Perspectives on Tigray

On November 2, the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a peace agreement, halting two years of brutal civil war. A joint task force including the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report in September that detailed evidence of war crimes by both sides, including attacks on civilians, ethnic cleansing, and sexual violence. However, it only found evidence of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the government, including widespread and systematic war crimes and use of famine as a weapon of war. Now analysts are beginning to assess the prospects for peace.

Writing in Just Security, international lawyer Owiso Owiso argues that vagueness in the parts of the agreement that provide for a justice and accountability tribunal threatens the peace. Owioso is concerned that the government of Ethiopia, which was a party to the conflict but will play a major role in interpreting the provisions, might take advantage of the ambiguity to avoid being held accountable.

On the Lawfare Podcast, an excellent interview with Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation and Fletcher School at Tufts traces the roots of the conflicts, the truce agreement, and the Ethiopian government’s wielding of famine as a weapon. De Waal says that, unfortunately, the conflict demonstrates that famine is an effective weapon. The Ethiopian government and its Eritrean allies blockaded the Tigray region and permitted only a small amount of food aid to reach people there. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people starved to death during the war. De Waal argues that it was, in large part, the famine that forced the TPLF into negotiations with, and ultimately a settlement with favorable terms for, the government.

De Waal’s lesson is in tension with a DOD study we highlighted earlier this week. That study found that, while targeting power grids in wartime reduces civilian morale, it rarely produces policy changes. The lesson from Tigray, by contrast, suggests that making the situation dire enough for civilians can force an enemy from the battlefield.