On September 3, the president of the federal state of Tigray, Debretsion Gebremichael, released a long interview in which he wanted to explain the reasons for the conflict and the evolution of the crisis seen from the side of the TPLF.
Gebremichael bluntly accuses Abiy Ahmed of betraying and sabotaging the stability of the Ethiopian federation through the Prosperity Party’s attempt to isolate any force hostile to him and, above all, contrary to his centralist and nationalist vision of the state.
The criminalization of the TPLF and Tigray, functional, according to Gebremichael, to the pursuit of the prime minister’s power objectives, led in a short time to the war and the ruinous evolution it brought to the stability of the country.
The war in Tigray was expressly defined as “genocidal”, conducted with the help of the Eritrean and regional Amhara forces, which still occupy the entire western part of the Tigray region.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is then accused of having first provoked the military intervention, then minimized it in the eyes of international public opinion as “a police operation” and finally of having once again tried the path of deception through the unilateral declaration of a ceasefire, which, in reality, has hidden only a reorganization phase of the ENDF forces after the defeat suffered on the ground in Tigray.
Gebremichael then referred to the ongoing serious humanitarian crisis in the region, defining it as the product of the encirclement determined by the government in Addis Ababa and its allies. An encirclement that has led to a complete blockade, both in terms of food and humanitarian aid as well as in terms of economy, communications and transport. Almost one million people would find themselves affected by the food emergency and the lack of medical care, and this has forced the TDF forces to try to break the siege by penetrating inside the territories of the regional states of Afar and Amhara, to ensure the mobility of aid and the possibility of contact with the outside.
At the end of the interview, Gebremichael asks the international community to help Tigray so that the federal government lifts the siege to the region, orders the exit of the Eritrean armed forces and those of the other regional states and, finally, so that Abiy Ahmed agrees to organize an internationally mediated negotiation for the cessation of hostilities.
