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Receiving famine aid in the Tigray region of Ethiopia is not just about saving lives, it is about whether Ethiopia as a country will continue or disintegrate.
When the Ethiopian army he fled on Monday from the capital Tigrayan Mekelle, the region was handed over to Tigray Defense Forces or TDF (armed wing of the former government party, Tigray People’s Liberation Front or TPLF) fighters. Of Tigray’s six million people, more than five million are in need of emergency assistance and, according to the United Nations, 350,000 are already in a state of famine. Children in preschool are at greatest risk because their small bodies cannot last long without essential nutrients.
In the coming months, approximately 30,000 children could die from starvation. And if the relief effort is not recovered and increased, the death toll could be 10 times higher.
Before Mekelle was abandoned, the backward Ethiopian troops tried to find support solutions and took all the money from the banks. They too steal communication equipment of support agencies. The TDF received found a city without a single day’s food supply.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed he announced which he called a “humanitarian ceasefire”. He came out with a good title, but statements in recent weeks have made it clear that this is not the case. In fact, he intends to continue the war in other ways – the blockade.
In a speech denounced on June 25, he accused aid agencies of having a hidden agenda for supplying rebels. Almost immediately, there were three international medical charities staffed by Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF). murder. The killers are not known, but the finger of suspicion is on the government.
The announcement of a “humanitarian ceasefire” limited the suspension of the army’s offensive action to an agricultural season that lasted just under three months. That’s enough time to buy new weapons and – Abiy promised – to return to Tigray by force. The ceasefire is usually an agreement between the warring parties, but in that announcement the TPLF is called a “criminal junta”.
Abiy spoke on June 30 and said he had fought the war against the people of Tigray, believing that the army had stabbed him in the back in support of the TDF. They will have time to understand his situation now, he said. What that means is that he will block Tigray and starve people.
Hunger in particular is a tremendous weapon. The seriousness of the parental uneasiness that small children waste is almost as horrible as the pains that these children themselves starve. The memory of hunger haunts people from generation to generation, leaving a long hatred for those who caused the pain. Ireland’s great famine of 1845-51 fueled the country’s independence struggle. The Ukrainian Holodomor – Stalin’s famine campaign in the 1930s – left many Ukrainians convinced that they could never be in the same state as Russia.
Abiy has a chance. Tigray may decide to pursue an international humanitarian effort. This means that support groups can travel along the roads and allow relief flights to land at Mekelle and other airports in the region. This could lead to starvation and save hundreds of thousands of lives.
Allowing humanitarian access would be the first step in reassuring Tigers, regardless of the political differences between the federal government and the TPLF, which are still valued as Ethiopian citizens.
Tightening the blockade sends a completely different message: your government wants to starve you to death.
The TDF is armed and highly motivated, driven by the anger of its young fighters for the cruelty inflicted on them. They have just won many stunning military victories and acquired a huge arsenal. If aid does not reach them from Ethiopia, they will surely look for another way to achieve this. The obvious possibility is to launch an offensive and clear the road to Sudan so that cross-border aid can be an unofficial operation.
International aid providers see it as a last resort because it is disproportionate to spread man-made hunger on this scale, while nothing is done to stop it. But they know that a cross-border operation would have political consequences. It would cut Tigray’s umbilical cord with Ethiopia.
The Tigra people are very angry that rape, murder, robbery and starvation and the government’s widespread hatred of the media are demanding independence. Their leaders know that this is a dangerous path and they want to keep open the possibility of reaching a negotiated agreement that keeps them part of Ethiopia – probably with a kind of increased autonomy for the region.
Abiy’s decision in the next few days could decide which path to take – the humanitarian access and the country that can hold it together, or the hunger blockade and national disintegration.
Compassion for the hunger of children in Tigray and the care of the future of Ethiopia as a single country has reached a single opportunity.
The body of a small child is quickly wasted. Abiy doesn’t have much time to choose his path.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of Al Jazeera’s editorial.
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