Abiy Ahmed and his genocide policy in Tigray - Eritrean Scholar Yosief Gebrehiwet
Posted: 08 Mar 2021, 11:43
In the past four months, genocide through the ravages of war, in general, and war-induced famine, in particular, has been emerging as the primary weapon of choice of its three architects—Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and the Amhara nationalists—to totally subjugate Tigray.
Their armies are meant to accomplish this task through total war that aims at the elimination of Tigray’s ruling party and its army, degradation of its higher institutions and its elite, destruction and theft of its public and private assets, razing and looting of its historical and religious sites, dismemberment of its domain and mass-killing of its people through war and famine.
It is no wonder that Abiy’s genocide policy resembles a well thought out battle strategy:
First, the entire population of Tigray is identified as enemy combatants. If the three armies are to use unconventional means—ethnic cleansing, massive looting, massacres, indiscriminate bombing and shelling, burning of food supplies, emptying of villages, destruction of public and private assets, etc.—then it has to be made clear to them who the enemy is in the first place.
Second, many of the ‘enemy combatants’ have to be smoked out from various areas and cornered to a place where they are rendered most vulnerable. When the armies displace millions to end up in IDP camps with little food and shelter, they are preparing them for the final assault—the famine itself.
Third, the Abiy government too has its ways of smoking out the ‘enemy’, the people of Tigray. Among other things, by drastically reducing cash flow into the region (through its banking and other policies) and fostering mass unemployment, it has been deliberately exposing the urban population to starvation.
Fourth, not only are these ‘enemy combatants’ surrounded on all sides, any possible escape route is plugged. Tigray’ neighbors—Amhara, Eritrea and Afar—have been incentivized through ‘land grants’ to seal off their borders. And the only route to safety (to Sudan) has been effectively blocked.
Fifth, any possible routes through which help could arrive are cut off. The government does that through its various deny-and-delay tactics—from bureaucratic hurdles to outright refusal—meant to prevent aid from reaching those who need it most on a timely basis.
Sixth, any communication from the ‘combatants’ for help is intercepted before reaching the rest of the world. The information blackout—media, telephone, internet, etc.—the government has imposed throughout Tigray accomplishes this task.
And, last, having thus encircled them, the ravages of war and famine are employed in wiping out as many of the ‘combatants’ as possible before the world takes full notice of what is going on – that is when genocide does its final work.
At the highest level then, we see how this genocide policy works: while fully enabling the destructive forces of war to do their work unhindered in creating a man-made famine, the Abiy government involves itself directly by denying the people of Tigray access to aid, cash, employment, information and escape routes.
And so far, this genocide policy has been a spectacular success. The interim Tigray government came out with these alarming numbers, “4.5 million people in need of emergency food, out of whom 2.2 million are IDPs.” Worse numbers have come from opposition parties in Tigray: 52 thousand civilians killed, 3 million displaced and 6.5 million (almost the entire population) in need of help. Equally grim predictions are being made, “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months”. Given these numbers, it is not surprising that Genocide Watch has put Tigray’s crisis at stage 9, ‘extermination’.
In the rest of the article, ‘famine’ and ‘war’ are not to be taken 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 that are working in coordination with one another in the making of this genocide have become well conversant in this strategy, each party playing a distinct role for a maximum effect. This is how this morbid division of labor goes:
Amhara forces and their famine policy
What makes the Amhara forces—made up of Special Forces (the police) and various militias—different from the two ally armies is that ethnic cleansing has emerged as their main weapon of choice.
It is easy to see why this is very appealing to the Amhara elite. If one is to settle the land they have occupied with Amhara peasants, one must first clear it from Tigrayan peasants— reminiscent of the Nazis’ ‘lebensraum’ policy. That is why in West Tigray, the assault by Amhara forces is more systematic: massive ethnic cleansing, accompanied by the expropriation of homes, farm plots, farm equipment, harvests, livestock, etc.
The eviction of tens of thousands of Tigrayans from West Tigray to Sudan happens to be the beginning of this ethnic cleansing. When stories of horror were picked up by the world media in Sudan, the Abiy government ordered the border to be closed. With the closure of the border, many were stranded in between, subject to starvation, killings and rape.
That doesn’t mean the eviction of Tigrayans from West Tigray has stopped since then. What did change is the destination to which they have been being evicted: interior Tigray. This is what Gebremeskel Kassa, the head of the region’s Interim Administration, had to say, “There are 2.2 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Tigray, half of them are whose houses were burnt and lost all their properties, the other half fled by foot from western Tigray and other places in Tigray to regional cities including Axum, Shire, Adigrat and Mekelle.”
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Their armies are meant to accomplish this task through total war that aims at the elimination of Tigray’s ruling party and its army, degradation of its higher institutions and its elite, destruction and theft of its public and private assets, razing and looting of its historical and religious sites, dismemberment of its domain and mass-killing of its people through war and famine.
It is no wonder that Abiy’s genocide policy resembles a well thought out battle strategy:
First, the entire population of Tigray is identified as enemy combatants. If the three armies are to use unconventional means—ethnic cleansing, massive looting, massacres, indiscriminate bombing and shelling, burning of food supplies, emptying of villages, destruction of public and private assets, etc.—then it has to be made clear to them who the enemy is in the first place.
Second, many of the ‘enemy combatants’ have to be smoked out from various areas and cornered to a place where they are rendered most vulnerable. When the armies displace millions to end up in IDP camps with little food and shelter, they are preparing them for the final assault—the famine itself.
Third, the Abiy government too has its ways of smoking out the ‘enemy’, the people of Tigray. Among other things, by drastically reducing cash flow into the region (through its banking and other policies) and fostering mass unemployment, it has been deliberately exposing the urban population to starvation.
Fourth, not only are these ‘enemy combatants’ surrounded on all sides, any possible escape route is plugged. Tigray’ neighbors—Amhara, Eritrea and Afar—have been incentivized through ‘land grants’ to seal off their borders. And the only route to safety (to Sudan) has been effectively blocked.
Fifth, any possible routes through which help could arrive are cut off. The government does that through its various deny-and-delay tactics—from bureaucratic hurdles to outright refusal—meant to prevent aid from reaching those who need it most on a timely basis.
Sixth, any communication from the ‘combatants’ for help is intercepted before reaching the rest of the world. The information blackout—media, telephone, internet, etc.—the government has imposed throughout Tigray accomplishes this task.
And, last, having thus encircled them, the ravages of war and famine are employed in wiping out as many of the ‘combatants’ as possible before the world takes full notice of what is going on – that is when genocide does its final work.
At the highest level then, we see how this genocide policy works: while fully enabling the destructive forces of war to do their work unhindered in creating a man-made famine, the Abiy government involves itself directly by denying the people of Tigray access to aid, cash, employment, information and escape routes.
And so far, this genocide policy has been a spectacular success. The interim Tigray government came out with these alarming numbers, “4.5 million people in need of emergency food, out of whom 2.2 million are IDPs.” Worse numbers have come from opposition parties in Tigray: 52 thousand civilians killed, 3 million displaced and 6.5 million (almost the entire population) in need of help. Equally grim predictions are being made, “We could have a million dead there in a couple of months”. Given these numbers, it is not surprising that Genocide Watch has put Tigray’s crisis at stage 9, ‘extermination’.
In the rest of the article, ‘famine’ and ‘war’ are not to be taken 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 that are working in coordination with one another in the making of this genocide have become well conversant in this strategy, each party playing a distinct role for a maximum effect. This is how this morbid division of labor goes:
Amhara forces and their famine policy
What makes the Amhara forces—made up of Special Forces (the police) and various militias—different from the two ally armies is that ethnic cleansing has emerged as their main weapon of choice.
It is easy to see why this is very appealing to the Amhara elite. If one is to settle the land they have occupied with Amhara peasants, one must first clear it from Tigrayan peasants— reminiscent of the Nazis’ ‘lebensraum’ policy. That is why in West Tigray, the assault by Amhara forces is more systematic: massive ethnic cleansing, accompanied by the expropriation of homes, farm plots, farm equipment, harvests, livestock, etc.
The eviction of tens of thousands of Tigrayans from West Tigray to Sudan happens to be the beginning of this ethnic cleansing. When stories of horror were picked up by the world media in Sudan, the Abiy government ordered the border to be closed. With the closure of the border, many were stranded in between, subject to starvation, killings and rape.
That doesn’t mean the eviction of Tigrayans from West Tigray has stopped since then. What did change is the destination to which they have been being evicted: interior Tigray. This is what Gebremeskel Kassa, the head of the region’s Interim Administration, had to say, “There are 2.2 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Tigray, half of them are whose houses were burnt and lost all their properties, the other half fled by foot from western Tigray and other places in Tigray to regional cities including Axum, Shire, Adigrat and Mekelle.”
Continue reading