Five years into the war on Oromia, eighteen months after Pretoria, and a year into the conflict in the Amhara region, a triad of national dialogue, transitional justice, and DDR has gradually emerged as the Prosperity Party (PP)`s conflict resolution blueprint. Since late 2021, a National Dialogue Commission has been established to facilitate and convene said dialogue. A Transitional Justice policy has been prepared by the Ministry of Justice. A National Rehabilitation Commission was set up to oversee DDR processes.
Only a quick glimpse at the triad reveals that national dialogue is being conducted not to resolve conflicts but to bypass their resolution. Transitional justice is being pursued in the absence of a transitional arrangement only to ensure impunity, overseen by the primary culprit of most contemporary political crimes as documented by almost all independent human rights bodies. DDR is being hailed as a cure in the absence of a hint of resolution to political questions that gave rise to wielding guns in the first place. Colorful terminologies that ostensibly hail dialogue and justice notwithstanding, the country and its true friends should be wary of the trajectory of Abiy`s Ethiopia.
All the same, some local and international actors appear to be shrouded by a cloud of confusion and/or indifference, likely because they remain apathetic to the consequential underlying contradictions in the regime`s prosaic rhetoric of dialogue and justice. To be sure, contradictions of all stripes are not exceptions to the PP`s reign over Ethiopia, they are the rule. The regime persists not in spite of evident absurdities, but partly because of them. Two contradictory claims are being made about the national dialogue, both in rhetoric and action. On the one hand, the regime endorses the need for a national dialogue on foundational questions around the state institutions, structure, and, the past and future of the polity. Questionably however the regime also claims to have been elected to office through a legitimate process organized by legitimate state institutions. If the latter existed, the former would by definition be irrelevant. Why invest in a national dialogue to reimagine and recreate legitimate institutions, if you don´t question the legitimacy of existing institutions?
Inconsistent as it is, the regime may deny the assertion that dialogue includes foundational state institutions: that national dialogue only strengthens existing institutions. But then, if it disputes that dialogue includes the reimagining of institutions including those that legitimize elections, dialogue will be around utterly trivial, and inconsequential issues. Also, at least in principle, it is not up to the regime to determine what issues are up for a national dialogue. Moreover, even if one assumed, only for an argument’s sake, legitimate state institutions existed and oversaw the 2021 elections, whatever legitimacy existed has been put into serious doubt by the consecutive three civil wars the state is prosecuting in three regions of the federation.
Wobbling under the weight of its contradictions, the regime is co-opting and misappropriating concepts and processes meant for transitional governance. National dialogue and transitional justice, in theory and practice, work within the context of a transitional governance arrangement, not in an exclusive oneparty despotic rule that highjacked a popular movement. These concepts and processes will only be misused for power consolidation in a regime-controlled milieu in the absence of transitional governance.
Even then, the PP`s national dialogue is designed in a manner that bypasses the necessary politicosecurity bargain among key stakeholders. National dialogues are meant to broaden participation beyond the usual political and military elite, not to sidestep them. The dialogue commission and transitional justice policy were created outside a transitional governance, by one party in a process that sidesteps all key stakeholders. Bottom-up participation is controlled by the same party. And if the dialogue yields any output, which is predetermined based on the current process, the Commission`s recommendations are to be presented to the same party to implement, or not. Even to feign independence, the Commission was not accorded legal powers to ensure implementation, not that implementation matters given the process in which the Commission came to be. The absence of broad legitimacy among key stakeholders also means that it does not possess the requisite extra-legal mechanisms to ensure compliance. Given the daunting security and political challenges in the land, the current design is simply a non-starter.
If conflict resolution was genuinely pursued, the design of a national dialogue could have emerged from genuine peace processes among warring parties, and key political parties, and later expanded to ensure broader public participation. While detailed discussions to chart a hopeful future for our people continue, at the very least, a path to a meaningful national dialogue, in which key aspects of transitional justice can be a part, begins with the following:
1. Opening up the political space
When opposition leaders who chose peaceful political struggle are gunned down in the middle of towns and cities, it is clear that dialogue on any issue is non-existent let alone on inter-generational matters presupposed by a national dialogue. In fact, it was only a few months into office, and as soon as he was in relative control of the country’s security and intelligence architecture, that the PM began a heavy crackdown on members of the Qeerroo movement, Oromo Liberation Front, Oromo Liberation Army, and on members of his party that sympathized with the major questions of the Oromo people.
Over the past five years, tens of thousands of political prisoners have been kept in various concentration camps, and makeshift prisons in Oromia alone. Together with the OLF leadership these tens of thousands of political prisoners remain in jail. They deserve far better. They should be freed.
Legislative reforms should accompany the process of opening up, among them the anti-terrorism proclamation. Any mildly independent observer of Ethiopia recognizes that anti-terrorism laws in Ethiopia have never been about terrorism or violence. It’s always been about silencing organized opposition and dissenting voices. It is a direct extension of the narrowing of the political space. In May 2021, the PP hastily moved the bill through parliament to proscribe TPLF and OLA to avoid international pressure to bring about an end to the civil wars through a negotiated settlement. It was declared precisely to obscure genuine dialogue.
2. Reaching genuine political settlements across the country
What is in a meeting-hall dialogue for the country when the main theater of political contestations has become battlefields across its territory? What dialogue is Ethiopia conducting when having failed to deliberate on interests peacefully, its young and old alike have left meeting halls for the bushes? What chapter of atrocities and crimes does a transitional justice process close while civil wars that incubate atrocity crimes are ongoing? The answer to these (rhetorical) questions continues to reveal the absurdities of PM Abiy`s Ethiopia.
Short of a relative lull in the Tigray region, the country is still in the depth of active conflicts and aerial attacks in the West (Wollega areas), South (Guji area), Central (north and west Shewa), and North (the four zones of the Amhara region). Unable to win the war on Oromia and the hearts and minds of the Oromo people, the regime has been using different tactics that it believes would do the trick: relentless propaganda, drones, and human waves.
Recently, it has been coordinating the military and its local cadres, and preventing family members, fathers and mothers of members of the OLA, and suspected supporters of the resistance movement from using healthcare facilities, hospitals, education, courts, and all communal services including burial grounds for dead family members. The reality on the ground is that the federal government and regional Special Forces are recruiting and training new soldiers, and that should change.
Reaching meaningful political settlements across the country remains an important prerequisite to any dialogue or pursuit of (transitional) justice. The political settlement/s should be genuine and ought to be sought across the country. Genuine Political settlement is not a DDR. The insistence on DDR in particular without addressing the underlying political questions is proof positive that the regime is utterly uninterested in creating a post-conflict society where lives and livelihoods flourish. It is rather insisting on mobilizing the scant resources of the country to consolidate power by pitting the country against itself. The settlements should also encompass the entire country. In our view, Tigray also needs a political settlement. As much as it was able to stop death by bullets, the CoHA was only a cessation of hostilities agreement, not a comprehensive peace agreement. However, at the moment, all evidences show that the Ethiopian government is interested in anything but genuine political settlements. That means this generation of resistance movements shoulder a herculean weight of both fighting tyranny and the daunting task of charting the future of the country and region.
3. An all-inclusive process that leads to the establishment of an independent commission(s) acceptable to all key stakeholders.
Conveners and facilitators of dialogue should come to be through a process that does not bypass key stakeholders.
In the absence of the above, PM Abiy’s national dialogue and transitional justice only achieve narrow partisan objectives.
At home, the dialogue will be used to signal to the Amhara and Ethiopianist camp that a constitutional restructuring of their liking is in the offing. The internal differences and contradictions within the Prosperity Party and its supports further afield have been widening. Many ardent supporters of the PM have turned bitter foes. By promising this camp that the national dialogue`s finished goods will be tailored to their objectives, the PM wishes to unify, albeit momentarily, his party and lost support base.
If the past six years are any lesson, we also expect the government to promise the exact opposite to the other political camps.
The national dialogue is also an opportunity to attempt to coopt what the regime considers as moderate forces in each political camp. The regime has long sought to sow discord among Oromo, Amhara, and Tigray. By encouraging the political factions, it considers as moderate, and adorning the national dialogue with their participation, the regime hopes to create fresh discord within each political camp.
Abiy also hopes to create a false sense of hope and progress for the population battered with conflict, and economic woes. Finally, if anything comes out of this process, it will be a constitutional machination that paves the way for Abiy to consolidate power. In the process, it could unpick a delicate political settlement reached in the post-1991 regime change.
The Commissioners sitting on the National Dialogue Commission, some of whom we held in high regard, should be cognizant of these facts. If not disbanded within a few months, as did all commissions established by PM Abiy, their Commission will only end up, (a) becoming a talking shop where all questions the regime does not wish to confront head-on are thrown for unending and indecisive chattering, or (b) as power consolidation tool for the PM. If any result comes out of this process, your legacy will be helping the incumbent to consolidate power, and in the process, contribute to the broader failure of transition to peace and democracy. We also observed with bewilderment when the commissioners undertook to guarantee the safety of participants in their recent call to armed movements. With all due respect, if they showed a measure of independence, the commissioners cannot guarantee their own safety. The fate of regime officials who recently tried to speak their minds should have been the last wake-up call.
Internationally, the main tactical advantage the PP is after is securing fungible funds from the Bretton Woods, and wider West to continue the war. The often-pricey transactional pacts with UAE, China, Turkey, and Iran might have helped the regime with quick arms deals and temporary windfalls. The regime however has come to recognize that the structural problems that permeate the Ethiopian economy cannot be addressed without Western bailouts. If utilized effectively, the international community has meaningful leverage. It should not abandon necessary political settlements and proper accountability for the sake of short-term strategic political interests. If it does, the resulting fungible Western money will be used to support a troubled economy that is nonetheless able to finance the civil wars. Fungible handouts might also be used to pay for more gadgets in Abiy’s vanity park projects that derail (urban) public attention. But crucially they will finance genocidal adventures that eventually plunge the polity into a bottomless abyss. If the West does not use its leverage effectively and continues to be predominantly invested in Ukraine and Gaza, the most populous country in the equally troubled Horn and Red Sea corridor will slowly unravel.
OLF-OLA High Command
7 May, 2024
