Tsadkan Gebretensae – From rebel leader to wine grower and back

It will go down in history books as one of the most amazing military campaigns of the present: The advance of the rebel troops “Tigray Defense Forces” (TDF) against the superior Ethiopian government army, which in addition to the “liberation” of large parts of the Tigray province, however, also caused misery and displacement and means death to the civilian population of neighboring Amhara Province. The TDF rebels are currently advancing further and further on the Ethiopian capital: The case of Addis Ababa is no longer ruled out. The command structures of the Ethiopian army have as good as collapsed, it is said in military circles.

The surprising rebel success is mainly attributed to one person: the TDF commander Tsadkan Gebretensae, whom Alex de Waal, director of the World Peace Foundation at the US University of Tufts, describes as “one of the best military thinkers and strategists in Africa”. The 68-year-old ex-general has had a long and dazzling career: he led an almost identical campaign 30 years ago – as commander of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TDLF), which for 15 years against the “red terror” of dictator Mengistu Heilemariam fought. On May 28, 1991, the TDLF rebels entered Addis Ababa on the same route as the TDF fighters from Tigray do today. At that time, Tsadkan is said to have slept in a bed made up for the first time in 15 years.

In the 1998 war against Eritrea, Gebretensae led Ethiopia’s troops to victory

In 1976, at the age of 23, he gave up his biology studies at the University of Addis Ababa to join the liberation front that had been founded the year before. There he befriended the TDLF boss Meles Zenawi, who later ruled Ethiopia for 21 years. Tsadkan’s strategic skill appeared quickly during the guerrilla war: during the 1980s he rose to be the leading TPLF commander.

After the invasion of Addis Ababa and Mengistu’s flight, he was entrusted as the new chief of the armed forces with the integration of the rebels and the restructuring of the army. Like Meles on the political side, he was also accused of having filled the leading military positions with members of his people. When war broke out with the former Eritrean brother state in 1998, Tsadkan led Ethiopia’s troops to a victory – but was prevented by his friend Meles from advancing to the Eritrean capital Asmara to overthrow dictator Isaias Afwerki.

His friendship with Meles broke due to the dispute: Tsadkan was deposed and first looked for a new field of activity as a military advisor in South Sudan and later as a wine farmer and businessman in his home province of Tigray. Actually, the rift with Meles was less due to the dispute over the advance on Asmara than to his criticism of its undemocratic governance, Tsadkan says later.

When Ahmed Abiy unexpectedly came to power in April 2018, the retired general initially had nothing to complain about. It was only when the new prime minister began to “purge” the state and military apparatus of the previously dominant Tigray that the board member of several state-owned companies was startled: He met Abiy Ahmed several times to find a solution – but he gave after the third attempt on. “Abiy was not interested in a peaceful solution,” he said in a rare interview: “He is preparing for war.” The casus belli was whether Ethiopia should remain a federal state or become a unitary central state. “It was no longer a question of us Tigray wanting to continue to have the say over the fate of the country,” says Tsadkan.

Only after Abiy sent his troops to Tigray and asked for the assistance of the Eritrean archenemy did the then 67-year-old feel pressured to return to the command post. First of all, the TDLF militias suffer an almost devastating military setback: only after they have withdrawn into the inaccessible mountains, can the fighters regroup – now as TDF and under Tsadkan’s leadership. The chief strategist succeeded in the first hussar piece in July of this year, when he and his very young troops inflicted one defeat after the other in the government army. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers die, eight thousand are captured, and tens of thousands finally withdraw.

Now he goes from defending Tigray Province to attacking

If the retired general had left it at that, his reputation might have shone brighter. But Tsadkan moves from defending Tigray Province to attacking neighboring Amhara Province. He recently shared the reasons for this with the BBC: First, Tigray’s blockade, which is putting millions of lives at risk, should be broken. Second, the government in Addis Ababa will be forced to hold talks about the future of the province. Both goals have still not been achieved: they cannot be described as warmongering or unreasonable. Tsadkan is convinced that an end to the war can only be achieved through negotiations: Why Abiy has still not offered this to Nobel Peace Prize laureate remains his secret.