While Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration aggressively pursues high-stakes external adventures—calculated maneuvers that threaten to destabilize the Horn of Africa’s fragile security architecture—it continues to turn a cynical blind eye to the harrowing domestic catastrophe unfolding within its own borders.
The federal government’s preoccupation with regional expansionism and the controversial quest for maritime dominance serves as a strategic smokescreen, masking a profound and lethal indifference toward the existential plight of millions of its own citizens who are currently caught in the crosshairs of institutional neglect.
In the war-ravaged Tigray region, the agonizing reality of a man-made famine has replaced the roar of artillery, as survival is no longer threatened by shrapnel but by the calculated weaponization of hunger.
This glaring disconnect between Addis Ababa’s outward-looking ambitions and its inward-looking abandonment is laid bare by a scathing new editorial from Addis Standard, which exposes how systemic starvation has institutionalized a state of ruin that the Pretoria Peace Agreement has utterly failed to arrest.
This “silent siege” is not a mere byproduct of administrative delay; it is a lethal instrument of political leverage that continues to decimate a population already brought to its knees by years of unchecked violence.
The editorial excoriates the glaring disconnect between federal rhetoric and the grim reality on the ground. While Addis Ababa touts the “silencing of the guns” as a landmark achievement, the silence in Tigray is that of the grave. Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are currently perishing in makeshift camps, not from shrapnel, but from a calculated lack of sustenance and medical care. This ruin, the newspaper argues, is the direct result of a “paralyzing political inertia” where the survival of human beings is treated as a secondary concern to bureaucratic maneuvering and regional infighting.
Central to this tragedy is the weaponization of aid. Despite the lifting of the wartime blockade, the flow of life-saving resources remains a trickle compared to the ocean of need. The Addis Standard highlights a disturbing pattern where aid obstruction has evolved from military barricades into complex layers of administrative red tape. By failing to fully restore constitutional order and facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, the authorities are effectively continuing the war by other means. The editorial emphasizes that “hunger does not wait for political consensus,” and the continued delay in implementing the core tenets of the peace pact—specifically the return of contested territories and the rehabilitation of IDPs—is tantamount to a death sentence for the most vulnerable.
Furthermore, the report unmasks the internal failures within the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) and its friction with federal entities. The internal power struggles and the lack of a unified, transparent response to the famine have only exacerbated the misery. The editorial demands an immediate cessation of this “institutional abandonment,” calling for the international community to move beyond passive observation. Global actors must recognize that the Pretoria Accord is failing its most fundamental test: the preservation of human life.
This state-orchestrated ruin must end. The transition from “shells to starvation” is a moral stain on the nation’s conscience.
To secure a future for Ethiopia, the government must prioritize the immediate surge of nutritional support and the total restoration of dignity to the Tigrayan people.
If the world remains silent while starvation finishes what the war started, the “peace” achieved in Pretoria will be nothing more than a hollow prelude to a generational catastrophe, The Addis Standard concludes.
https://x.com/addisstandard/status/2004577724539543618
