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OfJohannes Dieterich
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In Ethiopia’s northernmost province, Tigray, there has been allegedly peace for months. In fact, local militias are fighting the Addis Ababa military and its Eritrean allies quite successfully. A report and pictures by Johannes Dieterich
Conflicts in Africa are easily forgotten – too easily. At the weekend, Ethiopia and its embattled northern province of Tigray briefly moved back into the spotlight: the death of three members of the aid organization “Médecins sans Frontières” (Doctors Without Borders) was reported. Who Killed Them? Government troops, Eritrean invaders, the Tigray Defense Force? Everyone and nobody. Hardly anyone talks about the fact that six internally displaced persons died with the three. Reliable information from Tigray is in short supply. Our reporter was there.
What we actually wanted here, asks the Ethiopian soldier guarding the roadblock on the outskirts of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray province. From his point of view, the question is entirely justified: For his commanding authority, the government in Addis Ababa, there is actually nothing to report from the part of the country that has become so sadly famous. The prime minister Abiy Ahmed sent his troops to the province last November for the “law enforcement operation”, which the head of government declared to have been successfully completed just four weeks later. Since then, the soldiers have only been busy with “cleaning up”. Soon the Eritrean troops, which had been let into the country in support of the action, would also return home. Abiy had initially denied their presence in Tigray for months. The 44-year-old prime minister also dismisses the United Nations’ warning calls that famine is looming in the province as false reports: “Nobody goes hungry in Tigray,” Abiy recently told the BBC.
Are the reports from the Ethiopian province of civil war really exaggerated – or does Nobel Peace Prize laureate Abiy suffer from an acute misjudgment of reality? For a reality check, we choose the path from Mekelle west into the hinterland to Abiy Addi. The immaculately paved road is considered safe – like almost all connections between the cities of the province, which are controlled by either the Ethiopian or the Eritrean military. The soldier of the first of more than 20 roadblocks that we will pass on our two-day round trip through Tigray has nothing decisive against our onward journey: he wants to know why they have nothing better to do than drive foreign journalists through the area our two local companions, the driver and translator, only know.
A few kilometers later, the first burned-out tank appears on the roadside, and dozens more will follow on our way through the province. Almost without exception, Ethiopian tanks, which the Tigrays People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) hacked from the Northern Command’s holdings right at the beginning of the conflict. What the TPLF soldiers did not expect: That Addis Ababa would secure the support of the United Arab Emirates and their combat drones. They turned the booty tank park into scrap metal within a few days. The rebellious provincial leadership was forced to radically rethink: they gave up conventional warfare and withdrew their forces for guerrilla warfare in the spectacular mountains of Tigray.
We have just passed one of the countless breathtaking passes of the mountainous country when a group of young men with Kalashnikovs slung on their necks appears next to the road. Some are busy piling up small stone walls so that they can hide behind them: an ambush is obviously being prepared here. “TDF”, says our driver, less frightened than awe-inspiring.
A stocky man in his forties with gray hair reveals himself as the commander of the group. The stout man introduces himself as a former businessman in Addis Ababa, whose accounts have been blocked by the government because he is from Tigray. He then returned home and joined the rebels. Should Abiy Ahmed have expected that Tigray’s population would patiently endure the criminal prosecution allegedly directed only against the provincial leadership, he soon found himself wrong: With every further bloody day of occupation, the meanwhile poured into the “Tigray Defense Force” (Tigray Defense Force , TDF) renamed the rebel troops to hundreds of new recruits: farmer sons, taxi drivers, even university teachers. With their “reign of terror”, the enemies ensured “that we have no problems with the next generation,” says the commander.
A ghost settlement between Abiy Addi and Adua.
© Johannes Dieterich
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Their guerrilla struggle is so successful that they can now change their strategy again, adds the officer in jeans and a checked shirt: “While we have so far withdrawn quickly after every attack, we are now looking to hold areas.” If Abiy Addi falls into their hands, the businessman is sure: “But you have to go now, because the Ethiopians will be coming soon.”
In fact, on the way to Abiy Addi, we soon met a convoy of the Ethiopian army consisting of 19 trucks. There are around 30 soldiers on the loading area of each truck: They are now rumbling towards their doom. When we turned back later to see what happened, we didn’t get far: The two rear trucks of the convoy block the road – gunfire and gun smoke make it clear that the fight is still going on. We won’t find out details until days later.
Abiy Addi has had no cell phone reception for days, and the army keeps switching the network off. The local coordinator of an international aid organization said that he and his team were arrested, beaten and threatened with death by Ethiopian soldiers while visiting a starvation-ridden region. “The military want to determine who gets help and who doesn’t,” says the former university professor: “We have the food, but we are prevented from distributing it.” More than a third of the children in the region around Abiy Addi are malnourished: the worst Cases are already being dealt with in the clinic. Because no ambulances can be notified without mobile communications, only a few make it to the hospital.
Tigray crisis region
© FR
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It is not possible to return to Mekelle the same way: there is still fighting there. The road via Howzen is now also closed: the TDF and the Ethiopian army are also involved in fighting here. Only the route via Adua and Adigrat remains open: a 300-kilometer detour through the heart of the terrorized province. This route was suggested to us by Maria Hernandez, emergency aid coordinator of the Spanish “Doctors Without Borders”: She was murdered a few days later together with her employee and driver. Who is responsible for the absurd act remains unclear for the time being.
The road to Adua is controlled by Eritrean soldiers: They have long since stopped trying to cover up their controversial presence. They don’t look like the former winners who were able to drive the Ethiopians out after decades: young guys or old fighters – the middle generation is said to have almost completely fled to Europe. The fact that it is Eritreans who control this area could be seen even without the lighter uniforms of the occupiers: here almost the entire population has fled, the doors of the houses have been broken open, and inside there is a yawning emptiness. The Eritreans are particularly merciless with the civilian population, as we later learn in Mekelle’s Hayder Hospital: They attack four-year-old children with their knives, rape young girls and elderly women, just to maximize terror over their historical arch enemy bring to. More than 20 years ago, Eritreans and Tigray, who belong to the same ethnic group and speak the same language, fought a cruel fratricidal war – at that time it was about the border in a semi-desert area.
A militiaman from the Tigray Defense Force.
© Johannes Dieterich
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When we made a detour from Adigrat towards the Eritrean border the next day, the road looked deserted. Only at the entrance to Fatsi is a lonely old man who introduces himself as Alemu Gebremariam. He ran a small hostel, bar and shop that were smashed by the invaders. The 59-year-old explains that the occupiers had settled in firmly: They set up camp at the school and installed their own administrator. Alemu believes that the “army of beasts” will soon leave the province again, as Prime Minister Abiy has assured him several times: “Without Eritreans, we would chase the Ethiopian army away in no time at all.”
On the road from Abiy Addi to Adua we overtake a truck that is loaded with chairs, tables, planks and even plastic canisters: booty from the Eritrean soldiers that they are transporting to their homeland. The occupiers even ordered them to cut the trees, says a teenager; they seriously want to get their tribes across the border.
In the evening we reach Axum, the holy city of the Tigray, where the ark of the Israelites is supposedly kept. Except for a chosen priest, no one is allowed near the tablets of the law, which are carved in stone. That is tradition. And yet the invaders tried to get hold of them, too, they say in Axum: Hundreds of them rushed to the holy place – and were killed there by Eritrean soldiers. There are, however, many contradicting reports about the “Axum massacre”: The only thing that is certain is that the site now also contains a mass grave with an unknown number of corpses. We spend the night in an empty four-star hotel that is waiting for better times with its windows hung. And the next day, thousands celebrate Archangel Michael’s name day – as if they had nothing to complain about his current performance as patron saint.
The return trip to Mekelle via Adigrat is uneventful. We pass several textile, glass or natural stone factories, all of which have been completely destroyed, and encounter countless military convoys with thousands of Ethiopian soldiers, who deny Abiy Ahmed’s assurance that the mission is about to end. In some areas farmers use ox plows to prepare their fields for the first rain, in other regions the fields lie fallow. In total, more than two million Tigray are said to have been expelled from their homeland, according to the United Nations: Most of them live crammed together in schools that are only poorly supplied with food. There have been no classes in the province for eight months.
Back in Mekelle, we contact the rebel command staff to find out details about the fate of the businessman. Getachew Rada, a member of the nine-person TDF leadership and former Ethiopian information minister, announced that his troops captured 80 Ethiopian trucks and killed 2,000 soldiers. That is certainly grossly exaggerated, but there is no doubt about the success of his ambush. The commandant is doing well, Getachew assures us that Abiy Addi will be taken in the next few days.
The next day the government army takes revenge. Fighter jets bomb the village of Togoga, near the road between Mekelle and Abiy Addi: Hundreds of people have gathered there for market day. More than 50 people were killed in the attack, including many women and children. The Ethiopian army denies having attacked Togoga: rather, they hunted “terrorists”. The military claim that they are “masters in pretending to be victims.” Obviously, others have the right to masterly lies.
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