Belay Seyoum, Ph.D
Agust 5, 2021
Recently, there have been many calls for negotiations between the government and TPLF to bring about peace and an end to the conflict. However, there are several reasons why negotiations will neither deliver the peace nor bring long-term stability to the country. The idea of negotiating with TPLF (declared as a terrorist organization by the government) that has been responsible for the injury and deaths of thousands of people is reprehensible and offensive to most Ethiopians. Given the fact that the war was an attempt at forcibly taking back political and economic power that TPLF lost in 2018, there is really nothing to negotiate since the conflict does not involve any constitutional issue such as devolution of power or the right of states. Moreover, there is no issue to negotiate with the people of Tigray. Thus, it is a law enforcement issue and should be treated as such and requires the apprehension and arrest of the remaining fugitives from justice.
Negotiations could also internationalize the conflict and lead to the involvement of Western nations and their donor agencies that have clearly taken sides during this conflict. It is a byproduct of TPLF lobbyists, former Obama officials who serve in the present US administration that are friends with key TPLF officials. All this has led to a situation where the West has lost all credibility among the Ethiopian people. Now, they are suggesting the need for the government to open a humanitarian corridor along the Western border with Sudan while there is already sufficient access for such aid through the Amhara and Afar regions. It appears to be a cover to allow TPLF to bring in ammunition and other heavy weapons to gain a military advantage. It is important to note that civil wars are often sparked and aggravated by the meddling of foreign powers. The country cannot trust Western countries to display a neutral stance during the negotiations. The last time we trusted them in 1990, they installed the TPLF that left the country landlocked by giving away two ports and brutalized the population for 27 years.
Negotiations also transforms a domestic law enforcement matter into a political question which opens a pandora’s box because moving the conflict to the political arena will absolve TPLF leadership from legal responsibility for their crimes. It may even lead to pressure for the release of politicians who are being prosecuted for committing serious crimes. Moreover, negotiations create a situation of moral equivalence between the government and a terrorist outfit and send the wrong message in an ethnically plural society. The message is that if you use force and other illegal means, you can get what you want. It amounts to a clear surrender to terrorism.
Even though negotiated settlements have been used over the two decades as a way of ending civil wars, they have proven quite ineffective. Monica Toft of Harvard in her study of civil wars shows that civil wars ended by negotiated settlement are more likely to recur than those ending in victory by one side. Wars that ended through negotiated settlement were twice as likely to reignite as those ending in victory. Even if negotiated settlements may save lives in the short term, combatants have strong incentives to avoid sharing power and use the armistice as an opportunity to recover and rearm in preparation for a new fight thus costing more lives in the long run. A decisive victory by one side precludes any chance of rearming by the losing side because they will have lost most of their weapons and military personnel to impose costs on winners. If we are looking in terms of lasting peace, there is no alternative to a decisive military victory. Let us go for a quick and decisive military victory that will bring peace and stability but an end to external intervent