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The Ethiopian government announced on Thursday the launch of the “final offensive” against Mekele, the regional capital of Tigray. This is a portrait of a city isolated from the world.
Communications are cut off; a few intermittent connections over satellite lines allow rare and sporadic news; life runs its course harshly; food shortages, prices skyrocket, money is rationed. Today has ended the three-day ultimatum issued by the government before launching its final assault. The army warned that he would be ruthless.
Concerns expressed by international partners about the humanitarian consequences of this conflict have angered the authorities. While vehemently rejecting such foreign interference, the leadership is showing more restraint in its press releases towards the civilian population, instructing them to stay away from strategic objectives. Assuming these messages are received. Assuming one could flee from a city the army says it has surrounded. The final operation is presented as inexorable. Its speed of execution will be proof of its legitimacy. Mediation is not allowed, as no humanitarian truce is possible without appearing to repudiate this heinous action.
Due to the lack of reporters on site, due to the lack of images due to discharged cell phone batteries, it is impossible to imagine today’s Mekele. Let’s share a little about this great city, its cobblestone streets, shaded by fragrant blue jacarandas, and the semi-rural atmosphere of a city that only thirty years ago was nothing more than a garrison town surrounded by rustic villages. Originally Mekele was a fertile, open and windy plain, surrounded by slight mountains on the eastern edge of the highlands. It stood at the junction between the mountain bastions and the steep valleys of the interior of Tigray. Its roads connected with other Ethiopian territories and the outside world.
Two castles remain from the late 19th century, one that has been converted into a state hotel, with its old-fashioned and dilapidated charm. The other, renovated and recently opened to the public, recalls the political destiny of this place, which had federated the territorial entities of Tigray before becoming the seat of the King of Kings Yohannes IV, one of the rulers who unified Ethiopia and protected it from various external aggressions (from Egypt, Italy, Sudan). Today’s Tigrayans see themselves as inheritors of this responsibility to defend the nation and do not understand the general acrimony against them. Not many have benefited from the appropriation of positions of federal power and large national companies by the ruling elite. They have even felt neglected by those who have been doing the weather in Addis Ababa for the past three years.
As in all parts of Ethiopia, urban metamorphosis has been rapid. In a few years, the economic boom framed by an urban policy has driven the construction of public buildings: university campuses, hospitals, airport and stadium. The city has expanded with the opening of wide avenues lined by buildings with glass facades towards the outskirts of the city where modest houses of chiselled stone with tin roofs are built. At the other end of the city, on the side looking in from Tigray, an imposing concrete column crowned with a golden sphere celebrates the martyrs of the liberation movement who fought against the nationalist military tyranny of Mengistu Haile Maryam, defeated the cruel famine of 1984 and by allying itself with other peoples, it found a new federal political project, longed to be put into practice, imperfect, unequal or even unequal, but proposing new mechanisms to correct deep territorial imbalances.
City of memory, it is also a carefree city, a young city that comes to life thanks to the light hums of blue and white rickshaws scurrying everywhere. It is a clean city. The sidewalks become terraces where small stools are placed informally, creating a space to drink Ethiopian-made coffee from terracotta coffee pots. The public space is open, relaxed, carefree, but with the dynamism of a youth that had hoped to get out of the eternal repetition of the warlike heat of the past.
This article was first published by Libération.
