Ethiopia has restored power to Mekelle, the capital of the northern Tigray state. It should be recalled that during the two-year civil war that ended last month, Federal troops fought rebels there.
According to city sources, after being without electricity for more than a year, local residents are finally resuming full use of it.
“Electricity has been everywhere in the city since yesterday (Tuesday),” said a resident.
A spokesman for the government-owned Ethiopian Electric Electricity (EEP) was quoted by the state-affiliated Fana broadcast as saying that power had been restored following repair on a high-voltage line.
Ethiopia’s Minister of Energy Dr. Ing. Sultan Woli
Services in Shire town and the surrounding areas have also been restored by state-run telecommunications company Ethio Telecom.
Foreign-based families have revealed to newsmen how, after two years, they were finally able to call their loved ones.
After fighting broke out in the Tigray region in November 2020, power and telecommunications services were suspended. Meanwhile, a month after a truce was reached to put an end to the two-year fighting in the northern Tigray region, the rebels’ top commander reports that more than half of their fighters had left the frontlines in Ethiopia.
“We have accomplished 65% disengagement of our army,” Tadesse Wereda, commander-in-chief of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front said in a video posted on the TPLF’s Facebook page late on Saturday.
“Our army left the front lines and moved to the place prepared for them to camp,” he said.
Peace talks with rebels in Ethiopia’s restive Oromia region have been ruled out by the Ethiopian government. Federal negotiators sat down and struck a deal with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to end the two-year-long civil war in the north.
The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which is also fighting the federal government, once allied with the TPLF.
However, Hailu Adugna, a spokesman for the Oromia regional government, has since told local media that the government has no plans to meet with a group “that has no chain of command or political agenda.”
An OLA spokesperson has denied the claim and stated that the organisation will continue to fight.
The rebels in Oromia have been accused of being involved in a number of deadly attacks, which it denies.
The authorities say that despite there being no talks they will continue to receive OLA youth who have opted to lay down their arms.
The situation in Oromia, the home region of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has been overshadowed by the war in Tigray, but attacks by different armed groups have continued unabated.
The authorities have been blamed for not protecting civilians.
The OLA is a splinter group of the Oromo Liberation Front, which is now a legally registered political party. As well as making an alliance with the TPLF, the OLA has also made deals with other rebels in the western part of the country to put pressure on Mr Abiy’s government.
The OLA says it is fighting to secure full autonomy for the Oromo people and has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the government.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinkenhas spoken to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed about the implementation of the ceasefire deal between government troops and Tigray forces in the north.
“[The] Ethiopian Prime Minister and I discussed the urgent need to implement the cessation of hostilities agreement and to secure lasting peace in northern Ethiopia,” Mr Blinken said in a tweet.
In a readout of his phone call to the Ethiopian leader, Mr Blinken stressed the need to immediately implement the deal “including withdrawal of all foreign forces and concurrent disarmament of the Tigrayan forces”.
Mr Abiy has already reiterated his government’s commitment to the peace deal.
The secretary of state said the US was committed to support the African Union-led process including its monitoring and verification mechanism of the peace agreement
Mr Blinken recognised ongoing efforts by the Ethiopian government “to work towards unhindered humanitarian assistance and restoration of basic services” in Tigray and neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.
Amhara and Afar regional forces, as well as Eritrean troops, have been fighting alongside the federal forces war against the Tigrayan fighters.
On 2 November the Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan fighters agreed, in a surprise move, to halt their two-year conflict.
Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels have agreed to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.
Saturday’s agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital Nairobi this week on the full implementation of a deal signed between the warring sides 10 days ago in South Africa to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia
“The parties have agreed to facilitate unhindered humanitarian access to all in need of assistance in Tigray and neighbouring regions,” a joint statement said.
The agreement was signed by Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, chief of staff of the Ethiopian Armed Forces, and General Tadesse Werede, commander-in-chief of the Tigray rebel forces.
African Union mediator Olusegun Obasanjo said the deal would take “immediate effect”.
Ethiopian legislator Keiredin Tezera told Al Jazeera that aid was being sent to the areas in control of the army even before the agreement was reached on Saturday.
“This agreement may even further facilitate to deliver aid not only to the Tigray region but the neighbouring regions, which are also being affected by the conflict,” he said. “This is big news for us and not only for all of Ethiopia but also for Africa … It is significant beyond Ethiopia.”
The two sides also agreed to establish a joint committee to implement the disarming of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters, as stipulated in the ceasefire deal, the statement said.
Cessation of hostilities
After little more than a week of negotiations in the South African capital Pretoria, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF on November 2 signed a peace deal which has been hailed by the international community as a crucial first step in ending the bloodshed.
The deal notably calls for the cessation of hostilities, restoration of humanitarian aid, the re-establishment of federal authority over Tigray and the disarming of TPLF fighters.
Ethiopia’s northernmost region is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to a lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.
Tigray regional government representative in North America, Yohannes Abraha, said there have been calls for unhindered humanitarian flow to Tigray for a long time.
“There has been a very long time, since August, that there has not been any humanitarian aid into Tigray,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that nothing had materialised yet after the November 2 peace deal.
Abraha said that, among other reasons, the dire situation on the ground contributed to reaching the Pretoria outcome.
A scene from the signing ceremony in Nairobi [Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP]
The African Union Commission said it “applauds the parties on these significant confidence-building measures and encourages them to continue towards the full implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, as part of overall efforts to end the conflict and restore peace,security and stability in Ethiopia”.
Weaponising starvation
The conflict between the TPLF and pro-Abiy forces, which include regional fighters and the Eritrean army, has caused an untold number of deaths, forced more than two million from their homes and led to reports of horrific abuses such as rape and massacres.
Estimates of casualties have varied widely, with the United States saying that as many as half a million people have died, while the European Union’s foreign envoy Josep Borrell said that more than 100,000 people may have been killed.
UN-backed investigators have accused all sides of committing abuses but also charged that Addis Ababa had been using starvation as a weapon of war – claims denied by the Ethiopian authorities.
Abiy declared last week that his government, whose forces had claimed considerable gains on the battlefield, had secured “100 per cent” of what it had sought in the peace negotiations.
On Friday, the government said its forces controlled 70 per cent of Tigray and that aid was being sent in – claims swiftly denied by Tigrayan rebels.
Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, sent troops into Tigray in late 2020 to topple the TPLF, the region’s governing party, in response to what he said were attacks by the group on federal army camps.
The conflict capped months of simmering tensions between Abiy and the TPLF, which has dominated the national government for nearly 30 years until he took office in 2018.
The African Union has announced that Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan forces have formally agreed to end fighting following talks in South Africa.
The parties in the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray have agreed on a “permanent cessation of hostilities”, the African Union mediator said, just over a week after formal peace talks began in South Africa.
Former Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, in the first briefing on the peace talks, also said Ethiopia’s government and Tigray authorities have agreed on “orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament” along with “restoration of law and order,” “restoration of services” and “unhindered access to humanitarian supplies.”
The agreement marked a new “dawn” for Ethiopia, he said, speaking at a press conference.
The war, which broke out in November 2020, pits regional forces from Tigray against Ethiopia’s federal army and its allies, who include forces from other regions and from neighbouring Eritrea.
“It is now for all of us to honor this agreement,” said the lead negotiator for Ethiopia’s government, Redwan Hussein.
Tigray’s rebels hailed the deal and said they had made “concessions.”
“We are ready to implement and expedite this agreement,” said the head of their delegation, Getachew Reda.
“In order to address the pains of our people, we have made concessions because we have to build trust.”
“Ultimately, the fact that we have reached a point where we have now signed an agreement speaks volumes about the readiness on the part of the two sides to lay the past behind them to chart a new path of peace,” said Reda.
The conflict, which has at times spilled out of Tigray into the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar, has killed thousands of people, displaced millions from their homes and left hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine.
Urgent need for aid
Neither Eritrea nor regional forces allied with the Ethiopian army took part in the talks in South Africa and it was unclear whether they would abide by the agreement reached there.
Eritrean forces have been blamed for some of the conflict’s worst abuses, including gang rapes, and witnesses have described killings and lootings by Eritrean forces even during the peace talks.
Obasanjo, who has been leading the African Union’s mediation team, said the implementation of the agreement would be supervised and monitored by a high-level African Union panel. He praised the process as an African solution to an African problem and said the agreement would allow humanitarian supplies to Tigray to be restored.
A critical question is how soon aid can return to Tigray, whose communications and transport links have been largely severed since the conflict began. Doctors have described running out of basic medicines like vaccines, insulin, and therapeutic food while people die of easily preventable diseases and starvation.
United Nations human rights investigators have said the Ethiopian government was using “starvation of civilians” as a weapon of war.
“We’re back to 18th-century surgery,” a surgeon at the region’s flagship hospital, Fasika Amdeslasie, told health experts at an online event Wednesday. “It’s like an open-air prison.”
A humanitarian source said their organization could resume operations almost immediately if unfettered aid access to Tigray is granted.
“It entirely depends on what the government agrees to … If they genuinely give us access, we can start moving very quickly, in hours, not weeks,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly.
Forces in the embattled northern Ethiopian region of Tigray say government forces and their allies have reached Shire, one of the country’s largest cities, and that they are still engaged in a “life and death struggle.”
On Monday, the Ethiopian government said it intended to control airports in Tigray.
“During war movement out of areas is natural,” a statement by the Tigrayan rebel forces says.
It called the entering into the Shire by the government “temporary”.
Fighting broke out in August after five months of relative peace and there are growing concerns that the humanitarian crisis is worsening with transportation of aid into the region suspended because of the renewed clashes.
Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes fearing the violence in the region, the Tigrayan force’s statement says.
Tigrayan forces have called on the international community to “fulfill its duty and stop the hostilities”.
They also called on Tigrayans to continue fighting “in this crucial phase of the conflict”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said that the situation in Tigray was “spiralling out of control” and hostilities must end immediately.
