NAIROBI, Kenya – Ethiopian officials and allied military fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the war-torn region of northern Ethiopia, according to a confidential U.S. government report obtained by The New York Times.
The report, written earlier this month, documents a country with looted homes and abandoned villages where thousands of people are not being accounted for.
Fighters and officials from the neighboring Amhara region in Ethiopia, who entered Tigray in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are making the Western Tigray deliberately and effectively homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation, ”the report said.
“Entire villages were badly damaged or completely wiped out,” the report said.
In a second report, published on Friday, Amnesty International said that Eritrean soldiers systematically killed hundreds of Migrah civilians in the ancient city of Axum in November over a period of ten days and shot some of them in the streets.
The deteriorating situation in Tigray – where Mr. Abiy, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched a surprising military offensive in November – is becoming the first major test of the Biden government in Africa. Former President Donald J. Trump paid little attention to the continent and never visited it, but President Joseph R. Biden promised a more involved approach.
In a call with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday, Mr. Biden addressed the Tigray crisis. The two leaders discussed “the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,” the White House said in a statement.
But so far, Mr. Biden and other U.S. officials are reluctant to contact Mr. Abiy’s warfare was openly criticized, while European leaders and United Nations officials, who were concerned about reports of atrocities, were increasingly outspoken.
A European Union envoy, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, told reporters on Tuesday that the situation in Tigray was “very out of control” after returning from a trip to Ethiopia and Sudan. The bloc suspended $ 110 million in aid to Ethiopia at the start of the conflict, and last month EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned of possible war crimes in Tigray, saying the crisis was “upsetting” the entire region.
Ethiopia regularly dismisses the critics of its campaign in Tigray as enemies of its enemies in Tigray. But on Friday afternoon, in response to the Amnesty International report, Abiy’s office said it was ready to cooperate in an international investigation into atrocities in Tigray. The government ‘reiterates its commitment to making a stable and peaceful region possible’, he said in a statement.
Abiy’s office also claimed that Ethiopia had provided ‘unimpeded’ access to international aid groups in Tigray – in contrast to UN officials who estimate that only 20 per cent of the region can be reached through aid programs due to restrictions imposed by the government word.
The new US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, telephoned Mr. Ahmed spoke and asked him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the foreign ministry said.
Alex de Waal, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said it was time for the United States to focus urgently on the Tigray crisis, before further atrocities and humanitarian crisis melts. after a famine.
“What is needed is political leadership at the highest level, and that means the US,” he said.
When the United States took over the chairmanship of the United Nations Security Council in March, Mr. De Waal said they should use the position to put international pressure on the warlords to withdraw from a devastating conflict.
Mr. Abiy launched the Tigray campaign on November 4 after months of tension with the local ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades until Mr. Abiy came to power in 2018.
But many of the worst abuses of the war are not blamed on the Ethiopian army or the TPLF – whose armed wing is now known as the Tigray army – but on the irregular and black-declared forces behind Mr Military’s military campaign. .
Within weeks of the start of the conflict, the first reports came that soldiers from Eritrea – the bitter rival of Ethiopia until the two countries reached a peace agreement in 2018 – quietly moved to Tigray to kill Mr. Abiy’s too many federal powers to help.
In the western Tigray, ethnic fighters from Amhara – a region with a long rivalry with Tigray – flooded in, killing Mr. Abiy quickly helped conquer the area.
Now it is the Eritreans and Amhara fighters who are facing the worst accusations, including rape, looting and massacre which could, according to experts, constitute war crimes.
The U.S. government report on the situation in western Tigray, an area now largely controlled by Amhara militias, documents in vivid terms what it describes as an apparent campaign to force the ethnic Tigray people under the cover of war. .
The report documents how ethnic Tigrayans were attacked in various villages and that their homes were looted and burned. Some fled into the woods; others crossed into Sudan illegally and still others were captured and forcibly relocated to other parts of Tigray, the report said.
In contrast, cities with a majority Amharic population thrived, with bustling shops, pubs and restaurants, the report said.
The US report is not the first accusation of ethnic cleansing since the Tigray crisis broke out. But it does highlight how U.S. officials are quietly documenting the abuse and reporting it to the majority in Washington.
The looming spectrum of mass hunger also drives the feeling of urgency about Tigray. At least 4.5 million people in the region are in urgent need of food aid, according to the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, which is run by the federal government of Ethiopia. Ethiopian officials say some people are already dead.
A Tigray local government document, dated February 2 and obtained by The Times, notes that 21 people in the eastern Tigray district of Gulomokeda have died of starvation. Such numbers could only be the tip of the iceberg, aid officials warned.
“Today it could be one, two or three, but you know after a month it means thousands,” Abera Tola, president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Association, told reporters earlier this month. “After two months, it will be tens of thousands.”
However, the political outrage over Tigray, especially among European lawmakers, is fueled by the growing number of reports of human rights violations.
According to the Amnesty International report, published on Friday, Eritrean soldiers are conducting house-to-house investigations in Axum in November, civilians are being shot in the street and extrajudicial executions of men and boys are being carried out. When the shooting stopped, residents were shot trying to remove the bodies from the street, the report said.
Amnesty said the massacre was likely a crime against humanity. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane G. Meskel dismissed the report, calling it “transparent and unprofessional”.
Axum, a city with ancient ruins and churches, is very important to adherents of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. When the Eritrean soldiers conceded and allowed the bodies to be collected, hundreds were piled up in churches, including St. Mary’s Church of Zion, where many Ethiopians believe that the ark of the covenant – allegedly contained the tables on which the Ten was written. Commandments – are housed.
Simon Marks reported from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.