As
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed goes to war against Ethiopia’s former rulers—the
Tigray People’s Liberation Front—Khartoum’s moves will determine whether the
conflict remains a local affair or a regional conflagration.
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| Members of the Amhara militia, who fight alongside federal and regional forces against the northern region of Tigray, ride through Gondar, Ethiopia, on Nov. 8. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
ADDIS
ABABA, Ethiopia—While the world girded for the U.S. election in early November,
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a war against the northern region
of Tigray. The region is home to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front—the party
that dominated Ethiopian politics for decades and has since been displaced and
sidelined as Abiy has sought to consolidate power and made peace with the
TPLF’s archenemy, Eritrea.
But the
TPLF has not gone quietly; in September, the regional government it
leads held local elections that the central government refused to recognize in
October. Then, on Nov. 3, following provocations by Abiy, it took control of
personnel, military hardware, and equipment from the federal army’s Northern
Command, prompting Addis Ababa to declare war against a region that remains
home to a sizable portion of the Ethiopian federal army’s arsenal and
forces, given its position along the long-contested and still undemarcated
border with Eritrea.
Abiy has
long accused the TPLF old guard of seeking to sabotage his government and
his purported reforms. But now, facing all-out war against a
formidable foe, the outcome will turn on the choices of Ethiopia’s
neighbors—Sudan and Eritrea.
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| Members of the Tigray region special police force parade during celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of the launching of the “Armed Struggle of the Peoples of Tigray” in Mekelle, Ethiopia, on Feb. 19. MICHAEL TEWELDE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
Although
Tigray is small, it is well armed, and its forces are battle-hardened. Tigray’s
regional special forces, which a senior Ethiopian diplomat estimates have grown
to at least 20,000 commandos—led by senior Tigrayan officers forced into
retirement by Abiy, plus a standing body of reserve special forces made up of
military-trained militia and armed farmers—together have an estimated total of
up to 250,000 armed fighters. Until recently, however, it lacked the heavy
weaponry required to directly confront a fully-equipped division.
Since last week, the TPLF has taken control of
half the soldiers from the five divisions of the Ethiopian National Defense
Forces (ENDF) Northern Command that remain in Tigray—meaning it has gained
15,000 soldiers, according to three sources: a senior Ethiopian diplomat
briefed on the latest developments, a senior retired intelligence officer in
Tigray who continues to work for the TPLF, and a source in Tigray monitoring
the situation. But the seizure of Ethiopian military hardware and equipment has
heightened the importance of logistical supplies for the TPLF, which will
inevitably depend on Sudan’s stance.
Sudan has a number of strategic reasons to
back—or at least to be perceived as supporting—the TPLF in the civil war
against Ethiopia’s government.
Will Ethiopia’s Civil
War Engulf Sudan and Eritrea?
While Sudan has officially closed
the borders between Tigray and Sudan’s frontier states of Kassala and
Gadaref—which are landlocked Tigray’s only logistical links to the outside
world in terms of fuel, ammunition, and food—it could use the threat of support
to the TPLF to extract concessions from Addis Ababa on the contested Fashqa
triangle.
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). Like Egypt, Sudan has rejected Ethiopia’s proposal for
guidelines that would enshrine Ethiopia’s future ability to manage annual flow
of the Blue Nile on a discretionary basis and Khartoum is already using the
issue as leverage to pressure Abiy on Fashqa, where Ethiopia and Sudan continue
to maintain a military presence.
But if Sudan supports Tigray, which also borders
Eritrea, the civil war will certainly become a protracted affair, and the
strategic fallout in Khartoum’s relations with Addis Ababa and Asmara could be
too high. Indeed, the region could quickly revert to the state of proxy
conflict that preceded the rise of Abiy and the collapse of former Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir’s regime—or precipitate a wider regional
conflagration.
Since last week, Sudan has already seen
thousands of people flee from Ethiopia, including officers from the ENDF,
according to a source who has spoken with Sudan’s civilian prime minister,
Abdalla Hamdok, about the matter. While Bashir allied himself with Ethiopia’s
former TPLF-led regime, the TPLF’s influence in Khartoum has become limited since Bashir fell from power, and because it no
longer controls the Ethiopian state.
Sudan’s condition is already fragile, and it wants
to ensure that it has at least minimal relations with its neighbors.
For now, instructions from
Khartoum have focused on not alienating either Addis Ababa or Asmara—a message
that has trickled down in the Sudan Armed Forces, which has deployed to its
borders with Ethiopia, said a senior Sudanese military officer.
Sudan is not the only neighboring country with a
strong interest in the outcome of the civil war. Envoys of Eritrean President
Isaias Afwerki traveled to Khartoum on Nov. 11 to see the chairman of Sudan’s
transitional Sovereign Council, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—presumably to
ask Sudan’s military, which holds the real power, to cut off any potential
logistical support to the TPLF.
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| Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed meets with Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of Sudan in Khartoum, Sudan, on June 7, 2019. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
From
the beginning, it was clear that Abiy was intent on provocation, but he did not
anticipate the TPLF could supplant an entire military command. In late October,
a week before the TPLF took control of the remaining Northern Command in
Tigray, Abiy created a new regional command in Ethiopia’s Amhara state, with
the two divisions of the Northern Command already stationed in Amhara slated to
be transferred into its ranks.
The Northern Command comprises eight of the
ENDF’s 32 divisions. Three of them have been stationed outside of Tigray for
two years, since Abiy expanded the operational area of the Northern Command: a
tank division in the north of Ethiopia’s Afar state and two divisions in
Amhara. Military maneuvers against Tigray are now underway on three fronts:
from Eritrea, Afar, and Amhara, with Eritrea and Amhara being used in an
attempt to cut the TPLF off from Sudan.
On Nov. 1, a few days after Abiy created the new
command, Burhan flew to see him in Addis Ababa with the director-general of
Sudan’s intelligence service and the head of military intelligence. It was
announced that they would strengthen control of the Ethiopia-Sudan border,
suggesting that Abiy was trying to completely encircle Tigray before a
premeditated confrontation with the TPLF.
Both Abiy
and Isaias—who went to war with the TPLF’s leaders two decades ago, leading to
a bloody Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict that lasted, on and off, for 20 years—have
a bloodlust for the TPLF. This shared hostility toward Ethiopia’s former
regime, rather than any brotherly love, was the principal motivation for their
commencement of diplomatic relations two years ago, for which Abiy was
feted with last year’s ill-judged Nobel Peace Prize; the Norwegian Nobel
Committee failed to see that the prize rewarded a peace process that really
intended to end one war while laying the groundwork for another, as it has
today.
According to sources in both
Tigray and the Ethiopian government, soldiers in divisions of the ENDF Northern
Command in Tigray have in the past week split into three groups: half aligned
with the TPLF, one-quarter—Abiy loyalists and mostly ethnic Amhara officers—fled
into Eritrea, and the rest refused to fight against the federal army and have
been contained in barracks. The sources in Tigray were able to speak with us
intermittently over satellite Internet, circumventing the telecommunications
shutdown Abiy has imposed there.
While the TPLF had considerable success last
week in taking control of personnel, military hardware, and equipment held by
the divisions of the ENDF’s Northern Command, continued success in a protracted
civil war will ultimately depend on support from Sudan.
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| Sudanese protesters hold national flags of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia as they gather for a march outside the army headquarters in Khartoum on April 25, 2019. Tens of thousands of protesters converged from all directions on Sudan’s army headquarters after calls for a “million-strong” demonstration to demand the ruling military council cede power. OZAN KOSE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
Sudan
has a long history of involvement in Ethiopian and Eritrean affairs. Even
before the TPLF and Isaias came to power in the 1990s, Sudan clandestinely
supported both the TPLF and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in allowing the
passage of military and humanitarian logistics through its borders. (Isaias
later split from the ELF, which has since formed a series of splinter groups).
At the time, Sudan’s involvement was crucial to their success, but it would be
difficult for Sudan to resort to the same tactics again.
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, it seems that the TPLF’s
only remaining hope would be to overthrow Abiy’s government or seek to
assassinate him with the support of his many other enemies.
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| Construction workers at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, near Guba, Ethiopia, on Dec. 26, 2019. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
Both
Sudan and Egypt remain at odds with Ethiopia on the filling and operations of
the GERD, which could eventually upend preexisting allocations of water
resources to Egypt and Sudan. For now, Sudan is continuing to exploit its
leverage in the Tigray conflict and the dam negotiations to secure official demarcation
from Abiy of the Fashqa triangle—a formal transfer of a significant amount of
territory to Sudan. Since the civil war began, Sudan’s transitional Sovereign
Council has already announced that it will not compromise “on any inch of
Sudanese territory” with Ethiopia, according to the Sudan News Agency.
Sudan could always use its official border
closures as a pretext to supply the TPLF and deny the ENDF and forces loyal to
Abiy the ability to attack the TPLF from Sudanese territory. Both Kassala and
Gadaref states are awash with contraband weapons smuggling, which Sudan’s
military could fully shut down—but only if it chooses to do so. If Ethiopia
grants Sudan the concessions it wants when it comes to sharing the waters of
the Nile and returning the Fashqa triangle, Khartoum could tip the balance.
Officials privy to private talks between Abiy
and Sudanese officials earlier this year told us Sudan sought during the GERD
talks to seek implementation of the 1902 border demarcation treaty; by that
agreement, Sudan continues to seek full control over Fashqa. These sources told
us that Sudanese officials were perturbed by Abiy’s pusillanimous approach on
the issue and subsequent exchanges of gunfire between Ethiopian and Sudanese
soldiers on their border following Sudanese protests that armed Amhara farmers
were making further incursions.
If
Sudan makes the formal transfer of Fashqa an explicit condition for refusing
logistical support to the TPLF, that could prove fatal for Abiy , but it would be a risky move; several changes in regime
over the last century in both countries pushed Fashqa to the back-burner and
Bashir tolerated its unresolved status thanks to good relations with Ethiopia’s
former TPLF-led government.
If Abiy were to concede, he would lose the expansive
support he imagines he has among ethnic Amhara. Much like so-called ancestral
lands removed from Amhara and attached by the TPLF to Tigray in the 1990s,
Fashqa is an issue for which Amhara will lay down their lives; and if Abiy
refuses, Sudan could respond by supporting the TPLF.
Since last week, scores of ill-equipped Amhara
irregular forces along the Amhara-Tigray border have died fighting seeking to
reclaim these ancestral lands, according to the senior Ethiopian diplomat. He
said such unpublicized failures have both triggered Abiy’s reshuffle of the
Amhara regional president (an Abiy loyalist who is now director-general of the
National Intelligence and Security Service) and could deepen discontent there,
leading to another Amhara insurrection to install hard-line
regional leaders which could be more serious than an internal convulsion last
year.
It is evident from Abiy’s latest reshuffling of
his military, intelligence, security, and foreign-policy establishment that he
depends increasingly on a small network of Amhara ostensible loyalists—and they
could ultimately turn on him and take power for themselves if he does not
continue to serve their interests against the TPLF and their designs to
restructure the Ethiopian state in their image.
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| An armed member of the community security force stands in front of a school where a polling station is located during Tigray’s regional elections, in Tikul, Ethiopia, on Sept. 9. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
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| Ethiopians, who fled their homes due to ongoing fighting, are pictured at a refugee camp in the Hamdait border area of Sudan’s eastern Kassala state on Nov. 12. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES |
If the
TPLF is able to drain personnel away from a war it is already fighting on three
fronts—Amhara, Afar, and Eritrea—and invade Eritrea and bring regime change
there, that could give it access to additional territory as well as logistics
through the Red Sea. Tigray already hosts several Eritrean opposition groups as well
as small military bases for them, but it’s a tall order.
The TPLF would face the challenge of defeating
both the Eritrean Defense Forces and the ENDF in Eritrea, which hosts a naval
and air base for the United Arab Emirates, with whom Abiy has built close
relations. On Nov. 6, the Emirati foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al
Nahyan noted the UAE’s “solidarity” with “friendly countries in their war
against” terrorism—suggesting alignment with Abiy and Isaias against the TPLF.
Abu Dhabi could use its significant clout with Burhan and other key figures in
Sudan’s unstable government to achieve its objectives.
In Sudan, a retired senior officer who was a
member of the ELF told us that Isaias has been drafting additional military
conscripts since October in different parts of Eritrea. He said some Eritrean
soldiers—principally from the Beni Amer and related tribes—have refused to
fight and defected into Kassala state in Sudan. This may indicate the
unreadiness of at least some groups in the Eritrean Defense Forces to fight. In
Kassala, Beni Amer—who are also present in Eritrea—are being roiled up to fight
against Isaias’s regime.
Both the TPLF and Isaias see Kassala as their
strategic backyard. The TPLF built relations with anti-Isaias groups among the
Beni Amer in Kassala after the 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian war, and Isaias
knows that any challenge for control of western Eritrea can come from Beni Amer
allied with the ELF.
But an overthrow of Isaias in Eritrea could only
realistically happen if Sudan’s military provides support to Eritrean
opposition groups in Sudan, and only if the TPLF simultaneously advances into
Eritrea—also with tacit Sudanese support.
Although the previous governor in
Kassala was a Beni Amer closely aligned with the TPLF as well as the Bashir
regime’s army, Isaias may have already tilted the balance against the TPLF
there. After Sudan removed military governors as part of the new regime’s
reforms, another Beni Amer, Saleh Ammar, was proposed as governor, but his
appointment was abandoned following protests led by Beja subtribes linked to Isaias.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, Tigrayan officers are
being disarmed and Tigrayans across government structures are being targeted;
in the federal police, serving officers told us, Tigrayans have been asked to
take leave; and even in the African Union Mission in Somalia, which fights
al-Shabab, two senior officers said that more than 200 Tigrayan officers have
had their guns confiscated.
As the war intensifies, Abiy seems to be reading
from the same script as his TPLF predecessors even as he seeks to depose
them—organizing state sponsored support rallies for the war, jailing
journalists, and labelling myriad opponents lashing out against his hypocrisy
as terrorists.
There is more at stake in
Ethiopia’s civil war than a Tigrayan rebellion. At worst, officers throughout
Ethiopia’s ethnically based military will join a chaotic rebellion, and the
military will find itself increasingly enmeshed in an already cataclysmic web
of interethnic fighting across Ethiopia and at its borders—a regional
catastrophe that will ensnare both Eritrea and Sudan, and possibly more actors.
War is already underway on the Eritrean front,
with Ethiopian military commanders appearing on the Tigray-Eritrea border. And
if the Ethiopian army fails to choke off the TPLF from the small slice of land
between Tigray and Sudan—Abiy’s chief of staff claims it has, but senior
sources say the battle there is still unresolved—Sudan will determine the
outcome of Ethiopia’s civil war.
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