of Hostilities' document was flawed in both principle and wording, running contrary to all established wisdom regarding peace agreements. For them to endure, it is typical that a foundational political arrangement is secured between the warring parties upon which a peace agreement is subsequently developed. But there was never and remains no shared understanding of the causes of the war, and particularly its devastating consequences. In this instance, the peace deal between Mekelle and Addis was an ad hocinvention dubbed a 'Permanent Cessation of Hostilities.' But in typical negotiating parlance, a 'Cessation of Hostilities' refers to a period of a halt in fighting before a permanent ceasefire is established and political negotiations occur; making one 'Permanent' from the outset has no precedent. The political legwork would supposedly have to follow the hollow accord.

Further undermining the implementation of Pretoria since 2022 was the exclusion at the 11th hour of a more nuanced implementation matrix developed by the Tigrayans, with Addis asserting that the limited US technical assistance had rendered it an 'American document.' It made the main body of the deal, which heavily leaned in favour of Addis, the only document, and relegated Tigray to a much more unfavourable position.

But proposals that Tigray disarm in an absurdly short timeline were nevertheless included, while most egregiously, the agreement omits any mention of Eritrea, perpetuating the AU's complicit silence on Asmara's central role in the conflict. More broadly, the Pretoria agreement marked an abdication from the constitutive norms and principles within the African Union, instead favouring an emphasis on the sovereign rights of Addis, akin to the 1970s. It was a win of brute force and a return to the limited 'silencing of the guns' peace deals of the AU's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity.

Facing little pressure from a largely relieved international community, the necessary wide-reaching political negotiations between the TPLF and the Ethiopian federal government never occurred. Instead, Addis has shirked implementing its responsibilities within the Pretoria agreement, preferring to successfully undermine the Tigrayan political settlement in the months since the war ended. Yet a broad foundational political agreement that acknowledged the scale of Ethiopia's challenges could have been a useful starting point for the years-long insurgency in Oromia. This pattern of bad faith has poisoned other potential peace processes across Ethiopia, with the Oromo Liberation Army explicitly rejecting Pretoria-style agreements in their 2023 negotiations with the federal government. Similarly, Amhara's Fano militias, empowered during the war, viewed themselves as sidelined from both Pretoria and subsequent federal attempts to disarm Amhara Special Forces.

And though the fragile truce has endured between Tigrayan and federal troops, the situation in Ethiopia's northernmost region remains unremittingly bleak. Tigray's reconstruction has been estimated to cost over USD 20bn and is yet to begin in earnest, with much of its schooling, healthcare, and infrastructure still lying in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans remain in overcrowded displacement camps with limited access to basic amenities, unable to return to Western Tigray, which is split between the control of Amhara militias and the federal government. And Addis has paid only the barest lip service to key questions of transitional justice, accountability, and a national dialogue process. The few remaining independent political parties, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), have withdrawn from these farces.

There are almost too many consequences of the Tigray war to mention, but nearly all were left unrecognised in the hurried Pretoria talks. The bankrupting of Tigray and the country, the perforation of Ethiopia's military into national politics, the rolling back of social and economic development, its eroding of Ethiopia as a regional hegemon, and the sharpening of ethnic divisions, to name just a few.

The Pretoria and Nairobi accords should never have been the final documents but merely marked an end to fighting in one of the most horrific wars of the 21st century. There are many 'Original Sins' of Pretoria, but these too only reflect a corrosion in the normative principles of Ethiopia's federal government, the African Union, and the broader international community. And since November 2022, the international community has almost universally failed to invest in the commitment required to make the flawed peace agreement work. Only with war looming again in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea have some re-engaged, but it may prove too little, too late.

Still, there are some glimmers of positive news. This morning, General Tadesse Werede was appointed as the new President of the TIA, replacing the ousted Getachew Reda and ushering in a potentially more unifying figure that can bring the riven region together. Having largely kept out of Tigray's ugly political fray of recent months, General Werede's appointment offers an opportunity for the region to reset its politics and rebuild cohesion at a crucial moment. How Debretsion's faction responds will have to be seen, but Getachew was widely regarded as having grown too close to Addis. Without similar political baggage, General Werede still wields influence with the Chief of the Ethiopian National Defence Force Berhanu Jula and PM Abiy Ahmed. In the immediate, though, restoring internal Tigrayan political and security consensus with armed conflict still menacing between Asmara and Addis must be the priority to prevent the region from being sucked into another destructive war.

In the longer term, however, the Pretoria agreement remains a highly problematic document, and one which will likely continue to pose a number of issues for an unstable Tigray, the new TIA president and Ethiopia at large. Only with a negotiated broader political settlement can Ethiopia begin restoring a semblance of stability to the country, but the prospects for such an endeavour remain dim.

The Ethiopian Cable Team