Will Tigray truce deliver lasting peace in Ethiopia?

Tigrayan rebels have agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in the almost 17-month war in Ethiopia after the government announced an indefinite humanitarian truce just a day earlier.

In a statement sent to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, the rebels said they were “committed to implementing” an end to the fighting “effective immediately”. They called on the Ethiopian authorities to speed up the delivery of emergency aid into Tigray, where hundreds of thousands face starvation as a result of a blockade during the conflict.

Since the outbreak of fighting in November 2020, “thousands have died”, The Guardian reported, and many more civilians have fled their homes “as the conflict has expanded from Tigray to the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar”.

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Tentative peace

In a statement announcing the truce, the Ethiopian government called for “the donor community to redouble their generous contributions to alleviate the situation and reiterate its commitment to work in collaboration with relevant organisations to expedite the provision of humanitarian assistance to those in need”.

The government also asked the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional party that led the war against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, to “desist from all acts of further aggression and withdraw from areas they have occupied in neighbouring regions”, adding that such a move would “pave the way for the resolution of the conflict”.

The statement came as a “surprise” to observers, said Al Jazeera. “Fighting has dragged on for more than a year, triggering a humanitarian crisis, as accounts have emerged of mass rapes and massacres.” Both sides have been accused of human rights violations.

“Western nations have been urging both sides to agree to a ceasefire,” France 24 reported, with the US, the EU, the UK and Canada all “hailing the truce declaration”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, in a statement released shortly after the government’s announcement: “This commitment to a cessation of hostilities should be a critical step towards the resumption and sustainment of humanitarian assistance to the people in Tigray and all Ethiopian regions and communities in need.

“It should also serve as an essential foundation of an inclusive political process to achieve progress towards common security and prosperity for all the people of Ethiopia.”

The EU delegation to Ethiopia tweeted: “The EU welcomes the declaration of a humanitarian truce by the [government[ of Ethiopia and the statement on cessation of hostilities by the Tigrayan Authorities.”

The UN World Food Programme warned in January that three-quarters of Tigray’s population of six million were “using extreme coping strategies to survive” and that more than a third were “suffering an extreme lack of food”.

Responding to the deal, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General António Guterres said that he “hopes that this truce will translate into an effective cessation of hostilities, respected by all parties in this conflict, to allow for effective humanitarian access for all who need it”.

End of the war?

The conflict in Tigray is already “believed to have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of millions”, The Washington Post said. And “although the war has subsided in several places… concerns remain in the northeastern Afar region”.

The government in Addis Ababa has repeatedly “denied blocking aid to the region”, the Financial Times (FT) reported. However, “UN officials in Tigray have said that no trucks have made it through since December”.

David Satterfield, US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, told the paper it is hoped the deal “will substantially improve the humanitarian situation on the ground and pave the way for the resolution of the conflict in northern Ethiopia without further bloodshed”.

It could also lead to direct talks between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government, which “would present the best opportunity” to end the conflict, the FT said.

Analysts described the truce as “an important step but urged the government to act quickly to ease humanitarian access to Tigray”, The Guardian reported.

William Davison, the International Crisis Group’s senior Ethiopia expert, told the paper: “The unconditional and unrestricted delivery of aid could also help create enough trust to pave the way for ceasefire talks and, eventually, dialogue.”

However, knitting together a more permanent settlement between different factions in the ethnically divided nation could prove tricky.

In an article on Foreign Policy, Getachew Reda, a member of the executive committee of the TPLF, argued that “international solidarity with Kyiv in the face of Russian aggression is admirable” but that “Tigrayans brutalised by Ethiopia and Eritrea deserve the same”.

The truce is the first time “that both sides have expressed willingness to halt fighting”, Al Jazeera said, which is “a breakthrough of sorts in an atmosphere where threats of annihilation and even hate speech have become commonplace”.

But “a number of factors including lack of details and conflicting statements continue to shroud Ethiopia’s latest civil war truce in mystery”, the broadcaster added. The question of whether the peace will hold remains “open to speculation”.