Indicted, never convicted but capitally punished and abandoned, the saga of the Tigrai genocide

Introduction

The descent, God-fearing, and loyal people of Tigrai have been victims of Ethiopian Imperial deceits, manipulations, and control after Yohannes IV was martyred in Metema in 1889. To top it all, they were ultimately victimized by their homegrown high school and mid-college elites who took advantage of theirweakness, obedience, and loyalty to the king or warlords. Worse than the Imperial manipulators, they made Tegaru pledge unwavering loyalty to a party, ውድብ, party leadership መሪሕውድብና and its dogma መሥመርና.

They were baptized and indoctrinated in Marxism and knew very well how to exploit societal beliefs and indoctrination. They built on an inherent orthodoxy of feudalism: “We wake upon sunrise and bless our king;” similarly, “we focus on the goal መሥመርና and follow our leaders መሪሕ ውድብና.” The dogma became the gospel, and the party leadership became infallible to its eventual demise because it became intoxicated and delusional to the extent of simplifying the most complex of problems and political dilemmas. This unholy, tight party and people bonding has led the leadership to catastrophic failure and the people to an indescribable colossal sacrifice.

Western geopolitics and faith exploitation complement each other

De Ja Vue; the calamity of 1985 plus the most atrocious crimes against humanity, including genocide. In 1985, the Military Junta, led by Colonel Mengistu Hailemariam, covered up four years of drought, culminating in the most devastating draught Northern Ethiopia had ever experienced. He also diverted humanitarian aid to feed his soldiers and used trucks provided by the US to transport troops to the northern front, i.e., Tigrai and Eritrea. Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown partly because his ministers attempted to cover up the famine of 1972 that starved 200,000 people to death, mostly in the province of Wello—during the 1985 famine that mainly hit Tigrai and north-eastern Gondar and northern Wello, the international community led by the USA poured out sympathy and aid with no strings attached. Senator Ted Kennedy and his family spent Christmas with the famine victims of Tigrai, and President Regan redirected 300,000 tons of wheat to be delivered to Ethiopia, which was under sanctions for nationalizing US properties. Bob Geldof championed the famine in the UK, which led to the international assembly of celebrity singers and artists in the United States of America to produce the memorable “We Are the Children” concert.

The 2020 catastrophe had a much more sinister and complex background. It consisted of ethnophobia, faith-based, andhegemonic conspiracy to exterminate and erase the existence of Tigrai, not just the people but also their history and culture. The calamity was prophesied by scholars and politicians but underestimated by Tigrai political leaders and members of the Tigrai Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF).

Ethnophobia

The Amhara supremacist elite detested the defeat of Dergue by TPLF-led rebellion because it feared that that was the beginning of the end of the Menelik II doctrine of Ethiopia ruled under one flag (Green, Yellow, Red, an upside-down Yohannes IV flag, painted on the wall of Axum Mariam-Tsion), one language(Amharic) and one religion (the Ethiopian Tewahido Orthodox Church). Self-prophesy was fulfilled; Meles Zenawi redistricted Ethiopia and declared Ethnic Federalism. Hatred of Tegaru that began with the overthrow of Dergue culminated in right-out Tegaruphobia in mid-2018. The campaign was well funded and coordinated; it was a Washington, DC-centered successful movement when the Amhara Diaspora stuck a bull’s eye on every Tegrawai and Tigrawaiti back. It was fuelled by ESAT TV, which every Amhara in Ethiopia religiously watched; mission accomplished, Tegaru became the pariah for Ethiopians to take shots at.

Hegemonic conspiracy

The actors were the three musketeers, leaders of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, accompanied by the wealthy Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the most influential United States of America as supporting actors. And not surprisingly, not to miss the party, China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey also joined the show. A simplistic but extraordinarily ambitious and complex goal was to eliminate anything obstructing the Horn’s liberalization. The end will justify the means. The Prosperity Gospel of the US firmly pushed the new alliance between Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea.

The Trump Administration facilitated and coordinated the establishment of the Abraham Accord. To abandon the annexation of the West Bank, Arabs, and Muslim countries signed business partnerships with Israel. Concurrently, Saudi and UAE felt so insecure about the southern flank of the Arab Peninsula and conspired together with the US to expand their economic and defense influence to the Horn of Africa.  They then win a mega-lottery: Abiy Ahmed, a newly appointed interim Prime Minister, seeks an alliance with the Arab puppet who had been put to sleep for twenty years under UN and US sanction, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea.

Faith-based Conspiracy

After the death of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia was open to political and geopolitical exploitation as never before in its history. The few existing nationalist leaders were never of the caliber of prior leaders and never followed in their footsteps. Meles, who had an iron grip on the affairs of Ethiopia, never prepared his successor. Like every power monger, he believed he would live and rule forever. He had raised Hailemariam Desalegn ethnically outside the three major contestants to vice premiership to prevent competition. His party, the TPLF, was in disarray; members earnestly pursued personal gains. The intelligence, led primarily by Tegaru, would not, but most likely could not, smell the multi-pronged conspiracy that would forever change Ethiopia and spelled existential threat to Tegaru.

The Evangelical Christians led by the Prosperity Gospel, which raped African societies across the continent, found Ethiopia fertile ground with no vigilance or protection. The Tewahido Church was even more vulnerable. Thus, a Bahr Dar hatched a conspiracy with the unholy alliance of Aba Dulla, Demeke Mekonnen, and the Pentecostalists; Hailemariam Desalegn, Abiy Ahmed Ali sprang a surprise leader of the century. Abiy Ahmed Ali, a con artist who did not even complete high school but plagiarized his way to a Ph.D., rose to become an interim prime minister of Ethiopia. The entire nation and the Diaspora received him as a messiah who descended to lead Ethiopia to peace, democracy, and prosperity. Interestingly, the people of Tigrai were no different in their enthusiasm in welcoming him as their new leader.

Abiy Ahmed and Hailemariam Desalegn did not hide that he was the Divine-elect leader destined to rule Ethiopia for at least thirty years. The Norway Prosperity Gospel awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize to elevate his anointment. TPLF was utterly humiliated during the election of Abiy Ahmed. Because of their shallow and arrogant presumptions, they believed that SNNPR would vote with them, resulting in a stalemate. The assumption backfired; Hailemariam had scuttled that assumption by drawing enough Southern votes to assure Abiy’s election.

The Prosperity Gospel became so comfortable that it divided the Tewahido Church. It incited and motivated the formation of the Oromo Synod, which has since been dissolved but shook the foundation of the Church and can never return to baseline. They used the Amhara elites and the Diaspora to weaken the one resistance that would have mattered the most, Tigrai. They benefitted beyond their dreams because of yet another dimension to the conspiracy to undo Ethiopia; Tigrai and Amhara got into a bloody conflict, which, if ever, will take a long time to repair. Because of the conflict, the Prosperity Gospel gained another unanticipated victory—the Tewahido Church in Tigrai split and appointed its own Synod. The history of the Church is changed forever; Tigrai now has the foundation of the Tewahido Church in Ethiopia, a blow to the Amhara supremacists who would rather fight forever than accept such a defeat.

The Genocidal War​

Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki had whipped the Ethiopian frenzy against Tegaru, especially that of the Amharas. They baited Debretsion of TPLF to engage in escalating rhetoric,which enhanced the region’s isolation internally and internationally. The TPLF leadership was either oblivious or dismissed the campaign of former US ambassadors to Ethiopia, Donald Yamamoto and Tibor Nagy, who were angry at Meles Zenawi for outsmarting them at every turn of geopolitics.

The Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki military objective was to exterminate Tegaru, demolish any form of production and development, and erase the culture and history of Tigrai. The war formation consisted of the coalition of Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), the Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF), the Somalia Defense Forces (SDF), and the Amhara Special Forces (ASF) and Afar Special Forces against former TPLF fighters. It turned out that Debretsion was so concerned about the perception of war mongrelism that he resisted Tegaru retired generals who advised him to prepare for existential war because Isaias’ forces were coming to revenge the defeat of 1998 and 2000 plus the 20 years of isolation, some of it under UN sanction.

It was 296,000 coalition forces against 9,000 Tigrai fighters. The region was enveloped in all directions on the ground and fixed-wing aircraft and drones on the air. The defeat and retreat of the Tigrai fighters was immediate. Isaias and Abiy exacted the most calculated damage on the region: region wide destruction and the assassination of Tigrai’s top leaders, Seyoum Mesfin, Abay Tsehaye, and Asmelash Woldeselassie. TPLF leaders left Mekele and hid in Tembien, 80km southwest of the capital.

It was devastation on a scale and atrocity crimes never seen before. They destroyed whatever the forces could not loot and carry away to their respective nations and regions. The sexual violence shocked the world and left Tegaru humiliated and outraged. The insertion of dirt and rusted nails into the vagina of raped victims so that they would not bear the next generation of Tegaru documents intent to commit genocide. The act was universally condemned.

The Resistance and Birth of Tigrai Defense Force (TDF)

As everywhere in the world of have-nots, particularly Africa, neither the UN nor the international community does anything to prevent and stop genocide. They will either create narratives of convenience or legitimize atrocity crimes as internal matters justified under the sovereignty of a nation. That was Abiy Ahmed’s pretext three weeks after he opened land and air war on Tigrai. It was to enforce the law. The global attitude of blurring the truth to avoid action that would save lives is in direct contradiction with the preamble of the United Nations, which was authored with the Holocaust as its basis. Small and poor nations are thus on their own to survive ethnic extermination or bear an everlasting scar and domination.

Thus, not surprisingly, no country moved to stop the carnage, and only a few dared to speak the truth and condemn the humanitarian violations in Tigrai. The Secretary of State of the US started with an accusation of ethnic cleansing on his first trip to the EU as a secretary. The term rapidly disappeared from his statements and was never uttered by anyone in the Biden administration. The US government adopted the usual public pacifier by appointing special envoys to deal with the conflict, which was a sign of deferring decisions in the absence of policy.

In the meantime, ENDF, EDF, and the ASF plundered Tigrai’s assets and institutions. They were killed with impunity, especially the youth who chose to die fighting and defending their mothers and sisters rather than be passive targets of the invaders. The Tigrai generals who had told the youth to return to school found it difficult to refuse the desperate request. Moreover, the youth were determined to even fight the well-armed forces with sticks and rocks. The youth could no longer be turned back. A short training was provided mainly to save themselves as much as possible. The number rapidly swelled, and the fighters reached over two hundred thousand.

The militia that had not joined the resistance up to this point also rose to fight an existential war. Multisite successful confrontations by Tigrai guerilla fighters infuriated the ENDF and EDF field officers; they decided to deal with the resistance once and for all in Tembien. It was a fierce battle where 75% of ENDF and 45% of EDF were degraded and never recovered. The EDF retreated to its base; shockingly, the ENDF continued running away from the battlefront of Tembien until it was way in the Amhara region. Abiy called this a mercy retreat so that the farmers of Tigrai would not miss the planting season; Isais was outraged that the ENDF abandoned Mekele.

TDF, which armed itself fully by capturing enemy weapons, became a force to reckon with. It is the people’s army of volunteers, organized and trained but never paid. The word defense was deliberately misused in Pretoria to disarm the militia. As envisioned by Abiy and Isaias, it became the one factor that would stop their deal with the Arabs to neocolonize northern Ethiopia.

Humanitarian Truce

Tigrai is at war with the Federal government. Nonetheless, all humanitarian aid could only be routed through the government because of sovereignty. Abiy Ahmed declared a humanitarian truce, i.e., he would allow aid to reach Tigrai if TDF ceased hostilities. According to international law, during the war, belligerents are to open humanitarian aid corridors and assure the safety of aid workers. Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, repeated the term verbatim instead of reminding the belligerents of the UN universal human rights. He was complicit in Abiy’s intended starvation of Tegaru to submission. This was the beginning of the escalation of the Tigrai siege and genocide by starvation, which was ignored and resisted by the Biden administration as a US policy to benefit Saudi and UAE hegemony.

TDF astonished those who followed the war. It had become invincible by defeating any offensive against Tigrai. Unfortunately, the military strategy was incoherent and unsustainable to withstand a protracted 3600 offensive. TDF conquered Amhara territories it could not hold and marched towards Addis Ababa when it did not intend to rule Ethiopia again. General Tsadkan, in the middle of a heated war, started talks with the US East Africa envoy, Jeffery Feltman, who, upon learning that TDF had no interest in governing Addis Ababa, ordered an immediate retreat or else face a full military assault.

The retreat was the beginning of the end of the potential of TDF. Tigrai lost a large number of its youth, and many were disabled. The leaders of Tigrai soon realized that they could no longer defend the people, let alone win the war. With that sobering thought, they accepted a truce and surrendered to the US, and AU forced a one-sided, unimplementable agreement in Pretoria. TPLF surrendered to Ethiopia-scripted unearned victory. The US Department of State’s version of reasonableness to forge some equity in the deal was torn by Obasanjo and thrown away; the staff was admonished as attempting to sabotage the agreement.

The unimplementable agreement silenced the guns but, as anticipated, worsened the situation for the people of Tigrai: the occupation of their territory by Eritrean and Amhara forces continued, never mind the enforcement of the 1995 territorial constitutional sovereignty. Atrocity, crimes, and chaos continuedwith increasing starvation. Internally displaced people could not return to their homes. Law and order were palpably felt; there was anarchy and no security. The obliged organization, AU, never monitored the situation and finally washed its hands of the agreement and abandoned Tigrai.

The Siege Tightens

Starvation-related deaths rose. Tegaru in the Diaspora marched, and international media, members of Congress, members of the UK parliament, and EU leaders condemned the deliberate starving of the people of Tigrai. Then, the unimaginable happens. The Administrator of USAID paused aid to Tigrai because of the diversion of aid related to extensive corruption throughout Ethiopia, including Tigrai. Tigrai–destined humanitarian aid was sold across Ethiopia and Nairobi, Kenya.

The Administrator of USAID, Samantha Power, did not heed calls from NGOs, experts who testified in Congress about similar diversions in 1985, the international community, and congressional leaders. State Department staff chose to debate semantics that this was a pause and not a suspension as if politically correct words were going to save children from dying of starvation and lack of life-saving medication such as antibiotics.

We were told that “the corruption was so deep and extensive” that she had no alternative but to suspend the aid regardless of how many Tegaru died as a result. Undoubtedly, the corruption was massive, involving the Federal and Regional Governments, local relief agencies, businesses, TDF, ENDF, and WFP staff in Addis Ababa. The suspension of aid to Tigrai, where the most vulnerable people were, was immediate, effective April of 2023; the suspension of assistance to the rest of Ethiopia was carried out in June 2023.

The crime of the local relief agency was beyond theft of stored aid; it also made the aid recipients give back 30% of what they received to support their government. In some corners, this has been interpreted to include the starving people as part of a well-orchestrated corruption. The USAID chose a reflection of self-righteousness over the lives of children and mothers. It was the prosecutor who indicted the people of Tigrai, the jurors who convicted them, and the judge who condemned them to death. It then dared to announce that it had reorganized the corrupt aid distribution system and had the monitors in place.

Not a single WFP manager or staff was ever charged or held accountable. The most powerful aid organization, the USAID, was incapable of multitasking to continue life-saving interventions while reorganizing the management system leaves one suspicious of what else. The verdict to suspend the aid when experts were warning that the discontinuation of aid would result in thousands of Tigrai children dying must lead to outrage and call for justice and accountability. A very conservative estimate of death during the five months of suspension is a total of 16,384 dead, 9,011 of them children.

Seven thousand (7,000) metric tons of wheat and 215,000 liters of oil were diverted. In Tigrai, eight hundred (800) kg of grainand 215,000 liters were stolen from the storage. Most of the aid was stolen by the federal and Eritrean governments. It should be noted the Pretoria Agreement was never fully implemented in Tigrai; chaos and disorder continued, and the Amhara Special Forces and Eritrean Forces acted with impunity to kill, harass, and loot aid storages. The major criminals were the Eritrean Forces and the Federal Government, but conveniently, USAID elected to enforce capital punishment on the Tigrai people.

Using generous assumptions to allow USAID the maximum benefit of the doubt, all the diversions added up would be, at most, $3,925,481, which leads one to conclude that to USAID, a child and a mother are only worth $239.59 each. Perhaps that is why the State Department never flinched when the international community called and warned, including the US Senate and Congress, of persistent and increased atrocities and death in Tigrai. As during Mengistu Hailemariam’s dictate, some argued during the 1985 famine, “Why save them with aid, to only kill them later with bullets?”. Only the Administrator and her staff can answer that question.

We can only draw comparisons to administrators of the past in a similar situation; their concern for lives and the current Biden Administration not only the disregard and dismissal of genocides but the intentional interventions to worsen the situation. In 1985, the Republicans and President Regan accepted the argument that stopping aid because of the diversion was to deny northern Ethiopia, particularly Tigrai, the 15% that was trickling down to the victims. They took a stern measure to warn the junta that they would stop all aid if the victims were not receiving more than 55% of the aid donated for their welfare. The junta complied. The US and EU doubled their cross-border aid to Tigrai through the Christian Consortium in Europe. They also assisted in the repatriation of the refugees from the camps in East Sudan. They saved lives and restored the farmers and peasants of Tigrai to scratch their way back out.

Statesmen and the institutions they lead are usually guided by universal values of ‘do no harm’ and the supremacy of life. The US morale campus has been deranged and lacks proper polarity. It can no longer be valued or distinguished from ordinary greedy street transactionalists. It reacts and acts impulsively and resists corrective retractions. It has surrendered its leadership and morale authority by cow-towing to despised dictators who defy democratic principles as they kill with impunity. Atrocity crimes, including genocide, have become acceptable to the Administration.

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