The Daily - The War in Tigray

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence.Just a few years ago, Ethiopia’s leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, the nation is in the grips of a civil war, with widespread reports of massacres and human rights abuses, and a looming famine that could strike millions in the northern region of Tigray. How did Ethiopia get here?Guest: Declan Walsh, the chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Thousands of Ethiopians have fled the country and given accounts of a devastating and complex conflict. A U.S. report found that officials are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in the northern region of Tigray.United Nations agencies have said the crisis in the Tigray region had plunged it into famine. It’s  a starvation calamity bigger at the moment than anywhere else in the world.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, how the leader of Ethiopia went from winning the Nobel Peace Prize to undertaking a military campaign that over the past few months has killed thousands, displaced millions, and led to claims of ethnic cleansing. Sabrina Tavernisi spoke with our colleague, Chief Africa Correspondent Declan Walsh. It's Wednesday, June 16th.

Declan, what's happening right now in Ethiopia? So Ethiopia is just about to hold a major election. Now, normally this would be a cause for celebration. Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa. Just a couple of years ago, it was seen as this great democratic hope for the continent. And instead, Ethiopia is in this terrible state. There is a civil war raging in the north of the country. There's been widespread reports of massacres and other human rights abuses. There's a looming famine potentially involving millions of people. And we're at this point where this nation that just a couple of years ago was seen as an anchor for the region of the Horn of Africa, but also a hope for the continent on the whole, is now staggering through this conflict. And some people say even tumbling to a place where

the country itself could be on the point of unraveling. And I think that really just gets to the broader question of, why didn't we see this coming? So Declan, what's the answer to that question? Well, I think to find the answer, we've got to look back in the history. Ethiopia is this country that was never colonized. And through the 20th century, this country was ruled by an emperor until the 1970s. And then for a period, it is ruled by this brutal Marxist dictatorship that really sort of ravages the place. And eventually is ousted in 1991 by a rebel group that seizes control.

And it's led by people from Tigray, which is this region right in the north of Ethiopia, up on the border with Eritrea. The Tigrayans take power and they run the country for almost 30 years. It is a period of stability. Ethiopia starts to develop economically. And the country begins to cast off the image that so many people associated with Ethiopia, which is with the terrible famine that devastated the country back in the 1980s. So there is great progress, but it comes at a high price. Under the Tigrayans, Ethiopia is effectively a one-party state. There are no proper elections to speak of.

The press is quite curtailed. A lot of political opponents have been thrown in jail. And from about 2016, this whole system starts to run out of road effectively. Anti-government protests are erupting in several parts of the country. The police repress it in a very heavy-handed way. And then in 2018, the government surprises everyone by making a significant concession to the opposition. It effectively fires the man who is the prime minister. And in his place...

... In his place, Alex, a new, relatively unknown guy called Abiy Ahmed. So who is Abiy Ahmed? What do we know about him? So who is Abiy Ahmed? What do we know about him? So he's this young guy in his early 40s. He's from Oromia, which is home to the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, 35 million people, about one third of the population. And the Oromos are these people who have felt marginalized for decades. They feel they've been excluded from power. And so Abiy Ahmed for them represents this hope for a return to the corridors of power, if you like. On top of that, he's dynamic. He has served in the military. He started off as an intelligence officer, but later rose through the ranks of politics. So, for the Tigrayans,

and when I say the Tigrayans, I mean the Tigray People's Liberation Front. That's the main party in the Tigray region. Abiy represents a safe pair of hands because, in fact, he was already part of the ruling government. So they figured that he would guarantee the continuation of the same system of rule and guarantee the interests of the Tigrayan political elite. So, Declan, what does Abiy do when he first comes to power? Well, he immediately defies all of the Tigrayan political elite. So, Declan, what does Abiy do when he first comes to power? Well, he immediately defies all of the expectations that people had for him. In 2018, when he comes to power, he sets about undoing the decades of iron-fisted Tigrayan rule. He throws open the prisons, allows political prisoners to walk free. He invites home from exile

Ethiopians who had been living abroad. And then soon after that, he does this totally unexpected thing. For half a century, their nations fought wars. He reaches out to Eritrea, Ethiopia's arch rival, eyeing each other warily across their fiercely disputed border. A country they'd been at war with technically for two decades. And he says, I want to make peace. Ethiopia's new prime minister took the first step, a surprise and controversial decision to accept a long-delayed peace deal. And before you know it, they've signed this landmark peace deal,

bringing the conflict between these two countries to an end. There are these extraordinary scenes where the first commercial flights in decades between these two countries are taking place. The border is open. And there is this real euphoric sense that here is this inspirational leader who's not only opened up politics at home, he's also reached out to Ethiopia's biggest foe and made peace with them virtually overnight. So it sounds like this is really above and beyond anything anyone expected this new leader to produce. Absolutely. And then at the end of 2019, after just 18 months in power... I now call upon the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2019 to come forward and give his Nobel lecture.

Prime Minister. to come forward and give his Nobel lecture. Prime Minister. The Nobel Peace Prize comes knocking and they award that most prestigious prize to Abiy Ahmed. I am honoured to be here with you today and grateful to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. In recognition of the peace deal with Eritrea. We have released all political prisoners.

We have shut down detention facilities where torture and vile human rights abuses took place. But also for his domestic reforms at home and for helping to turn Ethiopia into this country that's suddenly a hope for the region and indeed for the continent. We are creating an Ethiopia that is second to none in its guarantee of freedoms of expression. Wow, the Nobel Peace Prize. That is quite an honor.

It was amazing. Peace shall be upon all of us. Thank you very much. But in the middle of that, this somewhat odd thing happens. When Abiy Ahmed goes to Oslo to collect his prize, he refuses to hold a press conference to answer questions from journalists, which is normally the tradition among recipients of the Nobel Prize. Why wouldn't he want to talk to the press? Well, it wasn't really clear at the time why, but in retrospect, it's been seen as a sign of problems with Abiy Ahmed's leadership that were brewing back at home in Ethiopia.

And what was happening back at home? Well, there are these ethnic conflicts erupting in several parts of the country where you have these ethnic groups that are seeking greater independence for their region, and they're mounting protests against Abiy's government. You know, we think of Ethiopia as this one unified country, but in fact, it's got over 100 ethnic groups. And so during the 30 years of rule that preceded Abiy Ahmed, this one-party state had kind of kept a lid on all of those tensions between ethnic groups that were competing for power. When Abiy Ahmed threw open the floodgates and liberalized the system in many ways, all of those tensions suddenly came bursting out and flowing over. And he is struggling to contain it. What does he do in response? So that's where things really start to go wrong.

What does he do in response? So that's where things really start to go wrong. His response is actually to go back to the way things were. He starts to lock up some of his opponents. The press starts coming under pressure again. The police start behaving with great brutality against protesters. And suddenly Ethiopia, after this brief moment of hope, starts to feel like it's backsliding very quickly and that Abiy Ahmed is suddenly now starting to move back towards being the sort of authoritarian that he was supposed to have replaced.

So he's really doing this 180 on so many of these reforms that he put in place when he came in, in just a short period of time, right? I mean, everything that drew all of that positive international attention in the first place. Yeah, he's reverting to the old playbook. And not only that, he's turning on the people who put him in power. And it becomes apparent that Abiy is creating this kind of political time bomb that would eventually go off with huge force last November. We'll be right back. So, Declan, what do you mean by political time bomb? Well, as Abiy Ahmed consolidated his power, one thing he did was to basically turn on the people who put him there. You remember the Tigrayans ran the country for 30 years.

They thought he was going to be a continuity candidate. But very quickly, he started to turn on those Tigrayan leaders, marginalizing them from power, and then initiating these prosecutions against some of the former rulers of the country for human rights abuses, corruption, other things like that. Effectively biting the hand that fed him. I mean, these were the people who ruled for 30 years, and he is effectively stripping them of power. That's right. And it creates a huge problem for him because, you know, his project suddenly now faces these two huge challenges. He's got protests erupting in some parts of the country based on these ethnic demands. And then at the same time, he's wrestling with these powerful Tigrayan politicians who feel that he has discriminated against them and is treating them unfairly. And then in the

middle of all of this comes COVID. And like many other leaders around the world, Abiy Ahmed decides he needs to postpone the elections that he had promised for August of last year. But because the political situation in the country is so febrile, all his opponents are suddenly up in arms and they're saying he's doing this because he's using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid an election he doesn't want to contest. This crisis continues to build and it climaxes in September when the Tigrayans go ahead with elections in their own province in defiance of the orders of the central government. And that only exacerbates this crisis with Abiy Ahmed and pushes it to a new level. So the Tigrayans respond by defying Abiy. How does Abiy respond?

Well, the government's first step is to try and cut funding to the Tigrayans, who in turn respond by saying, we no longer respect the legitimacy of the Abiy government. So things are really getting tense through the month of September and October. So things are really getting tense through the month of September and October. And then it really escalates when there are reports that the government is moving military units around. Inside Tigray, there is a total collapse in trust between the two sides. And then, in the early hours of the morning of November 4th, while the entire world has its attention fixed on the U.S. election,

Abiy Ahmed, in the middle of the night, issues this statement to say that the Tigrayans have carried out an attack on a federal military base, and he has been forced to respond with a military action against the Tigrayans. Oh, wow. So, Abiy Ahmed sort of quietly sends in troops while the international community's attention is elsewhere. Is this an invasion of Tigray? Well, he calls it a law and order operation against what the Ethiopian government calls a criminal clique, that fugitive politicians who have defied the authority of the government and need to be brought to justice. And Abiy Ahmed tells Ethiopians that

this is going to be over in a manner of weeks. And in fact, at one point, he even goes to the point of telling people that it will be entirely bloodless. But very quickly, it becomes clear that that is not what is happening. So what happens, Declan? What do we start seeing? Well, in the early first couple of months, we just do not really know what's going on in Tigray. There is a media blackout. The internet and the phone services are completely off. The government is preventing aid workers or journalists from entering the area. And so us at the New York Times and other reporters, we're really struggling to find out what's going on,

but we hear enough to know that it is very serious. There are these Tigrayan refugees streaming across the border into Sudan, and they bring accounts not only of the fighting, but also of attacks on civilians and even some massacres. But it's only when things really open up from around the end of January, early February, that the scale of what's going on in Tigray really becomes apparent.

Declan, when you talk about this scale, what were some of the things that were happening? There was widespread looting by soldiers and massacres of civilians who were dying in their dozens and sometimes hundreds in a single incident. Forces entered and burned our homes and killed people. They left us with nothing.

So we fled here to Sudan. Those unable or unwilling to flee were slaughtered by government troops, they said. Whoever was on the street was killed. So many young people were laid down. You can see them bleeding. The city started to smell. I left with my parents and my child with only what we wore. Now we have nothing. We fled

from death and murder. There were accounts of horrific sexual violence. They came to every house and forced the men to leave. We don't care about you, they said. We only listen to our urges. Some girls and I managed to leave the village, but on the road, more than 10 soldiers took turns raping us. Hundreds of cases of rape are reported,

which probably means that there's far, far more. Women that have been raped say that the things that they say to them when they were raping them is that they need to change their identity. And then they've come there to cleanse them. Cleanse the bloodline? Cleanse the bloodline. In the west of Tigray, there are reports of ethnic cleansing forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

And everywhere across the region, there are these reports of hunger. People's stores of food have been looted, farmers aren't able to plant their crops, and people are starting to starve. We don't have enough food, shelter, sleeping materials, and clothing. Before the war, we fed our children three times a day, but now we cannot. Before the war, we fed our children three times a day, but now we cannot. And yet, the Ethiopian government is blocking relief groups from reaching the most vulnerable people. And Declan, all of this violence, the murder and the rape, is all of this on the orders of Prime Minister Abiy? Well, at first he denies it. But as reporters and aid workers start to get access to Tigray, the terrible reality on the ground is undeniable.

Now, it's important to say, and the UN stresses this, that all sides to this conflict, including the Tigrayan rebels, have carried out abuses. have carried out abuses. But it's also true that the vast majority of those abuses are being committed by the Ethiopian military and its allies. And Declan, who are its allies? What do you mean by that? When Abiy Ahmed goes to war in Tigray, he doesn't just send in the Ethiopian military. He needs help. The Ethiopians can't hold down this region on their own. And then to the great surprise of just about everybody, that help comes from Eritrea, the old foe, whose forces cross the border into Tigray and start fighting alongside the Ethiopian military. Wow. So this is Abiy allying with a foreign power, Eritrea, a country that Ethiopia itself fought a long, bitter war with, that he concluded the peace deal with, in order to attack his own people.

It's absolutely astonishing. And so in the early weeks of this campaign, you have these Eritrean soldiers that are boosting the government's effort to defeat the Tigrayans. And for the Eritreans themselves, this is a kind of payback. Because remember, a couple of decades earlier, they'd fought this war with Ethiopia, largely against Tigrayan soldiers. And for them, this is their opportunity to come and, to some measure, take their revenge. So, Declan, what's happening now with the conflict? The war is rumbling on. The Tigrayans are mostly in a sort of mountainous region in the centre of

the country. They are fighting against the government forces. And elsewhere in Tigray, the region has been pretty much destroyed. Its economy is on its knees, the banks are closed, the phones still largely don't work, and the humanitarian situation is especially dire. Aid groups say that over 5 million people in Tigray urgently need immediate food assistance, and that 350,000 people are already living in famine conditions, and that if things don't get better by next September, the region could be in the grip of a famine on a scale that hasn't been seen in Ethiopia in decades. And at the same time, there is huge international pressure on Abiy Ahmed now to stop the fighting immediately and to send those Eritrean troops home who are doing so much damage. And instead of that, we're having an election. Right. I almost forgot about the election.

What's happening with that? Well, it's been postponed a couple of times, but it's going ahead next Monday. For Abiy Ahmed, it's important to face the voters for the first time, because when he came to power in 2018, he was installed by his own party. Nobody elected him. And it's supposed to be this key milestone on Ethiopia's journey towards democracy. But Declan, how can he hold an election in the middle of a civil war? Well, the short answer is, is that the election is not going to take place in several parts of the country. It's not going to take place in Tigray at all. And there are several other regions where

ethnic violence has been flaring. The government has effectively imposed a kind of localized military rule in those areas. So already we know that the vote won't be taking place in those places. The European Union has refused to send election monitors. And the State Department issued a statement just last Friday saying that it's gravely concerned about the conditions in the country when this vote is going to take place. So Declan, hearing you lay all of this out and seeing how quickly Abiy and Ethiopia have turned, essentially in a span of 18 months, he's gone from Nobel Peace Prize winner to alleged ethnic cleanser. How did the world, the Nobel Committee and foreign foreign leaders everywhere so drastically

miscalculate? I think part of the answer is that this is a story people wanted to believe in. They wanted Abiy Ahmed to succeed, perhaps desperately. And I think that people's view of what was going on on the ground in Ethiopia was a little obscured by the dazzle of the Nobel Peace Prize. It's interesting, I've been speaking to several, you know, Western officials and sources about this. And one of them said to me, you know, in the West, because we don't pay that much attention to what goes on in Africa, we tend to categorize African leaders either as soaring hopes and democratic idols,

if you like, and bad guys. And after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, especially, Abiy Ahmed was very firmly put in the category of a good guy. And there's a real sense that people took their eye off the ball, and they weren't paying attention to the warning signs of what has now come to pass in the country with such tragic consequences for ordinary Ethiopians. I mean, essentially what you're saying is the world wanted to believe in him, that the international community wanted him to be a hero. And so they made him one because that was what they wanted to see. Absolutely. So where are we now with Ethiopia? What's going to happen there?

You know, there's a real sense that the world is now waking up to what's going on, and there are constant calls for an immediate ceasefire. The United States has blocked visas for some Ethiopian officials. They have blocked some international financing for the Ethiopian government. And really, that's just the start, probably, of measures against Ethiopia if things continue. But it's a way to try and pressure the Ethiopian government to pull back from the brink of this war. And it kind of gets to the broader fear of the international community at this point. Officials are telling me this isn't just about a devastating civil war or even about this tragic famine that is looming, but this is about very stability of the Ethiopian state. When you look at all of these

sort of centrifugal forces that are pulling the country apart, arguably, in places, the question is now not just whether the Ethiopians can be persuaded to pull back or some sort of peace settlement can start, but whether they can stop this, what some people are looking on as a kind of unraveling that is starting to pull the country apart at the seams. Declan, thank you. My pleasure. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. This is a momentous day, and we deserve it because it has been a long, long road.

On Tuesday, the governors of both New York and California dropped virtually all remaining COVID-19 restrictions on businesses and social gatherings after more than 70% of adults in both states had received at least one dose of a vaccine. What does 70% mean? It means that we can now return to life as we know it. In New York, for instance, restaurants and movie theaters will no longer be required to space tables or seats six feet apart. Despite that progress, the Times reports that in the coming days, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 600,000. Experts said that it was unvaccinated Americans who are largely responsible for the lingering deaths

and for the grim new milestone. Today's episode was produced by Sidney Harper, Luke Vanderplug, and Daniel Guimet with help from Warren Jackson. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, engineered by Chris Wood, and contains original music by Dan Powell. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.