Food aid convoys enter Tigray for first time since ceasefire
Convoys carrying desperately needed food aid have entered Tigray, as humanitarian groups gained access to the war-torn northern Ethiopian region for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was signed two-week ago.
Doctors and aid workers in Tigray have described a race against time to keep sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance.
“Trucks are now rolling into Tigray with critical food assistance … This is the first movement since the peace agreement was signed,” said David Beasley, the UN World Food Programme’s executive director. “Progress must continue. All sides must uphold the agreement. Basic services must resume immediately. Ethiopia needs peace.”
Last week, the World Health Organization called for a huge influx of food and medicines and said humanitarian access had been denied despite being a key element of the peace deal signed earlier this month between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that dominates the region.
Other humanitarian agencies also said they had managed to get some aid into Tigray this week.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said a test flight landed in Shire, the first humanitarian plane to reach the northern city since the war started in November 2020, and two trucks had reached Mekelle, the capital of the region.
The peace deal signed in South Africa two weeks ago was supposed to end the blockade on Tigray imposed by the federal government at the beginning of the war two years ago.
The blockade cut almost all communications and stopped banking and other commercial services. Healthcare for Tigray’s 6 million inhabitants was reduced to minimal levels as facilities shut and medication ran short. Food, fuel and electricity have been scarce.
Though the news that some aid is beginning to reach Tigray will raise hopes that the deal will hold, aid experts say enormous amounts of assistance will be necessary to tackle a “catastrophe” in the region.
“So far we are talking about a drop in the ocean, not even a drop really,” one humanitarian official working in the region said.
Talks on the implementation of the deal have been held in Nairobi. The TPLF, the political movement in power in the region, has agreed to disarm its forces and observers have expressed concerns that the delivery of aid may be made contingent on the speed at which party’s forces gave up their weapons.
Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister, vowed on Tuesday “to implement honestly” a ceasefire agreement between his government and forces in Tigray, which he said was necessary to ensure peace proved sustainable.
There is widespread concern about when other combatants who are not part of the deal will withdraw from Tigray. These include forces from Eritrea, which neighbours the region, and Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
Under the peace deal, disarmament by the TPLF is supposed to take place alongside foreign and other forces, excluding the Ethiopian army, withdrawing from the region. Eritrean troops fought alongside federal forces and have been accused of multiple atrocities. The Eritrean foreign and information ministers have not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Ethiopian authorities have said they have sent aid to Tigray over recent days but have provided no details.
The WFP convoy entered Tigray through the neighbouring region of
Amhara using a route that had not been viable since mid-2021, when a bridge on the Tekezé River was destroyed.
Fighters from Amhara entered western Tigray in November 2020 in support of federal troops and took control of a swathe of territory they say was historically theirs. Tigrayan officials say the area has long been home to both ethnic groups.
Authorities in Amhara last week welcomed the ceasefire agreement but made no mention of the disputed territory.
The war has devastated the Tigray region, displacing millions and threatening the unity of Africa’s second-most populous nation.
Researchers at Ghent University, in Belgium, have calculated that several hundred thousand people in Tigray may have died since the conflict began, including from a lack of healthcare and from malnutrition.
More have died in neighbouring regions and the total would put the war in northern Ethiopia among the most deadly in recent decades.
The war is rooted in old grievances between the political elites of ethnically based regions, built up over decades of turmoil, violent regime change, territorial disputes between regions and long periods of authoritarian rule.
Abiy, whose ascent to power in 2018 ended nearly three decades of dominance by the TPLF over Ethiopia’s central government, has accused the TPLF of seeking to reassert its power at the national level.
The TPLF has accused him of centralising power at the expense of the regions and oppressing Tigrayans. Each side rejects the other’s narrative.