Last week, I went home to visit my parents in my village in southern Tigray for the first time in seven months. I knew my mother would welcome me with a hug, like she always does, but this time there was something unusual in the look she gave me.
I thought something terrible had happened, so I asked: “How is granny? Did my granny pass away?”
Trying to smile, she replied: “Son, why have you come now?” I was shocked. This was the same woman who used to call me every day, pleading – insisting – that I should come to visit her.
Roasting coffee, she continued speaking, asking me how I was, and how things were going. But her question kept swirling in my mind. I knew immediately what she meant. Yet I had hoped to forget, just for a minute, and have a normal reunion with my mother.
War on the horizon
Between 2020 and 2022 a terrible war was waged in Tigray, a war in which I fought and in which hundreds of thousands of people died. The cause was a power struggle between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the party that has ruled Tigray for decades – and Ethiopia’s federal government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
When a peace agreement was signed between the TPLF and the federal government in November 2022, I hoped we could move forward and focus on reconstruction and rebuilding. But now tensions between Abiy and the TPLF are rising once again. Everyone is reminded of 2020, in the months before the last war broke out, and everyone is afraid that another war is looming.
Later that evening, I was playing with some kids from the village. My mother came to greet me and sat on a stone wall.
“If war erupts, they will conscript you,” she said, struggling to hide her tears. “When you were in the struggle [the previous war] I couldn’t sleep at night. I was thinking of you always, crying day and night. I don’t want this to happen again. I don’t want to see you die, like your friends died in the last war.”
“If you love me truly, listen to me carefully. We will sell our oxen and offer you money,” she continued. “Go to Addis Ababa and don’t return until the situation has changed.”
The previous war was a nightmare. Tigray was surrounded by enemies on all sides. After Abiy came to power in 2018, he had formed an alliance with Eritrea, to the north of Tigray, and with Amhara nationalist militias, to the south and west.
Like Abiy, Eritrea and the Amhara elites hated the TPLF, which had been the dominant party in Ethiopian politics since the early 1990s. In November 2020, all three forces invaded Tigray.
They waged war not only on the TPLF, but against the entire people of Tigray.
Innocent civilians were massacred and thousands of women were raped. Western Tigray was ethnically cleansed by the Amhara militias, who burned villages to the ground and forced tens of thousands of Tigrayans to leave their homeland and cross the Tekeze River into Sudan.
Five years later, those displaced people are still languishing in camps, hungry and diseased.
Like thousands of others, I joined the resistance because I felt I had no choice. I was not fighting for the TPLF: I was fighting to defend my family, my land and my people. I watched many of my comrades die during the struggle. I was willing to die myself, because I believed that we had a just cause.
That has all disappeared now, as if our sacrifices meant nothing.
Protecting their illicit wealth
We were united before, but since the peace agreement we have become divided. Our leaders have split into two bickering factions. They are dragging us towards another conflict, not in the interests of the people of Tigray, but simply to entrench their own power and privilege.
Politicians vilify each other, squabbling and fighting, but all they want is to monopolise the resources of Tigray. They want to dominate the political economy of the region, its land and its gold. Some are involved in human trafficking and other criminal activities, and want to protect their illicit wealth.
After the peace agreement, our leadership became consumed by factionalism. The peace deal stipulated that an interim regional government would be formed in Tigray, and that its composition would be determined by negotiations between the two signatories – the TPLF and the federal government.
The TPLF initially nominated its chairman, Debretsion Gebremichael, to lead the interim administration. But Abiy refused to allow this. Eventually, the TPLF nominated Getachew Reda, a much younger member of the party who was not part of its inner circle, instead. A power struggle quickly ensued between Getachew and the TPLF old guard.
Getachew said he wanted to democratise Tigray, opening space for opposition parties and civil society. In practice, this meant reducing the power – and control over resources – of the TPLF, who began to castigate Getachew as a traitor and a puppet of Abiy’s government.
In August 2024, the TPLF expelled Getachew from the party, though he continued in his role as interim president of Tigray. That is until March this year, when the TPLF – with the support of senior commanders in the Tigray army – overthrew his interim administration. Getachew fled to Addis Ababa and joined Abiy’s government as a special adviser to the prime minister.
The TPLF’s seizure of power angered Abiy. In March, many were terrified that he would restart the war to reinstate Getachew. The peace held, in the end, but since then the situation has continued to deteriorate.
Abiy was angry in part because the TPLF had defied his authority, but he was also angry because the party had begun to form a relationship with Eritrea – the country that had supported Abiy against Tigray during the previous war.
The tactical alliance between Abiy and Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s president, did not survive the end of that conflict. Abiy’s decision to sign a peace agreement with the TPLF reportedly angered Isaias, who worried that Abiy would soon turn against him.
Those fears would be confirmed in October 2023, when Abiy began to talk about Ethiopia’s need for a port on the Red Sea – raising fears that he might try to seize Assab or Massawa from Eritrea.
In response, Isaias and the TPLF have over the past year or so begun to cultivate a tactical alliance of their own, which pro-government propagandists in Tigray and Eritrea have taken to calling Tsimdo, a Tigrinya word for the yoke that ties two oxen to the same plough.
Insults and threats
Over the past few months, Ethiopia and Eritrea have been trading insults and threats. Each accuses the other of plotting war and destabilisation. Tigray’s leadership, meanwhile, has split into two camps. The TPLF has aligned itself with Eritrea, while Getachew and his supporters are backing Abiy.
I asked a member of the Tigray Solidarity Party – a new political organisation led by Getachew – what has caused these divisions in Tigray, where unity used to be so strong.
“To be honest with you, we don’t have ideological differences,” he said. “Our differences emanate from the fact that the greedy group (the TPLF) is working against the people of Tigray.”
“Simply look at what they are doing in northwestern Tigray,” he added. “Extracting gold, using hazardous chemicals which cause harm to the people they used to say they were sworn to protect; engaging in the illicit economy and weapons smuggling.”
The TPLF, he insisted, is “working with Sha’abiya (the Tigrinya nickname for Eritrea’s ruling party and its army), who committed genocide against our people. This group will continue committing such heinous crimes until it secures its group interest. We will work to dismantle the group from the political sphere of Tigray.”
I also talked with a member of the TPLF working in the party’s head office in the Tigray capital, Mekelle. I asked him what complaints the TPLF had against Getachew and his supporters?
“They are a group of traitors,” he replied. “They worked to dismantle our party that was established by the blood and sacrifices of the people of Tigray. Look at their profile, and you will understand who they truly are. The group is based in Addis Ababa and is clearly asking the federal government for military intervention.”
He was referring to a new armed group that emerged after the TPLF seized power in Mekelle in March. The group, which calls itself the Tigray Peace Forces (TPF), is composed of former fighters of the paramilitary Tigray Defence Force (TDF) – formed in the wake of the 2020 attack on Tigray, to which I had belonged – who disagreed with the decision of their commanders to support the TPLF.
They are stationed in the neighbouring region of Afar, and have sworn to remove the TPLF from power. They are also said to be receiving support from Getachew’s party, and Ethiopia’s federal government.
The pace quickens
There are terrifying signs that Tigray is sliding inevitably, unstoppably, back towards war.
Tensions soared on 1 July after an incident in Wejerat, on the border between Tigray and Afar. On that day, the TPF fighters from Afar made a move into Tigray’s borders, prompting the TDF to fire some mortars at them.
Elders from the village of Senaele begged the TPF to retreat a bit. The farmers said it was sowing season: They pleaded for peace so they could sow their crops. In the end, the TPF withdrew, and the TDF took control of the area. The other side didn’t fire back.
On 3 July, Abiy gave a speech in parliament in which he called on religious leaders to engage in dialogue to prevent another war in Tigray. “Immediately, start your work now to prevent Tigray from entering conflict,” the prime minister warned. “It will be worthless to speak after it begins.”
People in Tigray were terrified, interpreting Abiy’s words as a threat. Food prices shot up following the speech, a friend in Mekelle told me, as people rushed to stockpile pasta, flour, rice and cooking oil.
In what appeared to be a pointed response to Abiy’s speech, Haileslassie Girmay, a senior TDF commander, made some bellicose comments of his own.
“We are making preparations because we are hearing about situations that force us to prepare,” the general said on 12 July. “We will defend ourselves; we will uphold our sovereignty; and to do this we will make preparations.”
These days everything reminds me of 2020, of the days and weeks leading up to the last war: The elders and religious leaders going back and forth between Addis Ababa and Mekelle for negotiations; the tension, insecurity, and confusion; the military preparations.
The only difference now is the media. Last time, both sides spouted political propaganda, fuelling the crisis. Now, they don’t – no one wants this war.
But everywhere you go, everyone is talking about the crisis. Blaming or praising the TPLF, or the TDF, or the TPF. It’s chaos. Young people are leaving in droves, migrating via perilous routes to Saudi Arabia or Europe.
Worst of it all is the prospect of seeing Tigrayans killing other Tigrayans. The last war was terrible, but at least we were united. At least we had a cause.
“Brother on brother, sister on sister”
When I visited my village last month, I met Tekle, our neighbour, a man in his 70s. After our greetings, I asked him how the sowing season was going.
“I am half-hearted,” he said, listlessly. “I am not sowing properly. I am not preparing the land properly like in previous times. How can I sow while everyone is talking about war?”
Tekle began to speak about the previous war. “[The TPLF and army leadership] asked us to provide them with food; we gave them the food off our tables, and our children starved,” he said.
“They asked us to give them clothes, and we gave them what we had. They asked us for shoes, and we took ours off our feet and gave them to them.They asked us to give our children [to fight], and we gave them our children.”
“But what was the point of all this? Wasn’t it to get the justice of which we have been deprived?” he continued. “Now they have forgotten all the sacrifices and promises. Now [the politicians] are fighting each other.
“They were together during the conflict and fought together. We trusted them, that’s why we gave them our sons,” Tekle said. “But now they have become enemies. Why didn’t God take me from this world, so that I would not have to see this bad time? Brother on brother, sister on sister, [preparing] to kill each other.”
The words of the despairing old man torment me.
He, like the other farmers in my village, had hopes of a better life when the war ended. There is nothing more painful than to see them now, with their broken promises and shattered dreams.
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
