“This moment is not the end of the peace process,” said Olusegun Obasanjo,a former Nigerian president representing the African Union,“but the beginning of it”.
Abiy agreed to the deal at a moment of military supremacy,following weeks of sweeping military advances by his troops across Tigray with the help of allied forces from Eritrea,the neighbouring country to the north.
But it also came against a backdrop of loud warnings from the United States and the United Nations about the possibility of new atrocities in a war already scarred by widespread abuses,including ethnic cleansing.
“The situation in Ethiopia is spiralling out of control,” the UN secretary-general,António Guterres,warned last month.
The scale of fighting in Ethiopia rivals that of Ukraine,the US ambassador to the United Nations,Linda Thomas-Greenfield,said last month. As many as half a million people have died as a result of the war,and the US was “deeply concerned about the potential for further mass atrocities,” she said.
As African Union-led peace efforts floundered this year,US diplomats brought the two sides together for three secret meetings outside Ethiopia. But while that initiative resulted in a five-month humanitarian ceasefire,it also provided both sides with a chance to rearm for the round of fighting that erupted in August.
After that,US officials,who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter,said they were considering imposing sanctions,authorised by President Joe Biden last year,in an effort to force the belligerents to stop fighting. But they wanted to give the talks a chance.
Ned Price,a US State Department spokesperson,welcomed the deal as an “important step toward peace.”
Karine Jean-Pierre,the White House spokesperson,said,“The United States remains committed to supporting this African Union-led process”.
Abiy hailed it as a “monumental” deal,seeking in a statement to frame it as part of a broader program of “reforms” led by his government. In a less conciliatory note,Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya,Bacha Debele Buta,said in a tweet that “Ethiopia has prevailed” and the federal government would rule Tigray “through a command post”.
Still,there was no immediate reaction from Eritrea,which has played a key role in the fighting on the side of the Ethiopian government and which was not formally represented in the peace talks.
The autocratic leader of Eritrea,Isaias Afwerki,has for decades harboured a bitter rivalry with the leaders of Tigray. It was unclear if he had agreed to the deal signed in South Africa and,crucially,if he would withdraw his troops from the region.
Equally uncertain was the political reception by the leaders of Ethiopia’s ethnic Amhara group,who provided political and military support to Abiy in his campaign against the Tigrayans. They have long claimed that western Tigray,where Ethiopian forces were accused of ethnic cleansing,rightfully belongs to the Amhara region.
The war in Tigray,one of several conflicts in Ethiopia,is rooted in the seismic shifts that have defined the country over the past three decades.
The main Tigrayan group,the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front,came to power in 1991,when it led a rebellion that ousted a Marxist dictator. It was shunted aside in 2018,after Abiy,a former ally,came to power amid a popular clamour for change in Ethiopia.
The two sides coexisted uneasily for several years. The Tigrayans retreated to their stronghold in the north of the country. Abiy built an unlikely alliance with Isaias,the leader of Eritrea,who had long despised the Tigrayans.
Tensions came to a head in September 2020,when the Tigrayans held regional elections in defiance of Abiy. Two months later,the feud erupted into war.
The joint agreement signed on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) outlines a plan to allow humanitarian access to Tigray,where a punishing government siege of the region has cut off electricity,banking and other vital services for more than 16 months. The deal also has provisions for reintegrating Tigray’s regional government back into the central government,and noted that the Ethiopian government would rebuild all infrastructure damaged in the war.
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The two sides also agreed to “a detailed program of disarmament,demobilisation and reintegration” of Tigrayan forces,they said.
Analysts said that the coming days would be crucial in determining if the deal could stick,and that much depended on how leaders on both sides sold it to their most vociferous,and heavily armed,supporters.
In South Africa,Uhuru Kenyatta,a former president of Kenya who helped broker the deal,warned in brief comments that unnamed “destructive” actors “from within or without” could scupper the deal – a likely reference to the leader of Eritrea and the Amhara militias that have been fighting alongside the Ethiopian military.
“The devil will be in the implementation,” Kenyatta said. “We still have a lot of work to do in terms of beginning the political process.”
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For civilians across northern Ethiopia,the deal is a welcome respite from a conflict that has become notorious for gross abuses.
At least 2.4 million people have been forced from their homes,according to the UN. Rights groups have accused both sides of war crimes including extrajudicial killings,looting and sexual violence. UN investigators recently singled out Abiy’s forces for engaging in “warfare by starvation” and submitting detained women to “sexual slavery”.
US officials said that the same abuses had recurred alongside the recent surge in fighting. After the breakthrough,Price said,“It’s our hope that what was announced today will see an end to those reports and,ultimately,the underlying abuses and atrocities”.
For much of the conflict,it has been hard to know exactly what was going on in Tigray. Abiy’s government cut off the internet and electricity to Tigray in June 2021 and prohibited reporters from visiting the area. How much that will change now remains unclear.
But the main priority for aid groups,and many international officials,will be to open up access to a region that has undergone immense suffering in the past two years.
The World Health Organisation said last week that Tigray had run out of vital medicines,including vaccines and antibiotics. Doctors had resorted to using rags to dress wounds,it said.
In the joint statement,Abiy’s government said it would cooperate with humanitarian agencies “to continue expediting aid to those in need of assistance”.
Whether that happens,and how soon,could be an early test of the commitment to peace on both sides.
This article originally appeared inThe New York Times.