Saturday, August 10, 2024, 7:53 p.m.
Eritrean forces went from house to house rounding up young residents. They then drove them to the local factory and ordered them to dismantle the machinery and load it onto their trucks. Before leaving with the looted equipment, they forced them to lie down on the ground and executed them. The incident occurred in Tigray, during the war that devastated this Ethiopian region between 2020 and 2022. Like those young men, 600,000 other people died as victims of the conflict, and another million fled their homes.
“The conflict is one of the most brutal of this century, and yet it can be considered a phantom war,” explains Marta Carreño. The blackout imposed by the government in Addis Ababa has prevented the events from being disseminated. This journalist from Madrid, a member of the Manos Unidas communications team, has arrived at the epicentre with a technical team from the Spanish NGO. “As a media professional, I don’t think I would have been able to go in. Working there is dangerous,” she warns.
There were not only work-related reasons, but also a personal component. Since 2005, he has travelled regularly to the region and maintains close ties with its inhabitants. “Before the pandemic, I went almost every year, with a few exceptions,” he recalls. “They are my Tigrinya family,” he confesses, and recalls that, on that occasion, he fell in love with the project that the Basque missionary Ángel Olaran was carrying out in the area with the support of the Madrid entity. “I decided that it had to be part of my life,” he confesses.
During that first stay, she met children orphaned by the war with Eritrea between 1998 and 2000, who are now parents and witnesses of the atrocities. “You arrive and it seems like nothing has happened, but you can feel the devastation. Workshops, hotels and health centres have been looted and many schools are still not functioning because they are occupied by internally displaced people,” she explains. “Productive projects have been destroyed, even irrigation systems.”
Fear and pain also remain. “People are traumatised. Peace has come, but justice has not come and the damage has not been repaired,” she says, noting that everyone has lost someone or knows someone close to them who has been raped or kidnapped. “There is a lot of fear of speaking out and no one talks about Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.” This figure is essential to explaining the reason for an unexpected crisis. His rise to power in 2018 encouraged hope for change in a country subjected to brutal authoritarianism since the fall of Haile Selassie, its last emperor. The leader promised a process that would culminate in freedom and democracy, and his first proposals earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the new strongman had a roadmap that the Oslo academics might not have approved of. The previous government, in the hands of Hailemariam Desalegn, was maintained by the agreement of several ethnically rooted movements with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) playing a prominent role in the military field. Abiy Ahmed Ali wanted to strengthen the central government on the centrifugal tendencies of 140 tribal communities and, to that end, he proposed to create the Prosperity Party, an umbrella entity.
Source of conflict
The Tigrinyas opposed the project and boycotted the 2020 elections, which were supposed to sanction the new political order. The immediate causes that led to the confrontation, which began in early November, have not been determined. Federal forces claim that the regionalists attacked a military base and that they retaliated. The result was a large-scale military operation that involved the physical and virtual isolation of the region for two years.
The prime minister has made strategic allies in his fight against the discordant agent. The brunt of the campaign did not fall on the regular army but on other bitter enemies of the rebels. The militias of the neighbouring Amhara state, with which he has territorial disputes, and the troops of Eritrea, one of the most authoritarian and impenetrable regimes in the world, took the initiative. These troops, former rivals of Addis Ababa, imposed horror. “They come from absolute poverty and committed all kinds of atrocities,” laments Carreño, also mentioning the drone bombings. Amnesty International speaks of extrajudicial executions, individual and group rapes, and sexual enslavement, even after the cessation of hostilities agreement was signed.
The siege meant a lack of news, but also of food and medicine. Mortality soared among the weakest, those suffering from chronic diseases, patients requiring dialysis or women in labour lacking care. “Women gave birth on the way to the only hospital because they were walking or on stretchers, there was no petrol,” she says. “Tigray became a rat trap for its inhabitants.”
Marta Carreño has reconnected with her friends and has joined the technical team of Manos Unidas, one of the few humanitarian organisations that have returned to the area with educational, health and agricultural projects. She flew to Addis Ababa and from there to Mekele, the regional capital. In her opinion, it is not only the material conditions that have deteriorated. “Before, the natives considered themselves Ethiopians to the core, you saw many national flags, children wore the national football team shirts and there were scarves with the colours of the country. Now you only see Tigrinya emblems.”
Unstable peace
Ethiopia’s alliances are proving extremely volatile. The Amhara, former collaborators of Abiy Ahmed Ali’s government, have turned against him and have also suffered repression. Peace, which is shaky and shrouded in resentment, has not prevented social problems from increasing. Drought has dried up reservoirs and threatens next year’s harvests. The local administration has warned that two million people are at risk of famine.
The Spanish journalist says that poverty and lack of opportunities push many young people to emigrate to Arabia, crossing the dangerous Sinai Peninsula. “There, many are kidnapped by criminal gangs and tortured to force them to contact their families and ask for ransom.”
The drama takes place in an area of extraordinary beauty, arid and rugged. Tigray was one of the most popular tourist destinations in one of the most exotic countries on the planet. In the city of Axum, the former imperial capital, there are tall stone steles that are among the largest monoliths in the world. In addition, the territory is home to hundreds of rock-cut churches located on high promontories.
Marta Carreño says that the Tigrinya are people who have adapted to a difficult environment, peaceful, strong and resilient, although still unable to verbalize and confront what happened. “A boy told me that he couldn’t tell me what had happened, that if he explained what he had done I would stop loving him,” she says. “But he also told me that it was a simple matter, it was either them or us.”
They already know when it is Christmas
The first verses were sung by John Paul Young, and later, Boy George, Sting and Bono, among others, joined in. Forty years ago, the terrible famine that devastated Ethiopia moved the singers Bob Geldorf and Midge Ure to compose ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas?’, a melody intended to raise funds to alleviate the catastrophe. In 1985, Michael Jackson created a superband with North American stars to replicate the project and ‘We Are the World’ was born, another hit with charitable purposes. Both efforts came together in ‘Live Aid’, the celebration of two simultaneous concerts for charity in Philadelphia and London.
Good intentions did not address the root of the problems. As is now the case, Tigray was one of the worst affected regions, and the reasons were not simply climate change. At the time, the tyrannical regime of President Mengistu Haile Mariam was seeking to impose a collectivisation plan, inspired by the Soviet model, which involved large-scale resettlement and high human costs. In addition, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front was engaged in an armed conflict with the central government and, according to some sources, took control of much of the humanitarian aid and used it to purchase weapons.
That country synonymous with hardship is today one of the African powers, the gendarme in the volatile region of the Horn of Africa. Ethiopians are part of globalisation and know perfectly well when Christian Christmas is celebrated, although theirs, called Genna, is governed by the Julian calendar and takes place on 7 January. However, secessionist conflicts persist. The apparent peacemaking will of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, just one year before unleashing the offensive against the Tigrinya.
This is not the only criticism levelled at the current strongman of Ethiopia. Some economic measures also seem questionable, such as the leasing of large arable lands to firms from the Arabian Peninsula and South-East Asia. He is also accused of unbridled megalomania, which he has put into practice at a time of great internal tensions. The Grand Renaissance Dam, which is nearing completion, aims to provide the republic with energy sovereignty, but has also generated tensions with Sudan and Egypt by allowing it uncontested control over the waters of the Nile. Even more controversial is the Chaka Project, an urban development operation that plans to build a new presidential palace, three artificial lakes and other residences on 500 hectares on the outskirts of the capital, and which has led to the forced eviction of thousands of residents. Critics say the plan will require an investment of more than 9.2 billion euros.
#Tigray #mousetrap #inhabitants #Diario #Vasco