Is Ethiopia’s civil war at ‘turning point’ as Tigray rebels retake key cities?

Tigrayan rebel fighters claim to have seized another key town just weeks after retaking the capital of the conflict-torn Ethiopian region from government forces.

A spokesperson told the AFP news agency yesterday that the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had reclaimed Alamata in a new offensive launched after the federal government declared a unilateral ceasefire earlier this month in the face of rebel advances.

The latest reported victory comes after TPLF forces recaptured regional capital Mekelle at the end of June, in what the BBC suggested could mark a “turning point” in the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

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‘Humanitarian ceasefire’

Mekelle was captured by government forces last November in an offensive that was “depicted by the government in Addis Ababa as the finishing blow to forces loyal to the northern region’s former government”, Al Jazeera says.

But that claim was blown out of the water when the rebels reclaimed the city two weeks ago. Local people “waving red and yellow Tigrayan flags” flooded onto the streets to celebrate the end of the eight-month occupation by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s troops, as the Financial Times (FT) reported at the time.

A resident told the paper that “everybody is very happy”, while a TPLF official said that rebel forces were “still in hot pursuit to the south, east, to continue until every square inch of territory is cleared from the enemy”.

The victory marked “a very significant shift in the war”, Will Davison, senior analyst for Ethiopia at the International Crisis Group (ICG), told the BBC. Following “significant battlefield gains” by the TPLF, the federal government “was unable to hold on to Mekelle or realised it is in its best interest to withdraw from Tigray”, Davison said.

Unsurprisingly, Ethiopia’s leaders put a different spin on events. The withdrawal from Mekelle was a strategic decision driven by a belief that the city was no longer “the centre of gravity for conflicts”, said PM Abiy, who has just secured another five-year term in office in an election that excluded Tigray.

Abiy later declared a “humanitarian ceasefire”, however, amid rising pressure from the international community following allegations that his government was cultivating a man-made famine in the conflict-torn region.

Regardless of the ceasefire announcement, rebel forces “have continued fighting, seizing more territory” to gain “the upper hand in this long-running conflict”, the BBC reports.

The TPLF’s claims about retaking Alamata, home to around 33,000 people, “could not be independently confirmed because communications were largely down in the area”, France 24 reports. An Ethiopian military spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The TPLF spokesperson also claimed that the rebels had “launched an offensive” in the southern district of Raya on Monday, and had been “able to absolutely rout” federal defence forces.

“We have been able to secure most of southern Tigray including Korem and Alamata,” the spokesperson said, adding: “We don’t want to give them a chance to regroup.”

What next?

The TPLF has dismissed the government’s call for a ceasefire as a “joke”, after Abiy triggered the conflict by sending the army into Tigray last November to oust the region’s ruling party following months of clashes between the two sides.

Following the withdrawal of federal troops from Mekelle, “experts say Ethiopia’s leader will now be focused on what happens in the west of Tigray”, where the rebels are also fighting forces from the neighbouring state of Amhara amid a long-running territorial dispute.

As the TPLF’s offensive against government forces intensifies, regional forces and militias in Amhara - home to one of the largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia - are “trying to win back some of the territory which they say is rightfully theirs”, says the BBC.

“The Amhara wing of Prosperity Party is one of the two most powerful regional branches of Abiy's ruling party,” Iain McDermott, an analyst at the security consultancy Protection Group International, told the broadcaster. “So that means potentially tolerating and supporting Amhara efforts to annex areas of the Tigray region which many Amharas argue were part of the Amhara region prior to 1991.”

Abiy is also depending on the support of troops from the neighbouring nation of Eritrea, who have been involved in the Tigray conflict since November.

In a bid to break down the rebels, both the “Eritrean and Ethiopian forces have not allowed in sufficient supplies of food” to Tigray, The Economist reports. However, analysts have suggested that the TPLF may attempt to “break the blockade by fighting for access to the Sudanese border or trying to topple the government in Eritrea”.

And such a threat to the stability of Eritrea could see the country pulling its troops out of Ethiopia and leaving Abiy’s government to fight on alone.

In the meantime, however, the humanitarian crisis in Tigray is worsening. “On the day of the Ethiopian army’s pullout from Mekelle, phone lines across Tigray, as well as the limited internet access used by aid organisations for their operations, were severed,” Al Jazeera reports.

A bridge on the Tekeze River, “a key crossing point for aid deliveries into Tigray”, was also destroyed, says the news site, with “both warring factions trading blame” for the demolition.

The United Nations estimates that more than 90% of Tigray’s six million inhabitants are now in need of emergency food aid.

But after reclaiming Mekelle in a key victory “in an atrocity-filled war that Abiy had thought would last just a few weeks”, the Tigray rebels are “in no mood to halt their offensive”, says The Economist. The TPLF is riding high having “scuppered Abiy’s attempt to bring Tigray to heel by force of arms”, adds the paper.

Meanwhile, international criticism is mounting against Abiy, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner now accused of overseeing a conflict “marked by grisly massacres and widespread sexual violence”, France 24 reports.

“Instability across the Horn of Africa is nothing new,” says the BBC, “but there are fears that a worsening situation in Ethiopia could have knock-on effects across the region.”

“Any further fragmentation, let alone state collapse, would obviously be disastrous for the region given Ethiopia’s status in the Horn,” said ICG analyst Davison. “That does not appear to be imminent, but the growing level of risk has to be taken seriously.”