Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Ethiopia’s military prepares for an assault on Tigray’s capital, Afghanistan suffers a dual bomb blast in Bamiyan, and Thai protesters stage a mass anti-government demonstration.
Decision Day for Tigray’s Leadership as Clock Winds Down
The 500,000 inhabitants of the Tigray region’s capital, Mekele, are bracing for an assault by Ethiopian federal troops as a 72-hour window calling for the Tigrayan leadership’s surrender elapses.
The past week has seen dueling narratives take shape between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The government seems assured that its offensive is having the desired effect, and that many Tigrayan forces have agreed to lay down their arms following Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Sunday proclamation. The TPLF tell a different story, of government forces routed by former Ethiopian military commanders now aligned with the TPLF.
Foreign Policy has even been dragged into the information war after an Ethiopian government social media account attacked this Nov. 14 piece by Nizar Manek and Mohamed Kheir Omer as “outright lies.” In recent days, the government has been aggressively promoting other articles published in FP.
Diplomatic efforts. While spokesmen spin, diplomats deliberate. On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council met for the first time to discuss the issue and expressed support for a mediation effort led by the African Union. Ethiopia has rejected the move as they don’t wish to legitimize the TPLF.
As Mekele’s residents prepare for war, United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has warned Ethiopian forces to exercise restraint. Reports of Tigrayan leaders hiding among the civilian population “does not then give the Ethiopian state carte blanche to respond with the use of artillery in densely populated areas,” Bachelet said.
“Bothsidesism.” Hailemariam Desalegn, who governed as Ethiopia’s prime minister as part of a TPLF-dominated coalition from 2012 to 2018, had stern words for Tigray’s leadership in a piece published on Tuesday in Foreign Policy. The TPLF, Hailemariam writes, has “designed and is now executing a strategy meant to capitalize on the propensity of the international community to fall into its default mode of bothsidesism and calls for a negotiated settlement.”
He argues that such talks would set a “precedent for other groupings within the Ethiopian federation to learn the wrong lesson: that violence pays off.”
