Save yourself, Tigray told, as assault on capital looms
ETHIOPIA’S military yesterday warned civilians to flee Mekele, the capital of the Tigray region, as it signalled an all-out assault on the city.
“The next decisive battle is to surround Mekele with tanks,” a spokesman, Dejene Tsegaye, said. He told Mekele’s half a million inhabitants: “Save yourself.”
Tsegaye added that citizens had been ordered to dissociate themselves from the Tigray rebels and warned there would be “no mercy”.
Ethopia’s prime minister launched a campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on Nov 4.
Abiy Ahmed accused it of seeking to destabilise his government.
Mamo Mihretu, an aide to Mr Abiy, told the BBC yesterday the government would
not enter talks with the TPLF. “We don’t negotiate with criminals ... We bring them to justice, not to the negotiating table,” he said.
Hundreds of people are
reported killed while tens of thousands have fled into neighbouring Sudan.
The government has claimed the capture of a string of towns in recent days
but Debretsion Gebremichael, the TPLF leader, promised “fierce fighting” to hold up its advance on Mekele.
The great humanitarian disaster of the Eighties was in Ethiopia. The famine there in 1985 killed more than one million people, left more than 2.5 million displaced and forced the emigration of some 400,000 refugees. It was caused by a drought but exacerbated by a civil war that had been raging for a decade. Harrowing reports led to a worldwide response, notably the Live Aid concerts.
Thirty-five years on and Ethiopia is locked in another civil war centred on the rebel enclave of northern Tigray, home to the legendary Queen of Sheba. In a powerful dispatch, the Telegraph’s correspondent reported at the weekend on the savagery of three weeks of fighting and the risk of a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of refugees have poured over the border into Sudan. Analysts fear the whole region could be destabilised by the fighting, with wider geopolitical implications.
The irony is that the Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in settling the long-running historic dispute with Eritrea. But his sweeping reforms in the once Marxist-led country have marginalised the regional Tigrayan government, which once effectively ran national affairs. Mr Ahmed has resisted calls from fellow African leaders to enable mediation, calling the Tigrayans “criminals” who need to be brought to justice, not accommodated politically. Indeed, their militia has carried out appalling atrocities, judging by accounts.
But the prime minister has shown himself to be a pragmatist and a peacemaker who should take up the offer from South Africa and other countries. Ethiopia has come to be regarded as a beacon of stability in the region yet now sits precariously on the edge of a bloody ethnic conflict that needs to be stopped now.