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President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali in the framework of the 32nd regular session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Ethiopia. 10/02/2019 Kopano Tlape GCIS
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears to have rebuffed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempt to instigate peace talks by calling it fake news, but his willingness to host three envoys has raised some hopes.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Sunday called on Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) forces to surrender to the national government within 72 hours or they will face “being condemned forever in the history books.” Abiy posted a heavily worded statement on Twitter in English, a language understood in Ethiopia by only a small number.
The statement comes a day after Abiy rejected the efforts of President Cyril Ramaphosa, as president of the African Union, to send three high-level mediators to help end the war in the northern region of Tigray, which has entered its third week.
In the statement, addressed to the Ethiopians, Abiy described the TPLF forces as a “traitorous clique” that he said had taken the capital of the Tigray region, Mekelle, hostage, and which the national army will now try to recapture. . According to official reports, there is no way to verify official information due to a media blackout, the national defense force has already seized the surrounding villages.
Abiy, in his statement, announced that the “third and final phase” of the “law enforcement actions” of the Ethiopian National Defense Force in the Tigray region has begun. Abiy asked the people of Mekelle to cooperate with the national army. He said Ethiopia’s military planes “have been very careful not to harm civilians” during offensives in surrounding cities and to protect places of worship, historical monuments, public facilities, infrastructure and natural resources. Abiy claimed that the TPLF forces have tried to cause such destruction using religious institutions and heritage sites as cover. The Tigray region is home to some of the richest religious and cultural heritage sites in the world, and it is believed that only a fraction of these antiquities have been discovered to date.
On Friday, Ramaphosa met with Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, who came to South Africa as Abiy’s special envoy and “expressed his deep desire that the conflict be ended through dialogue between the parties.”
Ramaphosa, whose term as AU president will end in January, said he would send former presidents Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia) and Kgalema Motlanthe (South Africa) “with a view to helping mediate between the conflicting parties in the sister Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia ”. Abiy’s office, however, issued a tough rebuttal on Saturday morning, saying it would receive Ramaphosa’s envoys “to speak with them one on one,” but said they would travel to Ethiopia to mediate between the federal government and the criminal of “# TPLF”. element ”was false.
Ramaphosa, however, obtained the support of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who, in a statement, praised Ramaphosa for his initiative and assured him “the full support” of the UN. He also thanked Abiy “for facilitating this initiative for peace.” According to the UN refugee agency, more than 30,000 people have fled the Tigray region for Sudan since the war broke out in the first week of November, and that number is expected to rise to more than 200,000.
One official said that despite Abiy’s apparent snub, those in the AU in favor of peace are encouraged by the fact that he is willing to receive the envoys. The situation puts Sahle-Work in an awkward position. The 70-year-old woman was named to great acclaim a few months after Abiy came to power in 2018, as she became the first woman to hold this ceremonial position. She was previously Guterres’ Special Representative to the African Union and Head of the United Nations Office to the African Union.
She might agree to the peace initiative, but her head might turn if she is seen to be in open disagreement with Abiy about the war.
Abiy declared war on Tigray in the first week of November when he announced that he had launched air strikes to destroy missile and heavy weapons depots around Mekelle. He accused the TPLF of attacking a military camp in the region and attempting to loot military assets. The TPLF denied the attack.
Although the national defense force is currently believed to have the upper hand, there is fear within the security community that this war could drag the region into both sides of the war. Eritrea has reportedly sided with the national defense force, while Sudan and Egypt have disagreed with Abiy over filling the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and would be interested in seeing efforts to do so halted. Intensifying the war could seriously derail Ethiopia’s plans to fill the dam, which Abiy wants to use to generate hydroelectric power in hopes of boosting Ethiopia’s double-digit economic growth. Although Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, home to the AU headquarters and several UN offices, is located about 750 km south of Mekelle, it is believed that there is a remote possibility that it could be a target.
Diplomats and senior officials in the capital have been careful not to speak about the events due to the Ethiopian government’s sensitivity to criticism. The AU’s theme this year was “Silencing the Guns”, and while Ramaphosa has not met South Africa’s stated goals of making peace in Libya and South Sudan, Liesl Louw-Vaudran of the Institute for Security Studies said South Africa’s impact on the Ethiopian Great Renaissance Dam talks was one of this year’s success stories, but war could reverse that. DM
