Martin Plaut

The opening clashes that led to the Tigray war on 4 November have been the subject of two competing myths.

The first myth is that the conflict erupted after forces loyal to the Tigray Regional Government attacked the Northern Command, situated in the Tigray capital, Mekelle.

This was a Tweet from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. In this narrative, the war is the fault of the Tigrayan authorities and the TPLF in particular.

The second myth is that the war was sparked off by a failed attack by Ethiopian commandos on Mekelle, disguised as security forces guarding a banknote transfer.

This version of events suggested that very early Wednesday morning aircraft carrying Ethiopian commandos took off on a mission to eliminate the Tigrayan leadership.

Ethiopian sources suggest that the force was airlifted into Mekelle in two helicopters and an Antonov from Bahr Dar, to try and seize the TPLF leadership at a hotel.

Social media reports that the hotel in question was the Planet. The commandos landed without a problem and drove into Mekelle, seizing control of the hotel.

But the intelligence they were operating from was faulty. The Tigrayan leaders they were seeking were not there. The commandos then withdrew.

It is not clear if the unit was involved in any fighting.

But after the failed raid Tigrean forces took over the Ethiopian National Defence Force camp (the Northern Command barracks for Mekelle) near the airport (when there was some fighting), as well as taking control of the airport itself.

This explanation is also questioned and not seen as plausible.

Abiy’s problem of legitimacy

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was widely portrayed in the international media as a democrat and a former, who deserved his Nobel Peace prize in October 2019.

His reputation inside Ethiopia was less positive. In June 2019 opposition parties were querying his democratic credentials when the date of the general election due in May 2020 started to be questioned.

As Reuters reported on 21 June 2019: “Opposition politicians in Ethiopia are warning against a delay to national elections due in 2020 that would be the first under reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed but are under threat from an explosion of regional ethnic rivalries.”

The possibility of a postponement when the government mandate expired had nothing to do with Covid-19, as Reuters made clear.

“Earlier this month, the election board said insecurity, which has driven 2.4 million people out of their homes according to the United Nations, could delay next year’s parliament vote. A national census has already been postponed twice, potentially undermining logistics for the polls including the drawing up of constituencies.”

“If the government is going to postpone the general election … it will anger the public,” former political prisoner Merera Gudina told Reuters by phone. He chairs the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress party from a region, Oromia, at the heart of anti-government protests in recent years.

Debretsion Gebremichael, chairman of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and vice president of Tigray regional state, also warned that postponement could have “grave consequences.” The TPLF is part of the governing coalition. “Not holding the election on time … is unconstitutional,” he told a television station. “It means the Ethiopia government after 2020 is illegitimate.”

By 2020 the situation was no better

The Prime Minister continued to lose support and an election looked increasingly unpalatable.

As the Washington Post reported: “Abiy’s platform is particularly unpopular in two ethnic regions: Tigray, in the far north, where power was centered during previous governments before he wrested it away; and his own Oromia, home to the country’s biggest group, the Oromo, who make up at least a third of the national population and whose ethno-nationalist leaders helped Abiy gain power but now want Oromo interests to be put first.”

Prime Minister Abiy was clearly considering postponing the election, which he was not assured of winning. The Economist headline summed up his dilemma. “Ethiopia is entering constitutional limbo. Postponed elections may leave it without a legal government.”

But then the Covid pandemic had arrived, which allowed Prime Minister Abiy to revisit the issue. The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia has announced that it will be unable to conduct the 2020 national elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, the House of Peoples’ Representatives approved the election postponement. Opposition parties protested, pointing out that this was unconstitutional.

Abiy Ahmed responded unequivocally. He would not allow any challenge to the postponement. In a video message the Prime Minister issued a stern warning that his government would take action against anyone who took part in what he described as “Illegal political activities and acts that are threatening to violate the constitution and constitutional order in Ethiopia.” The Prime Minister said his government will do anything necessary to protect and defend the safety of the country and its people.

The statement was rejected by many, including Tigrayans, who felt increasingly marginalized. The president of the Ethiopian parliament, a Tigray politician, resigned after accusing Abiy of authoritarian tendencies. Her party — the TPLF — announced that it would hold regional elections in Tigray. This put Tigray on a collision course with the government.

The build-up to war

Anyone who had followed the situation in the Horn of Africa would have known that tensions between the Tigray region and Addis Ababa had been ratcheting up for months. The peace treaty with Eritrea in 2018 had allowed Prime Minister Abiy to forge an alliance with President Isaias and their plans for a confrontation with Tigray were well advanced.

The Tigray regional government had not helped matters by staging demonstrations in late 2019 and 2020 which prevented heavy weapons from being withdrawn from their northern border with Eritrea. The Tigray elections – a success in themselves – were held in September 2020, despite being ruled illegitimate by the federal election commission.

The last straw perhaps came when the Tigray government rejected an attempt to replace the head of the Northern Command, based in Mekelle with a new commander, General Jumal Muhammad.

The stage was set for war – and everyone knew it.

On 30 October the International Crisis Group published a prescient article entitled: Steering Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis Away from Conflict. It explained that “A clash over budget transfers is the latest flashpoint in the bitter dispute between Ethiopian federal authorities and their rivals in Tigray. To avoid the standoff triggering a damaging conflict, both sides should back down and embrace comprehensive dialogue.”

On 2^nd November – two days before the fighting erupted – the European Union said that: “Developments in Ethiopia are a cause of deep concern. All parties as well as Ethiopia’s neighbours must act to reduce tension, eliminate inflammatory language and abstain from provocative military deployments. Failure to do so risks destabilising the country as well as the wider region.”

How right they were.

Debretsion Gebremichael – President of Tigray Region – went on television on 3^rd November, the day before the fighting began, to warn his people to prepare for a looming war. He said repeatedly that the Tigrayan people wanted peace but if war was waged against them, they were prepared to fight and to win.

If these are myths – what is the truth?

A different version of events has now emerged.

This suggests that until very close to the eruption of the conflict on 4 November, the Tigrayan government, led by Debretsion, were not really expecting a war. They had certainly not made adequate preparations for one.

When it appeared that some kind of confrontation was inevitable, the Tigrayan authorities went to the Northern Command to hold a series of talks with the military stationed at the base. The Northern Command was the best armed in the country and had stores of artillery, rockets and ammunition that were necessary to mount a sustained war.

The Tigrayan authorities argued that it was clear that Prime Minister Abiy was about to launch an attack and that Eritrean forces and Amhara militia would also be involved. Some kind of informal agreement was reached with the officers at the base. This would have allowed the Tigrayan Regional Government to have removed the weapons they needed.  from the base.

Many of the troops and their officers agreed with this proposal and the Tigrayans arrived to collect the military equipment. But not everyone in the Northern Command was prepared to accept the terms of the deal and fighting erupted. This allowed Prime Minister Abiy to mount what could be presented as a rescue mission for the besieged troops.

In reality most officers and troops had left the Northern Command and were being housed in Mekelle university. They were well cared for. Food and clean water were provided. Among the troops held at Mekelle university were 741 female soldiers, and sanitary towels were donated for them by local women. The troops were held at Mekelle university for days – at a time when they could have been mown down by the Tigrayans, if they had wanted to.

In the end an agreement was reached with the ICRC – the Red Cross – to allow any of the troops who wanted to leave Mekelle to do so. Some 1,200 – 1,300 took advantage of the offer. They were transferred out of Tigray, to Gondar or Addis Ababa.

In the meantime the conflict had erupted, with Prime Minister Abiy sending the Ethiopian Federal army into Tigray, alongside supported by Eritrean forces and Amhara militia. The war in Tigray had commenced.

This brief message has been received from inside Eritrea.

“All families have been asked to hand in their children from 16 onwards.

ALL CHILDREN TRAINED OR UNTRAINED. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

People are rattled and very fearful.”

Source: Daily Telegraph

Doctors say victims of conflict-related sexual violence are seeking emergency contraception and HIV prevention drugs in northern EthiopiaByLucy Kassa and Anna Pujol-Mazzini27 March 2021 • 8:30am

Hundreds of women are rushing to Tigray’s hospitals in northern Ethiopia for emergency contraception and HIV prevention drugs after being systematically raped, often gang-raped, by Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers fighting in a brutal civil war.

Dozens are seeking abortions, medical care and psychological support in overwhelmed hospitals, many of which have been destroyed by a five-month conflict between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Thousands more are thought to be suffering in silence as they fear reprisals by security forces and rejection from their families, survivors, doctors and aid workers told the Telegraph.

In one of the first in-depth investigations of allegations of rape as a weapon of war in the conflict – which would constitute a war crime – the Telegraph has spoken to dozens in the region to uncover the true extent of what is happening.

One video, which was widely circulated on social media and has been verified by the Telegraph, shows a surgeon in Adigrat hospital removing long nails and pieces of plastic from the vagina of one woman after she was raped and tortured.

Melat*, 20, was at home in Wukro with her elder brother Danayi* when Ethiopian federal soldiers came in, she said. “When five Ethiopian soldiers came to our house to rape me, Danayi tried to defend me from them. ‘I cannot let you rape my sister,’ he said to them. The soldiers shot my brother in the head and took turns raping me,” Melat recalled, still in shock. “They raped me beside the corpse of my brother.”

Like many Tigrayan women, she is now pregnant from the attack. Many others have contracted HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have for months been battling troops loyal to the former Tigrayan regional government in a war that has left thousands dead and millions on the brink of starvation. The resulting humanitarian disaster has left 4.5 million people in need of emergency assistance.

A coalition of Tigray’s political opposition recently stated that more than 50,000 people might have died since fighting began on November 4. Survivors, doctors, aid workers and experts speaking to the Telegraph all pointed to rape being systematically used as a weapon of war by Ethopian and Eritrean forces despite being harassed and threatened by soldiers in a bid to prevent them from speaking out.

“It’s absolutely ethnic cleansing, rape is being used as a weapon of war, it is being used as scare tactics,” an aid worker who has just returned from Tigray, who asked to stay anonymous, said.

Selam, a 26-year-old coffee seller in Edaga Hamus, 100km away from Tigray’s capital of Mekelle, said she was abducted by Eritrean soldiers with 17 other women in January.

“They took us into the forest. When we arrived there, there were around 100 soldiers who were waiting for us. They tied the hands and feet of each one of us. And then they raped us without mercy,” she told the Telegraph as she fought through tears.

Involvement by Eritrean troops in ‘law and order’ operation tips country into fully fledged crisis

Source: Financial Times

The 78-year-old Orthodox priest stayed inside his house until the killers had gone. Then, leaning on his wooden cane and holding a crucifix, he rushed outside to cover the bodies of his four sons and his two grandsons. Blood seeped through their white cotton scarves. “They gathered them together and massacred them,” Liqe Tiguhan Abraha Gebre said of the killers he identified as Eritrean soldiers by their accents, uniforms and facemarks. Liqe Tiguhan Abraha Gebre at the church in Dengelat: ‘They gathered them together and massacred them’

Liqe Tiguhan Abraha Gebre at the church in Dengelat: ‘They gathered them together and massacred them’ © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT

They had arrived on foot in late November, he said, as the priest and his family were sharing injera flatbread and lentils to celebrate a Christian Orthodox holiday in the village of Dengelat in Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia.

The celebration fell in the midst of conflict — the culmination of a power struggle between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, a regional party that ruled the country for 27 years until 2018. This war has tipped Ethiopia, a gradually liberalising economic powerhouse and Africa’s second most populous country, into crisis. As tightly restricted humanitarian and foreign media access is loosened, testimonies such as that of Abraha are bubbling to the surface. So too is evidence of the involvement of troops from Eritrea, which neighbours Tigray, to help the Ethiopian government fight the battle-hardened TPLF. After previous denials, this week Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, conceded that Eritrean troops had crossed into Ethiopia because, he said, they feared attack from the TPLF.

During a meeting in Asmara on Friday, Isaias Afewerki, Eritrea’s strongman, “agreed to withdraw its forces out of the Ethiopian border”, read a statement from Abiy’s office. For Eritrea, this conflict has been an opportunity to fight its decades-old Tigrayan foe, many claim. “This is open season for Eritrea,” said a foreign diplomat in Ethiopia. “Isaias wants to get rid of Tigray once and for all.” Their involvement and that of local militias and forces from elsewhere in Ethiopia has escalated a conflict that threatens to destabilise the region.

“You speak like us in Tigrinya. You are Eritreans. We are brothers. Come in and eat with us,” Abraha recalled telling six soldiers. But instead they took six men, aged between 15 and 46, to the banks of the nearby river, tied their hands behind their backs and shot them in the head. “They killed unarmed human beings whom they have not seen killing others. They are barbarians,” Abraha said. ‘Payback for Eritrea’ In total, local church officials and members of the Inter-Religious Council of Tigray estimate that at least 164 civilians were killed in Dengelat over two days in late November. These are just a few of the thousands that diplomats and aid workers say have died since early November when Abiy began the so-called law and order operation against the TPLF, an organisation he has labelled a “criminal clique”. Weeks later, Addis Ababa claimed to “have completed and ceased military operations in the Tigray region”, establishing its own government there and killing or capturing some senior members of the TPLF leadership.

A man holds the portrait of a victim of an alleged massacre in the village of Dengelat © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT A list with names and ages of the victims of a massacre allegedly perpetrated by Eritrean soldiers in Dengelat © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT

But the fighting rumbles on and Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, Tigrayan and other ethnic militias now stand accused of atrocities and even “ethnic cleansing”.  “This could be like the former Yugoslavia. Ethiopians will be digging up mass graves for a decade,” said a senior humanitarian official in Tigray. Top members of the interim government in Tigray, which was appointed by Abiy, admit that Eritreans are in “full control” of a strip of Ethiopian territory of about 100km along the border. In private, even some senior federal government officials admit that the Eritreans remain present. The involvement of Eritrea, where conscription is unavoidable and often indefinite, “is payback” because “the TPLF is the biggest existential threat to both Tigray and Eritrea”, said a senior federal government official, adding that Eritrean solders “have to leave” now because this has turned into “a majorly ugly war”.

The UN, US and EU have condemned the Eritrean presence in Tigray and said the perpetrators of human rights abuses should be held accountable. On Monday, the EU imposed sanctions on Eritrea, partly for its involvement in Tigray, diplomats say. Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane Ghebremeskel, dismissed the allegations of abuses by Eritrean forces as “outrageous”, while the foreign ministry accused the EU of “doggedly working” to save the “TPLF clique” and to “drive a wedge between Eritrea and Ethiopia”.

Filmon Teame, a survivor of the alleged massacre, shows his scars in Dengelat © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT Mulu Nega, leader of the caretaker administration of Tigray, says TPLF fighters are using civilians as ‘human shields’ © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT

For its part, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has strongly denied ethnically motivated violence. The Ethiopian government recently said in a statement that “it undertook the law enforcement operations in the Tigray region with utmost precaution to avoid as much as possible collateral damage on civilians”, adding that it “takes any allegations of human rights abuses and crimes very seriously”. Officials in Addis Ababa say the TPLF is “the source of all this mess”, blaming the party for almost three decades of dictatorship and fomenting ethnic division. Addis Ababa alleges the TPLF sought to undermine Abiy by sponsoring terrorist attacks around the country. It blames the TPLF and its militias for carrying out massacres, such as one at Mai Kadra in western Tigray in November. Mulu Nega, the interim president of Tigray who was handpicked by Addis Ababa, said TPLF fighters were using civilians as “human shields”. “We’re trying to minimise this, but we cannot avoid completely human rights abuses,” he said in his office in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle. “This is a dirty war,”

Yohannes Gebremeskel Tesfamariam, a government general in charge of a task force on the Tigray conflict, told diplomats during a March briefing in Mekelle. “On the atrocities, rape, crime . . . I don’t think we are going to be fortunate to see that such things have not happened,” he added.  Getachew Reda, a senior member of the TPLF, warned from his hide-out that TPLF forces would continue to fight until Tigrayans were liberated from what he called “occupation and perpetrators of genocide”.  ‘In our lifetime . . . we have not seen such wickedness’ The wreckage of war is in plain sight on the 100km drive north of Mekelle to Dengelat. The Financial Times passed shelled villages, churches and mosques, looted factories, mangled tanks and charred combat trucks. On arrival at the mountainous village of stone houses, men immediately rushed out to show mass graves — allegedly of between three and 13 people each — covered with cactus leaves or corrugated zinc. Women crouched under eucalyptus trees, holding photographs of dead relatives, sobbing in anger and despair.  Locals said “Eritrean soldiers” had fired on civilians, saying their orders were to get rid of potential TPLF militias. Some climbed a rock escarpment to shelter in the church but were warned by soldiers it would be shelled. Some who fled were shot dead. Then, residents say, the Eritrean soldiers went on a murderous spree. They broke into the house of Yemane Gebremariam, 53, a seller of soft drinks. Out of the 13 people gathered there, he said, they killed seven, including his daughter and newly wed son, whose wife was shot in the hand.

Yemane Gebremariam lost his daughter and newly wed son in the alleged massacre © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT Emnti Gobezay’s son was killed in Dengelat. ‘I saw them with my own eyes,’ she says of his killers © Eduardo Soteras Jalil/FT

“In our lifetime, or even in our history, we have not seen such wickedness,” he said. “They killed youngsters who were wearing white clothes after having taken the Holy Communion. One woman who was holding a child and shouting ‘my son, my son’ was singled out and killed, and her seven-month-old baby fell to the ground right in front of us.” Weeping outside the church at Dengelat, 53-year-old Emnti Gobezay described the past months of conflict as “the worst war I’ve seen in my lifetime”, surpassing the TPLF’s insurgent war against the Derg regime in the early 1990s and the subsequent border war with Eritrea. “I saw them with my own eyes,” she sobbed, describing when the “Eritreans” caught and killed her 20-year-old son. The Ethiopian government and its Eritrean “supporters” want “to wipe out the people of Tigray” by killing “peaceful people, teenagers, children, and priests”, she said. Holding a leaf from a eucalyptus tree, she said: “The innocent blood of Tigrayans will fertilise this ground and grow fresh leaves. Our dead children will not be forgotten.”