Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said his government would drive out Eritrean forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region militarily any time when necessary.
The Ethiopian premier made the pledge to former US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey David Feltman, according to Foreign Affairs, a leading magazine that makes in-depth analysis and debate of foreign policy, geopolitics and international affairs.
“Abiy has assured me and others that he can manage the Eritreans, to the point of expelling them militarily from Tigray if necessary,” Feltman said in his writing entitled ‘Ethiopia’s Hard Road to Peace’ and published on Foreign Affairs on December 26, 2022.
Feltman, however, said that the Ethiopian prime minister’s confidence seems unmoored from reality arguing that even if Isaias withdraws Eritrean troops from Tigray, he (Isaias) would retain other methods of interfering in Ethiopia.
“Among the Ethiopian proxies Asmara has cultivated are hard-line Amhara militias who share Isaias’s hatred of the Tigrayans and who might be persuaded to flout their obligation under the Nairobi declaration to withdraw from parts of Tigray that they currently claim and control,” Feltman said.
Going into the peace talks in Pretoria, the Ethiopian government was in a much stronger military position than the TPLF, the special envoy continued.
“Not surprisingly, the agreement the two sides reached there on November 2 tilted in Addis Ababa’s favor, providing for the restoration of Ethiopian federal authority in Tigray and the dissolution of the TPLF administration,” he said.
According to the US special envoy, the agreement has flaws, including an overly ambitious initial timetable for TPLF disarmament, inadequate monitoring and reporting processes, a lack of clarity on accountability, and, most seriously, silence on Eritrea, except for a vague prohibition on “collusion with any external force hostile to either party.
Regardless of these imperfections, the Ethiopians deserve credit for agreeing to end the bloodshed, he added.
