S.Eyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down in Tigray this month by the forces of a lesser man: Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean army, Abiy’s allies, who murdered Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain obscure.
As with much of the unreported, uncontested murder and chaos currently taking place in Northern Ethiopia, murky is what Abiy prefers. When he ordered the military attack on the breakaway region of Tigray in November, he blocked the internet, shut out aid organizations and banned journalists. It’s a conflict he claims to have won, but the emerging reality is very different. It’s a war fought in the shadows, keeping the outside world in the dark.
After humanitarian workers finally gained limited access this month, it was estimated that 4.5 million of Tigray’s 6 million people are in need of emergency food assistance. Hundreds of thousands would starve. The UN warns that Eritrean refugees in the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps are “in dire need of supplies” and are being harassed by armed gangs. Some are said to have been forcibly and illegally repatriated.
Entry is still being denied to two other camps, Shimelba and Hitsats, which have been set on fire. Many of the camp’s residents are believed to have fled marauding militiamen from Eritrean and Amhara. Satellite images published by UK-based DX Open Network reportedly show damage to 400 buildings in Shimelba. Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, points to “concrete indications of major violations of international law”.
There are persistent, unconfirmed reports of massacres, torture, rapes, kidnappings and the looting or destruction of ancient manuscripts and artifacts in Tigray. Last week, EEPA, a Belgium-based NGO, described a massacre of 750 people in a cathedral in Aksum that is said to house the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopian troops and Amhara militias are charged with the murders at the Church of St. Mary of Zion, which is part of a UN World Heritage Site. The report has not been independently verified.
Despite Abiy’s claims that the war is over and no civilians have been harmed, sporadic fighting continues, said an analyst familiar with the government’s thinking. Thousands of people have died, about 50,000 have fled to Sudan and many are homeless and hiding in caves. Deliberate artillery strikes have destroyed hospitals and health centers in an echo of the Syrian war, the analyst said.
Aid workers gathered this month in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, complaining that the Ethiopian government was still restricting relief efforts and demanding full access. “People are starving. In Adwa people die while they sleep. [It’s] same in other zones, ”said a regional administrator, Berhane Gebretsadik, as follows. But there has been little response from Addis Ababa.
Official Ethiopian and Eritrean denials that Eritrean armed forces operate in Tigray have been contradicted by eyewitness accounts. Amid the darkness, it seems clear that Eritrea’s dictatorial president Isaias Afwerki has made common cause with Abiy. The two met in Addis Ababa in October, shortly before the outbreak of war, to discuss the “consolidation of regional cooperation”.
Afwerki is an old enemy who runs a brutally repressive regime. But he shares Abiy’s hatred for the Tigrayan leaders who dominated former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government during the 20-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Abiy, an Oromo of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, made peace with Eritrea in 2018, ousted his Tigrayan rivals, and has been fighting with them ever since.
Further evidence of secret alliances comes from Somalia. The Somali Guardian reported this month that 2,500 Somali recruits were treated as “cannon fodder” after being sent to a military base in Eritrea for training and then deployed with Eritrean forces in Tigray. Dozens of people have reportedly been killed.
International research into Abiy’s Tigray War was largely lacking. An exception is the EU, which has indefinitely suspended € 88 million in aid to Addis Ababa. “We receive consistent reports of ethnically targeted violence, murders, looting, rapes, forced returns of refugees and possible war crimes,” said Josep Borrell, EU foreign affairs chief.
The warnings from the UN and the EU, coupled with the shocking murder of the internationally respected Seyoum Mesfin, may now prompt further investigation. I met Seyoum, a co-founder of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in 1975, in Addis in 2008. He was a master diplomat. According to Alex de Waal, the Africa specialist, Seyoum was an experienced peacemaker in Rwanda and Sudan who after 1991 “led the restoration of Ethiopia’s international reputation”.
Abiy now risks destroying that position. The circumstances of Seyoum’s murder are not clear. The Ethiopian government is not a reliable source of information. Eritrea – which may have committed the murders – is silent. The official report that Seyoum and his colleagues ‘refused to surrender’ is opaque ”, writes De Waal.
He noted that the two other older Tigrayans who were 71 years old besides Seyoum were Abay Tsehaye, who had just had heart surgery, and Asmelash Woldeselassie, who was blind. This trio posed hardly a physical threat to heavily armed forces.
Abiy seems to have lost control of the events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet board has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rape. The threat of famine in the countryside is great. In the mid-1980s, the massive famine in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were then overcome by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s shame, the specter of famine is now haunting Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He must return his Nobel Peace Prize and be accountable for his actions in Tigray.