By Samson Lebassi
When fighting resumed in Tigray, the first casualties were the region’s connections to the outside world. Phone lines and internet service collapsed almost overnight, and the banking system followed. There is not much detailed reports about the extent of the damage, BBC’s early report shows that 52 civilians have already been killed in the escalation. Those deaths are only the visible part of the harm. The suffering of those still alive, unable to call loved ones, buy essential medication, or access their own savings, is equally devastating.
What is happening?
State-owned Ethio Telecom went completely dark, while the private provider Safaricom was only partially operational. Who ordered the shutdown is disputed. Some sources say the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did so to disrupt military drones, while the BBC reports that it is unclear. Banking is less ambiguous. Services in Tigray have been suspended by the Ethiopian federal government, and Ethiopian commentators say Commercial Bank of Ethiopia accounts in the region have been blocked across the board. I am not aware of any published legal basis or timeline for restoration. In practice, a person’s Tigray address, primarily Tigrayan ethnicity, has become grounds for losing access to their money.
A familiar playbook
None of this is new to Tigrayans. During the 2020–22 war, the blackout froze banking and prevented people from sending money to relatives. Rights groups documented how it shrouded crimes against humanity and fostered impunity among armed actors. The Pretoria agreement of 2022 committed the federal government to restoring basic services, and for a time it did. That the same tools are being used again suggests the lessons of the first war were not absorbed.
The human cost
Tigray was already fragile. A humanitarian worker in Mekelle told the BBC that eight months of chronic cash shortage, combined with the blackout, would be devastating for everybody. A resident said there is almost no cash.
Families cannot buy food, and merchants cannot restock. Remittances from the large Tigrayan diaspora, long a lifeline, cannot arrive. Hospitals cannot pay staff or coordinate emergency referrals. Teachers and civil servants have not paid their wages for several months. Aid agencies lose the means to coordinate and pay local partners. And without phones, monitors and journalists cannot document what is happening, so abuses go unrecorded and unpunished.
A violation of law
Intent is for investigators to establish, but the legal picture does not depend on proving a plan. International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment and the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. Human rights law protects the rights to food, health, property and access to information. A blanket freeze that targets people by region, rather than by individual suspicion, fails any test of necessity or proportionality. When a measure foreseeably deprives a population of food and medicine, its architects cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the consequences.
What must happen now?
Ethiopian federal authorities should unfreeze Tigray-origin accounts at once. If there are genuine fraud or security concerns, targeted, time-limited controls such as withdrawal limits can address them without punishing millions. Every party with control over the networks should restore communications, with guaranteed lines for hospitals, aid agencies and families at a minimum. Food, fuel, medicine and cash must move without obstruction. All armed actors must stop attacks on civilians, and independent monitors and journalists must be allowed in.
Responsibility Beyond Rhetoric
The African Union brokered the Pretoria agreement and remains its guarantor. It should publicly demand the restoration of banking and communications, reactivate its monitoring mechanism and convene the parties. Silence now would undermine the credibility of its own peace architecture.
The United States has real leverage through security cooperation, development finance and its influence at the IMF and World Bank. It should state plainly that blocking a region’s banking and communications is unacceptable, make future support conditional on compliance, and use targeted sanctions against those who order or enable abuses.
The European Union, a major humanitarian donor and budget-support partner, should tie its financial engagement to the restoration of services and fund emergency cash and communications for aid operations. It should also back a renewed international investigative mechanism at the UN Human Rights Council.
The cost of waiting
There will be time to establish who cut which cable and who signed which order. But demanding perfect information while millions are cut off from their money, their medicine and their families repeat the failure of 2020–2022. Restoring banking and communications should be the first step, and it should not wait for anyone to win or concede an argument about the war.
The author is a former Ethiopian university academic and a business leader at a major multinational company, is a human-rights advocate and paying member of Amnesty International. The views expressed are strictly personal and do not represent those of any organization. The author can be reached at samson.h.lebassi@gmail.com
