At the end of February 2021, Amnesty International accused Eritrean troops of
committing a massacre in Axum - a historic city in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
This comes alongside other reports of Eritrea's armed forces fighting
alongside their Ethiopian counterparts in Tigray.
If true, this seems a remarkable development given that Ethiopia
and Eritrea were locked in a bitter border dispute until just a couple of years ago.
So, is Eritrea now helping Ethiopia in Tigray? And, if so, why?
[Music]
Hello and Welcome. If you're new, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
The emergence of fighting in Tigray in late 2020
raised fears that Ethiopia was on the verge of a new civil war.
However, just weeks later the Ethiopian government announced that its campaign
against what it termed criminal forces in its northern region was at an end.
But, in the months since then, there's been mounting evidence
that the conflict is actually far from over.
Despite an ongoing communications blackout, there are growing doubts that the Ethiopian government
has in fact managed to reassert control over the province of Tigray.
But alongside the reports of ongoing fighting, and a clearly worsening humanitarian situation
as people flee, there are also claims that atrocities and war crimes are taking place.
One of the most serious of these is alleged to have happened in the historic city of Axum
in late November 2020.
But what really made the story stand out was the suggestion that the killings were committed by
troops from neighbouring Eritrea, who are now widely believed to be fighting in the conflict.
If these claims of Eritrean involvement in the conflict are true,
and they've been vehemently denied by both countries, the presence of the Eritrean Defence
Force in Ethiopia would seem remarkable given that, until just a few years ago,
Ethiopia and Eritrea were in fact locked in a bitter territorial dispute with one another.
But dig a little deeper and the allegations of Eritrean involvement in the Tigray conflict
don't just become credible, they actually become highly likely.
Ethiopia and Eritrea lie in Horn of Africa.
At 1.1 million square kilometers, or 425 000 square miles,
Ethiopia is the 27th largest of the 193 members of the United Nations and with the
population of around 110 million is Africa's second most populous country after Nigeria.
Meanwhile, Eritrea is a mere fraction of the size, at around 120,000 square kilometres,
or 45,000 square miles, its population is around three and a half million.
I've covered the conflict in Tigray extensively in two other videos and
so I don't propose to go into considerable detail again here.
I have put a link to them above and in the description below. h
However, by way of a brief background, the story really emerges from the overthrow of
the Ethiopian military regime, in May 1991, following a prolonged civil war .
The country's new government was made up of a number of rebel groups.
At the head of these was the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the TPLF.
As a result, Tigrayans assumed a commanding position in the administration and military
of Ethiopia, despite representing just six percent of the country's population
and being the country's fourth largest ethnic group.
This lasted until April 2018, when a new leader came to power; Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Hailed as a young reformer, he broke the TPLF's hold on power and sidelined them.
However, the TPLF retained a power base within its home province of Tigray
and from there they accused the prime minister of increasingly autocratic tendencies.
Matters between the two came to a head in early 2020.
Against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic,
the Ethiopian federal government announced the postponement of planned national elections.
Viewing this as a deliberate attempt by the prime minister to consolidate his hold on power,
the TPLF went ahead and held elections anyway - winning a commanding victory in Tigray.
In the period that followed, tensions grew between the federal government
and the government in Tigray, both of which now viewed the other as illegitimate.
These tensions spilled over into full-scale conflict following an alleged attack by the
Tigrayan forces on an Ethiopian military base at the start of November 2020.
Deciding that the power of the TPLF had to be broken, Abiy Ahmed sent in the federal armed
forces to reassert control and just a month later the Ethiopian government announced that
it had taken control of all the main towns and cities in Tigray, including the capital Mekelle.
However, these claims are widely doubted.
Despite the communications blackout, it's clear that fighting does in fact continue.
At the same time, allegations have also emerged that Ethiopia's troops
have been assisted by troops from neighbouring Eritrea.
Quite apart from the report by Amnesty International alleging their involvement
in fighting and atrocities, as early as December 2020 the US State Department raised its concerns
about Eritrean involvement in the conflict and called for their withdrawal.
And in February 2021, both the European Union and the United States
reiterated their calls for Eritrean troops to pull out of Tigray.
For their part, both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments
vehemently deny Eritrean involvement in the fighting.
However, the wider view is that neither the United States
nor the European Union would have made the call for Eritrean withdrawal from Tigray
unless they had some credible evidence to support their positions.
But there's a deeper question in all of this.
On the face of it, it would seem odd that Eritrea and Ethiopia would be cooperating in Tigray
given that the two countries have had such a long history of conflict.
Aside from the 30-year Eritrean war of independence from Ethiopia, which ended in 1991,
from 1998 to 2000 the two countries had also been in a brutal border war that
had led to tens of thousands of deaths and was only finally resolved in 2018.
So, how are such long-standing foes now allied in an internal conflict in Ethiopia?
To understand the context for Eritrean involvement in Tigre,
it's important to step back to the evolution of the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Again I've covered this in another video.
However, in December 1950 the United Nations decided that Eritrea should unite with Ethiopia.
Although the union was based on a federal arrangement,
it soon began to break down and in 1961 a rebellion broke out against Ethiopia rule.
The following year, Ethiopia abolished the federation and imposed direct rule on Eritrea.
In the mid 1970s, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the EPLF,
the main Eritrean group fighting for independence,
teamed up with other rebel groups fighting to overthrow the Ethiopian government.
One of these other groups was the TPLF.
While the two groups had common cause, there were a number of sources of tension between them - not
least of all over the eventual demarcation of the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia,
a large part of which lay in Tigray, which covered half the boundary between the two countries.
Nevertheless, their continued cooperation led to the overthrow of the Ethiopian government,
in May 1991, and saw the TPLF take a prime position of power in Ethiopia
and the EPLF guide Eritrea to full independence, in 1993.
Despite what seemed to be initially good relations between the two countries,
within a few years tension grew over a series of issues.
The most major of these centred on the border.
While Eritrea now claimed a large area along the entire boundary, the most contentious
point was in the northwest of Tigre around a seemingly insignificant town called Badme.
Needless to say, the TPLF dominated government in Ethiopia rejected the
claim against Tigrayan territory and on the 6 May 1998, following months of growing tensions,
the two countries went to war.
The conflict, which would last a little over two years, would end up being a particularly
brutal war, with the death toll estimated to be as high as a hundred thousand people.
However, by early 2000, Ethiopia had the upper hand and in June 2000,
a UN monitored ceasefire was called.
Six months later, the two sides signed the Algiers Agreement.
At the core of the deal was an agreement to set up
a boundary commission in cooperation with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
Crucially, both sides agreed to be bound by its findings.
However, when it produced its results in 2002, and awarded Badme to Eritrea,
Ethiopia refused to accept the outcome.
As a result, in the years that followed tensions remained high between the two countries;
occasionally erupting into fighting.
It was against this backdrop that Abiy Ahmed Ali came to power in Ethiopia, in April 2018.
Just two months after assuming office, and in a move that took observers by surprise,
he announced that he'd accept the Commission's decision,
thus bringing the conflict to an end - and for which he was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
Widely seen to be part of his efforts to cut the TPLF down to size, the decision caused
outrage in Tigray and helped cement the deep hostility between Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF.
But unsurprisingly the decision was warmly welcomed in Eritrea.
President Isaias Afwerki, a founder of the EPLF, and Eritrea's leader since independence,
lauded the Ethiopian leader's decision at a summit in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, in July 2018.
More to the point, both sides were now united by their mutual hatred of the TPLF.
It was this deeply rooted dislike of the TPLF
that seems to have driven cooperation between the two governments in Tigray.
However, Eritrean involvement seems to have also been based on a couple of specific events.
The first of these was the decision of the Eritrean government to provide
sanctuary to Ethiopian forces fleeing Tigre at the start of the conflict.
As Abiy Ahmed told the Ethiopian Parliament,
"the Eritrean people have shown us they are a relative standing by us on a tough day."
But Eritrea's involvement also seems to have been driven by TPLF rocket
attacks against a number of targets in Eritrea, including Asmara airport,
following claims that Ethiopia was attacking Tigray from Eritrea.
As things stand, it's unclear when Eritrean troops first entered the conflict,
and exactly how it happened, and in what numbers.
But there does seem to be compelling evidence that Eritrea is now involved.
But it's the allegations that those troops have been involved in atrocities
that really seems to have contributed to growing international concern about their presence.
With a very real fear that Tigray is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe,
and with concerns that the conflict is far from over, there's a growing sense that Eritrea's
involvement - an involvement based on a historical grudge - is making a bad situation so much worse.
Despite claims by the Ethiopian government that the conflict in Tigray is over, it's clear that
the fighting continues and that this poses a very real risk of a major humanitarian disaster.
But what's also sparked international concern is the alleged presence of Eritrean forces
fighting alongside the Ethiopians and that they've perpetrated war crimes.
For many, this may seem like a surprising development given the fact that Ethiopia
and Eritrea were locked in one of Africa's most deadly wars of modern times
just 20 years ago, and only signed a peace deal in 2018.
But when one looks back into the history of the relationship between the two countries,
and the place of Tigray and the Tigrayans in that relationship,
the presence of Eritreans in the conflict doesn't appear quite as strange as it might first appear.
Instead, it fits neatly into a general and long-standing pattern of tensions
between the Tigrayan leadership and the Eritrean regime that stretches
back to when they were allies in the fight against Ethiopia's military government.
In this sense, the relationship that's developed between Addis Ababa and Asmara,
between Abiy Ahmed Ali and Isaias Afwarki, is perhaps the best example in contemporary
international relations of the old adage that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.
I hope you found that useful.
If so, here are some more videos that you might find interesting.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.