politics

Pretty much every side involved in the conflict here is responsible for many horrible civilian casualties and likely even war crimes. The central government is known to lack the capacity to truly control paramilitary forces and militias from the regions bordering the Tigray region, which makes this into a recipe for disaster and collateral damage. The TPLF, which has a terrible reputation throughout the Horn of Africa, is also forcing child soldiers to fight for them as fodder in the front lines against the Ethiopian central government forces and in the TPLF’s invasions of the Afar and Amhara regions. All sides have their online activists and the TPLF has its own troll farm to make sensationalists claims and spread disinformation while calling for western intervention in a civil war that the TPLF had started as the former ruling party seizes parts of the Afar and Amhara regions as part of their violent irredentist campaign that has been accused of engaging in ethnic cleansing.

The pro-TPLF account (@hayet_alem) that was linked misrepresented the video of the Ethiopian advisor by falsely claiming that he was referring to all Tigrayans when he was instead referring to TPLF rebel forces. From the video itself that the pro-TPLF account posted which actually contradicts the TPLF accusation (although it's still pretty cringeworthy imo):

These people (referring to Tigray ruling party and Tigray forces) and their likes shouldn’t be repeated. They should be known as the last of their kind.

The official acknowledged that his speech reflected his own personal feelings and was about the TPLF party itself which he had compared to the “devil”, although it would have helped to not have used incendiary speech that could be deliberately misrepresented even when he was referring to the rebel party he considered to be a terrorist group. Despite what pro-TPLF propaganda and their online bot armies would like to suggest, the TPLF has never represented all Tigrayans. Tigrayan opposition against the TPLF party has always existed in Tigray despite their history of repression.

While it’s true that the TPLF-dominated Ethiopian government was pro-China (as is the current government), they were also considered one of the greatest allies of US foreign policy in Africa. The TPLF-led government even invaded Somalia at the behest of the US government and made Ethiopia one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid. Meanwhile, the new Abiy-led government has been in a hostile conflict with Egypt, a key US ally. This metric that was referenced is a deeply flawed method of measuring foreign policy alignment as both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are also considered critical allies in US foreign policy and actually score lower on this metric than TPLF-led Ethiopia.

The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia was founded on the principles of ethnic federalism under the belief that it could help establish equality for all ethnic groups in Ethiopia, but this system quickly devolved into what was in practice a repressive ethnocracy dominated by the TPLF, where public office assignment was very often allocated based on ethnic-based political affiliation favorable to the TPLF rather than merit. So despite creating a strong state-led economy that averaged annual growth rates of nearly 10% for over a decade, this economic growth was not inclusive and overwhelmingly favored corrupt TPLF-aligned officials and their cronies. This and a long history of discrimination led to a lot of resentment and wide-spread anti-government protests from other regions in Ethiopia and this political opposition to TPLF dominance and corruption was met with political persecution and even violent repression. The TPLF-led government would often try to play other ethnic groups and regions against each other to try to maintain their power over the country.

Under years of immense anti-government pressure, there was a transition of enough political power away from TPLF leaders in 2018 that resulted in Abiy Ahmed becoming Prime Minister, who led the transition away from the TPLF’s ethnocracy in Ethiopia. He won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end a costly territorial stalemate with Eritrea. This move by Abiy angered the TPLF which had a territorial dispute with Eritrea and destroyed their irredentist efforts to further expand the Tigray region’s territory. Abiy also enraged the former ruling party by freeing hundreds of political prisoners that had been imprisoned because of their open opposition to TPLF policies. As Abiy tried to reduce the TPLF’s disproportionate power in an effort to increase representation of ethnic groups that had been marginalized in Ethiopia under the TPLF, he also tried to hold TPLF leaders accountable for their crimes under their EPRDF regime. With the loss of their disproportionate political and economic privileges that they had enjoyed for decades, the TPLF leadership responded by trying to sabotage the new government. When Abiy made a controversial decision to postpone national and region elections due to the pandemic, the TPLF leaders seized the opportunity to hold regional elections anyway and declare Abiy’s actions illegitimate. Abiy responded by redirecting funding away from the higher levels of the regional government that were controlled by the TPLF to the lower level ranks less affiliated with the TPLF in Tigray in an attempt to weaken the TPLF. TPLF military forces then started a civil war with their attacks on the central government military.

Atrocities are occurring on both sides, which is what Breakthrough news has also acknowledged. Both sides accuse the other of obstructing international aid, but even American officials have acknowledged that the TPLF was raiding international aid warehouses, looting aid trucks, and were causing destruction in every village that they had visited. According to the head of the USAID mission in Ethiopia, food support was provided to about 5 million people in the Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions. Only the TPLF activists are continually calling for western/US invasion in the region.

A wave of privatization occurred in the earlier years of the TPLF-led Ethiopian government while they still managed to retain public control over much of the commanding heights of the economy. Not much is significantly changing from this economic model under Ahmed other than some partial privatizations of some state-owned industries to obtain foreign exchange reserves while the government still plans to maintain majority public control over the industries that make up the commanding heights. Abiy Ahmed’s government canceled a proposal to partially privatize the government’s airline, but they are going through with partially privatizing the government’s monopoly on the sugar industry and are also partially privatizing the government’s Ethio telecom by offering 2 telecoms licenses and a 40% stake in the state-owned enterprise, which will still be majority-owned by the government.

While the economic achievements by Eritrea’s state-led economic model that Eugene mentioned are true, the government of Eritrea, since achieving independence after years of fighting, unfortunately can also still be very repressive and paranoid. Citing the instability caused by border wars and ongoing territorial conflicts with Ethiopia/having up to 1/5 of their land under occupation, Eritrea’s national government repeatedly postponed national direct elections and even postponed implementing their new constitution after ratifying it. They do, however, still maintain some semblance of representative democracy at the regional and local government level with regular local and regional elections. Eritrea has mandatory national service for their population, which was established to help in the reconstruction effort of the country after years of war for independence. It consisted of about 6 months of military service and a year of working on government development projects. The official 18 month service limit then became extended indefinitely for many Eritreans though as a result of the 1998-2000 border war that dragged on with continued fierce territorial disputes with a TPLF-led Ethiopian government that was backing violent rebel groups in Eritrea despite the ceasefire. There is hope now that with the recent peace deal with Ethiopia that was signed by Abiy Ahmed that indefinite national service, where the government continues to pay your salary after being assigned to a civilian job or continued military work, could end, but the current Tigray conflict may end up postponing this as they share a long border. Eritrean forces are also probably responsible for at least some civilian casualties in the Tigray conflict, as are the TPLF, which had been executing Eritrean refugees who had wanted to leave camp to look for food and those who had lost a battle to the EDF. The current Abiy-led government also still hasn’t fully implanted the peace deal yet. According to Eritrea's Ministry of Information in July 2020:

Two years after the signing of the Peace Agreement, Ethiopian troops continue to be present in our sovereign territories, Trade and economic ties of both countries have not resumed to the desired extent or scale.