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Writer's pictureHannah Habtu

Tigray: Genocide, Suffering and A Path Towards Healing

I was really holding off on writing about Tigray not because I don't love or feel a connection to it ( I wear a Tigray necklace and a bracelet that says "Save Tigrayan Girls" everyday), but because I felt utterly intimidated. There is so much riding on this, I'm not the most well read on Ethiopian/Eritrean/Tigrayan politics, and I think there's an overwhelming pressure to not let everyone down.

But if Tigray is going to recover and thrive again it takes all of us---those in Tigray, the diaspora and beyond to put away our selfishness, insecurities, differences and complacency and spring in to action. We owe it to our families and the rest of our brethern in Tigray.

History

But of course, context is key and its absolutely essential to understand how we got here. The Ethiopian empire, or Abbysinian empire depending on who you ask, has a history of strife with ethnic conflict and for the last few centuries that very Ethiopian empire has been dominated by the Amhara ethnic group, (The three main ones are Tigray, Amhara and Oromo along with a litany of others). And there has been a push and pull struggle for the rest of the ethnic groups to maintain some sort of autonomy and national identity as well as the ultimate prize which is power of the entire state.

In 1991 the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front ( a coalition of many ethnic groups) took government power, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) then of course emerged as a dominant one, and the government wrote a new constitution granted each state the autonomy to teach schools and run government affairs in their native language and overall granted each regional state a large degree of autonomy in other words created a federal system. As a result it expanded literacy, many schools/universities and clinics were opened and Ethiopia became one of the five fastest developing economies in the world. This was done in part because of low interest loans from the Chinese and their technical know how.

And then like many developing countries Ethiopia became another casualty of western intervention/imperialism as Western powers particularly the United States saw Chinese investment in Ethiopia and Africa in general as a threat to their own economic and political hegemony.

Meanwhile the Oro-Amhara youth group began to demonstrate against the government (though it's unclear their origins) and they helped to undermine the progress of the sitting government and as a result of this movement Abiy Ahmed rose to become Prime Minister in April 2018 interestingly at the same time that the Trump administration was in power in America.

Immediately after he came to power he begun to reach out to Eritrea in a seemingly benign, diplomatic fashion. His visit to Eritrea in July 2018 was hailed for seemingly putting the two countries on the trajectory of mending their relationship. In 2019 he was even given a Noble Peace Prize for his work in that regard. But no one knew what the terms of their agreement was at that time or what they had planned including and especially in the regional state of Tigray. But one thing was clear from the get-go, Ahmed wanted to abolish the federal system and viewed Tigray as an obstacle to his totalitarian dreams of forming a unitary state.

Start Of the Conflict

Fast forward to November of 2020 when arguably the deadliest conflict of the 21st century broke out --- Abiy Ahmed's war on Tigray. And they chose that date because it coincided with the American presidential election so they knew the eyes of the world would be fixed on the U.S and no where else. And in the year prior both Eritrea and Ethiopia with the help of some Somali troops prepared to invade Tigray, but Tigrayans would not become aware of all this until much later.

Hundreds of thousands of Amhara militia including the odious Fano, Eritrean and Ethiopian troops, a limited number of Somali troops invaded Tigray. Additionally, drones from U.A.E were used to decimate Tigrayan artillery and other weapons leaving them even more vulnerable to these sort of attacks.

The invaders begun to kill thousands of people through massacres, airstrikes, meanwhile hundreds of women were individually and gang raped and horrifyingly sexually mutilated while being told by their rapists that they were being "cleansed of their Tigrayan blood" and deliberately being exposed to HIV/AIDS by the soldiers.

Another critical piece of this story is the economic destruction, as the enemy invaders entered they immediately begun destroying many cottage industries and factories such as the medicine factory in the town of Adigrat where the locals tried to stop the looting and they killed every last one that stood in their way, and also the glass and bottle factory in Edaga Hamus where in their respective town Eritrean soldiers forced the local youths to load factory machines onto their trucks and proceeded to kill them all afterwards. Eritrean and Amhara fighters looted virtually all businesses located in Tigray, mainly in Hawzen, Tembien, Wukro, Agbe, and Abiy Addi as well as hundreds of thousands of private homes.

The overwhelming death is caused by the deadly siege maintained mainly by the Ethiopian government in order to starve and deprive medical care from the people of Tigray. All the roads to and from the Tigray region were blocked, crops were burned by all invaders, and hospitals were completely looted by those very forces.

Additionally there is the cutting off of many other resources such as banking, electricity and a complete communications blackout for two years.

The grand total is an estimated 600,000-800,000 people dead, over 120,000 women and girls raped not including those held in sexual slavery, total and complete economic, infrastructural and social destruction.


Intent to Genocide

Its so trasparent that the Ethiopian government and its allies had intended to commit genocide from the beginning. But it's first important to realize the foundation of this is anti-Tigrayan racism that fuels the politics and society of the domaniant Amhara group and the Eritreans. For example, a very powerful Amhara, A close advisor to Abiy Ahmed a Deacon named Daniel Kibret, tells his audience to kill everyone like the European settlers did too the Tasmanian aborigines; he encourages his audience to leave no trace of these people, "all of them should be exterminated". An Amhara billionare from Gojam, Worky Ayteneew, told his audience "not only to kill them and let them die, but kill them roast them like a goat and eat them." They even told Peka Hauisto, a Foreign Minister of Finland, about their plans when he was to sent to the quell the conflict.

But it can be argued that the genesis of such genocide was the outright ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans from their homeland in Tselemti, Wolkeit, Tsegede, Waldiba.

Healing Ourselves

And with the ongoing siege and incomplete restoration of services there is one question that hangs in the air...where do we go from here? Or more to the point how do we heal Tigray?

And I think the answer to that is we start with the two most basic foundational things---hope and joy. It may sound naive but we must channel all of our strength that we've preserved throughout this ordeal and choose happiness. Joy is an act of resistance and we see that in Tigrayan children singing in refugee camps to people performing musically and doing our cultural dances under Eritrean occupation. The whole point was to destroy us emotionally and physically but they will not win.

Then we strengthen our relations in the diaspora even more than we have. By building and strengthening solidarity networks based on our heritage we gain emotional support and can better come up with solutions to this tragedy. For example being a part of a Tigray youth group (Tigray Professionals Network) created friendship and belonging for me that I didn't even know was possible.

Also we continue to protest, form allies, and lobby the government and media to take our side against the smear campaign and disinformation waged against us and our cause. We donate all we can financially and now that phone lines are opening up we have to be there and talk and be part of a support system to our loved ones inside Tigray.

Economic Recovery

Economic and infrastructural recovery,however, in Tigray is a totally different battle. It will require immense investment from foreign powers (particularly western states such as the U.S). It is estimated that $1.4 billion to rebuild health facilities across the state. in March 2021 of healthcare facilities in Tigray found that around 70 percent were looted and 30 percent had been damaged. By late February, almost all factories in central and eastern Tigray were destroyed and rendered useless and it is estimated that 100 billion Ethiopian birr would be needed to rebuild them to their previous capacity which amounts to 1.86 billion in U.S dollars.

Restitution

To me those western powers that ignored the genocide for over two years and deliberately chose not to cover the crisis have an enormous debt to pay (even if they don't see it that way). We have a duty to lobby western countries and organizations to help rebuild and restore Tigray. Particularly the United States. They invested billions (rightfully) to help defend Ukraine from Russian agression, not a dime to the Tigray Defense Forces whose people lost roughly 10% of their population. We are utterly decimated and we need assistance desperately.


What we have gone through is unthinkable, especially our brothers in sisters back home and we are indebted to them for the rest of our lives for carrying this burden for us. For surviving for us. And we will heal the way the Tutsies in Rwanda healed, the Bosnians, the Jews and so on. All we have to do is lean on each other, believe, be wise and take action.



-Hannah Saba Habtu


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