A day before the two year anniversary marking the start of the Ethiopian Civil War, leadership from the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have agreed to a permanent ceasefire following 10 days of negotiation in South Africa.
The conflict has seen tens of thousands killed with millions more being displaced amid human rights abuses and war crimes. The ceasefire will allow aid shipments to resume into the Tigray region, where over 90 percent of the population is in need of food, according to the World Health Organization. Likewise, TPLF fighters have reportedly agreed to disarm and a new regional government for the Tigray region will be formed.
The conflict began when forces of the TPLF attacked the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle on November 3, 2020, leaving several soldiers dead. This was followed by attacks against Eritrea. The breakout of fighting was the boiling point as tensions rose for weeks prior after the TPLF, the ruling party in Tigray, held elections in defiance of the government due to COVID-19 restrictions. The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics as the ruling party from 1991 until 2018, when current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office. The TPLF has had a long history of bad blood with Eritrea, having waged a bloody border war from 1998-2000 that killed 70,000. Ahmed won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for playing a main role in ending hostilities between the two countries.
The outbreak of the war initially saw a strong offensive by government forces that took over much of the Tigray region and within one month the Tigray capital of Mekelle was captured with TPLF forces largely in retreat by November 2020. However, sustained fighting and strained supply lines have led to TPLF fighters to take back nearly all lost territory through an effective insurgency and guerrilla warfare campaign by June 2021, essentially turning the tide of the entire war and pushing Ethiopian forces back.
Fighting continued as the TPLF, backed by fighters of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), continued to push into the Afar and Amhara regions while making a break for the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. On the one year anniversary of the start of the conflict, rebel forces began positioning themselves to advance on the capital, causing federal offcials to declare a state of emergency. However, an intense counter offensive by federal forces, backed by Eritrea, where able to repel the advances and push TPLF rebels back to the Tigray region by the end of December. After that, fighting largely slowed as a ceasefire took place, but fighting rapidly intensified by August 2022. In October, the TPLF announced a full mobilization of every abled body person in the Tigray region to fight as Ethiopian and Eritrean forces launched full scale offensives. Negotiations began on October 25 as the war was reaching an unprecedented level of fighting.
The UN’s Human Rights Council had voted to establish an independent investigation into human rights abuses and war crimes throughout the conflict, stating that all sides have committed violations. At the time, Ethiopia’s government slammed the decision, calling it a product of “neocolonialist mentality” and that an investigation will be “a deliberate destabilization effort.” The two long conflict has seen credible reports of rampant mass killings, gang rapes, and ethnic cleansing by both federal and rebel forces. The Ethiopian government’s crackdown and mass detention of anyone of Tigrayan ethnicity has also been decried as ethnically charged abuse.
