By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media.
Originally published December 1, 2020.
Ethiopia’s president declared on Saturday that the military operations against the Tigray Province have been carried out. Fighting continues nonetheless, and large masses of people have been forced to flee. The conflict is by no means over in Africa’s second most populous country.
Aftenposten writes that Eritrea is at risk of a protracted guerrilla war, even if the campaign to take over the entire Tigray Province were to be successful. TPLF has their own forces and has exercised political power and waged war for several decades.
The military in Eritrea, the federal forces under the president’s command, have warned the civilian population in the Tigray Province that they will show “no mercy” to civilians who have not managed to escape before the final offensive. The brutal threats have been met with criticism from many positions. As of Saturday, the army marched towards the Tigray capital city of Mekele to encircle it with tanks. A spokesperson for the army said that people should protect themselves from the heavy artillery fire that will come and accused the Tigray leadership of using the civilian population as human shields. The USA and Human Rights Watch have warned that regarding the entire city as a military target will be considered as a war crime and a form of collective punishment.
The war in Ethiopia has led to many more refugees and a worsened situation for all refugees who are already in the region, like the half million refugees from Eritrea. Ethiopia has rejected a proposal for peace talks regarding the Tigray conflict. The Ethiopian federal army began their advance on the Tigray region after a protracted conflict escalated to an armed struggle on November 4, 2020. The Ethiopian government has claimed that they have operated in “self-defense” and that it was the local forces of the Tigray party TPLF that initiated the armed struggle by attacking a military post belonging to federal forces.
The Ethiopian National Defense Forces has moved forward quickly and have taken over the region’s second largest city. Civilians flee in the hundreds of thousands, partly because government forces have been firing on the cities. Many of the refugees come from the war-torn neighboring country of Sudan. An escalating humanitarian catastrophe is developing. The refugees have been fleeing without being able to take anything other than what they can carry in their arms and on their backs. All of this is happening in a region that is heavily characterized by military conflicts and regional dissolution, poverty, hunger, and a history of famines, all in the midst of a pandemic and a global economic crisis. In this situation, in other words, the government urges, or threatens, people to flee.
On the other side, the TPLF answers by rejecting the ultimatum and says that people in the region are ready to die to protect their homeland. The TPLF has long been the dominating party in the front that has governed Eritrea since they seized power through a war against the Soviet-backed Derg regime. This front was initially “Marxist-Leninist” of the Hoxhaist (Albanian) variant until 1991. After this, they quickly changed their rhetoric to embrace the west, primarily the US, and market liberalism, but nonetheless maintained certain symbols and phrases.
The current conflict originates in a factional struggle in the government party, which changed its name from EPRDF, although it was formally dissolved to create the president’s “Prosperity Party” without ethnic-regional membership parties. This is a factionalist struggle that regards power and influence, on positions within the bureaucracy and within business, and of course has connections to imperialists. It also deals with where the borders should be drawn between the Tigray Province and Ethiopia’s neighboring country, Eritrea, and conflicts between Ethiopia’s government party and the TPLF that trace back several decades.
It is also worth mentioning Ethiopia’s conflicts with Sudan and Egypt, the results of a gigantic dam that the country is planning to construct and which will have consequences for the water reserves of Sudan and Egypt. The world’s longest river, the Nile, has its source in the mountains of Ethiopia, before joining together in Sudan and running through all of Egypt and out into the Mediterranean.
There have been made claims, among them from Amnesty International, that hundreds of people have been killed in massacres. The UN has expressed concerns that genocides may occur, and several desperate voices erupt with descriptions of bombing civilians, people being chopped to death, and other abuses. All communications from parts of Tigray have been blocked by government forces, and the UN fears that the lives of half a million people may be at stake.
All of this is occurring in a country where the president has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. This “Peace Prize” has time and again been revealed as a purely politicized prize, which time and again has been awarded to war criminals, imperialists, and imperialist lackeys. In Ethiopia’s case, it clearly has to do with Norwegian companies’ interests in Ethiopia’s mineral deposits, and, for instance, Norsk Hydro’s enthusiasm that the president has improved relations with Eritrea.
The war yet again reveals the hypocritical talk of peace within this system. Imperialism means war. The oppressed countries will never see peace and progress as long as imperialism reigns. Only new democratic revolutions and socialism, and continued struggle until communism, will create peace for the masses of people in the entire world.
Read More:
Kamper i Etiopia – vil de utløse ny flyktningestrøm?
Etiopisk offensiv mot Tigray fullført lørdag, hevder statsminister Abiy Ahmed
US voices ‘grave concern’ over situation in Ethiopia
‘Stop the madness,’ Tigray leader urges Ethiopia’s PM
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