Hope fading for peaceful settlement
NAIROBI, Kenya — Alarm spiraled Tuesday over Ethiopia’s imminent tank attack on the capital of the defiant Tigray region and its population of half a million people, while the U. N. Security Council met for the first time on the threeweekold conflict amid warnings that food in the region is running out.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s 72hour ultimatum for the region’s leaders to surrender ends on Wednesday. His military has warned civilians of “no mercy” if they don’t move away in time — which some rights groups and diplomats say could violate international law.
“The highly aggressive rhetoric on both sides regarding the fight for Mekele is dangerously provocative and risks placing already vulnerable and frightened civilians in grave danger,” U. N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said. The allegation that Tigray leaders were hiding among civilians “does not then give the Ethiopian state carte blanche to respond with the use of artillery in densely populated areas.”
A year before taking power in Ethiopia and introducing reforms to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Abiy successfully defended a PhD thesis in conflict resolution. Now he sits in Africa’s diplomatic capital, home of the African Union, and rejects calls for dialogue.
The diplomatic vacuum has brought Ethiopia, one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries, to what Amnesty International calls “the brink of a deadly escalation.”
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front dominated Ethiopia’s government for more than a quartercentury, but was sidelined after Abiy took office in 2018 and sought to centralize power in a country long ruled along ethnic lines. The TPLF opted out when Abiy dissolved the ruling coalition, then infuriated the federal government by holding an election in September after national elections were postponed by COVID19. Each side now regards the other as illegal.
Meanwhile, hundreds if not thousands of people have been killed, some 40,000 people have fled into Sudan and the U. N. says 2 million people in the sealedoff Tigray region urgently need help. That number has doubled in three weeks.