Pretoria, 2022: peace did not give Abiy a clean slate

We welcome any genuine step that stops families from being killed. We also reject the expectation that relief must be expressed as gratitude to the men who exercised power during the catastrophe. Abiy Ahmed did not earn exemption from scrutiny when negotiations produced a way out. Neither did the TPLF leadership. Stopping a war is an obligation. It is not a receipt cancelling everything that came before.

Those aims deserve support because civilians deserve to live. But our measure of peace is what happens beyond the signing table: whether a family can obtain care, whether a child can return to school, and whether displaced people can rebuild their lives safely. A ceremony cannot answer those questions by itself. The authorities should have to demonstrate progress to the people affected, with evidence that others can inspect.

Our position is that peace and accountability belong together. Investigating abuses should not mean collective punishment, predetermined convictions or revenge. It should mean establishing what happened, examining the evidence against individuals, protecting those who testify and providing a fair opportunity to respond. A settlement that ends fighting should make that work more possible. It should not make survivors’ questions less legitimate.

People can desperately want the guns to stop and still be furious with their leaders. Those feelings are not contradictory. We refuse to interpret a population’s need for relief as approval of every decision that brought it to the negotiating table. Nor should anyone demand that a bereaved family choose between supporting peace and asking why a loved one died.

For Abiy, meaningful accountability would require accepting independent scrutiny of his administration’s wartime decisions and allowing Ethiopians to challenge his leadership peacefully. For TPLF leaders, it would require the same willingness to examine their own conduct. Political survival cannot be the overriding purpose of reconciliation. Otherwise, the people who suffered become spectators while those who exercised power decide which questions may be asked.

We want public records, credible investigations, support for survivors and institutions strong enough to restrain whoever governs next. We want disagreements resolved through peaceful political participation rather than another armed contest that demands sacrifice from families with the least protection. Those are standards for a different political future, not a call to trade one unaccountable leadership for another.

Our anger at Abiy’s handling of the war is rooted in that demand. Ethiopia deserves more than a cycle in which leaders ask for trust, civilians bear the cost, and an agreement is then presented as the final word. Pretoria should be remembered as a necessary opening. What the public does with that opening must include the freedom to say: peace matters, and we still demand answers.