He probably wanted to remind them of Eritrea’s genocidal intent during the latest conflict in an attempt to dissuade civilians from siding with the same forces who sought to exterminate them amidst rising tensions between an Eritrean-backed hardline TPLF faction and the federal government.
Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed told the House of Peoples’ Representatives last week that the deterioration in bilateral ties with Eritrea began much earlier than most observers thought. It wasn’t due to him reviving Ethiopia’s quest for sea access like many believe, but by Eritrea’s massacres of Tigrayan civilians in the early days of the Northern Ethiopian Conflict from 2020-2022 when it was allied with the federal government against their shared TPLF foes. He strongly implied that Eritrea exhibited genocidal intent.
According to him, “After we cleared Shire in the first round of the war, the Eritrean army followed behind us, entered the town, and began destroying private homes and buildings. That is when the friction started, though we did not speak of it at the time…When we moved through Axum, the tension intensified as [Eritrean forces] entered and conducted mass executions of youth.” He also accused Eritrea of looting Tigray, dismantling factories to send back to Eritrea, and destroying what it couldn’t plunder.
Abiy told lawmakers that he tried addressing these war crimes through diplomatic channels at the time and that Ethiopia couldn’t forcefully stop Eritrea due to being militarily overextended. He said that his envoys told their counterparts “Do not terrorize the people of Tigray, do not loot their wealth; the fight is with the TPLF, not the people of Tigray.” When that failed, he wisely opted not to publicly escalate the matter in order to avoid a two-front war with the TPLF and Eritrea, which could have been disastrous.
Be that as it may, his remarks didn’t just set the historical record straight but were also very timely considering worsening bilateral tensions over the past year, which readers can learn more about from this analysis here that summarized the Foreign Minister’s detailed speech on this subject last fall. In brief, he strongly implied that Eritrea is following in Ukraine’s footsteps by becoming anti-Ethiopian state just like how Ukraine became an anti-Russian one, but as part of an Egyptian plot instead of a US one.
A month prior to his aforementioned speech, he sent a letter to the UN warning about Eritrea’s unholy alliance with a hardliner faction of its TPLF enemy, which is led by Debretsion Gebremichael. This development was framed as part of Eritrea’s ongoing proxy war against Ethiopia. If the situation worsens, then the Northern Conflict might resume, but this time with Eritrea taking the TPLF’s side in what would then be the two-front war that Abiy wisely sought to avoid the last time around.
It’s with this scenario in mind that his remarks about Eritrea’s war crimes against the Tigrayan people take on a strategic significance since he likely also wanted to remind them about what Eritrea did. Whatever problems some of them might still have with the federal government don’t morally justify allying with Eritrea, which isn’t just their TPLF representatives’ long-running enemy, but exhibited genocidal intent against them during the last war that could manifest yet again in another one.
If the federal government were defeated by Eritrea, the hardline TPLF faction, and Eritrea’s other proxies in a future war, then it wouldn’t just be the Ethiopian state that might cease to exist given Eritrea’s intent to “Balkanize” it, but the Tigrayan people too. After all, Eritrea tried genociding them during the last war as collective punishment against the TPLF, so precedent suggests that it would “finish the job” were it ever to enter into a position to do so after exploiting some misguided hardline Tigrayans to that end.