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northOR BETTER IMAGE symbolizes the fall from power of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that had made the decisions in Ethiopia for almost three decades. Sebhat Nega, one of its founders, was photographed this month in handcuffs, wearing a wrinkled tracksuit and a single sock. The 86-year-old, long one of Ethiopia’s most powerful men, had been captured by the army. His party, which was ousted from power amid mass protests in 2018, has been fighting the government led by Abiy Ahmed for the past two months. Not going well.
Several other majors TPLF figures have been killed by the army. Among them was Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s longest-serving foreign minister. The murders and arrests appear to have left the TPLF untidy. Its leaders, including the ousted president of the Tigray region, Debretsion Gebremichael, have been in hiding for more than a month. Although the TPLF it still controls large swaths of rural Tigray, it has no towns or cities. Abiy’s allies, who have already declared victory, believe that it is only a matter of time before the rest of what he calls the “junta” are captured or killed.
But time is not a luxury the Tigrayans can afford. For weeks, the vast majority of the region’s roughly 6 million people have been without adequate food, water or medicine. According to the interim Tigray administration, appointed by Abiy last month, more than 2 million civilians have been driven from their homes. The state-appointed human rights commission warned of a “humanitarian crisis.” According to the US government-run Famine Early Warning Systems Network, parts of central and eastern Tigray are probably one step away from famine. “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months,” worries a Western diplomat.
It’s impossible to know how bad the crisis is because phone lines are down and the government has banned journalists from going to most of Tigray. It also restricts the movement of humanitarian workers. But the accounts are leaking. In some places, especially in the north, crops have been burned. In others, farmers abandoned their fields before harvest.
Even where food is still available, many people have no way of getting it. Banks are closed in Tigray (except in Mekelle, the capital of the region). So are markets and shops. In many places the fuel has run out. Inflation is rampant. “Even if you have the money, you don’t have a bank,” says Kibrom, who fled Tigray to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, last month. “If you have grain, you don’t have a mill. If you have a mill, you have no energy. “
Hospitals are also running out of supplies. In most, such as Humera, a city close to Sudan and Eritrea, staff have not been paid since October. The lack of electricity means that the medicines are spoiling, if any. When Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international charity, arrived at the hospital in Adwa earlier this month, its staff found that it had been almost completely looted. “How are we going to do life-saving blood transfusions if we don’t have a refrigerator?” asks Mari Carmen Viñoles, head of MSFEmergency unit.
The federal government disputes such accounts. “There is no hunger in Ethiopia,” a spokesman for the federal disaster management agency said on January 19. He claims to have distributed aid to almost 2 million people in northern Ethiopia (although it is unclear how many of them were actually in Tigray).
Muferiat Kamil, the peace minister, says her ministry is reaching out to citizens even in the central areas of Tigray, which are largely under the control of the TPLF. This is implausible. A senior humanitarian official notes that civilians in these places are “effectively trapped.” TPLF forces regularly attack military convoys, making it impossible for the government to deliver supplies safely. An agreement signed with the A allowing aid groups to travel unhindered across the region has not been respected last month. This is probably because officials do not want them to expose the war crimes or the presence of thousands of troops from neighboring Eritrea (who are helping the government). Four A Last month, staff were shot and detained for entering areas where a government official said they were “not supposed to go.”
Trucks carrying emergency supplies are also being stopped. Despite some recent improvements, the system for obtaining permits to allow them to enter Tigray is slow and complex. Even when the central government grants permission, local authorities in neighboring regions stop shipments, saying that they too have to give permission. Once the trucks arrive in Tigray, they are stopped by local army commanders on the grounds of safety or perhaps because they believe the food will end up in rebel hands.
The Ethiopian government may be too incompetent to realize that its actions are likely to cause hunger. But it seems more likely that the authorities are deliberately withholding the food in an effort to starve the rebels. “The lack of humanitarian access is an integral part of the war campaign,” says a A diplomatic. Even before the war began, there was an effort to blockade Tigray to weaken its leaders. In October, the federal government suspended welfare payments to poor farmers.
For decades, Ethiopian governments have been guilty of putting politics before the people. A famine in 1973 was covered up to avoid embarrassing the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. A decade later, a Marxist military dictatorship burned crops and restricted aid to Tigray in an attempt to defeat the TPLF, then a heterogeneous band of guerrillas. There is still not a full-blown famine in Tigray. But there is a real danger that history will repeat itself. ■
This article appeared in the Middle East and Africa section of the print edition under the title “War and Famine.”
