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Pressure is mounting on Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as the scale of horrors of his war against the northern Tigray region gradually emerge, revealing massacres, mass sexual violence and fears of ethnic cleansing.
Ethiopia has insisted for months that its army’s operations, which began in October last year, were officially ended and targeted solely at the leadership and forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Abiy came to power.
The Abiy government has repeatedly downplayed the most serious allegations against its forces in Tigray and has denied reports that the Eritrean armed forces were active in Tigray fighting the TPLF.
However, last week he finally admitted that Eritrean soldiers were “in the border area” between Tigray and Ethiopia’s former enemy turned ally. The Eritrean army is now withdrawing from Ethiopia, he said. The Eritrean government has not publicly acknowledged any role in Tigray nor has it confirmed that its troops will withdraw.
The independent Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said last week that its investigations found that more than 100 people in the historic city of Axum in Tigray were killed by Eritrean soldiers in November, confirming previous revelations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Reports confirming the atrocities committed by Eritrean soldiers present in Tigray and revelations of the devastation of the past five months have fueled international condemnation from both Ethiopia and Eritrea. The EU imposed sanctions on Eritrea this week, amid concerns that many of the attacks could constitute crimes against humanity.
Reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have revealed several massacres and an explosion of sexual violence, torture and destruction of monuments and cultural and religious property in Tigray.
Since aid groups and observers were granted access earlier this month, there have been a number of shocking revelations. Last week, the aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its staff had witnessed extrajudicial killings on the Mekelle-Adigrat road by Ethiopian troops. “We are horrified by the continued violence in Tigray, Ethiopia. This includes the extrajudicial executions of at least four men who were dragged from public buses and executed by soldiers while our staff were present, on March 23, ”said Karline Kleijer, his head of emergency programs.
Earlier this month, MSF said that most of the more than 100 health facilities it had visited in Tigray had been looted, vandalized and destroyed in a deliberate and widespread attack on health care. What Abiy has insisted on was a military operation against “criminals” has emerged instead as a bitter conflict waged against millions of civilians, with massive attacks and sexual violence driven by regional ethnic and historical divisions.
The military campaign against the TPLF, whom Abiy accused of attacking federal military camps and with the aim of destabilizing the country, quickly reshaped the image of one of Africa’s youngest leaders who received the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Amid a telecommunications blackout and restricted movement of international aid groups and observers, many fear that the true cost of the conflict can never be determined.
The United Nations, the United States, the European Union and aid groups have condemned the violence in the region in recent weeks.
Thousands of people are believed to have died, with vast swaths of internally displaced people in the mountainous and agricultural region of five million people.
Nearly a million people remain inaccessible to aid groups, according to the UN, amid the armed conflict with TPLF forces, which Ethiopia still claims has officially ended, earlier this month, in a leaked recording of a meeting. between foreign diplomats and an Ethiopian army general, Yohannes Tesfamariam, described the conflict in Tigray as a “dirty war” and the civilian casualties as “defenseless” in the most significant recognition by the Ethiopian authorities that the fighting and threats to civilians continued, particularly in western Tigray.
Last week, the UN condemned “horrible forms of sexual violence” with more than 500 rape cases reported in just five clinics in Tigray, and the number of actual cases is likely much higher. “Women say they have been raped by armed actors, they also told stories of gang rape, rape in front of relatives and men forced to rape their own relatives under threat of violence,” explained Wafia Said, UN aid coordinator assistant in Ethiopia in a briefing to the Member States.
On March 10, the US Secretary of State condemned the violence and increased pressure on Ethiopia to end the atrocities in Tigray. Following the investigations, Antony Blinken said that he had seen “very credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities” and that “the forces of Eritrea and Amhara must leave and be replaced by ‘a force that will not abuse the human rights of the people of Tigray or committing acts of ethnic cleansing. ‘ Ethiopia dismissed Blinken’s statement as unfounded, but said it would allow an investigation by the African Union.
On Monday, the EU announced sanctions against Eritrea, dismissed by the country’s Foreign Ministry as “a futile attempt to drive a wedge between Eritrea and Ethiopia.”
Almost 70,000 refugees have fled to camps in neighboring Sudan since November, some suffering physical injuries from the attacks in Tigray, others suffering the horrors they witnessed before escaping.
Before 26-year-old Elsa Berhe fled to the Sudanese city of Hamdayet, she was a midwife in Adwa, eastern Tigray, and led a comfortable life. In November, shelling and fighting destroyed much of Adwa. Earlier this year, Ethiopian forces destroyed, looted and seized control of several hospitals and clinics. “I was secretly providing house-to-house services for pregnant women,” he said. “There are shots being fired every day, there are interrogations every day,” he said, from the camp overlooking Sudan’s border with Ethiopia. Attacks on medical officials led her to leave, she said.
“I saw an ambulance with a patient and a nurse,” when they were stopped by Ethiopian soldiers. “They killed the driver and the nurse and left.” Later, he witnessed Eritrean forces gang-raping a woman, Berhe said. “The international community has done nothing to stop the war. Destruction is happening, rapes are happening daily and civilians are being killed. “
According to Adem Abebe, an expert at the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the dire nature of the conflict so far is likely to keep the TPLF a long-term threat to Abiy. “Unless there is a negotiated settlement, the conflict will definitely drag on. But Abiy may now think that he has cornered the TPLF and is in a much stronger position to negotiate. “
