“Abiy seems to have lost control of events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet administration has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rapes. The threat of rural famine looms large. In the mid-1980s, mass starvation in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were subsequently vanquished by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s great shame, the spectre of famine now haunts Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He should hand back his Nobel peace prize and answer for his actions in Tigray.
Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s long-serving former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down this month in Tigray by the armed forces of a lesser man – Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean military, Abiy’s allies, who killed Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain murky.
As with much of the unreported, unchallenged murder and mayhem currently occurring in northern Ethiopia, murky is what Abiy prefers. When he ordered the army’s assault on the breakaway Tigray region in November, he blocked the internet, shut out aid agencies and banned journalists. It’s a conflict he claims to have won – but the emerging reality is very different. It’s a war fought in the shadows, with the outside world kept in the dark.
After humanitarian workers finally gained limited access this month, it was estimated that 4.5 million of Tigray’s 6 million people need emergency food aid. Hundreds of thousands are said to face starvation. The UN warns that Eritrean refugees in the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps are in “desperate need of supplies” and harassed by armed gangs. Some are said to have been forcibly, illegally repatriated.
Access continues to be denied to two other camps, Shimelba and Hitsats, which have been set ablaze. Many of the camps’ residents are believed to have fled marauding Eritrean and Amhara militiamen. Satellite images published by UK-based DX Open Network reportedly show damage to 400 structures at Shimelba. Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, points to “concrete indications of major violations of international law”.
There are persistent, unconfirmed reports of massacres, torture, rapes, abductions, and the looting or destruction of centuries-old manuscripts and artefacts across Tigray. Last week, EEPA, a Belgium-based NGO, described a massacre of 750 people at a cathedral in Aksum that reputedly houses the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopian troops and Amhara militia are accused of the killings at the Church of St Mary of Zion, part of a UN World Heritage site. The report has not been independently verified.
Despite Abiy’s claims that the war is over and no civilians have been harmed, sporadic fighting continues, an analyst familiar with government thinking said. Thousands of people have died, about 50,000 have fled to Sudan, and many are homeless, sheltering in caves. Intentional artillery attacks have destroyed hospitals and health centres in an echo of the Syrian war, the analyst said.
Meeting this month in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, aid workers complained Ethiopia’s government was still hindering relief efforts and demanded full access. “People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] the same in other zones,” a regional administrator, Berhane Gebretsadik, was quoted as saying. But there has been scant response from Addis Ababa.
Official Ethiopian and Eritrean denials that Eritrean forces are operating in Tigray are contradicted by eyewitness accounts. Amid the murk, it seems clear Eritrea’s dictator-president, Isaias Afwerki, has made common cause with Abiy. The two met in Addis Ababa in October, shortly before the war was launched, to discuss the “consolidation of regional cooperation”.
Afwerki is an old enemy who runs a brutally repressive regime. But he shares Abiiy’s hatred of the Tigrayan leadership that dominated the government of former prime minister Meles Zenawi during Ethiopia’s 20-year border war with Eritrea. Abiy, an Oromo from Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, made peace with Eritrea in 2018, ousted his Tigrayan rivals, and has been feuding with them ever since.
Further evidence of secret alliances comes from Somalia. The Somali Guardian reported this month that 2,500 Somali recruits were treated as “cannon fodder” after being sent to a military base in Eritrea for training, then deployed in Tigray with Eritrean forces. Dozens are reported to have been killed.
International scrutiny of Abiy’s Tigray war has been largely lacking. An exception is the EU, which has indefinitely suspended €88m in aid to Addis Ababa. “We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, looting, rapes, forceful return of refugees and possible war crimes,” Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, said.
The United Nations and European Union warnings, coupled with the shocking murder of the internationally respected Seyoum Mesfin, may now bring closer scrutiny. I met Seyoum, a co-founder in 1975 of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in Addis in 2008. He was a master diplomat. According to Alex de Waal, the Africa specialist, Seyoum was a skilled peacemaker in Rwanda and Sudan who “presided over the rehabilitation of Ethiopia’s international standing” after 1991.
Abiy now risks destroying that standing. “The circumstances of Seyoum’s killing aren’t clear. The Ethiopian government is not a reliable source of information. Eritrea – which may well have carried out the assassinations – is remaining silent. The official report that Seyoum and his colleagues ‘refused to surrender’ is opaque,” De Waal wrote.
He noted that the two other elderly Tigrayans killed alongside Seyoum, aged 71, were Abay Tsehaye, who had just had heart surgery, and Asmelash Woldeselassie, who was blind. This trio hardly posed a physical threat to heavily armed troops.
Abiy seems to have lost control of events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet administration has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rapes. The threat of rural famine looms large. In the mid-1980s, mass starvation in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were subsequently vanquished by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s great shame, the spectre of famine now haunts Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He should hand back his Nobel peace prize and answer for his actions in Tigray.
“Attacks on cultural heritage are devastating in the context of war as they speak of the destruction of the soul of a people, of things which have endured through the ancestors.”
Tigray’s Rich Heritage is ‘highly Endangered’, Experts Warn, as The Conflict Escalates Near Key Cultural Sites
Abuna Yemata Guh Church, Gheralta, Tigray
Abuna Yemata Guh Church, Gheralta, Tigray
It has been hidden from view for thousands of years, and its whereabouts never proved. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area.
The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which reputedly houses the ark – a casket of gilded wood containing stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, according to the Bible – was the scene of a recent massacre of 750 people, reports filtering out of the country say.
International experts have raised the alarm over the security of the ark and other religious and cultural artefacts as a result of escalating conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Among those voicing concern are academics from the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies at Hamburg University, who warn that Tigray’s rich cultural heritage is “highly endangered”. In an appeal, they say reports suggest “hostilities are taking place in close proximity to renowned cultural sites”.
They add: “There are reports of looting of manuscripts from Tigrayan churches and monasteries, and warnings that they will … be taken out of Ethiopia to be sold at antiquities markets in other countries.”
The conflict began in early November when Ethiopia’s Nobel peace prize-winning prime minister Abiy Ahmed sent federal forces to attack the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled the country for almost three decades until 2018. Abiy has accused the TPLF, which has its own military, of seeking to destabilise Ethiopia and holding illegitimate elections. Troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s former enemy to the north, have crossed the border to fight alongside Abiy’s forces.
Reliable reports of the fighting and its impact have been scarce due to a communications blackout and lack of humanitarian access, but the UN has warned of mass killings, the displacement of civilians and looting. More than 21,000 people have reportedly fled across the border to Sudan.
Heritage experts readily acknowledge that the humanitarian crisis must take priority over protection of the country’s artefacts and antiquities. But, said Alison Phipps, professor of languages and intercultural studies at Glasgow University, “these are sacred sites and of incalculable value to the history of Christianity and its development in Ethiopia in particular.
“Attacks on cultural heritage are devastating in the context of war as they speak of the destruction of the soul of a people, of things which have endured through the ancestors.”
Catherine D’Andrea, director of the Eastern Tigray archaeological project at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, said the region was “truly blessed with numerous and varied forms of tangible and intangible cultural patrimony”.
They include monumental architecture such as the Unesco world heritage site of Aksum, rock-hewn churches and remains of one of the earliest mosques in Africa, which are at high risk of damage, she said. “In addition, there are less visible cultural treasures, including manuscripts, paintings, oral traditions and artefacts held by churches and monasteries scattered throughout rural areas of Tigray. These tend not to be fully documented, so we can’t even begin to calculate the potential losses if destroyed or pillaged.”
Despite the absence of verifiable information, damage from the conflict to the recently reconstructed 7th-century mosque complex at Negash had been clearly documented, said D’Andrea. “It appears that the structure was shelled and images from within are suggestive of looting.”
At the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, fleeing civilians have said the aim of the attack, in which hundreds of people hiding in the church were brought out and shot, was to remove the ark to Addis Ababa, according to Martin Plaut, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
The ark is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to have been brought to Aksum by Menelik, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel, after Jerusalem was sacked in 586/587BC and Solomon’s temple destroyed. It has since been guarded by a succession of monks who are forbidden until death to leave the church grounds.
As well as the potential threat to the ark, Eritrean troops were “looting everything they can get their hands on” in the region, Plaut told the Observer. “They’ve also gone through some monasteries and churches, taking Bibles and icons back across the border. It’s absolutely appalling.”
The monastery of Debre Damo, dating from the sixth century and containing painted ceilings and walls, is also reported to have been attacked.
Alessandro Bausi of the Hiob Ludolf Centre said he was “extremely concerned that unique artefacts will be destroyed or lost”. The centre is calling on Ethiopia’s state institutions to do “everything possible to protect the cultural property of Tigray”, and for warring parties “to abstain from attacking the cultural heritage and to respect the integrity of the places, both religious and secular, where this heritage is preserved”.
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