In the morning of August 24, 2022, Tigray people Liberation Front/TPLF launched an extensive offensive on Federal forces, flagrantly violating the humanitarian truce and reigniting another cycle of conflict. As was to be expected, the TPLF blamed the Federal Government for starting the conflict via its international media apologists. Its propaganda machinery has at the same time begun spreading this falsehood and whitewashing the evolving facts that led to such unfortunate reality. Playing victim is what the TPLF has long specialised at.

The party’s spokesperson started his vitriolic attacks on the ongoing peace process even before the outbreak of the conflict. In an attempt to undermine the peace efforts, he issued on 22nd August 2022 a denigrating article against the leadership of the African Union and the High Representative for the Horn of Africa, H.E. Olusegun Obasanjo. Moreover, on August 23, a day before launching the assault, the Tigray Region’s president sent a hostile letter to different foreign dignitaries, threatening that it would launch a war if its demands were not met, which points to the direction the TPLF was heading.

The TPLF has been mobilising, conscripting, and training the region’s youth to finally launch this offensive. This long-planned undertaking could not pass unnoticed to those who care to see the conflict resolved peacefully.

On the same day of TPLF’s offensive, UN Spokesperson condemned Tigrayan forces who forcefully entered the World Food program/WFP warehouse in Mekelle and took 12 fuel truck tankers with 570,000 litres of fuel which should have been used exclusively for humanitarian purposes to distribute food, fertilizers, and other lifesaving items. This demonstrates TPLF’s brazen disregard to the lives of communities in their Region who are entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance. The international community should not look away from this crime but must call it for what it is and hold the TPLF to account.

The Government of Ethiopia still believes in the peaceful resolution of the conflict and has urged the TPLF to desist from its old-fashioned tactic of achieving political goals by sacrificing civilians. Such tactics cannot work in the current context for Ethiopians have had enough of the TPLF’s ruthless totalitarianism. The conflict brings nothing apart from perpetuating the ongoing suffering of civilians in all conflict affected regions. The international community must join the government of Ethiopia in urging the TPLF to cease its senseless war and resume the peace process.