It’s time for the suffering in the north of Ethiopia to end and the dialogue to begin, US envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer told academics, diplomats and former leaders on Sunday.
Hammer spoke during the last session of the Tana high-level forum on security in Africa, where most participants avoided talking about the Tigray conflict due to political sensitivities around the conflict.
“I’m uncomfortable that we sit in this beautiful Bahir Dar with this beautiful view [of Lake Tana], and yet in this region, not too far away, there’s violence that’s causing untold suffering, death, destruction. Women, men, children are dying,” he said.
The lakeside town where the meeting was held is host to a growing number of people fleeing the war from other towns in the region.
The conflict between the government and Tigrayan rebels broke out in November 2020, but because the Tigray region has been closed down, with almost no connections to the outside world, not much is known about the conflict.
It has an estimated death toll of up to half-a-million people due to systematic violence and famine, making it the most deadly of any current conflict.
Hammer said the AU and its member states should partner with the US in an effort to find a solution to the conflict.
Eritrea in August is reported to have sent troops over the border into Tigray when fighting renewed in August after a five-month truce.
“The US supports an AU-led process for peace in Ethiopia,” Hammer said. “The US policy towards Ethiopia is to support the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country.”
The AU earlier this month initiated peace talks that were supposed to have taken place in SA, but they were postponed due to apparent logistics issues and the inability of former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta to make it. Kenyatta has been playing an important role in mediation efforts.
The US has faced some resistance, especially from the Ethiopian government side, which has accused the country of being partial to the Tigrayans. The New York Times earlier in October reported that Hammer has an influential role in behind-the-scenes efforts to get the parties to talk.
Hammer’s position on peace talks was supported by a few other speakers, but there was also pushback by some participants who pointed out that the US has its own problems with “structural violence” that deprive some of that country’s people from access to services.
Others also held the position that big powers should get out of Africa altogether, but AU peace and security commissioner Bankole Adeoye told the audience via a virtual link that the AU needed partners. The continent should have a strategy of how to engage these, he said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in his welcoming address at the forum mentioned climate change, the impending energy crisis and technological security as the biggest security issues facing his country.
Former Ghanaian president and forum chair, John Dramani Mahama, in his closing address admitted that the conflict nearly threatened to shift the gathering to Addis Ababa. “Luckily, we have come to a very peaceful Bahir Dar which is very beautiful and very clean,” he said.
The forum, organised by the Institute for Security Studies at Addis Ababa University, is in its tenth year.
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