(ANALYSIS) The current crisis in Ethiopia — displacing 2.1 million people with another 7 million in need of humanitarian aid — is an ethnic-political conflict, not a religious one. However, strengthening Ethiopia’s interfaith collaboration among Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and other groups can bring about much-needed national understanding, forgiveness, reconciliation and healing after three decades of ethnic division, mistrust and revenge.

Long-simmering conflict between the former Marxist ethno-nationalist ruling party, the Tigray’s People Liberation Front, and the federal government erupted in 2020. The TPLF was the chief architect and dominant power of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, which was in power for 27 years until it was rejected by popular unrest in 2018.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed following the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn, who replaced the late Melse Zenawi in 2012. Ahmed won by a landslide in the June election this year. The TPLF first defied Ahmed by holding rigged local elections during the pandemic and reinstating itself to power. Then the TPLF attacked the federal army stationed in Tigray. Please see my previous article on the genesis of the current conflict.

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The relatively mutual and peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims has its historic roots in Ethiopia’s welcome to the first exiled Muslim believers, known as the Abyssinian Migration of 613 and 616. This is a rich heritage to build on. 

The renewed vision of the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia — with seven leaders of major faiths sitting on its board, representing approximately 97% of Ethiopia’s religious population — has a vital place in peace building. The statement IRCE issued, just a day after the war started on Nov. 3, 2020, clearly indicated its remaking as an independent voice, reflective of a new path of democracy.

Also, the IRCE’s public prayer and call for peace and reconciliation, denouncing violence on the inauguration of Ahmed’s new government, was historic. However, great challenges remain, as the war has expanded from Tigray into the Amhara and Afar regions.   

READ: Ethiopia’s Twin Challenges: Misinformation And Water Politics

Three views that hinder the journey to peace

Focusing on the immediate concerns in Tigray with some oversimplification, there are three major politically radical views that the IRCE peace building initiatives need to wrestle with as the council engages the current conflict in Ethiopia. The quest for reconciliation, peace, healing, truth and justice has to be held in creative tension in an honest and open dialogue based on the objective realities concerning the evolution and complexities of the current conflict.

Reconciliation does not entail a mere sentimental harmonizing of conflicting groups. It demands sacrifices, the end to oppression and injustice, and a commitment to a new life of mutuality, justice and peace. This can only happen through mutual listening and attentiveness to the plights of victims. 

There are three views that are barriers to peace.  

First is the view that sees the peaceful people of Tigray through the lens of Tigray’s People Liberation Front oppressors. Like most regions in the north, Tigray has been subjected to repeated droughts, famines, and wars. The senseless war with Eritrea from 1998 to 2000 resulted in at least 200,000 lives lost. It is an open secret that Tigray enjoyed relative peace and prosperity during the TPLF-led repressive rules of the Democratic Front.

Naturally, this created a feeling of resentment, suspicion and mistrust by people of other regions. Nonetheless, it is now recognized that the region’s fundamental needs have not been adequately addressed even during the reign of TPLF. The region’s continued need for progress has been exploited for political capital by TPLF elites to assert and extend their power. 

Second is the view that demands blind ethnic loyalty to TPLF oppressors. It is unjust and immoral to deny the historical reality that the TPLF has the major share of the responsibility for human rights violations, atrocities, nepotism and systemic corruption during the reign of the Democratic Front. The cries of the victims compel us to be truthful to this reality.

The regions of Tigray, Amhara and Afar find themselves in a dire humanitarian crisis because of the war the TPLF started. The voices of the oppressed and the marginalized are indispensable in the process of reconciliation. As long as those who are in power abusively dictate the terms of reconciliation, the cries of the oppressed may fade away temporarily, but bitterness will remain in their hearts.

Third is the view that pressures religious leaders to be partial.  Religious leaders need to be careful from the perspective of ethnic, religious and political partiality. But they also cannot remain indifferent and neutral in the current conflict. Rather, religious leaders must engage Ethiopia’s challenges with righteousness and justice. The biggest war, even after the conflict comes to an end, will be fought in the hearts and minds of leaders and their people.

This requires crossing ethnolinguistic, religious, and political boundaries with a heart of compassion. The war is making many homeless, widows and orphans. It is causing horrible physical, emotional and spiritual wounds. Faith communities can help. Nonetheless, how can they help if they are complicit in the war by taking sides based on blind ethnic loyalty or political ideology? 

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church has yet to recover from the deep wound of the schism it suffered for 27 years precisely because its leaders were entangled with ethnic politics. The church now has two patriarchs. One patriarch, Abune Merkorios, lived in exile in the U.S. after the newly formed Democratic Front government ousted him in 1991.

He was elected after the death of Abuna Takla Haymanot in May 1988 and led Ethiopian exiles in North America. He later returned to Ethiopia in 2018 under Ahmed’s government and new political paradigm shift — emphasizing national unity, diversity, peace and reconciliation — encouraging the return of exiled opposition political leaders. See my previous article on his early political reforms. 

The church’s other patriarch in Ethiopia, Abune Mathias, is Tigrayan and also spent several decades in exile after denouncing the communist regime in the 1980s and leading exiles from churches in Jerusalem and Washington. He returned to Ethiopia as a bishop in 1992 and became patriarch in a 2013 synod election to succeed the late patriarch Abune Paulos, also a Tigrayan, whose appointment from 1992 to 2012 was orchestrated by TPLF leaders while Merkorios was still in exile. In a country where the federal government is based on ethnolinguistic identities dominated by one ethnic group, one can see that these appointments have had serious sociopolitical implications.

In a videotaped statement in Amharic, Mathias said that the “Tigray people are destined for annihilation. ... I am not clear why they want to declare genocide on the people of Tigray. ... I feel helpless not knowing what to do to stop the ongoing mass killing.”

While his lament was understandable, he nonetheless failed to mention the TPLF’s atrocities, express similar compassion for victims or plea for justice and peace. The most notable atrocity was the Nov. 3, 2020, massacre of members of the Northern Federal Command stationed in Tigray for over 20 years.

This was a turning point in the three-year tension between the TPLF and the federal government that sparked the current war, as confirmed in a report from the joint investigation of the U.N. and Ethiopian human rights commissions. The conflict has spurred a humanitarian crisis, with more than 7 million people now in need of assistance across the regions of Tigray, Amhara, and Afar and more than 2.1 million internally displaced.  

As a shepherd for all Ethiopian Orthodox believers, Mathias could have been a bridge builder. A balance could have been redressed had he also lamented the atrocities committed by the TPLF, as confirmed by the JIT report: the mass looting, gang rape, and killing of civilians in various places in the Amhara and Afar regions.

It has now been over five months since the TPLF invaded these two regions after the Ethiopian government’s unilateral cease-fire on June 28. Mathias has missed many opportunities. The fact that he is Tigrayan has already positioned him for misunderstanding and suspicion, given the lingering cloud of ethnolinguistic political cynicism. Consequently, the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod immediately distanced itself from Mathias’ statement. This is a clear indication of the tension within Ethiopia’s Orthodox church, a huge obstacle to peace. 

The video statement by Mathias was recorded and released by a former Californian pastor, Dennis Wadley, who is a Western apologist for the TPLF. Wadley tweeted: 

“In one of the most astonishing feats of arms in history, the TDF [Tigray’s guerrilla army] built an army & defeated their enemies within a year. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that there is no military solution, this war has a clear loser: the ENDF [Ethiopia’s national army] & its commander in chief [Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed].” 

Wadley works closely with the Tigray Media House, whose anchor, Stalin Gebreselassie, was once Mathias’ assistant as a communications officer. Tigray Media House is the TPLF’s mouthpiece in the U.S, a source of misinformation and disinformation for many major Western news outlets. 

There is also growing hostility toward Ethiopian evangelicals simply because the prime minister is an evangelical. There is even an allegation that churches are being destroyed in Amhara, where the TPLF has invaded. Meanwhile, Tigrayan Evangelical Churches are forming with global headquarters in Toronto.

This signifies a split forming from Ethiopian Evangelical Churches. The Fellowship of Evangelical Churches of Tigray supported Mathias’ statement. Historically hostile to each other, these groups — evangelicals and Orthodox Christians in Tigray — are now united simply by ethnocentric political loyalties. 

In redressing the balance, isolated feelings of entitlement within the wider evangelical community have contributed to the tension. These in-house challenges make building peace difficult. There is a need for cooperation in repentance, reconciliation and repairing damages. Reconciliation presupposes genuine repentance and forgiveness — a recognition that we are all part of the problem, to a varying degree. True reconciliation demands an awareness of one’s own sin. 

It is only insofar as all human-made walls are transcended that the faith communities can become a true reservoir of human solidarity for the greater common good. They can act as agents of peace and transformation insofar as they authentically live as reconciled communities. Polarization within and between faith communities is a deadly self-inflicted wound that perpetuates the national crisis. Will they rise above the divides? Will they be a beacon of hope and harmony? How else do we go forward?

Opportunities for a collaborative journey to justice and peace

Cooperation between faith groups represents a major opportunity for building peace in Ethiopia. Why? Because love of neighbor and human dignity are shared values. St. John Paul II, a former Roman Catholic pope, wrote, “In a divided world, driven on and on towards separation and particularism, there is an urgent need for unity. People of different religions and cultures are called to discover the way of encounter and dialogue. Unity is not uniformity. Peace is not built in mutual ignorance, but in dialogue and encounter.”

Ethnocentrism has deeply hurt Ethiopia. But if faith communities are true to their creeds, then they will embrace the multiracial, culturally diverse, and ethnolinguistically complex harmonies that make up Ethiopia. Fundamental is the honoring of all human life as sacred. This makes justice, peace, forgiveness and healing possible. 

There are five opportunities for mutual collaboration. 

Listen with mutual attentiveness to the plight of victims. More than ever, faith communities should stand between opposing polarities as bridge builders who hold justice and truth in one hand and peace in the other. Faith leaders have the responsibility to serve as empathic listeners to all parties — but especially to those most victimized by the conflict. Liberation and reconciliation are indivisible. Faith communities need to be truthful and combat false media. We live in an age where truth and media-worthiness are decided by the power of money, politics and sensationalism.

Ethiopia’s image has been unfairly disfigured. As Martin Kimani, Kenya's permanent representative to the U.N., has rightly recognized, the challenges of ”misinformation and disinformation” have immensely contributed to Ethiopia’s instability. The Global North’s foreign policy, particularly the U.S. sanctions on Ethiopia, are highly influenced by false narratives. See my recent article on this. Faith communities can help correct these misguided and hostile policies.  

Shepherd with earned spiritual authority. Earning personal authority as champions of love, peace and justice is vital if faith leaders are to advocate for higher virtues in a credible way. This entails a radical re-engagement of the belief that human life cannot and should not be reduced to religious, political and ethnolinguistic identities. The credibility of a faith community’s message lies not only in saying but also in being — as true apostles of peace, love and justice. Ethiopia is a mosaic — a nation knit together by over 80 ethnolinguistic groups, each with its unique beauty. As diverse as it is, its people share commonality across religions, languages, cultural history and values. We cherish the beauty of our mosaic. Shepherds keep the sheep together in one flock. 

Advocate for victims and against violence. Neutrality in the face of gross injustice is injustice itself. Faith community leaders are called to be impartial, to take sides with the victims of sociopolitical and economic injustice and against the victimizers in every political structure. This entails a genuine commitment to the fight against oppression in every sphere of human existence. It is much easier to work from the “safe zone” of the status quo, avoiding confrontation with negative and abusive powers even within our circles. Indifference, politeness or silence in the face of evil has kept us at arm’s length from justly addressing the victim’s plight. True reconciliation is a much more costly affair. It involves getting hurt, being misunderstood and perhaps even losing one’s privileged position. Are we willing to pay the price to gain peace? 

Create a proactive dialogue on a national level. Ethiopia’s political landscape has changed much in the last 50 years. Nonetheless, for most Ethiopians, these changes have not halted the repeating story of injustice, pain, neglect, dictatorship and poverty. We have witnessed freedom fighters become oppressors. This is a common pattern in many parts of Africa and indeed in the Global South. Ethiopia’s political successions have been bloody. The recent election, however, was relatively open, fair, and transparent — a remarkable turning point. This is the right step forward as the country attempts to engage in a national dialogue for understanding, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Faith communities can help the nation move in the right direction. There is a need to learn from history — both its dark and bright sides. The most important question is whether or not we choose to move from historical imprisonment to a vision of hope — and avoid rewriting the same old story of oppression and resentment. Faith communities can help the nation overcome mutual alienation and animosity based on current and past wounds by being communities of trauma healing. 

I reiterate what I have said in many of my previous writings. The ancient land of Ethiopia has a significant place in history. Profiling it within the confines of the 27 years of the TPLF-dominated political eras is unbecoming to its glorious history. As we move forward, the people of Tigray, particularly its faith leaders, have a role to play in forgiveness, healing and peace building. It is essential to find ways to mend relations with its immediate neighbors: Eritrea, Amhara and Afar. 

When the war ends, the church and faith communities have a huge role in building bridges of reconciliation. Our pride will always find sufficient reason for us to despise each other and continue with hostility. We understand quite well that hatred should not be allowed to linger between the people of Tigray and the rest of Ethiopia and that it is self-destructive to all sides. There is freedom in peace, but there is destruction in hostility. Our faith teaches us that there is a need for forgiveness between each other. The faith groups must play a major role in working to see that happen.

Fellow Ethiopians back home and around the world, now is the time to listen humbly, to pray intensely and to advocate boldly for Ethiopian unity. The biggest war is to be won in our hearts — renouncing hostility while working for reconciliation and healing. Faith communities have a significant role not only as bridge builders but as bridge crossers. May each of us be peacemakers, rejecting violence and alienation.

Girma Bekele is a consultant in Christian mission studies and a visiting professor of missional leadership in the postmodern world at Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto, as well as Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis.