The EconomistNovember 28th 2020 Leaders 131F
irst, thepolice and militia shut the roads out of Mai Kadra, a
farming town in Ethiopia’s northern province of Tigray. Then
they went from door to door, checking idcards and singling out
non-Tigrayans. They destroyed sim cards to stop people phoning
for help. Then, on November 9th, members of a Tigrayan youth
group stabbed, hacked, burned and strangled hundreds of Am-
hara men, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commis-
sion (ehrc). When federal government troops entered the town
the next morning at least 600 people were dead, says the ehrc.
Because of an internet and telephone blackout, as well as re-
strictions on journalists and ngos, it is hard to be sure exactly
what happened. But there is no doubt that a massacre occurred.
Amnesty International has videos of bodies
strewn across the town. And it seems likely that
it was committed by forces allied to the Tigrayan
People’s Liberation Front (tplf), the ruling party
in Tigray. It is also beyond doubt that federal
government forces or their allied ethnic militias
have also committed atrocities in the same area.
Tigrayans who have fled across the border to Su-
dan tell of attacks on civilians by Amhara mili-
tiamen and government soldiers. The government says under-
covertplfagents are sowing disinformation.
Ethiopia’s civil war is less than a month old, but its horrors are
multiplying fast. Government forces surround Mekelle, Tigray’s
capital. On November 21st Ethiopia’s army warned the city’s
500,000 inhabitants that it would have “no mercy” and that they
should “save themselves”. A day later Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s
prime minister, gave the tplf 72 hours to surrender. To treat an
entire city and its people as a target would be a war crime. In a
country as riven with ethnic tensions as Ethiopia, it could also
lead to wider bloodletting. Tigrayan civilians elsewhere are al-
ready being singled out. Hundreds have been arrested in the cap-ital, Addis Ababa. Tigrayans in the army have been disarmed or
detained. Those in the civil service have been told not to come to
work. Tigrayans trying to leave the country are turned back at the
airport. “This has the smell of Rwanda,” says a foreign diplomat.
Both sides passed up opportunities to reduce tensions before
the first shots were fired by the tplfon November 4th. Now each
appears to think it has the upper hand. Abiy seems to be trying to
topple the tplfbefore Joe Biden takes charge in America. The
tplf’s leaders, many of whom are graduates of its guerrilla war
against a Marxist dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, seem to
think they can win concessions by fighting from the hills and
dragging the war out. Both sides act as if they have more to gain
from killing than talking.
Outsiders need to convince them otherwise.
First, the unand African Union (au) should
make it clear that those who commit war crimes
will be held accountable. Independent investi-
gators should be allowed in to determine what
happened at Mai Kadra. Non-combatants must
be spared. Humanitarian corridors should be
opened to allow aid to flow.
If Ethiopia commits grave war crimes, the unand aushould
also impose an arms embargo. This would not stop the killing
entirely—the region is awash with guns and machetes. But halt-
ing the flow of artillery shells and bombs would dampen it and
send a clear signal to both parties.
Donors should rethink their support for Ethiopia, which re-
lies on aid. Western powers are hesitating for fear of being ac-
cused of neocolonialism. The auis reluctant to act because of its
policy of not interfering in its members’ internal affairs. But if
nothing is done, Ethiopia will slide deeper into crisis. It could
even break apart, like Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Good neighbours
should apply pressure now to prevent such a catastrophe. 7Preventing war crimes
Africa and the world need to act now to stop the slaughter in TigrayEthiopiaE
conomic forecasters could be forgiven for feeling a sense
of whiplash. As covid-19 runs rampant in Europe and Amer-
ica the world economy is taking another hit from the pandemic.
America’s consumers are gloomy; Europe’s service sector is con-
tracting. At the same time the growing prospect of mass vaccina-
tion in 2021 raises the prospect of an imminent recovery. In 2020
economists were too pessimistic about how fast growth would
rebound after the first wave of infection, especially in America. A
vaccine might allow another snapback in 2021.
A springtime consensus that governments should spend big
on rescue packages has given way to bickering and confusion. In
America Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, is bringing to an
end some of the Federal Reserve’s emergency programmes (seeFinance section). Janet Yellen, whom President-elect Joe Biden
this week chose to be Mr Mnuchin’s successor, will be greeted by
a legal and political storm about the Fed’s lending authority.
Congress looks unlikely to agree to renew emergency spending
on unemployment insurance and loans before Mr Biden takes
office. In Europe Hungary and Poland are holding up the eu’s
budget and its €750bn ($900bn) “recovery fund” in a spat over
whether the disbursement of cash should be conditional on
countries upholding the rule of law. The European Commission
has warned several countries about their debts. Britain’s govern-
ment is trying to reconcile an instinctive suspicion of deficits
with a recognition that the economy still needs life support, in
part by cutting the foreign-aid budget (see Britain section).The right kind of discipline
Fights about stimulus are breaking out everywhere. Time for rules-based budgetingFiscal stimulus