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For more than thirty years, Professor Kjetil Tronvoll, who is now affiliated with Bjørknes University College, has been researching conflicts in Ethiopia and Eritrea. There have been several books. He was the first international researcher to enter Eritrea after the fall of the Derg regime in 1991 and settled in a small high-rise town until after independence in 1993. During the 1990s, he made several field stays in the areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia’s Tigray province, and did new fieldwork during the 1998-2000 war, this time in Tigray.
Tronvoll has also done fieldwork in various regions of Ethiopia and has visited the country many times a year since 2000. He has a wide network of contacts in various settings in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Both Ethiopia and Eritrea are marked by strong political and ethnic divisions and hatred. In early November, government forces attacked the Tigray region with the aim of overthrowing the regional government of the Tigray Liberation Front (TPLF), after the TPLF carried out what they called a “preemptive strike” on federal military installations. . Prime Minister and Peace Prize Laureate Abiy Ahmed and TPLF had long been on a collision course.
Activated by the visit of Tigray
Tronvoll, however, has over the years received “all kinds of comments and shit” after him when he posted something.
– As long as it came from everywhere, I could believe it was a bit balanced, says Tronvoll laconic.
Everything changed in September when the professor was in Tigray in September in connection with the holding of elections in the region. He was there as a researcher and election observer to collect data for a book project on Tigranian nationalism and one on Ethiopia’s political fragmentation.
– While I was there, the environment around ESAT, the Ethiopian satellite television channel based in Washington DC, launched a highly organized smear campaign against me. The channel is an extremely nationalistic Amhara-based media platform. This extreme environment brought with it the global diaspora.
– The interesting thing from my point of view as a researcher is how this environment was connected with the Eritrea troll factories. They made false accusations that I was in Tigray illegally and demanded that I be arrested, which was also supported by Eritrean pro-social media activists. The Prime Minister’s office, and Abiy himself relied on these groups to get support for his policies and precisely the war against Tigray, and he probably had to respond to them. That is why they briefly detained me when I returned to Addis Ababa. But he had all the permits in order, so there was no formal case, says Tronvoll.
Eritrea does not have disinformation factories in Russia, where there are several hundred trolls, but they do have an extremely good network that is partially professionalized over a long period of time, Tronvoll believes.
– What I think is a paradox is that the extreme Eritrean nationalists have joined the extreme Amhara nationalists, who are basically archenemies. But they have a common agenda to crush the TPLF and neutralize anyone who tries to nuance this war and what is happening in the country.
When the active war began, the hate campaign against Tronvoll increased.
– All the information I share is criticized, and that’s fine, but there are also threats: both in Facebook comments, but also in direct messages on twitter, messenger, email and in text messages. It’s about everything from “we’ll take you”, “we’ll kill you and do all kinds of weird things.” And then they accuse me of receiving money from TPLF and others. But I still haven’t seen the money bag.
– Until now it has not worried me much since these have been Ethiopians living in the United States, in Ethiopia or anywhere else in the world, but now it has also started to come from Norwegian-Ethiopians. Then it is immediately more inconvenient and closer, admits Tronvoll. You are considering reporting the threats to the police.
Social media wars
– This shows that the country is at war and that all resources are used. Many people feel compelled to participate in war from their point of view. Social media has become a stage where the war continues. It is a massive propaganda war that we are living now, with a lot of misinformation. You should not take anything for granted, no matter where it comes from, you should have a strong criticism of everything.
Read the BBC story: Tigray conflict in Ethiopia spreads misinformation
– We see here a hybrid war at the information level. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is Ethiopia’s first social media prime minister, and he is one of Africa’s most active heads of state in SoMe, with a large professional propaganda apparatus around him. I had this long before the war.
More material for research
The statements that appear on social media consider Tronvoll as investigative data.
– I am constantly investigating the process, and the diaspora, especially the Amharic-Nationalist diaspora, is one of the main drivers of the conflict in Ethiopia today. Activists from the Tigray diaspora almost unanimously call for peace and negotiations, while the majority of social media activists in the Amhara diaspora almost unanimously call for war and the need to eliminate Tigray’s leadership. It’s interesting how it affects Ethiopians around the world and can help understand how war is being conducted on the ground, says Tronvoll.
The case was first published on Bistandsaktuelt.no
