Mothers blessed him. Fathers felt proud of him. We all believed he was a man of peace; a serious reformer; a person of integrity, with unshakeable principles and inexhaustible energy to eliminate conflicts from the face of Ethiopia and its neighbours; and with a deep commitment to regional integration. Eritreans are deeply wounded. The war presently waged over Tigray has its parallels with those fought by emperor Haile Selassie and the Derg, especially the latter that was viciously waged against Eritrea.
This war that went on for 30 years was virtually hidden from ordinary Ethiopians and the world at large until Eritreans were ingenious and strong enough to bring the international media to witness it. This was repeated in the most demonising way by the Ethiopian elite. They reiterated, propagated, believed, and lived with it, oblivious of what this meant to their own country — for, at that time, Eritrea was officially a part of Ethiopia.
The elite never looked back at themselves and asked why such a vicious war, a war where Ethiopian peasants were perishing by the tens and later hundreds of thousands, had to continue. Once more, Ethiopian leaders are waging war against their own — the people of Tigray.
As Eritreans were branded Arab agents bent on destroying Ethiopia, Tigrayans are maligned in a similar manner but more systematically. Under the guise of exposing crimes committed by the TPLF, by no less than the prime minister, hatred against Tigrayans is being cultivated by the political elite, consistently fanned and normalised. Such sanitised and institutionalised ingraining of hatred against any group can only have a calamitous end.
And in Ethiopia today, it has reached a point where Ethiopians on social media express their feelings that Tigrayans were the source of all that ails their country, and getting rid of them, even physically removing them from the face of the earth, is the right thing to do. This has the implication of preparing the people for an impending ethnic cleansing — which many average Ethiopians seem to applaud implicitly at least on social media platforms.
As a result, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed as we speak, leaving deep wounds that render reconciliation difficult, if not impossible. Human Rights Watch reported during the time of the Eritrean armed struggle for independence that the Derg was using starvation as a weapon of war. It restricted food supplies from reaching those in desperate need, exposing the entire population to hunger.
It put the population in constant fear by making sure water and fuel were scarce and under firm government control. International organisations also reported that between December and January , the Derg junta was strangulating young Eritreans with piano wires and strewing their bodies in the streets of Asmara.
They also reported that the Derg was practising systematic, brutal and cold-blooded murder with wide-spread torture, looting, raping and indiscriminate killing of civilians. Eritrea lived under a reign of terror. Tigray is now living under a similar reign of terror. Indeed, the forces of then president Mengistu Haile Mariam demolished the dwelling places of peaceful Eritrean peasants, burnt their crops, including using napalm, and slaughtered their livestock.
It was a war by starvation deliberately waged. The Ethiopian government then imposed a total blockade on Eritrea while it was destroying it and subjecting its people to hunger; the present war over Tigray reminds me of the 30 years of war in Eritrea that was virtually hidden from the Ethiopian people.
Like Tigray now, back then we were officially and formally a part of Ethiopia too. Tigray has been turned into an active war zone, literally invaded by its own government with the active support of foreign forces; all communications severed for weeks; hunger and disease left to take their own hideous courses. Warnings of widespread famine in Tigray are ringing all over. The sea being the Eritrean people that gave sustenance to the cause of freedom, and the fish the Eritrean freedom fighters.
History is repeating itself after 40 years. It is not only accounts of deliberate famine brought by its own federal government that are coming out of Tigray. Accounts of horrifying atrocities committed on ordinary Tigrayans have begun to come out: children, mothers, the old and young are shot on sight, rape is rampant and there is extensive destruction of property, including health facilities and schools. Different sources consistently indicate that Eritrean troops are acting maliciously, not only in the destruction of lives and property but also in looting, packing up war bounties and taking them to Eritrea.
This fills us with agony and helplessness as these are young people brought from all over the country, from all the towns and villages of Eritrea, snatched from their parents and communities at a very young age and given military training to kill and destroy.
They are now committing horrendous crimes. They have been indoctrinated with hatred of the TPLF since birth. They are also victims, not just perpetrators. This happened in Eritrea under the Derg and it is now happening in Tigray under Abiy. Other sources in Eritrea said that Ethiopian troops had also been seen regrouping around the central town of Hagaz, and taking their wounded to the nearby Gilas Military Hospital.
UK-based Eritrean academic Gaim Kibreab said he believed that Mr Isaias had sent troops to Tigray to pursue the "liquidation" of the TPLF, which, he added, has been the Eritrean leader's key objective since the border war. Even when an international tribunal ruled that the village belonged to Eritrea, the TPLF refused to withdraw from the occupied place for 18 years. Mr Isaias' supporters insist that Eritrean troops have not crossed into Tigray, saying they had only pursued the objective of regaining sovereign territory by taking over Badme, and its surrounding areas, without causing casualties.
Expressing a different view, Mr Paulos said: "Badme is back in Eritrean hands, but there has been no public announcement about it because that is not Isaias' main concern.
He is still pushing on to crush the TPLF. Mr Abiy says he tried to resolve differences with the TPLF peacefully, but was forced to act against it after it seized military bases in a night-time raid on 3 November, convincing him that it wanted to overthrow his government. Although Mr Isaias rallied to his aid at the time, Eritrean state media has kept its audiences in the dark about the conflict, failing to even report on the TPLF-fired missiles that landed on the outskirts of the capital Asmara in early November, causing loud explosions that were heard by residents.
In a tweet , Eritrea's information minister Yemane Meskel said it was "pointless to amplify its [the TPLF's] last-ditch, predictable, though inconsequential acts". Internet access in Eritrea is limited and the country has no independent media and no opposition parties - the fate of 11 politicians and 17 journalists detained almost 20 years ago remains unknown.
Furthermore, military conscription is compulsory while job opportunities are limited, resulting in many people - especially youths - fleeing the country. About , had been living for years in UN camps in Tigray. The UN refugee agency said it had received "an overwhelming number of credible reports" that refugees had been killed, abducted and forcibly returned to the one-party state during the current conflict.
Although it did not say who was behind the abductions, a refugee told the BBC that it was Eritrean soldiers who loaded them onto lorries in the town of Adigrat and took them across the border to Adi Quala town. Eritrea has not commented on its alleged involvement, but it has previously accused the UN agency of "smear campaigns" and of trying to depopulate the country. Mr Dawit said he did not believe that the regime would ever reform. Richard Reid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The histories of Eritrea and Ethiopia have long been closely intertwined. This is especially true of Tigray and central Eritrea. These territories occupy the central massif of the Horn of Africa. Tigrinya-speakers are the predominant ethnic group in both Tigray and in the adjacent Eritrean highlands. It was soon confronted with a range of armed insurgencies and socio-political movements. These included Tigray and Eritrea, where the resistance was most ferocious.
The Tigrayan front was at first close to the Eritrean front, which had been founded in to fight for independence from Ethiopia. Indeed, the Eritreans helped train some of the first Tigrayan recruits in , in their shared struggle against Ethiopian government forces for social revolution and the right to self-determination. But in the midst of the war against the Derg regime, the relationship quickly soured over ethnic and national identity. There were also differences over the demarcation of borders, military tactics and ideology.
Each achieved seminal victories in the late s. The Tigrayan-led front formed government in Addis Ababa while the Eritrean front liberated Eritrea which became an independent state. But this was just the start of a new phase of a deep-rooted rivalry. This continued between the governments until the recent entry of prime minister Abiy Ahmed.
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