The Architecture of Death in Tigray - Eritrean Scholar Yosief Ghebrehiwet (Awash Post)
Posted: 14 Feb 2021, 10:07
On November 4, 2020, three disjointed partners in the Horn of Africa declared total war against Tigray, a small region of 6 million people in northern Ethiopia. At a national level, the Ethiopian government, run by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, deployed most of its federal troops and Special Forces enlisted from other regions (kilil). At a sub-national level, the Amhara region deployed tens of thousands of Special Forces and militias. At an international level, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki deployed the majority of that nation’s bloated army. Accompanied with heavy armaments, hundreds of tanks and scores of fighter jets, and allegedly UAE drones, the tripartite troops set out to vanquish a tiny region in the shortest time possible—all under the deceptive mission of enforcing ‘law and order.’
When a nation is convinced that it has to kill part of itself through whatever means and alliances to continue existing as a state, its very existence will be put to further test. Abiy has repeatedly declared that “ኢትዮጵያ አትፈርስም or Ethiopia will continue” at all cost, even if millions have to die. Similarly, the Amhara nationalists’ favorite slogan has been “the continuation of the nation” (ager mesqetel), which puts the nation above and over the people. The oxymoronic goal of ensuring the nation’s continuity at all costs is a sign of Ethiopia’s existential crisis. At worst, it would be a nation disintegrating for lack of a cause, unable to answer what holds it together other than the necessity to continue as a nation-state.
The notion of nationhood in the Horn region has always been suspect, but Tigray’s war has laid bare the fault lines within which old and new nationalities are claimed; where borderlines between nations are rendered fluid and ignored, and new and rigid ones are drawn within the country itself. Alliances are made within and across borderlines, even across the sea, to subjugate those on the way of a multiple redrawing, both physical and mental, representing various geopolitical interests; ranging from sub-national to regional. Masses of people are then made to move with such drawings, as imaginary lines are made to move back and forth, with all the brutalities needed to accomplish such tasks, to satisfy the elite in Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, and Asmara. Tigray has become the focal point wherein their converging and diverging goals meet.
But even as these overwhelming forces conducted their blitzkrieg, reaching Mekelle, the capital of Tigray Regional State, within a short time, nobody expected what the architects of death, who had planned this for a long time, had in mind: a total war against the people of Tigray, with heightened risk of genocide and mass atrocities. Genocide Watch has already updated Tigray’s case into stage 9, which is ‘extermination.’ Nothing else follows after that except ‘denial’ (which is stage 10), something that ultra-nationalists in Ethiopia are already rehearsing in morbid anticipation. A man-made famine is being deliberately induced and facilitated with hunger as a weapon of war to force the Tigray people into submission. The Famine Early Warning System has put it at Phase 4 (emergency), after which comes Phase 5—the famine itself.
So far, the world is letting this happen, even as it watches total war waged against Tigray, with all the warning signs of genocide in the making across the region. Even the interim Tigray government, propped up by the invading forces, came out with these grim numbers, “4.5 million people in need of emergency food, out of whom 2.2 million are IDPs.” Since then, the number of displaced has increased to 2.5 million. An administrator added that “hundreds of thousands might starve to death.” The Ethiopian Red Cross has warned that 80 percent of Tigray is cut-off from humanitarian assistance. The limited international reporting from Tigray offers grim predictions: “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months.” Opposition parties in Tigray contend that, so far, 52,000 civilians have been killed, 3 million displaced, and 6.5 million (almost the entire population of Tigray) is in need of humanitarian assistance. They estimate the loss of 4.8 million livestock.
The regime in Addis Ababa is determined to see this devastating campaign run its full course, unhindered by any humanitarian intervention.
The war has six targets, with the destruction, dismemberment, and subjugation of Tigray as its final goal:
1. the wiping out of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), its leadership, and its army;
2. the degradation of Tigray’s elite, with its higher learning institutions and schools, looted or destroyed, and many of their attendants forced to flee the towns and cities.
3. the total destruction of Tigray’s developmental and infrastructural projects: hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, factories, businesses, farms, banks, hotels, markets, private and public buildings, etc.;
4. the destruction of Tigray’s historical and cultural heritage, with many such sites, vandalized and destroyed and their artifacts looted;
5. the dismembering of its territory, with about one third given to Amhara and a large section along the border to Eritrea, beyond what it has ever claimed before;
6. the making of atrocity crimes by inducing famine and hunger through the ravages of the war and then letting it run its course unhindered.
In this article, I will focus on the last one. Where the connection is intimate, as in-between ‘famine’ and ‘war,’ the words are not used as distinct categories that hold independent of one another, since the former is also used as a war strategy to subdue Tigray and the latter as a famine strategy to induce mass starvation. The three parties overseeing the war on Tigray—Isaias, Abiy, and the Amhara nationalists— are not only the architects of the total war but also of the ethnic-cleansing, each party playing a distinct role.
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When a nation is convinced that it has to kill part of itself through whatever means and alliances to continue existing as a state, its very existence will be put to further test. Abiy has repeatedly declared that “ኢትዮጵያ አትፈርስም or Ethiopia will continue” at all cost, even if millions have to die. Similarly, the Amhara nationalists’ favorite slogan has been “the continuation of the nation” (ager mesqetel), which puts the nation above and over the people. The oxymoronic goal of ensuring the nation’s continuity at all costs is a sign of Ethiopia’s existential crisis. At worst, it would be a nation disintegrating for lack of a cause, unable to answer what holds it together other than the necessity to continue as a nation-state.
The notion of nationhood in the Horn region has always been suspect, but Tigray’s war has laid bare the fault lines within which old and new nationalities are claimed; where borderlines between nations are rendered fluid and ignored, and new and rigid ones are drawn within the country itself. Alliances are made within and across borderlines, even across the sea, to subjugate those on the way of a multiple redrawing, both physical and mental, representing various geopolitical interests; ranging from sub-national to regional. Masses of people are then made to move with such drawings, as imaginary lines are made to move back and forth, with all the brutalities needed to accomplish such tasks, to satisfy the elite in Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, and Asmara. Tigray has become the focal point wherein their converging and diverging goals meet.
But even as these overwhelming forces conducted their blitzkrieg, reaching Mekelle, the capital of Tigray Regional State, within a short time, nobody expected what the architects of death, who had planned this for a long time, had in mind: a total war against the people of Tigray, with heightened risk of genocide and mass atrocities. Genocide Watch has already updated Tigray’s case into stage 9, which is ‘extermination.’ Nothing else follows after that except ‘denial’ (which is stage 10), something that ultra-nationalists in Ethiopia are already rehearsing in morbid anticipation. A man-made famine is being deliberately induced and facilitated with hunger as a weapon of war to force the Tigray people into submission. The Famine Early Warning System has put it at Phase 4 (emergency), after which comes Phase 5—the famine itself.
So far, the world is letting this happen, even as it watches total war waged against Tigray, with all the warning signs of genocide in the making across the region. Even the interim Tigray government, propped up by the invading forces, came out with these grim numbers, “4.5 million people in need of emergency food, out of whom 2.2 million are IDPs.” Since then, the number of displaced has increased to 2.5 million. An administrator added that “hundreds of thousands might starve to death.” The Ethiopian Red Cross has warned that 80 percent of Tigray is cut-off from humanitarian assistance. The limited international reporting from Tigray offers grim predictions: “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months.” Opposition parties in Tigray contend that, so far, 52,000 civilians have been killed, 3 million displaced, and 6.5 million (almost the entire population of Tigray) is in need of humanitarian assistance. They estimate the loss of 4.8 million livestock.
The regime in Addis Ababa is determined to see this devastating campaign run its full course, unhindered by any humanitarian intervention.
The war has six targets, with the destruction, dismemberment, and subjugation of Tigray as its final goal:
1. the wiping out of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), its leadership, and its army;
2. the degradation of Tigray’s elite, with its higher learning institutions and schools, looted or destroyed, and many of their attendants forced to flee the towns and cities.
3. the total destruction of Tigray’s developmental and infrastructural projects: hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, factories, businesses, farms, banks, hotels, markets, private and public buildings, etc.;
4. the destruction of Tigray’s historical and cultural heritage, with many such sites, vandalized and destroyed and their artifacts looted;
5. the dismembering of its territory, with about one third given to Amhara and a large section along the border to Eritrea, beyond what it has ever claimed before;
6. the making of atrocity crimes by inducing famine and hunger through the ravages of the war and then letting it run its course unhindered.
In this article, I will focus on the last one. Where the connection is intimate, as in-between ‘famine’ and ‘war,’ the words are not used as distinct categories that hold independent of one another, since the former is also used as a war strategy to subdue Tigray and the latter as a famine strategy to induce mass starvation. The three parties overseeing the war on Tigray—Isaias, Abiy, and the Amhara nationalists— are not only the architects of the total war but also of the ethnic-cleansing, each party playing a distinct role.
Continue reading
The likes of Deqi torserawit such as Roha, Tarik and the ape (Ape Abraham) fall into that category. 