00:00And for more, I spoke to Laura Hammond, Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, part of the University of London.
00:06It sounds from reports that we're hearing that most of the leadership has fled northward,
00:11and there is a concern that in some of the northern towns like Adigrad, which is quite close to the
00:16Eritrean capital,
00:17and some of the smaller towns around that, there may be more danger of fighting.
00:22So that's something to watch out for.
00:23I think the TPLF will be in a state of disarray and will be needing to regroup if that's indeed
00:30what they're going to do, or else try to disband.
00:34I expect that they won't disband, though.
00:36They've been around for a very long time.
00:38They'll probably try to regroup.
00:41And that will be important for a durable peace to come, because I don't think this military movement, as quick
00:49as it has been, by itself can bring about peace.
00:53And indeed, about that, does this intensified fighting confirm that the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement that was meant to end
01:00the conflict is essentially unsalvageable?
01:04I think that the Pretoria agreement was unsalvageable long before this happened.
01:10It was always only ever meant to be a cessation of hostilities agreement, which falls short of being a full
01:17peace agreement.
01:17There were many elements of the debates and disputes between the federal forces and the Tigrayan leadership that were not
01:25even mentioned within the agreement.
01:27Right. And there are already reports of civilian deaths.
01:29And what kind of impact is there, do you think, in humanitarian terms?
01:33Could we potentially see a return to the scale of the suffering seen during the war between 2020 and 2022?
01:40Well, in the 2020 to 2022 fighting, there were anywhere between 300,000 and 600,000 deaths.
01:49And many of those were as a result of direct fighting, but many also were a result of being cut
01:54off,
01:55blocked off from any form of humanitarian aid and a complete stranglehold on the economy of the region.
02:01So while this latest military movement has been quite quick and relatively short of bloodshed,
02:09the real danger is in the economic stranglehold that the region finds itself in,
02:15where for the last eight months people have not been able to access any form of cash from the banks.
02:20When the phones and Internet communications were cut off 10 days ago,
02:25people lost their ability to purchase anything from the market because they've been using mobile technologies.
02:30And stepping back a bit, the history of this conflict,
02:33why is it that the structure of Ethiopia and the regions is just so perpetually unstable?
02:41Well, it stems back to the beginning of the 1991 government when the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front
02:49was the most powerful of a coalition that took power of the whole government of Ethiopia.
02:55And that led to quite a lot of resentment from other parts of the country
02:59that a feeling that, whether founded or not,
03:02that the Tigrayans were benefiting disproportionately to other parts of the country as part of it.
03:09Also, I think that the constitution that was passed in the early 1990s,
03:14which set up a system of regional autonomy and granted regions a certain level of control and say
03:21over how they would run their resources and their administrations was never fully implemented.
03:28And so it created a fertile ground for grievances on both sides.
03:32And I think that the answer is a little bit哦.
03:32And if you ask Lester to find a way out,
03:32But it's your firstância GOD.
