NAIROBI, Kenya – Ethiopian officers and allied militias are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the war-torn region of northern Ethiopia, according to a confidential United States government report obtained by The New York Times.
The report, written earlier this month, documents in strict terms a land of looted houses and deserted villages where tens of thousands of people are missing.
Combatants and officers from the neighboring Amhara region in Ethiopia, who entered Tigray in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are “deliberately and efficiently making Western Tigray ethnically homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation,” says the report.
“Entire villages have been severely damaged or completely wiped out,” said the report.
In a second report, published on Friday, Amnesty International said Eritrean soldiers systematically killed hundreds of Tigrayan civilians in the ancient city of Axum over a 10-day period in November, shooting at some of them in the streets.
The worsening situation in Tigray – where Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, launched a surprise military offensive in November – is preparing to be 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 engaged approach.
In a call with President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on Thursday, Biden mentioned the Tigray crisis. The two leaders discussed “the deterioration of humanitarian and human rights crises in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,” said a statement from the White House.
But so far, Biden and other American officials have been reluctant to openly criticize Abiy’s conduct in the war, while European leaders and United Nations officials, concerned by reports of widespread atrocities, have been increasingly outspoken.
On Tuesday, an EU envoy, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, told reporters that the situation in Tigray was “very out of control” after returning from a fact-finding trip to Ethiopia and to 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 and said the crisis was ” disturbing “the whole region.
Ethiopia routinely rejects critics of its Tigray campaign as puppets of its enemies in Tigray. But on Friday afternoon, in response to Amnesty International’s report, Abiy’s office said it was ready to collaborate in an international investigation into the atrocities in Tigray. The government “reiterates its commitment to making a stable and peaceful region viable,” he said in a statement.
Abiy’s office also said that Ethiopia gave “unrestricted” access to international aid groups in Tigray – in contrast to UN officials who estimate that only 20 percent of the region can be reached by aid groups because of restrictions imposed by the government.
The new United States Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, spoke to Ahmed by phone on February 4 and asked him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the State Department said.
Alex de Waal, an expert on the Horn of Africa at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said it is time for the United States to urgently focus on the crisis in Tigray, before more atrocities are committed and the humanitarian crisis jumps. towards a famine.
“What is needed is political leadership at the highest level, and that means the United States,” he said.
When the United States takes over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council in March, de Waal said, they should use that position to exert international pressure on belligerents to withdraw from a ruinous conflict.
Abiy launched the Tigray campaign on November 4 after months of tension with the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which ruled Ethiopia hard for nearly three decades until Abiy came to power in 2018.
But many of the war’s worst abuses were attributed not to the Ethiopian military or the TPLF – whose armed wing is now known as the Tigray Defense Forces – but to the irregular, undeclared forces that gathered behind Abiy’s military campaign.
A few weeks after the start of the conflict, the first reports emerged that soldiers from Eritrea – Ethiopia’s biggest rival until the two countries reached a peace agreement in 2018 – quietly entered Tigray to help Abiy’s overworked federal forces.
In western Tigray, ethnic fighters from Amhara – a region with a long-standing rivalry with Tigray – have invaded the site, helping Abiy capture the area.
Now it is Eritreans and Amhara fighters who face the most serious charges, including rape, looting and massacres that, experts say, could constitute war crimes.
The US government’s report on the situation in western Tigray, an area now largely controlled by Amhara militias, vividly documents what it describes as an apparent campaign to expel the Tigray population under the cover of war.
The report documents how in several cities Tigrayans were attacked and their homes were looted and burned. Some fled to the bush; others crossed illegally to Sudan and yet others were arrested and forcibly relocated to other parts of Tigray, the report said.
In contrast, cities with a majority population in Amharan thrived, with bustling shops, bars and restaurants, the report said.
The American report is not the first accusation of ethnic cleansing since the start of the Tigray crisis. But it highlights how American officials are quietly documenting these abuses and reporting them to superiors in Washington.
The growing spectrum of mass hunger is also driving a sense of urgency about Tigray. At least 4.5 million people in the region are in dire need of food aid, according to the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, which is administered by the federal government of Ethiopia. Ethiopian officials say some people have already died.
A Tigray regional government document dated February 2 and obtained by The Times notes that 21 people died of hunger in the Gulomokeda district of eastern Tigray. Those numbers may just be the tip of the iceberg, humanitarian officials warned.
“Today it could be one, two or three, but you know that after a month it means thousands,” Abera Tola, president of the Ethiopian Red Cross, told reporters earlier this month. “After two months, it will be tens of thousands.”
Political outrage over Tigray, however, especially among European lawmakers, is being fueled by the rising tide of reports of human rights abuses.
Amnesty International’s report published on Friday states that Eritrean soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in Axum in November, shooting civilians in the streets and carrying out extrajudicial executions of men and boys. When the shooting stopped, residents who tried to remove the bodies from the street were shot, the report says.
Amnesty said the massacre was probably a crime against humanity. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane G. Meskel rejected the report, calling it “transparently unprofessional”.
Axum, a city of ruins and ancient churches, is of great importance to followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. When Eritrean soldiers gave in and allowed the bodies to be collected, hundreds were piled up in churches, including the Church of Santa Maria de Sião, where many Ethiopians believe the ark of the covenant – said to contain the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments – is housed .
Simon Marks contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.