Parsing Out Dystopia: Two Wars Worlds Apart – Ethiopia

(continued from here)

According to the Wilson Center:  “Since Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict began in November 2020, an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 combatants have taken up arms, and as many as 600,000 civilians have died in the violence, according to researchers from Belgium’s Ghent University. With the destruction of hospitals and emergency clinics, and rampant food insecurity fueling the staggering civilian death toll, this conflict has led to several compounding humanitarian crises.

“The region’s inaccessibility and government-imposed blackouts have often made it difficult to obtain accurate information, however, death toll estimates are stark: 50,000 to 100,000 victims of direct killings, 150,000 to 200,000 deaths by starvation, and more than 100,000 additional deaths caused by a lack of access to health care.”

How did so much go so horribly wrong in a country whose prime minister won the Nobel Peace Prize(!) a year before war started?  That is a great example of an absurd question.  Civil war in Ethiopia came about as a result of another war in the region coming to an end.  This truly is a dystopian story and further proof that we are future-shifted.  Dystopia is not ahead of us, we are living in it, engulfed by it.   What if I told you it was Jimmy Carter's fault?

That isn't true but our story could start with Carter in 1989.  The karma of the Tigray War, an extension of the long-running Ethiopian Civil War, goes way back, starting even before then.  Eritrea was once Ethiopia's northernmost region and its only access to ports on the Red Sea.  Obviously, it was important for Ethiopia to maintain ports for commerce and foreign aid.  But Eritrean separatist rebels fought Ethiopian forces for many years.  It was longest on-going conflict in all of Africa.  Both sides had been at war since 1961. 

Carter negotiated a ceasefire agreement between the two sides but it did not last long.  However, it managed set in motion a process of diplomacy that led to a genuine ceasefire in 1991 and to Eritrean Independence in 1993.  During this conflict, which spanned parts of four decades, Eritrean forces fought alongside rebels from Tigray as well.  The two were closely allied back then.

Unfortunately, the final border established between Eritrea and Tigray was drawn in such a way that both sides disputed it.  Some people from each side were stuck in the other side's country.  Fighting broke out again in 1998 all along the border.  It raged until 2000 when another tenuous peace was cobbled together.  This time peace came not out of human wisdom but out of political maneuvering.  A symbolic town was officially ceded to Eritrea.  In exchange, Tigray's representation and power within Ethiopia was ensured.  For decades thereafter, the Tigray region dominated Ethiopian politics.

The former allies of Eritrea were now became their bitter foes.  It was the border with the Tigray region that was originally in dispute.  Eventually, fighting broke out again between Ethiopian forces (led by Tigrayan generals) and Eritrea.  This war quickly became a stalemate but it created a no man's land where military raids were being conducted constantly by one side or the other.

Into this stepped the new Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018.  He brokered a deal that ended the war with Eritrea.  It was widely held throughout Africa as a great diplomatic accomplishment.  For that he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.  

But Ahmed was an outsider to the Tigrayan control of the country.  For the Tigrayans the border was still in dispute.  Ahmed had compromised land away to Eritrea in exchange for peace.  But the Tigrayans are a warlike people.  They did not want to cede any of their lands to their enemy.  As part of a more democratic Ethiopia, Tigray became just another minority group, its previous clout diminished.  

This prompted these aggressive people (they had been at war with Eritrea for a generation or more) to declare their independence (like Eritrea did decades ago) and attack any Ethiopian forces that were sent to control the region.  (Ahmed claimed that Tigray started the war by attacking government military bases in the region but the rebels denied this, which was pretty much the story on any question about this war.)

Absurdly, Ahmed the bringer of peace now brought war.  As prime minister, he really had no choice.  In September 2020, Tigray held regional elections in defiance of Ethiopia.  In reprisal, welfare funds were withheld from Tigray.  In November major fighting erupted throughout Tigray with massacres committed by both sides and tens of thousands of people displaced.  Simultaneously, fighting broke out again along the border between Tigray and Eritrea, with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) firing rockets at Eritrean towns.  The fighting was so sudden and intense that it threatened to spill over into neighboring Sudan.

Nevertheless, on November 28, Ethiopia announced that its operations against the TPLF were completed.  Ethiopian forces took control of the Tigrayan capital of Mikelle.  Apparently, this had no effect on Eritrea who launched an offensive into Tigray.  These forces were met with furious TPLF counterattacks.  Both sides apparently committed atrocities in horrific fighting.  At the same time, Tigrayan forces retook Mikelle, driving the Ethiopians out of the city.  

The situation in Tigray quickly deteriorated with tens of thousands of more refugees fleeing the savage fighting.  There was almost no reporting on what was happening in and around Tigray at this time.  No reporters were allowed in and no one was allowed out.  The region was completely isolated by Ethiopia to the south and Eritrea to the north.

For months Ahmed denied that Eritrean forces were in Tigray but he finally admitted their presence in March 2021.  But even facing isolation and combat north and south, the TPLF continued its offensive against Ethiopian forces.  It aligned itself with the Oromo Liberation Army in a joint attack on Ethiopia.  (The Oromo Conflict was yet another on-going war in Ethiopia through numerous ceasefires agreements since 1973.) Shortly after this the TPLF invaded the Amhara region directly to Tigray's south.  The TPLF was kicking ass and gaining territory.

This was a very different war from Ukraine.  While there were a few rockets on both sides and Ethiopia had attack helicopters and a few jet bombers, mostly it was fought by small infantry units with only lite artillery support (if any at all).  Equally different was how the war was covered.  Hardly any information came out of Tigray itself.  Journalists were barred except for access to areas controlled by the Ethiopian government.  Whereas, starvation did not happen in Ukraine (one of the world's greatest grain suppliers), it quickly became widespread in Tigray.  Unlike Ukraine, Tigray was a killing zone completely isolated from the world.  Which was one reason so few in America have ever heard any of this epic tragedy before.  (See a timeline of some major events here.)

Ahmed called on all Ethiopians to support the war and for males to volunteer for local militias to help protect themselves from Tigray, Oromo, and other hostile forces.  Tens of thousands were taking up government issued arms.  The situation in Ethiopia was escalating quickly.  But Ahmed was able to stop it all, becoming the peacemaker again.  Once more necessity dictated what human wisdom or compassion never could.  This time it was about starvation.

By isolating Tigray, Ethiopia effectively controlled the food supply to the people.  Without Ethiopian maintenance assets, transportation systems within Tigray started breaking down.  Available food could not be delivered and the TPLF controlled the few remaining trucks, mainly to feed itself.  Hundreds of thousands were suddenly without food.  How long would it go on?  No one could get in or out and there was literally no food for hundreds of thousands of people.

Whose fault was that?  Ahmed was an elected prime minister and could get trucks full of food traveling into Tigray in a matter of days.  But the TPLF would still attack the supply lines.  A ceasefire was needed.  Ahmed's entire purpose in creating this crisis was to shut down the TPLF offensive into Amhara.  Ethiopia was effectively saying, “stop attacking and we let the food back in.”  

It was basically the same offer Japan had from America in August 1945.  Surrender or we will blow all of you up.  This time it was stop fighting or you will starve.  Ahmed had to be a throat cutting bringer of peace.  Tigray was kicking ass and killing other Ethiopians (and Eritreans too, you don't want to mess with these people).  So now, only recently, the TPLF agreed to peace.  

Everything seems very tentative and the animosity between Ahmed (who is popular throughout most of Ethiopia) and the TPLF (which used to run the whole country) remains acute.  So this is a shaky peace.  My guess is it won't last.  After all, Ethiopian regions have been at war with one another forever.

It is now a race against time in Ethiopia.  How fast can food be delivered?  It was two weeks after the peace agreement was signed before the trucks at last started reaching the starvation wasteland, something definitely dystopian.   An isolated war torn region consumed with fighting and starvation everywhere.  I mean, you can't top that for living in dystopia.  The magnitude of the effort simply to the get food to these people is staggering.

It is sometimes hard to believe what humans beings will do to one another.  Our tribal ways are still very much with us.  East Africa is one of the world's most fractured, tribal regions.  Human tribalism and primitive thinking makes dystopia possible.  Dystopia is not the coming of some future global threat.  Rather, as global technology unfolds, dystopia is really just a consequence of being ethnocentric, of applying old ways that have been around for thousands of years, in a truly high-tech global world.  Our animalistic and most deeply bigoted selves create dystopia because we inject our past into a pace of change that is jolting.  The result of looking backward in a forward moving world makes reality feel dystopic.

Nobel Peace Prize winning Ahmed had to threaten to starve a bunch of his own people to stop a war from getting out of control.  The trouble is, the starving are yet to be saved and all the many reasons for regional war otherwise still remain.  This is a ominous salvation for the starving.  They will survive hunger's wrath only to find themselves still living in a realm that wants to kill its neighbors.  "War is all hell," as Sherman said.  Of course, it is hell in Ukraine.  But there's a special kind of hell going on in Ethiopia.  

Pondering our two wars I find myself wondering would Ahmed and Putin (or anyone in the TPLF or the Russian army) ever be tried for war crimes?  Probably not.  Can Ahmed even be said to have committed a war crime by isolating Tigray the way he did?  That is a very difficult question.  Similarly, will we let Russia get away with attacking a sovereign country and intentionally targeting and killing civilians?  I know what the answer is supposed to be to a question like that but the truth is it will never be officially asked.  I'm still wrestling with the feeling that our warlike nature is too much for the coming of a new world.  We don't seem to be rewiring ourselves fast enough.  Our warring past thrown into the present is the most dystopian thing in the known universe.