Continue: https://m.bdnews24.com/en/detail/africa/1913393How local guerrilla fighters routed Ethiopia’s powerful army
>> Declan Walsh, The New York Times
Published: 2021-07-12 12:02:14 BdST
The Tigrayan fighters whooped, whistled and pointed excitedly to a puff of smoke in the sky where an Ethiopian military cargo plane trundling over the village minutes earlier had been struck by a missile.
Smoke turned to flames as the stricken aircraft broke in two and hurtled toward the ground. Later, in a stony field strewn with smoking wreckage, villagers picked through twisted metal and body parts. For the Tigrayan fighters, it was a sign.
“Soon we’re going to win,” said Azeb Desalgne, a 20-year-old with an AK-47 over her shoulder.
The downing of the plane June 22 offered bracing evidence that the conflict in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia was about to take a seismic turn. A Tigrayan guerrilla army had been fighting to drive out the Ethiopian military for eight months in a civil war marked by atrocities and starvation. Now the fight seemed to be turning in their favour.
The war erupted in November, when a simmering feud between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Tigrayan leaders, members of a small ethnic minority who had dominated Ethiopia for much of the three previous decades, exploded into violence.
Since then, the fighting has been largely hidden from view, obscured by communications blackouts and overshadowed by international outrage over an escalating humanitarian crisis. But during a pivotal week, I went behind the front lines with a photographer, Finbarr O’Reilly, and witnessed a cascade of Tigrayan victories that culminated in their retaking the region’s capital and altered the course of the war.
We saw how a scrappy Tigrayan force overcame one of the largest armies in Africa through force of arms and by exploiting a wave of popular rage. Going into the war, Tigrayans were themselves divided, with many distrustful of a governing Tigrayan party seen as tired, authoritarian and corrupt.
But the catalogue of horrors that has defined the war — massacres, ethnic cleansing and extensive sexual violence — united Tigrayans against Abiy’s government, drawing highly motivated young recruits to a cause that now enjoys widespread support.
“It’s like a flood,” said Hailemariam Berhane, a commander, as several thousand young men and women, many in jeans and sneakers, marched past en route to a camp for new recruits. “Everyone’s coming here.”..
How local guerrilla fighters routed Ethiopia’s powerful army
Re: How local guerrilla fighters routed Ethiopia’s powerful army
Terrorist agame Aba Awash,
I heard when Mengistu Hailemariam withdrew his troops from Tigray, and deployed them to Eritrea in preparation for the 1982 military campaign dubbed "Red Star," you low IQ agame confused the withdrawal for a military victory and celebrated prematurely, and as a result, over one million of your Tigray people starved to death.
How many more million agames are you willing to kill by starvation this time?
I heard when Mengistu Hailemariam withdrew his troops from Tigray, and deployed them to Eritrea in preparation for the 1982 military campaign dubbed "Red Star," you low IQ agame confused the withdrawal for a military victory and celebrated prematurely, and as a result, over one million of your Tigray people starved to death.
How many more million agames are you willing to kill by starvation this time?
Re: How local guerrilla fighters routed Ethiopia’s powerful army
The descent:
From National Govt to Regional Govt to now, merely, a guerilla group?
Qiqiqi
From National Govt to Regional Govt to now, merely, a guerilla group?
Qiqiqi
Re: How local guerrilla fighters routed Ethiopia’s powerful army
... Issu's slaves, Farmaajo’s, Amhara & other militia, UAE's bin fagot.
Keep reading: https://m.bdnews24.com/en/detail/africa/1913393...Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and has staked his prestige on the Tigray campaign, has downplayed his losses. In a self-assured address to parliament on Tuesday of a kind that once dazzled admiring Westerners, Abiy insisted that his military’s retreat from Tigray was planned — the latest phase of a fight the government was on course to win.
Seen from the ground, though, Tigray has been slipping through his fingers.
In the past three weeks, Tigrayan fighters have captured a wide swath of territory; retaken the regional capital, Mekelle; and imprisoned at least 6,600 Ethiopian soldiers — and claimed to have killed about three times as many.
In recent days, Tigrayan leaders have expanded the offensive to new parts of the region, vowing to stop only when all outside forces have been expelled from their land: Ethiopians, allied troops from the neighbouring country of Eritrea and ethnic militias from the next-door Amhara region of Ethiopia.
“If we have to go to hell and back, we’ll do it,” said Getachew Reda, a senior Tigrayan leader.
Press officers for Abiy and the Ethiopian military did not respond to questions for this article.
We flew into Mekelle on June 22, a day after national elections in Ethiopia that had been heralded as a major step toward the country’s transition to democracy.
In Tigray, though, there was no voting, and the Ethiopian military had just launched a sweeping offensive intended to crush for good the Tigrayan resistance, now known as the Tigray Defense Forces, commanders on both sides said.
An Ethiopian airstrike had struck a crowded village market that day, killing dozens. We watched as the first casualties arrived at Mekelle’s largest hospital.
Days later, three aid workers from Doctors Without Borders were brutally murdered by unknown assailants.
In the countryside, the war was moving at a furious pace. Ethiopian military positions fell like dominoes. Hours after the Tigrayans shot down the military cargo plane, we reached a camp holding several thousand newly captured Ethiopian soldiers, about 30 miles south of Mekelle...