Source: Economist

ADDIS ABABA

First come muffled sobs, gradually growing louder with each new voice that joins the chorus. A woman in a black shawl begins to wail, her body rocking towards the portrait of a smiling young man in the middle of the room. Abraham was 35 years old when he was shot, says an older brother who is hosting mourning relatives on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Last month armed men arrived at the family home in Adwa, a town in the northern region of Tigray. By then many of the town’s residents had fled, but not Abraham, who had a young child and a sick, ageing father. When the gunmen tried to steal two of the family’s trucks, Abraham resisted. He was shot dead on the spot, in front of his father.

According to his family, Abraham’s killers were from Eritrea, a neighbouring country whose troops have been fighting alongside Ethiopian government forces against the recently-ousted rulers of Tigray. There is little reason to doubt their claim. Although phone lines to Adwa have been cut since the fighting started in early November, they know what happened to Abraham from a family friend who met his father, as well as neighbours who escaped to Mekelle, the regional capital.

Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, has consistently denied enlisting the help of soldiers from Eritrea, the gulag state next door. But Abiy’s denials ring hollow in the face of a growing number of claims like those of Abraham’s family, as well as by foreign diplomats and governments. In December America said reports of Eritrea’s involvement were “credible” and urged it to withdraw. Belgian journalists who made a rare trip into Tigray found video footage apparently showing an Eritrean tank loaded with plunder.

Exposing Eritrea’s involvement matters because both governments have gone to such lengths to deny it. Abiy told António Guterres, the secretary-general of the un, that no Eritrean soldiers had entered Ethiopia. His government says Tigray’s now-renegade ruling party, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (tplf), made fake Eritrean uniforms to spread misinformation. Eritrea’s foreign minister told Reuters that Eritrea was not a party to the conflict.

Others say that Eritrea’s involvement is not only real but highly significant. It won independence from Ethiopia in 1993. The two countries fought a bloody border war in the late 1990s followed by two decades of low-level conflict that ended with a peace deal in 2018 (for which Abiy won the Nobel peace prize in 2019). Much of the fighting was along Tigray’s border, leading to bitter enmity between Eritreans and the tplf.

This bitterness may explain the destruction that Eritrean forces have left in their wake. They are accused of killing civilians, looting, laying waste to farmland and abducting some of the 100,000 Eritrean refugees who had fled their own totalitarian government and sought safety in camps in Tigray.

Using foreign troops to fight a war on his own soil besmirches Abiy’s reputation and will complicate efforts to pacify Tigray. “The government will never admit it,” says an Ethiopian analyst. “Because they know they could never justify it to the Tigrayans.”

Awet Tewelde Weldemichael, an Eritrean academic at Queen’s University in Canada, says that in recent weeks there seems to have been a phased withdrawal of Eritrean troops. If true, it might suggest Abiy has had enough of them. Or it might mean that Issaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s dictator, is confident that his old foes in the tplf have been routed. Although fighting is reported to be continuing in several parts of Tigray, the tplf leadership—thought to be holed up somewhere in the mountains—has been mostly silent for weeks. On December 18th the Ethiopian government offered a reward worth the equivalent of $260,000 for information on their whereabouts.

It is not just Eritrea that has a stake in Ethiopia’s civil war. Clashes between Sudanese forces and militias from Amhara, a region to the south of Tigray, have turned deadly in recent weeks. They are fighting over a large slice of fertile farmland that is within Sudan’s borders but long occupied by Amhara farmers. Shortly after the war began in Tigray, Sudanese troops moved into positions that had previously been held by the Ethiopian army. Since then each side has accused the other of upping the ante. On December 22nd Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister accused Sudanese forces of looting. Sudan’s information minister countered by accusing the Ethiopian army of taking part in border attacks. Talks and a visit to Addis Ababa in December by Abdalla Hamdok, Sudan’s prime minister, have failed to resolve the matter.

These tensions are unlikely to blow up into a full-scale war between the two states. But if the border conflict is not resolved, Sudan could prolong the fighting in Tigray by, for instance, turning a blind eye to arms and other supplies crossing the border. That would be a headache for Abiy, whose forces are already overstretched trying to locate the tplf’s guerrilla forces while also battling armed insurgents and quelling inter-ethnic fighting elsewhere in the country.

On December 23rd more than 200 civilians, mostly Amharas, were massacred by heavily armed ethnic militiamen in the western region of Benishangul-Gumuz. Similar incidents have been reported in western Oromia in recent weeks. Ethnic Somalis and Afars in the country’s east are also trading deadly blows. Ethiopia, already a tinder box, risks igniting a wider conflagration across the Horn of Africa. ■

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “The widening war”

Rashid Abdi – one of the most shrewd commentators on the Horn of Africa has posted these Tweets – which have been slightly revised to make them easily to read. The background is not by Rashid, and has been added.

“Sudan says it is asserting sovereignty over the al-Fashaga triangle. And it is right. Region is internationally recognised as Sudanese. Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi who was more astute sought modus vivendi with Sudan rather than challenge its sovereignty. This allowed Ethiopian farmers to lease land, not own land.

“A large-scale and prolonged war between Sudan and Ethiopia will be catastrophic. It almost certainly will draw in Egypt. That will be a nightmare scenario. Makes sense for PM Abiy to negotiate with Sudan rather than use military means to challenge Khartoum’s seizure of al Fashaga.

“PM Abiy is sadly in a bind and terrible fix. His only support base now is hardline Amhara imperio-nationalists. They drove him to war with Tigray, now pushing him to another even bigger war with Sudan. When he fails to deliver, they will depose him.

“Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki always wanted supremacy, dominance in the Horn. The turmoil in the Horn is his chance. Tigray was existential & immediate threat. A weak & conflicted Ethiopia suits him fine. An Ethiopia at war with Sudan even better. That way he gets to kill two birds with one stone.”

How this conflict escalated

The  dispute over the al Fashaga triangle  goes back to treaties signed by Britain, Italy and Ethiopia in 1900, 1901 and 1902. The triangle is very fertile and well watered land, which has been cultivated by Amhara farmers from neighbouring Ethiopia. But the land is generally regarded as Sudanese.

The background to this complex problem can be read here.

As  NIZAR MANEK, MOHAMED KHEIR OMER argued in an article in Foreign Policy:

“Fashqa is an approximately 100-square-mile territory of prime agricultural land along its border with Ethiopia’s Amhara state, which Sudan claims by virtue of an agreement signed in 1902 between the United Kingdom and Ethiopia under Emperor Menelik II and subsequently reinforced by various Ethiopian leaders, including the TPLF.  The dispute over Fashqa remains a major grievance for Ethiopia’s ethnic Amhara farmers near the border, who seek to till the land, and is an obstacle in negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).”

Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir largely turned a blind eye to incursions into his country by Ethiopia. However, Sudan’s transitional government, which took power after popular protests that ousted  al-Bashir, took steps to get the Ethiopian farmers to leave al-Fashaga.

When the war in Tigray erupted on 4 November, the Ethiopians withdrew their army from the al Fashaga – to join the fighting in Tigray. The Sudanese seized their opportunity – and took large parts of the disputed area.

Failed attempting to resolve the conflict

On Sunday 13 December Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok visited Ethiopia with an offer to broker a ceasefire in its northern Tigray region, a proposal Ethiopia said was unnecessary because fighting had stopped.

As the AFP report put it: “Hamdok, who was accompanied by Sudanese security officials, planned to present his concerns about threats to Sudan’s security along its border with Tigray during the visit, the officials said. However, Hamdok returned within a few hours from what Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had earlier described as a two-day trip.”

PM Hamdok – who had hoped to resolve the al-Fashaga problem during the visit, had been snubbed by Ethiopia’s PM Abiy. He returned to Khartoum bruised by the encounter. No useful discussions were held to end the Ethiopia-Sudanese crisis during the regional summit in Djibouti of IGAD. Rather, the crisis escalated.

Reuters reported on 16 December the Sudanese armed forces as saying that a number of its officers had been ambushed by “Ethiopian forces and militias” during a security patrol of the border region. “During the return of our forces from combing the area around Jabal Abutiour inside our territory, they were ambushed by Ethiopian forces and militias inside Sudanese territory, as a result of which lives and equipment were lost,” the army said, adding the attack took place on Tuesday. The Sudanese army did not specify how many officers were killed. Local residents said that reinforcements were being sent to the area, which is part of the Fashaqa locality where some Ethiopian refugees have been crossing into Sudan.

Sudan responded by reinforcing its troops in the disputed areas.  Egypt – Sudan’s traditional ally – said it would back Khartoum. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned the Ethiopian cross-border attack on Sudanese military troops near Sudan’s border with Ethiopia. The ministry termed the attack as an “unjustified assault.” “Egypt reiterates its full solidarity with brotherly Sudan and affirms its support to the country’s right to protect its security and sovereignty over its territory,” the ministry said in a statement. The statement continued, “Egypt is following these dangerous field developments with great concern … and underlines the need to take all possible measures to guarantee that such incidents against Sudan will not be repeated in the future.”

On 29 December Ethiopia warned Sudan that it would mount a counter-offensive to take re-assert its control of the al-Fashaga triangle. “If Sudan does not stop expanding into Ethiopian territories, Ethiopia will be forced to launch a counter-offensive,” Ethio FM 107.8 quoting Foreign Ministry spokesman Ambassador Dina Mufti as saying.

Now that conflict appears to have erupted into full scale fighting.

Consequences of a Sudan-Ethiopia conflict

It is too early to be certain how this will develop. Much depends on how far Sudan and Ethiopia will push this conflict. The reactions of Egypt and Eritrea will also be important – while regional actors like the African Union could be important.

As Rashid Abdi said in the Tweet quoted at the start of this article, “A large-scale and prolonged war between Sudan and Ethiopia will be catastrophic. It almost certainly will draw in Egypt…Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki always wanted supremacy, dominance in the Horn. The turmoil in the Horn is his chance. Tigray was existential & immediate threat. A weak & conflicted Ethiopia suits him fine. An Ethiopia at war with Sudan even better. That way he gets to kill two birds with one stone.”

The conclusions by Nizmar Makek and Mohamed Omar in Foreign Policy is also useful.

If Khartoum does so, it has much to lose. Abiy could retaliate by supporting Sudanese rebel groups following unstable peace accords they signed with Sudan’s transitional government in October—for example, in Sudan’s Blue Nile state, which borders Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz state, the site of the GERD. Isaias could also support subgroups of the Beja—a group of tribes living between the Red Sea and the Nile—in a tactical alliance with him against the Beni Amer ethnic group in eastern Sudan and Eritrea traditionally aligned with the ELF, as well as seek to enlist discontented Sudanese opposition figures who were previously based in Eritrea from the mid-1990s to 2006. Since the fall of Bashir, tensions have erupted in eastern Sudan—including in Kassala, Gadaref, and Port Sudan—between groups aligned with Eritrea’s government and those opposed to it.

Meanwhile, Eritrea is getting involved; it is hosting the ENDF on its territory although it remains unclear if Eritrea’s own forces are involved in fighting. On Tigray state television, Tigray’s regional president Debretsion Gebremichael said forces aligned with Isaias bombed Humera—a strategic Tigrayan town on the triple frontier between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan on Nov. 9 with heavy artillery, that Eritrean and Tigrayan forces are fighting on the border, and that ENDF forces have otherwise been restricted in their movements. While Abiy’s government earlier claimed it had captured territory from Humera to Shire, about 160 miles east in Tigray, it quickly retracted that claim.

Despite initial successes, the TPLF may not have the backing of Sudan to keep going, especially if Abiy and Isaias can make compromises to enlist Sudan’s support. Although everyone from Sudan’s Hamdok and the African Union to Pope Francis and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is calling for a cease-fire and negotiations, Abiy will only call for talks if the ENDF and other security forces continue to fragment to a point of no return and fail on the battlefield. Without Sudan, a cornered TPLF—which is no stranger to ruthless and violent tactics—might attempt to overthrow Abiy’s government or seek to assassinate him with the support of his many other enemies.