Eritrea withdrawing troops from Tigray, Ethiopia's Abiy says

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that Eritrea has agreed to withdraw troops from Ethiopia’s Tigray region. But that doesn’t mean fighting between the Ethiopian government and Tigray forces is over.

|
Mulugeta Ayene/AP
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responds to questions from members of parliament in Addis Ababa, Nov. 30, 2020. Up until a few days ago, Mr. Abiy refused to acknowledge the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray, despite witness accounts.

Ethiopia’s prime minister said Friday that Eritrea has agreed to withdraw its forces from the Tigray region, where witnesses have described them looting, killing, and raping civilians.

The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office comes after intense pressure from the United States and others to address the deadly crisis in Tigray.

Mr. Abiy’s statement after a visit to Eritrea said that Ethiopian forces will take over guarding the border areas “effective immediately.”

Mr. Abiy only in the past week has acknowledged the presence of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government.

The new statement doesn’t say how many Eritrean soldiers have been in Ethiopia, though witnesses, for months now, have estimated the number to be well in the thousands.

Eritrea in a statement said Mr. Abiy and its president, Isaias Afwerki, discussed in depth the “common strategic partnership and envisioned joint trajectory, the vicious military attacks unleashed in the past five months, and attendant disinformation campaigns” but it did not specifically mention Tigray. Eritrea’s statement added that “important lessons have been gleaned from temporary hurdles precipitated by this reality that will further bolster the joint undertakings by the two sides in the period ahead.”

In a tweet, Eritrea’s ambassador to Japan said that “as of today #Eritrea/n Defense Forces units shall hand over all posts within the borders of #Ethiopia which were vacated by the Ethiopian Defense Forces.”

Mr. Abiy shocked the region in 2018 by making peace with Eritrea after a long border war in the Tigray region, an achievement for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But since the current Tigray conflict began in November, Mr. Abiy has been accused of teaming up with Eritrea to pursue the now-fugitive Tigray leaders.

Mr. Abiy’s statement accuses the former Tigray leaders of starting the conflict by attacking Ethiopian forces, then drawing Eritrea into the fighting by firing rockets into Eritrea’s capital. But witnesses have alleged the involvement of Eritrean soldiers from the start of the fighting.

The U.S. weeks ago demanded that Eritrean soldiers leave Tigray immediately, and pressure increased in recent days with the Biden administration dispatching Sen. Chris Coons to Ethiopia nearly a week ago for hours of talks with Mr. Abiy.

No one knows how many thousands of people, especially civilians, have been killed in the Tigray fighting. The region of some 6 million people has been largely cut off from the world, and despite some progress in aid delivery, humanitarian workers have warned that food and other supplies coming in are far from enough amid fears of starvation.

And only in recent days has the United Nations human rights office said it’s been allowed into the Tigray region in a limited capacity to support investigations into alleged atrocities including mass rapes by Eritrean soldiers and others.

The U.N. refugee agency told reporters in Geneva that it had finally reached two refugee camps that had hosted some 20,000 people from nearby Eritrea and found them “completely destroyed.” It said just 9,000 of the refugees have been accounted for.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Abiy’s office did not immediately respond to questions about Friday’s statement, including why the Eritreans had not withdrawn after earlier requests.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Eritrea withdrawing troops from Tigray, Ethiopia's Abiy says
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2021/0326/Eritrea-withdrawing-troops-from-Tigray-Ethiopia-s-Abiy-says
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe