ERITREA

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Finnish EU envoy to investigate ‘dire’ Ethiopia war

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EU Observer | The security situation in Ethiopia was “dire”, as Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto prepared to travel to the region on an EU fact-finding mission.

Finnish FM

Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto | Wikimedia Commons

“Nearly three months after the start of the conflict … the security situation in Tigray [a region of Ethiopia] remains dire, with reports of localised fighting especially in rural areas,” Haavisto told EUobserver.

“There is news circulating that hundreds of thousands of people have yet to receive [humanitarian] assistance,” he said.

But “access to the affected regions remains limited due to the challenging security environment and bureaucratic obstacles,” he added.

War broke out last year between the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a local power which defied his rule.

The TPLF leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, said on Sunday (1 February) that the Ethiopian army was guilty of “genocide” and “massacres”.

He also said three foreign powers were fighting on Ethiopia’s side, while urging the international community to investigate “the atrocities” he spoke of.

An Ethiopian government spokeswoman told the BBC that Gebremichael’s words were “the delusions of a criminal clique” and accused the TPLF of “horrendous crimes” in return.

Ethiopia has also denied that Eritrean and Somalian forces, as well as Emirati drones, were fighting on its side.

But the US state department has confirmed that Eritrea was involved.

And Tigrayans who fled to neighbouring Sudan have told Human Rights Watch, an NGO, that Ethiopian forces were guilty of indiscriminate shelling and extrajudicial killings.

For his part, Finland’s Haavisto said: “The regional impacts of the Tigray conflict are of growing concern”.

“Reports indicate that more than 58,000 refugees have fled to Sudan and tensions in the border areas are growing dangerously,” he added.

The Nordic diplomat planned to go to “Ethiopia and its neighbouring regions” in the “next few weeks”, he said, after EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell tasked him with the mission last week.

Haavisto is to travel with Alexander Rondos, an EU special representative for the Horn of Africa.

An internal EU report, last November, said Europe feared “the unravelling of the Ethiopian state” and the creation of millions of refugees if the war got worse.

And it feared instability could spread to neighbouring Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia.

The Ethiopia conflict is just one of several in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, including ones in Libya, Israel, the Sahel, and Syria.

Meanwhile, Europe’s eastern flank is also becoming increasingly volatile.

Warfare recently erupted in Azerbaijan and goes on unabated in eastern Ukraine.

A political crisis in Belarus and mass-scale demonstrations in Russia have also posed questions about the future of the ruling regimes there.

Russia diplomacy
Russia, on Sunday, arrested another 4,000 people in nationwide protests calling on authorities to free opposition hero Alexei Navalny.

“Russian citizens’ right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression should be respected,” Haavisto told EUobserver.

Borrell, the EU top diplomat, is himself going to Moscow at the end of this week to urge Navalny’s release and to discuss “strategic” issues.

And Haavisto said it was important for the EU to keep up Russia diplomacy despite the deteriorating ties.

He also highlighted the need for “people-to-people contacts” between ordinary Russians and Europeans, “which have taken a big setback from the Covid pandemic”.

“We have a lot of experience on this, as Finland issues the highest number of Schengen visas in Russia,” Haavisto said, referring to Europe’s ‘Schengen’ free-travel area.

Through Eritrea, China Quietly Makes Inroads Near the Red Sea

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The Diplomat | China is finding an eager partner in Eritrea, an autocratic state generally overlooked entirely by world powers.

As Iran continues to dominate headlines across the Western world, China’s far quieter quest to influence Africa and Asia has escaped the news media’s attention of late. The many examples of this Chinese strategy include the world power’s relationship with Eritrea, a country on the Horn of Africa that rarely features in geopolitical discussions. Nonetheless, officials in Beijing intend to turn what some analysts still label “Africa’s North Korea” into a centerpiece of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s costly economic megaproject inspired by the Silk Road.

In May 2019, Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Beijing to laud what Eritrean officials dubbed “a healthy and strong partnership for the benefit of their two peoples.” Just five months later, Chinese Ambassador to Eritrea Yang Zigang said in an interview with Eritrea’s state-owned media that “China has consistently supported Eritrea’s nation-building endeavors by providing Eritrea with many kinds of assistance.”

The months of diplomatic niceties between China and Eritrea preceded a much more substantive development barely noticed by Western news agencies. In early November, the China Shanghai Corporation for Foreign Economic and Technological Cooperation — known as “China SFECO Group” — began building a 134-kilometer road in coordination with ranking Eritrean officials, an initiative heralded by Yang. He has displayed a keen interest in Eritrean infrastructure, noting on the embassy webpage, “Eritrea is endowed with two great natural harbors, Massawa and Assab.”

Eritrea has long expressed its enthusiasm for the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s bid to expand its sphere of influence by investing in countries across the Global South. A representative from Eritrea’s ruling party traveled to Beijing’s Belt and Road Forum in 2017. The Eritrean Information Ministry, meanwhile, praised China’s effort in 2019, calling it a step toward “open, inclusive, and balanced regional economic cooperation” and “integration of markets.”

t first glance, a little-known one-party state with an ailing economy would seem an odd choice for Chinese investment. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has only succeeded at turning his country into a pariah state during 27 years of brutal rule, and the World Bank Group considers Eritrea “one of the least developed countries in the world.” Even so, Chinese President Xi Jinping likely sees his investment in Afwerki’s regime as an opportunity to secure an ally on the Red Sea.

Chinese tacticians have been eyeing the strategic region for some time. In early 2016, China concluded a deal with Djibouti, one of Eritrea’s neighbors on the Red Sea, to construct a military base – China’s first overseas military facility. The much-discussed Chinese outpost, which itself borders a similar American facility, became operational a year later. China has deployed soldiers throughout East Africa, even sending peacekeepers to secure Chinese-staffed oil wells in South Sudan.

Chinese-Eritrean relations appear focused on economics for the time being, but the possibility of militarization looms on the horizon. China and Eritrea cooperate in a variety of sectors, including energy and public health. The East Asian world power has a long history with its East African partner, arming Eritrea not only during its 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia but also during its second war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s. In more recent years, China has offered to mediate territorial disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a sign of China’s wider ambitions.

In Africa and Eritrea in particular, China’s distinct foreign policy has given it a critical advantage over its Western rivals. Xi is more than willing to ignore Afwerki’s well-known abuses of human rights, such as conscripting tens of thousands of Eritreans and forcing them into what the United Nations terms “slave-like” labor. Though Eritrea has a population of just 6 million, only Syrian applicants for asylum outnumber Eritreans in Europe. Fifty thousand live in Germany alone.

While some Western countries have tried to engage with Eritrea in the last few years, they have faced backlash. European officials suffered significant embarrassment when The New York Times revealed that an Eritrean project funded by the European Union and facilitated by the UN relied on the labor of conscripts. Many European countries view Eritrea as a source of mass migration and a key front in their bid to stop it. Unlike China, which Afwerki has tried to court through his emphasis on Eritrea’s “strategic location,” Europe seems to have few long-term goals there.

The United States, China’s main rival in Africa, has indicated little interest in Eritrea. The State Department has admitted that “[t]ensions related to the ongoing government detention of political dissidents and others, the closure of the independent press, limits on civil liberties, and reports of human rights abuses contributed to decades of strained U.S.–Eritrean relations.”

As long as China keeps overlooking Eritrea’s dismal record on human rights, the two countries’ relationship seems likely to blossom. Despite a remarkable increase in goodwill toward the East African autocracy following Eritrea’s conclusion of a peace treaty with its longtime adversaries in Ethiopia, Afwerki has few friends in the international community. For its part, China has long stated its reluctance to interfere with or even comment on other countries’ internal affairs. That position has endeared Beijing to autocrats around the world.

For now, China only has one opponent in the race to establish a sphere of influence in Eritrea: the United Arab Emirates. The UAE operates an air base and a military port in the East African country in addition to its military base in Somalia. In a sign of China’s growing reach, however, the UAE is participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Considering that China’s ambassador to the Middle Eastern regional power vaunted their relationship as “at its best period in history” in 2019, the prospect of a confrontation between the two countries over Eritrea seems dim.

SFECO Group’s project in Eritrea marks a new level of cooperation with China. As American and European officials turn their attention to the Middle East, China’s staying power in the Horn of Africa is growing. The Chinese presence in Djibouti sparked alarm across the West. In Eritrea, though, China is reaping the benefits of other world powers’ lack of interest in a rogue state. Unlike its Western counterparts, China has its sights set on the Red Sea.

Biden Administration Faces Mounting Pressure to Act in Ethiopian Conflict

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The Washington Free Bacon | Millions in peril of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the State Department Thursday to demand the Biden administration take immediate action in Ethiopia to combat a humanitarian crisis that has left thousands dead.

The protesters called on newly confirmed secretary of state Antony Blinken to prioritize the deteriorating situation in Ethiopia where troops from the federal government—as well as troops from neighboring Eritrea and Somalia—have cracked down on the Tigray region. Protesters said immediate aid is necessary to prevent millions of Tigray residents from starving to death, presenting the days-old Biden administration with its first international crisis. Attendee Makea Araya said the crisis has placed millions in danger and displaced millions more.

“We need international actors, we need the Biden administration to take action and allow humanitarian access into the region,” Araya said.

The conflict puts millions of lives at stake and threatens the religious and cultural heritage of the world’s largest religions. Tensions between Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia, and the federal government came to a head when Tigray’s leading political party refused to join the Ethiopian government’s new coalition in 2019. In early November, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into the region, sparking violent clashes with the region’s militia force. While the crisis has been raging for months, limited information has emerged about its true scale since communications have been cut off in the region and foreign media and human-rights watchdogs have not been able to access the region. Reports of the massacre of religious worshipers in a famous Oriental Orthodox church and violence across the region are mounting, however.

Selome Girma, a protester, told the Washington Free Beacon that 4.5 million people are in dire need of humanitarian aid and are being cut off from the outside world. Tigray has been plagued by several communications blackouts during the months-long conflict, which the government has blamed on cyberattacks. Girma said the United States should lead the way to break the embargo and allow outside observers into Tigray.

“We are asking the United States to please humbly try to get some sort of international investigation of what’s going on in Tigray,” Girma said.

She said religious and cultural history is also in danger of being destroyed in the conflict. The region is home to several major Christian and Islamic historic sites, including the site of the massacre in the Oriental Orthodox church, which is reputed to be the location of the Ark of the Covenant.

The State Department, which did not return a request for comment, has remained vague on how it will approach the crisis. The department has released a statement calling for foreign troops allied with Ethiopia to leave the region immediately. The administration, however, has yet to lay out a strategy in the event that foreign troops remain in the region. The statement also called for “full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access” to the region, but the administration did not elaborate on how it would ensure this access.

Blinken also tweeted about the conflict in November and briefly mentioned the issue during his confirmation hearing, saying that the United States needed to do more in Africa. He called for more humanitarian access and said he was concerned that the violence could destabilize the region.

Ferez Timay, a longtime Washington, D.C., resident who was born in Tigray, said the Biden administration must do more than issue public declarations.

“We want the Biden administration to act soon because as the hours go, the minutes go, it’s the difference between life and death for the people of Tigray,” Timay said. “We want the Biden administration to act right away.”

The White House did not return a request for comment.

The People of Irob Mourns The Massacre Of Their Loved Ones – Irob Advocacy Group

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“It is with great sorrow & grief that we share here the incomplete list of Irob civilians killed by Eritrean soldiers during the mass killing campaign in about just 2 weeks of late December 2020 to early January 2021,” the Irob Advocacy Association said in a Tweet on Saturday.

“These civilians [see list of victims here & here] did not take part in combat mission. They were simply civilian farmers – primarily young male adults & teenagers,” the Association said, adding “We cry for justice!”

On January 24, 2001, the Belgian based Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA) reported that Eritrean soldiers, controlling many districts in Irob land, killed many Tigrayan young men: “We hear Eritrean soldiers told the local elders and parents that, they have orders to kill all male youth older than 15.”

Eritrean soldiers were also seen distributing Eritrean I.D. cards to citizens in Irob, Tigray. Many people had to fled to the mountains and hide in caves, according to EEPA.

The Irob people are an ethnic minority group who are situated in the traditional Agamä Awrajja, Tigray Region, bordered with Afar region of Ethiopia to the East and  Saho of Eritrea to the North. They speak the Saho language, the same language spoken by the Saho people of Eritrea.

The Saho people of Eritrea are indigenous people in Eritrea marginalized by the Eritrean Geovernment who refuses to admit the existence of any indigenous people.

The Irob people were most affected by the outbreak of Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000. Next to Badime, Irob became the prime target of Eritrean invasion and the consequent destructive high-tech warfare.

Since Eritrea joined the military offensive against the Tigray regional government launched by the unelected Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, Eritrean forces have been accused of summary execution, rape, looting and burning private and public properties, including refugee camps.

U.S. State Department officials told The Associated Press that they have directly “pressed senior levels” of Eritrea’s government to immediately withdraw from the embattled region. There were no details on how officials in Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive countries, responded to the Biden administration demand.

The Ethiopia Government, however, has privately told Biden administration that the embattled Tigray region has “returned to normalcy” to which witnesses strongly disagree.

The horrors of the Tigray war: Eyewitness accounts

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Eritrea Hub | This is a slightly shortened article by Alem Berhe

When the war broke out, I was in the beautiful capital of Tigray – Mekelle, visiting immediate family. On November 3, I sat down for dinner at GG Hotel in the Adi Shumduhun area, where I made dramatic arguments to a group of friends about why our regional government had not yet installed a 4G network. The irony was to be played out the next day, as I woke up in a full-fledged warzone, to a complete communications blackout. My life, and the lives of everyone around me, would never be the same. After being stuck in the fire for over two months, I recently and luckily made it out alive to Addis Ababa. Here are my firsthand accounts of what I have seen and heard. Please note only first names of witnesses have been used for safety.

PART I: ERITREAN FORCES, SADISM AND NECROPHILIA:

“You are all an ungrateful bunch of lice. If we followed orders, all of you above the age of 7 would be dead. That is the mission we were given. We were told to exterminate you – all of you. If you don’t stop crying – we will kill the children too.” This is the prevalent line of argument from the Isaias-led Eritrean troops in the areas they de facto occupy in Tigray and openly punish (parts of Eastern, Central and South Western zone). And this, they do with the blessing of the Ethiopian government, which claims it is “simply freeing Tigrayans.” Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group: and this, the Eritrean forces explicitly claim as their mission in the war.

HAWZEN: On January 20, I spoke to Assefa, a Hawzen resident, who had fled to Mekelle fearing door to door killings. Here are his accounts.

“There are corpses all over the road in Hawzen; the stench is overwhelming. They have turned Tigray into a slaughterhouse. They will kill you for no reason. You walk in front of them, they kill you asking “who gave you the authority to walk before us like Generals?” They find you at church or in a mosque, you are dead. If they especially see that you have come back from attending a funeral, they go on a shooting spree yelling “who gave you the right to bury anyone?” If you identify a family member amidst the line of corpses and you cry, they kill you. You can’t shed one tear – mourning is a crime.” He recounts to me the story of an elderly woman about 60 years old who was shot dead by an Eritrean soldier following her discovery of a dead teenage boy in front of a garage and crying out “My son! My dear son! (wedeye! wedey mearey!)” The teenager was in fact not her son, he tells me, and this is just a common term of endearment in Tigrigna. “They also shot another woman after she placed a netella (a traditional, white scarf) over a corpse she found on the road as a sign of respect. She died immediately.”

“Many of the corpses are unidentified. If you notice a family member amidst the bodies, you hold back your tears and beg the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces to transport them. If you are lucky, they make you pay money and you wait a few days before you can take your relative’s body – or what’s left of it anyway. Some of the townsmen have been taking the risk of transporting these bodies incognito via traditional carriages when the forces are not around. Since the banks are closed and the little money and property we own has been massively looted, most of us cannot pay for our loved ones’ corpses.”

When I inquire into what has been looted, he snorts: “Why don’t you ask me what they haven’t looted? When they had finished looting and pillaging all our infrastructure and shops, they marched one house to another killing people and taking our clothes and shoes, our bed-sheets and blankets from our beds, our wedding rings, even pissing into our cooking pots. They spared us nothing. You will not find a piece of plate in my house. Not even my wife’s trinket earrings for 2birr. And when they looted, they exclaimed “you guys are living like the Americans, you don’t deserve this.”

I then ask him to give me names of civilians recently killed. He hesitates and his relatives assure him that I am a friend just trying to get word out to the world. He mentions he will only tell me a few. “You should first of all know that pretty much all of the youth in town have already fled the town and scattered everywhere; youth are actively being searched and killed. You will only find women and the elderly in most towns. It is no use if they run though – they are hunting them down everywhere like animals.”

“On January 18, two days before I came to Mekelle, they went on another round of door to door killings – well, what’s left of us anyway. They saw an elderly man named Kidane Abadi, a known tailor in town, who is disabled on his right leg and limps due to a longstanding illness. When they noticed he was limping, they grabbed him right away saying “you are a soldier!” He told them he was a tailor and that everyone in town knew so. They still shot him dead; they said he is a returned soldier injured in the war. But everyone in town knows he has been a disabled man for a long time.” He emphasizes to me how dangerous this is, because on top of the hunt for Tigrayan youth, the disabled population at large is now issued a free death stamp under the guise that they could potentially be “injured rebel soldiers.”

“They also killed Memhir Hagos Girmay on the same day– they killed him in his house because he is a “teacher.”” When I ask if he could explain further, he says “I would, if I understood why being a teacher is a good reason to die. I don’t know what else to tell you: our youth are being exterminated, the disabled are being finished off, they are raping our women – including nuns in convents, they have pillaged our towns, they have ransacked and shelled our churches and mosques, and whoever is left, is just waiting to starve to death.”

“Every time we say we have seen enough, we hear even more appalling stories. I don’t remember the exact date, but the Eritrean forces ran into a dozen monks from a nearby monastery in Hawzen last week. They halted them and forced them to either dance or be shot dead. Many of them refused as part of their religious obligations and were therefore shot at the scene. They are sadists – they will kill them anyway but they always look for ways to make the killing pleasurable. They have been actively killing civilians in churches – in Abune Teklehaymanot, Medhanealem, St. Mary – you mention all the saints. If they are rock hewn churches on the mountain (as are many in Tigray), they deliberately shell them with artillery. If they are built on the ground, they do walk-ins and shoot inside. They know we will not stop going to church. Everyone says, if we die, we might as well die martyrs in the church. And they know this – it’s the place where they can kill many at once. This is what they are calling a law and order operation.”

When I ask him which forces are now operating in Hawzen, he says both the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were present, with the former warning to “call Eritrean forces [on us] if we fail to do what they ask of us – including not complaining about the rampant rape on our women by both forces.” The story of Hawzen is perhaps the ‘kindest of atrocities’ – to use an oxymoron – as compared to all other Eritrean-occupied areas as well as those areas where Eritrean forces are generally present, such as Irob and Zalambesa.

ADIGRAT: In Adigrat, the second most populous city in Tigray, the stories are similar. I received the following account from a priest, Abba (Father) G/Medhin, arrived to Mekelle from Adigrat on 19 January. “On 20 November (11 Hidar EC) – the whole city was consistently and arbitrarily shelled with heavy artillery from 2–6:30pm. Dozens of civilians were killed, including a whole family of five in their home.” I should note here that most, if not all, towns and cities in Tigray were heavily and indiscriminately shelled using tanks and heavy artillery by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces: this war-criminal tactic was thoroughly implemented because the Ethiopian government believed it would render the easy capture of towns without having to do much fighting with rebel forces on the ground. “On 21 November (12 Hidar EC), the Eritreans arrived and indiscriminately killed everyone they found on the streets – I saw 17 dead near my home. When they noticed there weren’t many people on the streets, they went on a door to door killing spree. For instance, they killed a family of three in the area known as 06 and another family of four in Bihere Tsigie. They looted everything. What’s more, they forcefully took youth to round up and carry what they stole – shooting them afterwards.”

“When they were ransacking the Addis Pharmaceutical Company in Adigrat – they took a dozen people to help them load the equipment to their craters and tanks. Once they finished, they shot them dead on the spot. They also killed six of the company guards and threw them in a ditch – the seventh was found alive and he was the one who told the story. This is the same everywhere – in the nearby Goda Adigrat Bottle and Glass Manufacturing Plant – they forced 23 young men to transport and load what the Eritrean forces looted from the factory. All 23 were shot dead afterwards, three being from the same family. Around the area called Commission, they shot dead three civilians on the road – and their bodies remained there for over a month! The Eritrean forces banned any of us from transporting or burying them. They were to serve as “signs of what awaited all Tigrayans.””

Since he is a priest, I also inquire into the targeting and ransacking of holy sites and artifacts in Adigrat. “Churches and holy sites are active targets; they are ruining churches and mosques with a history of over 1000 years. They shelled the historic Meskel Kirstos Church for example (recently established by Aba (Father) Ze Wengel) with 50 projectiles; it is now destructed. We also know that they killed civilians in neighboring churches after they ran away from Adigrat and surrounding areas for fear of dying in the continued shelling. On 30 November (21 Hidar EC), during the Feast of Our Lady of Zion, they came in and shot dead 150 civilians in Mariam Dengolat Church, including a known investor in Adigrat by the name of Esayas Asgedom and his family. They deliberately went to that church because it was an Annual Feast day and they were sure to find “civilians gathered in great numbers.” They also killed 27 civilians in Medhanealem Church in Gulomikhada during the Feast day of the Lord our Savior. They made sure to go during Mass (Divine Liturgy) because they knew that many devotees would gather there early. Out of the murdered, 12 were priests. There was a brave elderly woman who screamed out to them saying “how could you do such a vile thing in the House of God?” The Eritrean soldiers were extremely surprised at this with one Eritrean soldier exclaiming to another “what are you waiting for, pop her dead (Ta’ii abila).” But another replied and said “I am not going to waste my bullet on an old Tigrayan” and cracked her head with a nearby rock, making them all laugh. She didn’t die, but they left her bleeding on the Church floor. The Ammanuel Church in Wuqhro is also destructed – I saw it on my way here. You have already heard about the Al-Nejashi mosque, I am sure.”

“Everyone is scattered. We don’t know if those who left are alive or dead somewhere. If you are lucky, someone finds an ID on a corpse and they try and spread word so families will know that they have a dead family member. I also know that many Tigrayans have been respectfully removing shoes and shirts of dead bodies and placing it on top of them so families will be able to recognize them via their clothing if the corpse remains unidentified for a longer period.”

When I ask him about sexual based violence and harassment, he mentions “It’s not just the rape – it’s the way this is done. I know of a father who was tied up to a chair with a rope between his lips, forced to watch as five Eritrean soldiers took turns to rape his 12 year old daughter. They are even forcing fathers, brothers and uncles to rape their own children and relatives, and killing them for refusing – what Tigrayan will rape his own family member?! They rape pregnant women. We are also hearing accounts of Eritrean forces killing women and raping their corpses after. It’s difficult to find one-time rape victims; even those who have been raped have been raped again. I know these are unconscionable and horrifying to the human mind; I am telling you as a priest – but this is what they are doing. To them, this is law.”

PART II: SECURITY CHECK-POINT ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ETHIOPIAN MILITARY:

The night before the government’s delighted announcement on national television that they would the-next-day indiscriminately shell Mekelle, the capital city of Tigray, many residents had scattered to neighboring rural towns for fear of being stuck amidst the heavy artillery fire. The announcement said, “Tigrayans – no mercy!” On national TV! I stayed – partly because I naively believed the government was bluffing, and partly because rights organizations and high-level leaders like Susan Rice had warned that doing so would account to war crimes. I am an idiot of course – they had already shelled all the towns on their way to the capital and Mekelle was no exception. On 28 November, I woke up to deafening sounds of shells being fired n’importe ou, with around 40 people being killed as a result – including a 15year old girl in my neighborhood and a whole family of five around Ayder Hospital, five minutes from my home.

Recently, I met two close friends, Frehiwot and Birrkhti, who had made the dangerous trip back to Mekelle from the rural areas of Adet and Yechila respectively, where they had escaped to before the Mekelle shelling. I asked them to recount to me their specific encounters with the Ethiopian military on their way to the city.

Frehiwot mentions to me that she and her friends were forced to strip naked as part of the security searches on their way to Mekelle. “I did this three times at various check points and when I got to the third checkpoint around Gijet, I decided to speak up. I told the security officer that we had been stripping naked in all the other checkpoints and that we had been searched so many times already. The security officer then yelled at me. She said to me “it’s better to trust the devil himself than a Tigrayan – even the females. Those are our orders. Just take off your pants.” She also mentions she was scared for her life for carrying an Addis Ababa issued identity card. This meant she had to respond to scrupulous questions like ‘What are you doing in Tigray if you have an Addis Ababa ID?’ “It was such an absurd question and I didn’t really know how to answer it,” Frehiwot tells me. “Not because the freedom of movement is my constitutional right – no. Simply because Tigray was my home and they were threateningly asking me, “why are you home?” How do you respond to that? Is the fact that one is in Tigray a crime by itself? I told them the truth: that I had come to visit family and got stuck in the fire. I also told them that I live and work in Addis Ababa. They yelled at me and called me a liar. They said I was an “undercover junta agent” who had come to Tigray to support the war on the side of the rebels. After much pleading, they let me go but they warned me and said “we are nice, but make sure you don’t fall into the hands of the “other soldiers” because they might not be as kind to someone with an Addis Ababa ID.” She said she did not know whether they were referring to the Ethiopian forces or the Eritrean forces. “Too many of them want to kill us – it’s hard to say whom you will encounter where.”

I ask the other woman, Birrikhti, who took a similar route when she had fled the capital city of Mekelle. She was born and raised in Addis Ababa and had arrived in Mekelle a few months before the war to open an internet café. I ask if she encountered similar problems.

“They are sort of similar. I mean, the questions they ask you at the security checkpoints are quite peculiar. When we were also around Gijet, we were stopped by security officers and told to come off the minibus taxi taking us to Mekelle. We thought they were going to take the taxi and either shoot us dead or leave us stranded, as had been the case with many other vehicles in Tigray. But we were lucky. When the security officers noticed that I didn’t have a Tigrigna accent, they engaged me in further conversation. They asked me whose side I was on and if I knew Debretsion. They asked me if I considered myself Ethiopian or Tigrayan. When I remained quiet, they pointed at everyone and yelled “you are all rats anyway – all of you are hiding Debretsion” Much to my surprise however, she recites the following distressing dialogue with one of the security officers at the checkpoint:

Officer: “Do you know Axum?” (Eshy Brikiti, Axumen tawkiyatalesh?)

Birrikhti: “Yes” (Awo.)

Officer: “It’s a beautifully historic town, isn’t it?” (Mechem konjo tarikawi ketema nech aydel?)

Birrikhti: “Yes.” (Awo)

Officer: “Well guess what – it isn’t anymore.” (Ahun gin aydelechim, atifetenatal)

 

Officer: “And what about Wukro? Do you know Wukro?”

Birrikhti: “Yes.”

Officer: “It’s a very pretty, vibrant town, isn’t it?”

Birrikhti: “Yes.”

Officer: “Not anymore. We have destroyed it.”

She recounts her astonishment. “Not only were the officers declaring that they were deliberately working with the Eritreans to destroy towns and cultural sites, but also that they were proud of this destruction – like it was a goal to be achieved. I kept quiet and looked down to the ground because I knew he was waiting for a reaction.” By the end of the security check, she adds that the security officers singled out the only five men (youth) from the minibus taxi. When they asked why they were being sidelined, they were told “your faces look familiar – we think you are juntas.”

“They took all five with them; everyone knew they would shoot them dead. And for what? For “looking familiar?” We are only grateful we made it back alive.” She recounts that she also met other soldiers on the way who mentioned that they were there “to free the people of Tigray and that no harm will come to us.” “Freedom is slavery,” Orwell would have sneered.

PART III: ADDIS ABABA – THE TIGRAYAN PURGE:

Is this where I was raised? Is this the city that I once called home? These are questions I ask myself a few days following my arrival to Addis from Mekelle. Most people here that I have talked to – with the exception of some Oromos – justify to me why the genocide was necessary. They speak to me in loud voices about why my people deserved this and about how we brought the rampant massacres and rape and starvation unto ourselves. Some who know how outspoken I am carefully warn me: “You should be careful – this is not your home anymore. No one will defend you.”

Tigrayans I know have been summarily dismissed from all governmental and civil organizations, including those who have sacrificed their whole lives to the welfare and development of the Ethiopian state. Some of those I have talked to state that they were not even given notice letters –their names had just been posted outside their respective organizations and guards were warned against allowing them entry. Most surprising to me were my conversations with cleaners who were dismissed in the area known as Kibeb Cafe around the Signal Apartments, including a relative of mine. When I ask her why, she darkly smiles and tries to make a joke: “I do not know. I guess if you have the wrong identity, may be you clean wrongly. What do you want me to tell you?!”

The stories are unending as they are harrowing. Another friend, Kibrom, tells me of his arrest and his consequent two nights in jail (with two of his friends) for speaking Tigrigna in a public taxi, a week after the declaration of war. When I ask how he could potentially be arrested inside public transport, he says a few people in the taxi called them “junta supporters” and “daytime hyenas” and forcefully transported them to the nearest precinct as “suspects.” It should be noted that the derogatory term “daytime hyenas” is a term coined and popularized by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed himself, in a speech he gave on national TV. This is the same Prime Minister who has called African Americans “lazy” in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

“The funny thing is,” my friend continues “the police actually thanked them for bringing us in and carrying out their civic duties, actively encouraging them to keep doing the same to other Tigrayans. All of that – just for speaking our language.” He also confesses his belief that “such rampant ethnic profiling and purging definitely received further green light following a speech by Adanech Ababe, the new mayor of Addis Ababa, at the start of the war, in which she had bluntly asked citizens “to help the government as it cleans up dirt from the city (kosashan inatsada).”I am sure the larger population translated dirt to be the Tigrayan population at large.”

In Summit Condominium, I go to visit an old family friend, Meseret, and to ensure her safety. She is in disbelief that I have made it out of Tigray alive although failing to recognize me at first due to my severe weight loss. Soon after, she lists to me the names of family friends that have been jailed or forcefully disappeared, herself being fired from a government hospital (which she asks me not to mention for fear of further retribution.) When I ask where our family friends have been jailed, she shakes her head, pointing to me that she doesn’t know. “We just know of detainment camps in Addis and other parts of the country where only ethnic Tigrayans are being held captive (or worse) en masse. The numbers are as large are 20,000. Some are calling them “Tigrayan concentration camps” and I think they are right. I only hope they are not torturing them. You know, when they searched my house, they even ransacked the flour and sugar rations in the kitchen, to see that I was not hiding anything inside food items. I am a nurse – I am not sure what they thought they would find here. They said they would be back – but I have done no wrong. I am not going anywhere.”

When I ask her to tell me elements she found shocking in the aftermath of the aggression on Tigray, she says: “It has been very difficult to see the other kids in the apartment avoiding my kids. We have lived here for seven years and people are acting as if they don’t know us. A few days after the Tigray shutdown, my daughter saw the 5-year old kid, Kidus, two doors down from our apartment and she went to hug and kiss him as she always did. He hesitated. When my daughter asked him what was wrong, he blurted out “Dad says to stay away from you guys; he says you are evil and conniving. He also says the big guys will kill me if they see me with you.” Imagine, we have been loving neighbors for seven years. We don’t know what awaits us tomorrow.” Don’t tell kids any secrets, am I right?

CONFIRMED POGROMS UNDER BLACKOUT:

  • Axum (Mary of Zion) Massacre: 750 ethnic Tigrayans mass murdered in the church square of the Church of Mary of Zion by Ethiopian National Defense Forces and Amhara militias; 15 December 2020
  • Mai Kadra Massacre: 600-1000 ethnic Tigrayans mass murdered by Amhara militia and youth group (known as Fano); 10 November 2020
  • Zalambesa Massacre: 400 ethnic Tigrayans mass murdered by Eritrean forces in door to door killings; 13 November 2020
  • Wuqhro Massacre: 200 ethnic Tigrayans mass murdered by Eritrean forces whilst defending the Saba Leather Factory from being looted

QUICK FACTS

  • 60,000+ refugees in Sudan; 2.2 million internally displaced; 4.5million in need of emergency food assistance

SHORT READINGS AND RESOURCES:

  1. Opinion: A Pogrom is happening in Ethiopia – The Globe and Mail
  2. ‘He’s planning to exterminate us all’: Ethiopians Speak of Ethnic Massacres – VICE
  3. ‘Choose – I kill you or rape you’: Abuse accusations surge in Ethiopia’s war – Reuters
  4. Who will call out Eritrea’s war crimes in Tigray? – World Peace Foundation
  5. Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict: ‘My wife died giving birth to twins while we hid’ – The BBC
  6. The war in Tigray: Abiy, Isaias, and the Amhara elite – The Africa Report
  7. Ethiopia’s government appears to be wielding hunger as a weapon – The Economist
  8. ‘I don’t know where my children are’: Ethiopian refugees recount horrors of war – VICE
  9. Extreme urgent need: Starvation haunts Ethiopia’s Tigray – Washington Post
  10. Ethiopia’s leader must answer for the high cost of hidden war in Tigray – The Guardian
  11. Witnesses: Eritrean Soldiers loot, kill in Ethiopia’s Tigray – The Associated Press
  12. US ‘directly’ presses Eritrea to withdraw forces in Tigray – The Associated Press
  13. 750 Christians die defending Ark of the Covenant – Persecution
  14. Opinion: Ethiopia’s leader won the Nobel peace Prize. Now he’s accused of war crimes – Washington Post
  15. War in Tigray destroys human lives and important world heritage – Martin Plaut
  16. Disturbing rape allegations in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict: UN – Aljazeera
  17. WHO warns of diseases spreading in Tigray because of conflict – VOA News
  18. Tigray: Ethiopian army kills ex-Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin – Aljazeera
  19. UN warns of ‘serious’ rape charges in Ethiopia’s Tigray – The Associated Press
  20. Western concern mounts over Ethiopia Crisis – Financial Times
  21. Journalist shot dead in Ethiopia’s Tigray – aid worker, residents – Reuters
  22. Fabled ark could be among ancient treasures in danger in Ethiopia’s deadly war – The Guardian
  23. Dam down, water supplies failing in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray – Reuters
  24. In Somalia, mothers fear sons were sent to Ethiopia conflict – The Associated Press
  25. Anger in Somalia as sons secretly sent to serve in Eritrea military force – Reuters
  26. Starvation looms as aid groups seek urgent Tigray access – Aljazeera
  27. Ethiopia’s worsening crisis threatens regional, Middle East security – United States Institute for Peace
  28. Ethiopians dying, hungry and fearful in war-hit Tigray: agencies – Reuters

Background:

* On 4 November 2020, the Ethiopian government declared war on the small region of Tigray, one of the ten regional states in the country. It claimed the war to be a “law and order operation” to arrest “dissidents” of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the rightfully elected regional government of the Tigray region. Above, I recount accounts of a “law and order” operation turned rogue into a genocidal mission, involving various internal and external actors. Currently, the following actors, all with different aims and agendas, are active in Tigray: the Amhara militia, youth and special police; regional special police from all states in the federation; Eritrean forces (Sha’bia); Emirati drones; along with recently credible reports of Somalian soldiers also involved. Tigray is  home to around 6 million people – why the world is standing by as a whole nation, ethnic group, and region, is being conjointly exterminated by a myriad of actors under the guise of a “law and operation” is beyond me. As I write this, I am a “non-human being” and a stateless citizen in Ethiopia: one who has lost all her individual peculiarities and experiences, and collectively – with other fellow Tigrayans – is being defiled and purged as “louse/daytime hyena/dirt” – derogatory terms for our ethnic group. 

NB: I do not include here reports of genocidal atrocities committed by the Amhara militia, youth and special police because I have not encountered an eye witness fleeing areas neighboring the Amhara region. The below resources I have included have some reports on massacres carried out by Amhara forces – including the very first massacre in the region – the Mai Kadra Massacre. I will be writing more on that after I find eye witnesses, although ample has been done on this front by gathering stories from refugee camps in Sudan.

“They Have Destroyed Tigray, Literally”: Mulugeta Gebrehiwot speaks from the mountains of Tigray

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Transcript Call between Mulugeta Gebrehiwot and Alex de Waal 27 January 2021

Additional background information and audio are available on the WPF blog, “Reinventing Peace.” For more information: worldpeacefoundation.org

Listen to the interview

[The first minute of the call was not recorded. Mulugeta started by describing the onset of the war.]

Mulugeta: … and the damage it inflicted on the enemies, it’s difficult to express, it was a sort of miracle. Tigray only had 23 battalions, and 42 divisions of Eritrea and twelve divisions of Ethiopia, were all here. This is without including the special forces of the Amhara region, which is beyond, over 10,000, and also special forces of Oromia, Somalia, and other forces as well. The first month’s resistance was with this level of asymmetry.

And then the Emirates came. The Emirates effectively disarmed Tigray. They started killing tanks, then howitzers, then fuel, then ammunition. Then they started hunting small vehicles, targeting leaders, [indistinct] all over. This created [unclear: risk?] and sort of dislocation, and this is part of the weakness of the preparation. So many people moved out of the cities of Tigray towards the rural other areas following the army, some including their families.

So, we were caught in between, you know. Are we going to defend these people who flocked out of the cities with their families or are we going to fight, I mean the army was caught in between. So, the organization has to make a decision. You know, it prioritized continuing the resistance, and then it advised many of us who were not in active duty in the resistance to remain in some remote areas which finally resulted in the type of sad news you heard.

You know, the result became—they have destroyed Tigray, literally, all of them, EPLF, the Eritrean forces and the Ethiopian forces. They literally destroyed all the wealth that it had accumulated for thirty years, and burned schools, clinics, they have ransacked each house. They moved in. They have started looting the produce of the peasants, from all the villages beyond the black road that crosses Tigray towards Eritrea. And they kill whomever they find in whichever village they get in. In the village I was in yesterday—it’s a small village— they killed 21 people, out of which seven of them were priests of that small village.

And that’s what they do, wherever they go. So they literally destroyed the wealth we accumulated for thirty years in Tigray. And, no peasant is staying at home when these forces move around, and therefore we can consider the whole Tigrayan peasantry as dislocated.

It’s an effective destruction of Tigray but that’s not the only thing. It’s also an effective destruction of Ethiopian defense forces. Ethiopia has remained without an army now. Our evaluation initially reduced the Ethiopian army by [to?] about 85 percent. Seventeen percent of the army was immediately reduced by Abiy because 17 percent of them were Tigrayans.

They were torn out of their ranks, put in camps like Dedessa [etc.] under custody 17,000 Tigrayans. So, that was literally approximately 20 percent. And this is not only numbers, but its also critically—a critical part of the army, mid-level commanders, most of the technicians, and also, you know, skilled people who used to work in artillery, engineering, and all sorts of departments. And they literally lost something like 60 percent of [indistinct, call breaks] …they sent the commanders of the Eritrean forces, which they were just using as cannon fodders, you know, they send them first, and then once they’re finished, they start sending their army. So, Ethiopia is effectively without an army now. If the Eritrean forces left Tigray…

[BREAK IN CALL]

[The call resumed with Mulugeta saying that if the Eritrean forces left Tigray, the Ethiopian army would not be able to stay there, even for a few days. The recording resumes:]

Alex: Tell me, what is the condition of the people? Are you able to eat? Do you have any medical facilities? What are the essentials of life?

Mulugeta: Not much. You know, there has been this locust infestation, and the harvest also much interrupted because of the war. The crisis started at the beginning of the harvest period, and particularly, the Eritrean forces have deliberately burned crops while they are on the ground or before the harvesting is completed. So there is a reduction of produce as well. The [aid] logistics that was prepared initially by the government was disrupted, so there are drops, these problems of supplies, food, medicine, and so forth. Hunger, among peasantry, is crippling [indistinct] in those remote areas, bordering areas Eritrea. They are massively, massively ransacked by the Eritrean army. Whatever produce they have is taken by them. So, it’s tight. Soon, we might see a serious humanitarian crisis.

Alex: The government is saying it controls 85 percent of the access, and that it can provide humanitarian access to the great majority of people. Is that correct, do you think?

Mulugeta: The great majority of people. Even the government, even the humanitarian organizations, are estimating the people who need food to around 4.5 million. That’s even conservative.

Alex: And how many of those people can be accessed from the government’s side, and how many of them are in areas that are controlled by Tigray forces?

Mulugeta: Literally people on the towns of the main road. Because there is conflict all over. You know, a certain part of people, or the southern part of Tigray, around Maychew or Alamata… the rest of it is not accessible for humanitarian aid, unless some arrangement can be made. [Until] some sort of preliminary agreement to allow humanitarian assistance to [indistinct] has been reached, I don’t think a majority of Tigray is accessible to any humanitarian aid that comes through the government.

Alex: But we are not hearing anything—we have heard nothing from the TPLF leadership about what—

Mulugeta: I know, that’s a major problem we have. They’re just dislocated, and [sighs], that’s a critical impediment, we know that.

Alex: Because—as you might have heard today, well yesterday—the [U.S.] State Department demanded, first of all the withdrawal of Eritrean forces, but then also said there needed to be talks towards a political resolution. But how can any talks be conducted under the current circumstances?

Mulugeta: I think they’re in contact through telephone with some people there, but I don’t really understand why they shy away from coming public and talking publicly. I know there is a limitation of communication. They have lost their V-SATs, they only have these Thurayas, and they’ve really been without any radio transmitter. They brought a television station, which was not possible to run it without having a permanent base. I know that there is this limitation of communication, but the problem they have is more than that. I am telling them, people are telling them, we hope that they will soon come out and start being public. It’s even a problem here in Tigray.

Alex: Because also we are not hearing anything about any political demands. I mean, what is the agenda, what is the political program? I mean if there were to be negotiations, where would be the starting point? We don’t know any of this at the moment.

Mulugeta: Yeah. I know.

Alex: Anyway, just the news we get every day is so desperately sad. I think many people were shocked, especially by the news of the deaths of Seyoum and Abay and Asmalesh. I think that touched a lot of people around the world. As you may know, I wrote a tribute to Seyoum, which was widely circulated, but we still don’t know anything about the circumstances. Did you learn anything about that incident— ?

Mulugeta: They just found them in a village. They were staying in a village, and they didn’t have an army. They were just in a secluded area. They caught and killed them. It was the EPLF that killed them.

Alex: So, this story about a shootout, et cetera, is not—

Mulugeta: No, no, no. It’s completely rubbish. You know, they, the TPLF could have done so many things had they forecasted that level of violence which was not difficult to forecast. You know, it was very obvious that this war would be a war against Tigray, which Abiy is going to run alongside Isaias. And once you expect Isaias, you shouldn’t expect it to come less than any devastating force it could mobilize. Therefore, for those who will not have participated in active resistance in the field on the military side, there were lots of options. You know, moving them to Sudan or somewhere else. So many things could have been done, but there were no preparations at all.

Alex: It seems there was just a terrible miscalculation about this, and no political strategy, no communications strategy, no protection strategy.

Mulugeta: Not at all, yeah, not at all. Extremely poor. People were begging them. They didn’t have any [indistinct]. People were literally coming up with plans and asking them do this, do that. But they brought Tigray to their size anyway, what can we say.

Alex: The mood of the people now must be desperate, angry.

Mulugeta: Angry, angry, extremely angry, extremely angry. They are left with one option: just fighting. And the war is only beginning. It’s the same in the urban centers, and much worse in the rural areas. Wherever you go, you get dozens of youngsters asking you to be mobilized, to be trained and armed. The TPLF doesn’t have any shortage of manpower when it wants to mobilize. So it’s anger, and they’re left without option, with that option only, they don’t have an option.

They [i.e. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces] are not even [indistinct] they’re not trying to appease them, they’re not trying to get the buy-in of the people. They’re not attempting anything. They’re just out here, and it’s literally genocide by decree. Wherever they’re moving, whomever they find, they kill him or her. [It’s] an old man, a child, a nursing woman, or anything.

Alex: The stories we’ve been hearing most recently are especially that it’s the Eritreans. Is it everybody, or is particularly the Eritrean forces?

Mulugeta: It’s everybody, but the worst ones are the Eritrean forces.

Alex: So tell us, are you able to remain abreast of how this has been covered by the rest of the world? Are you able to pick up anything from the news, from the radio, from internet sites or anything?

Mulugeta: Yeah, I have an old radio transistor which I bought it from a militia [laughs]. That’s what connects me to the rest of the world.

Alex: It’s back to those old days.

Mulugeta: It’s extremely difficult. Sometimes the battery gets, you run out of battery and therefore run out of communication for two, three days. It’s difficult.

Alex: So, we have been doing our best to just draw attention to what’s been going on, because as you know, there was an attempt to have this war conducted in conditions of total secrecy, and even to pretend that it was not a war. There was the U.S. administration, the last one, was very much complicit in that. The African Union completely failed. But the news is now coming out.

Mulugeta: Everything is fine. But one thing is you could push more on this humanitarian intervention. There has to be either some sort of monitoring.

And the Eritrean forces will remain here. They had a meeting last week, it’s some information we got from them, among the senior commanders of the army. There was a request from some of the army commanders on how long they are going to stay in Tigray. The response they gave them was, “Once we leave Tigray, PP [Prosperity Party] will not stay for one week in Tigray, and therefore we will leave Tigray to Woyene [TPLF] again and it will revive. And therefore, we have to remain there up until PP can pick it up which might take several months to come back.” That’s the answer that they gave them.

And therefore, this declaration from State Department—it might even come later from the UN Security Council—might not force the Eritreans to leave Tigray, unless it is supported, either with some humanitarian intervention, as much as they did in Kosovo, some armed intervention that reinforces things, or at least some sort of monitoring on the ground.

Alex: What about the Emirates? You mentioned the Emirates. Presumably, you meant the drones?

Mulugeta: Yeah. Now we don’t have any targets. We don’t have tanks. We don’t have [indistinct]. We are not big targets. We are just human beings moving around. I think that’s the only thing that brought it [i.e. the recent decline in drone attacks]. Otherwise, they have been here in full force, in just full force. They deployed their drones with their operators, and they’re the ones who effectively disarmed us.

Alex: There was one thing that I didn’t quite catch earlier on. You said the Eritreans would stay until something had been achieved. What is the Eritrean war aim, as you see it?

Mulugeta: They don’t know when PP will stand on its foot to fight against Tigray. That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying we have to stay there until PP comes up in a position to fight against the Woyenes. That’s what they’re saying. They don’t know when it will happen. It will never happen, actually. They way I see it, it will not happen here. It might not even happen in the rest of Eritrea. We’re seeing them in the field. Wherever confronted…

You might have heard of a small operation that happened two weeks ago around Edaga Harbi. There was a full brigade, support brigade of the 33rd division, which was fully mechanized, a support brigade is a mechanized support to the rest of the division. It only took 15 minutes to destroy it. In 15 minutes, six 107mm rocket launchers were taken, six 120mm mortars were taken, four 122 howitzers were taken, several vehicles were taken, and 167 of them were taken prisoners, in just 15 minutes.

Alex: What is happening to these prisoners of war? Where are they being kept? How are they being kept?

Mulugeta: We sent them back. We can not carry them around. What we did was, we gave them a sort of political education for two, three days, and then we sent them back to Mekelle and Adigrat. It’s only the commanders—one colonel, one lieutenant colonel—who declined to return back. They said, “they will kill us, so we will remain with you.” We told them, “you cannot be our soldiers, and that’s not what you are asking us, and we shall not provide you shelter, but you can remain in the liberated areas.”

So, they are just moving around. So that’s where we are Alex.

Somali men ‘forced into Eritrean army’ under impression they were signing up for security jobs in Qatar

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The Telegraph | The men are thought to be being sent to Tigray to fight in Ethiopia’s civil war.

Anger is mounting in Somalia over allegations young men are being secretly recruited and sent to Eritrea to fight in Ethiopia’s civil war.

Three families told Reuters their young sons had officially been recruited by Somalia’s government to work in Qatar, only to later find out they had been sent to Eritrea and forced to serve as soldiers.

Ali Jamac Dhoodi, 48, told the news agency he thought his son was working as a security guard in Qatar to help prepare for next year’s football World Cup. But he said he was later told by Somalia’s National Intelligence Agency that his son had died in Eritrea.

“They showed me a picture from their WhatsApp and asked me, ‘do you know this picture and his full name?’ I said, ‘yes he is my son,'” Dhoodi, 48, said. “They said to me ‘your son died’. I cried.”

Others said their sons, who had originally been sent to Eritrea for military training, were sent to fight in the Ethiopian civil war. Mothers have led rare protests in the capital Mogadishu demanding to know where their children had been sent, and some lawmakers have written to Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo asking for information.

“I heard that our children who were sent to Eritrea for military training have been taken and their responsibility was turned over to [Ethiopian Prime Minister] Abiy Ahmed to fight for him,” Fatuma Moallim Abdulle, the mother of 20-year-old soldier Ahmed Ibrahim Jumaleh, told The Associated Press.

“According to the information I gathered, our children were taken straight to Mekele city,” the capital of the Tigray region, she said. “You may understand how I feel, I am a mother who carried her child for nine months in my belly, that’s my blood and flesh.”

Eritrea is accused of involvement in the conflict pitting its neighbour Ethiopia’s federal government against the rebellious leaders of the northern Tigray region. Witnesses have accused Eritrean forces of massacring civilians and pillaging villages in the embattled region.

The United States on Thursday said it had pressed Eritrea’s government to immediately withdraw its troops from Ethiopia.

Somalian and Ethiopian authorities have denied Somali troops are being deployed in Tigray. Ethiopia and Eritrea have consistently denied reports of Eritrean troops fighting in the conflict, despite extensive Telegraph reporting and the video of an Ethiopian general pointing to the contrary.

The Qatari government responded on Friday by saying it condemned any false recruitment initiatives and urging relevant governments to investigate any abuses.

“The State of Qatar reiterates that any genuine offers of employment in Qatar will always come through official channels and approved recruitment agencies or Qatar Visa Centres,” it said in a statement to The Telegraph.

“We urge all individuals seeking employment in Qatar to confirm any offers they receive with these official channels or the embassy, prior to acceptance.”

US ‘Directly’ Presses Eritrea to Withdraw Forces From Tigray

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Associated Press — The United States says it has directly “pressed senior levels” of Eritrea’s government to immediately withdraw its troops from neighboring Ethiopia, where witnesses have described them looting and hunting down civilians in the embattled Tigray region.

A State Department spokesperson in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday said Washington has conveyed “grave” concerns about credible reports of abuses. There were no details on how officials with Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive countries, responded.

Eritrea has said little publicly about the conflict in Tigray as Ethiopian soldiers fight forces loyal to the now-fugitive Tigray regional leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades. The Tigray leaders were marginalized after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, and each side regards the other as illegitimate.

Ethiopia has repeatedly denied the presence of Eritrean soldiers, who some witnesses have estimated in the thousands. Now concerns are growing that the Eritrean forces refuse to leave. Eritrea remains an enemy of the fugitive Tigray leaders after a two-decade border war that ended under Abiy.

Eritrea’s information ministry on Thursday published a statement by the country’s embassy in the U.S. responding to an open letter this week by former U.S. ambassadors to Ethiopia that expressed concern about the Tigray conflict and Eritrea’s involvement.

“The allusion by these ambassadors to potential territorial war between Eritrea and Ethiopia can only be disingenuous in content and vicious in intent,” Eritrea’s statement said, expressing “profound dismay at their provocative and ill-intentioned swipe.”

The Tigray region remains largely cut off from the outside world and Ethiopia has blocked almost all journalists from entering, complicating efforts to verify assertions by the warring sides.

Meanwhile, humanitarian workers have had limited access to the estimated 6 million people in Tigray as food and other supplies run short and concerns about starvation grow.

The situation is “deteriorating every day, every minute,” the president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, Ato Abera Tola, told reporters on Thursday as Red Cross entities appealed for more financial support. “There is no area which is not affected by this conflict … the conflict is everywhere.”

The Ethiopia head of delegation for the International Committee for the Red Cross, Katia Sorin, said they still had not been able to reach rural areas of Tigray, a largely agricultural region. The ICRC is one of the few international organizations to maintain its operations in Tigray after fighting began.

“We’re helping, but it’s a drop in the ocean of need,” Sorin said.

Anger in Somalia as sons secretly sent to serve in Eritrea military force

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Ali Jamac Dhoodi thought his son was working as a security guard in Qatar, helping prepare for next year’s soccer World Cup. Then one day last April, officials from Somalia’s National Intelligence Agency arrived with $10,000 in cash.

They told him his son had died – not in Qatar, but in Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive countries.

“They showed me a picture from their WhatsApp and asked me, ‘do you know this picture and his full name?’ I said, ‘yes he is my son,’” Dhoodi, 48, told Reuters. “They said to me ‘your son died’. I cried.”

They gave him the money, and told him not to ask questions.

Ali’s son was one of three young Somali men whose families told Reuters they had been recruited by Somalia’s federal government for jobs in Qatar, only to surface in Eritrea, where they were sent to serve in a military force against their will. Two other families said their sons had simply disappeared.

The apparent secret recruitment of young Somali men for a fighting force in Eritrea is stirring public anger in Somalia, a poor country where opportunities to work abroad are eagerly sought. Protests erupted last week in the capital Mogadishu and in the towns of Guriel and Galkayo over the missing recruits.

Reports that Eritrean forces have taken part in fighting that broke out in November last year in neighbouring northern Ethiopia – which Eritrea and Ethiopia strongly deny – have led some Somalis to worry their sons may have been sent there.

Asked if Eritrea had recruited Somalis, trained them or sent them to Ethiopia, Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Meskel told Reuters: “This is ludicrous … There is massive disinformation floating around.”

Somali government spokesman Mohamed Ibrahim and Information Minister Osman Dube did not respond to requests for comment on the Somali government’s apparent role in the recruitment, but Ibrahim said no Somalis had been sent to Ethiopia.

The leaders of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea have been drawing closer together since 2018, after a change of leadership in Ethiopia. Ethiopia and Eritrea, once archenemies, signed a peace deal and have regular high level visits. Somalia – which once accused Eritrea of supporting Islamist rebels – now has friendly relations with its president.

‘A BULLET IS THE REPLY’

Hussein Warsame said his son Sadam, 21, had been recruited for a security job in Qatar in October, 2019. Nothing was heard from him for more than a year. Finally, last November, he phoned from Eritrea.

“We were all shocked to land in Eritrea. We thought we were being flown to Qatar,” he quoted his son as telling him. “Dad, there is no life here, I have not seen food save a lump or slice of bread since I left Somalia in 2019, and when recruits demonstrate or reject orders, a bullet is the reply.”

Sahra Abdikadir, whose son Aqil Hassan Abdi disappeared in 2019 under similar circumstances, told Reuters that he had called in January and said he was in a camp in an unknown location in Eritrea.

Eritrea, a heavily militarised society, has never held elections, has no independent media and forces its citizens into indefinate government service. Former guerrilla leader Isaias Afwerki has been president since 1993.

Somalia has had only limited central government rule since 1991.

Both countries have a history of decades of conflict in the Horn of Africa region, often involving their much larger neighbour Ethiopia.

A regional security analyst who asked not to be identified told Reuters he had learned from conversations with Somali security officials that about 1,000 Somalis had been recruited and taken to Eritrea in at least three groups. One group had returned to Somalia, the second group was unreachable and the third was still in Eritrea.

Reuters was unable to confirm those details.

Ethiopia’s peace laureate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sees a reversal of fortune as war and atrocities tarnish reputation

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The Globe & Mail | Less than a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau strolled through a verdant garden in Addis Ababa with the world’s newest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

As they enjoyed a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony in Unity Park, on the site of a former imperial palace, Mr. Trudeau must have seen Mr. Abiy as a wise choice for an African partner. The young leader had been praised for freeing political prisoners and lifting the ban on opposition parties, and he was a Nobel prize winner for his peace deal with his former Eritrean enemies.

In a tweet soon after, Mr. Trudeau described Unity Park as “a symbol of Prime Minister Abiy’s democratic reforms” and the “positive transformation” of the country. The site was designed to showcase Mr. Abiy’s new national narrative, in which Ethiopia’s diverse ethnicities would be woven into a single harmonious and unified people.

A year later, Mr. Abiy’s dream is in tatters. The former hero of peace and democracy is instead facing blame for a shocking list of alleged atrocities by his military and its allies in the Tigray region: massacres, sexual assaults, ethnic cleansing, the kidnapping of refugees, the destruction of refugee camps, a humanitarian blockade and the deliberate starvation of civilians.

The atrocities have heightened the spectre of escalating conflict across the entire Horn of Africa, with tensions rising between Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and Somalia.

The Western leaders who once heaped praise on Mr. Abiy are now voicing their alarm. Many are calling on the Abiy government to end its blockade of Tigray. Even the Trudeau government has expressed its concern at the “continued barriers to humanitarian access” – an implicit criticism of Mr. Abiy, whose forces control access to the region.

One of the most horrific reports was issued by Pramila Patten, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict. She described “a high number of alleged rapes” in Tigray’s capital – a city that was captured by Mr. Abiy’s military forces in late November.

“I am greatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, including a high number of alleged rapes in the capital, Mekelle,” Ms. Patten said in her statement last week.

“There are also disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence. Some women have also reportedly been forced by military elements to have sex in exchange for basic commodities. … In addition, there are increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls in a number of refugee camps.”

The Ethiopian government has banned journalists from entering Tigray, making it difficult to know the full extent of the atrocities. But refugees from Tigray, arriving in Sudan, have given similar accounts of rape by Ethiopian soldiers and their military allies, according to news agency reports. The U.S. State Department, under the new Joe Biden administration, says it is “gravely concerned” by the allegations of sexual violence in Tigray.

Massacres of civilians by armed soldiers, sometimes leaving hundreds of people dead, have been reported in several places in Tigray. Refugee camps have been torched and destroyed, and crops have been burned. And now there are reports of starvation and the looming risk of famine – even as relief agencies are blocked from sending food into many parts of the region.

More than a dozen people, including three children, have died from starvation in Tigray in recent days, according to an Ethiopian news site, Addis Standard, which attributed the information to a senior official in Tigray’s interim government, Abraha Desta. He estimated that 4.5 million people in Tigray – almost the whole population – are in need of emergency food assistance.

None of this was envisioned in Mr. Abiy’s official promises at the beginning of the war. On Nov. 9, five days after sending troops into the region to subdue the rebellious Tigray government, Mr. Abiy tweeted that his military offensive was merely a “law enforcement operation” that would “wrap up soon.” Any fears of chaos were “unfounded,” he assured the world.

If there was any hope of a brief and limited conflict, it was soon destroyed by one of Mr. Abiy’s most troubling decisions: his tactical alliance with the repressive regime of neighbouring Eritrea, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, a government that has banned all opposition parties, outlawed all independent media, refused to hold any elections and imposed a harsh form of long-term national conscription on most of the adult population.

Officially, the Abiy government has denied Eritrea’s involvement in the war. But the presence of thousands of Eritrean troops in Tigray has been confirmed by Western governments, civilian eyewitnesses, photos and videos on social media, and even by a senior Ethiopian military commander, Major-General Belay Seyoum, who told a meeting in Tigray that the Eritrean military presence was a “painful” reality.

Eritrean troops have been at war with Tigrayan forces for most of the past 25 years, beginning with a border war in the late 1990s that killed tens of thousands of people. When the Abiy government allowed the Eritreans into Tigray to reinforce the military operation in November, they took their revenge on the people of the region.

Eritrean troops have been identified as the perpetrators of many of the worst atrocities in Tigray, including the massacre of civilians, the destruction of refugee camps and the kidnapping of Eritrean refugees, who were forced back to the country they had fled.

Human Rights Watch said this week that it is investigating “credible reports of extrajudicial executions of civilians [and] widespread looting and damage of property, including hospitals, by Eritrean forces in Tigray.”

The UN’s high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said he had received “many reliable reports” of refugees being kidnapped and forced back to Eritrea.

The Tigray conflict is not the only one where Mr. Abiy’s military forces have been accused of excesses. In the Oromo region, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has identified Ethiopian security forces as being responsible for 76 of the 123 deaths that occurred during protests last June and July. In a recent report, the human-rights commission said the security forces had been responsible for killing people who had no involvement in the protests. Some of the victims were shot in the back or the head, it said.

And while the violence and killings in Tigray are showing no sign of ending soon, Mr. Abiy is also facing criticism for conflicts with Sudan and Egypt that have grown worse under his rule. Ethiopia has been embroiled in deadly border clashes with Sudan, and it has exchanged threats with Egypt over a controversial Ethiopian hydro dam that reduces the flow of water on the Nile.

The Tigray war has also fuelled tensions with Somalia, following reports that Somali soldiers – sent to Eritrea for training – had been ordered into Tigray to fight in the war.

The new U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a glimpse of the growing international worries about the Abiy government when he spoke at his Senate confirmation hearing last week. He cited a number of “deeply, deeply concerning” actions in Ethiopia, including “atrocities” directed at Tigrayan civilians and Eritrean refugees.

Mr. Blinken then gave a much broader warning. The war in Tigray, he said, could spark a wider conflagration. “What started there has the potential to be destabilizing throughout the Horn of Africa.”