Issue No. 321

(Re)crossing the Ford of Kemalke

The first known reference to the Tekezé River is an inscription that describes the Axumite King Ezana boasting of a triumph on its banks near the "ford of Kemalke" in the 4th century AD. Emerging in the Ethiopian highlands near Mount Qachen in the Amhara region, the major rivers' tributaries flow north and west, forming part of the westernmost border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. And for centuries, the Tekezé has wound its way through various conflicts and seminal moments of Ethiopian history, with some even alleging that the Eyela Kudus Michael Church near its source is the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. In the 20th and 21st centuries, many tens of thousands of Tigrayan refugees, too, have waded through the river to reach the refugee camps on the opposite banks in Sudan.

In the past decade, violent contestation has particularly centred on irredentist Amhara claims on either bankside, which culminated in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans during the 2020-2022 Tigray war from Western Tigray. Since then, a grim limbo has ensued, with control over the region remaining a point of deep contestation between Mekelle and Addis. Now, with the federal government suddenly removing several Western Tigray districts from Mekelle's administration in late February amid its clamouring for renewed war, control over these territories has been thrust back into the spotlight. Reactivating deep grievances and claims over Western Tigray is a brazen attempt by Addis to sever the growing alliances between Mekelle, Asmara, and the Fano insurgency.

During the last war, the widespread violence in Western Tigray was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Over several months, particularly Amhara paramilitaries-- emboldened and empowered by Asmara and Addis-- expelled hundreds of thousands of Tigrayan farmers from the fertile region. For years, successive Amhara nationalist campaigns around Welkait have been spearheaded by claims grounded in land politics, alongside cultural and historical identities. During the war itself, massacres and sexual violence were commonplace, while thousands of ethnic Tigrayans were systematically rounded up and arbitrarily imprisoned in military camps, warehouses, schools, and other ad hoc sites. Nor did the Pretoria agreement bring about an end to the violence in Western Tigray, with expulsions continuing to be reported months after November 2022 from Humera, Rawyan and Adebai, among other towns. Today, hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans remain displaced, crammed into underfunded displaced camps where preventable diseases and malnutrition are rife.

Since the dispossession of Western Tigray, it has existed in an unconstitutional limbo, with the Ministry of Defence and ad hoc Amhara-led arrangements having assumed responsibility for the region. No budget or comprehensive service delivery has been allotted, while militarised rule has seen land arbitrarily cleaved off for a range of Amhara settlers and investors. This governance vacuum has reflected a deliberate strategic ambiguity from Addis in which neither Mekelle nor Amhara nationalists secured definitive recognition, and the government retained leverage over both. Meanwhile, the fertility of the region and the attractive 'white sesame' economy that straddles the Ethiopia-Sudan border have also attracted Amhara farmers and settlers, including those displaced from Al-Fashaga —the contested border area seized by the Sudanese army. Eritrean forces, too, have seized the opportunity of the porousness of Western Tigray to funnel weapons and supplies to their Fano allies, entering the country at will and facilitating the training of thousands of paramilitaries.

But, as it has done with many of the Pretoria agreement's stipulations, the federal government repeatedly demurred, refusing to facilitate the return of displaced Tigrayans to their homes and to restore Mekelle's constitutional control over the contested region. A handful of brief attempts to return displaced persons were aborted when the returnees were met with violence from Amhara militias. Addis's rationale was manifold; first, to keep Tigray politically diminished and bogged down, with their military unable to easily access the Sudanese border and maintain the 'no war, no peace' limbo. Certainly, the perceived failure of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) to deliver on the Pretoria agreement and facilitate the IDPs' return has badly damaged the powerful party's reputation. The second motivation is not to further inflame the Amhara nationalist sentiment embodied by the Fano insurgency. Yet in the years since the war, the government's heavy-handedness has pushed elements of Fano and Mekelle closer together; quite an extraordinary about-turn given the events just five years ago. 

But following months of ratcheting tensions, it was inevitable that something would eventually give-- and in late January, deadly clashes erupted in Tselemt between Tigrayan and federal troops. Many feared it would mark the start of a new war, but cooler heads prevailed, at least briefly, with Tigrayan forces pulled back from their positions. Then, on 23 February, the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) suddenly declared that parliamentary elections in 5 contested constituencies of Humera, Adi Remets, Tselemti, Korem-Ofla, and Raya Alamata would no longer be held under Mekelle's jurisdiction. 

The timing was conspicuous, coming amid the mass withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from across the country towards Tigray and accentuated sabre-rattling rhetoric. Mass protests quickly erupted across Mekelle, Axum, Adigrat, Shire and more, with Tigrayan politicians from across the grimly divided spectrum united in their condemnation of the decision. Interim President Lt. Gen. Tadesse Woreda warned that "If this issue, which should be resolved politically, leads to war, it will endanger not only Tigray but the whole of Ethiopia." Even Getachew Reda, the former regional president and now advisor to the PM, has rejected the decision, an individual who has resolutely refused to repeat his accusations of genocide since he defected to Addis. The Federal High Court has issued a temporary injunction intended to pause implementation, but the judiciary's mandate here is dubious at best. The issue is fundamentally political, with the NEBE having been co-opted into the federal government's machinations, best epitomised by their unnecessary ban on the TPLF. With these territories being pulled from Tigray, it is intended to redirect the attention of Fano and Mekelle towards one another, and not their mutual opposition to Addis.

It is unlikely to succeed, however, with the Tigrayan and Amhara body politic regarding Addis as the current existential threat, even though disputes and contestation over Western Tigray/Wolkait territories remain unfinished. But it appears that Addis is preparing to steadily ramp up pressure on Mekelle, cauterising fuel deliveries to the region over the past few weeks and now legally severing the region. 

And with the war drawing the world's eyes towards the blaze consuming the Middle East, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed may well spy an opportunity to deliver on the war he has threatened for the past year. Mass mobilisation of soldiers and weaponry towards Tigray suggests that conflict is imminent, and the mercurial prime minister could well use the cover of violence elsewhere to pursue his own warmongering-- all the terrible consequences notwithstanding. Though US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had made explicit their opposition to any new war in the Horn, American attention is now squarely concentrated on Iran. And one should remember that the last war in Tigray, led by Eritrean and Ethiopian forces, began on 3 November 2020-- the same day as the US presidential election.

The Tekezé has borne witness to much Ethiopian history, from the refugees crossing into Sudan from the 1985 famine to the site of an Ethiopian counter-offensive against the Italians in the Second Italian-Abyssinian War. Today, the river marks another grim faultline, representing a creaking federal order unable to reconcile peace with its people. And if war returns to its banks once more, the reverberations will no doubt echo through a fractured country and region stretched to its outer limits.

The Ethiopian Cable Team