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Dansha (Ethiopia) (AFP)
It was late on the first Tuesday in November, and Captain Hussen Besheir, an Ethiopian federal soldier, was on duty at a guard post outside the military camp in Dansha.
It was near midnight when he saw the headlights approaching.
Ten armed members of the Tigrayan special forces got out of the vehicle and demanded to see the camp commander.
“‘We’re not here for you,'” Hussen recalled being said. “‘We want to talk to the leaders.’
Short and flinty, Hussen refused. An argument ensued and shots rang out.
They were the first shots in a conflict that has since gripped the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, killing hundreds of people and forcing tens of thousands from their homes.
This week, AFP visited Dansha barracks, home to the Ethiopian Army’s 5th Battalion of the Northern Command, after gaining rare access to Tigray, where there has been a near-total blackout in communications since the fighting began.
Shell casings littered the camp grounds and bullet holes were drilled into the walls of buildings and the sides of military trucks.
A metal sign at the entrance that read, “We need to protect the constitution from anti-development forces and lead our country to rebirth,” was so perforated with gunfire that it was almost unreadable.
– ‘Treason’ –
Hussen and others described hours-long rifle and grenade battles against fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), including special forces and militiamen, along with some federal soldiers also housed in Dansha who turned on their comrades.
Echoing a statement by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Hussen said the soldiers “died in their pajamas,” adding: “What happened here is even worse than that.”
“Betrayal alone would not describe the feeling I have. These are soldiers who have been eating and drinking with us,” he said of those former federal soldiers who allegedly turned their guns on them.
The Addis Ababa government has claimed responsibility for the attack on Dansha – and a simultaneous assault on another barracks in the regional capital Mekele – as justification for its military offensive in Tigray since 4 November.
He points to an interview in the Tigrayan media in which a prominent TPLF supporter said a pre-emptive strike was “imperative”.
“Should we wait for them to launch the attacks first? No,” Sekuture Getachew said in the interview, which Abiy’s office has called a “confession.”
However, a senior TPLF official, Wondimu Asamnew, told AFP: “There was no attack.”
Instead, says the TPLF, the story was made up as a pretext to turn against them.
The confrontation between Abiy and the TPLF was a long time coming. The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades until anti-government protests brought Abiy to power in 2018.
Since then, the TPLF has complained of being marginalized and made a scapegoat for the country’s problems. The gap widened after Ethiopia postponed national elections due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tigray went ahead with his own vote and later branded Abiy an illegitimate ruler.
– Ethnic forces –
Tadilo Tamiru, a sergeant in the government-aligned Amhara special forces, was 50 kilometers (30 miles) south with his 170-man unit, in a small town along the border between the Tigray and Amhara regions. , when the fighting began in Dansha.
The north were ordered to join the battle.
“The support we provided to the Ethiopian defense forces was very important,” he said, stating that it turned the tide against the TPLF.
Tadilo now remains at the side of Hussen, Amhara’s special forces informally integrated into the unit, sleeping on mattresses outside the barracks and taking orders from army officers.
Despite being from the neighboring region, Tadilo said: “As long as the peacekeeping mission is here, we will stay here.”
In the hours and days after the fighting in Dansha, Abiy sent troops, tanks and fighter jets to Tigray to drive out the “criminal cabal” of TPLF leaders. On Thursday, he ordered a “final” assault on Mekele, after the TPLF refused a 72-hour deadline to surrender.
– ‘Many shots’ –
Restrictions on access to the conflict zone make it difficult to verify the claims of both sides, but a visit to Dansha revealed that a battle took place, limited in scope: while the military barracks was full of bullet scars, the surrounding city came out unharmed.
Some shops were boarded up, but the city, unlike others in Tigray visited by AFP, was far from abandoned.
The paved, tree-lined main street was lined with cattle and vehicles, women roasting coffee on the roadside while a group of children played pool at a sidewalk table.
Relieved residents described listening fearfully as gunfire erupted from the barracks.
“During the first night there were a lot of shootings. And when we woke up in the morning, we could see bullets everywhere,” said Mulye Bayu, a wide-eyed 19-year-old dressed in flowers running down a road. Cafeteria.
The city subsequently fell silent, but with federal forces firmly in control, life has quickly returned to normal, albeit without the old ruling party and its officials.
Five men sat at a wooden table in an empty storefront, registering candidates for the newly vacant civil servant positions.
“The previous administration in Dansha, they were all from one party (the TPLF),” said one of them, Kibrom Girmay, an ethnic Amhara. “They were assigned to enforce all the orders from that match. But when this fight happened, they all left and now their jobs are empty.”
The immediate task is to “keep the peace” and prevent looting, Kibrom said.
“Then we will begin to provide basic services, such as health, and we will help farmers to return to their fields,” he said.
Kibrom insisted that the Tigrayans who remained in the city would not be excluded from the new administration, but he had nothing but contempt for the TPLF.
“The TPLF plan was to instigate civil war in the country,” he said. “They want to destabilize the country, the Horn of Africa and the rest of the world.”
© 2020 AFP
