The news from Ethiopia’s Tigray region arrives with an unsettling familiarity: internet restrictions are again in place following reports of renewed fighting. For those who follow the machinations of strongmen, this is less a development and more a reiteration of a well-worn playbook. When uncomfortable truths threaten to emerge, the first casualty is always information.
The two-year civil war in Tigray, which ostensibly concluded with the Pretoria peace agreement in November 2022, was marked by an almost total informational blackout. The world watched, or rather, failed to watch, as atrocities unfolded, facilitated by the digital darkness imposed by Addis Ababa. To see this tactic redeployed now suggests that the underlying issues were never truly resolved, merely papered over. Peace, it seems, was a conditional state, easily revoked.
One cannot help but note the chilling parallels to other conflict zones where regimes, often under the guise of maintaining order or fighting 'terrorism,' first sever the digital lifelines. From Moscow's iron grip on information regarding Ukraine to various African states stifling dissent with an internet kill switch, the pattern is consistent. It allows narratives to be controlled, dissent to be crushed unseen, and the true cost of conflict to be obscured from both internal and external scrutiny. This is not a technical glitch; it is a strategic weapon.
For Europe, this renewed instability, while geographically distant, carries implications beyond humanitarian concerns. The Horn of Africa is a nexus of migration routes and geopolitical competition. Instability there inevitably translates into increased pressure on Europe’s borders and further opportunities for actors like China and Russia to expand their influence in a resource-rich continent. A truly stable Africa, or at least one not constantly teetering on the brink, is in Europe's strategic interest, yet pronouncements of concern often outweigh concrete, long-term policy.
The Pretoria agreement was hailed as a breakthrough, yet its implementation has been, charitably, glacial. Disarmament has been partial, reintegration efforts stalled, and the fundamental distrust between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) clearly persists. The international community, having basked in the reflected glow of a "peace deal," now finds itself with an inconvenient truth: the structural issues that fuel conflict in such regions are rarely amenable to quick fixes or ink on paper.
This latest development underscores a crucial lesson for Western foreign policy: wishful thinking about the fundamental shift in authoritarian regimes or insurgent groups rarely materializes. Deals are signed when convenient, but the underlying power dynamics, grievances, and strategic ambitions remain. To assume otherwise is to set oneself up for perpetual surprise and repeated disappointment.
The immediate imperative is for international observers to demand the restoration of communications, alongside unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies. Without these, the world is once again granting a free hand to those who prefer their actions to remain in the shadows. The price of such complacency in the past has been measured in untold human suffering. One hopes, though without much expectation, that this time the lesson might finally stick. The silence from Tigray is not peace; it is merely the absence of inconvenient noise.