Eritrea Wire

Shops remained shuttered, some government workers hadn’t been paid and the town’s main hospital was laid to waste. But the Tigrayan fighters still claimed victory, swaggering through the streets of Hawzen with their guns.

It wouldn’t last long.

Hawzen, a rural town in the ethnic Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, is a microcosm of the challenge facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — and a warning that the war here is unlikely to end soon.

When The Associated Press arrived in May, Tigrayan fighters had recently retaken Hawzen from Ethiopian government troops, laying claim again to land that has switched control multiple times since the war began in November.

To the Ethiopian government, the fighters are terrorists who have defied the authority of Abiy in the federal capital, Addis Ababa.

But almost everyone the AP spoke with in Hawzen supported them and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the party of the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders.

“The people elected us, so we are not terrorists,” said fighter Nurhussein Abdulmajid, standing confidently in the middle of the road with a gun on his shoulder, as a crowd listened. “He [Abiy] is the one who is the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who massacres people.”

Larger war

The battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Tigray between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people.

While the government now holds many urban centers, fierce fighting continues in remote rural towns like Hawzen.

The AP was able to get through an Ethiopian military roadblock and cross the front line to get a rare look at a town held by Tigrayan fighters, who carried light weapons they said they had seized from opponents.

If anything, recent atrocities appear to have increased support for the TPLF.

One 19-year-old said she had been raped by an Ethiopian soldier and was now six months pregnant. After trying and failing to terminate the pregnancy herself, she is now desperately hoping someone in a local hospital will help her.

As soon as possible, she said, she wants to join the rebels.

“I want to go,” she said, as she broke down in tears. “You will die if you stay home, and you will die if you go out there. … I would rather die alongside the fighters.”

The AP does not name victims of sexual abuse.

The TPLF was on top of a coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That changed in 2018, when Abiy rose to power as a reformist. He alienated the TPLF with efforts to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, and rid the federal government of corruption.

Tigray’s leaders fought back. In 2020, after a national vote was suspended because of the pandemic, the TPLF went ahead with its own elections in the region.

Asserting that Tigrayan fighters had attacked a military base, Abiy sent federal troops into Tigray in November. Government forces are now allied with militias from the rival Amhara ethnic group as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities.

‘Protracted’ conflict

Abiy acknowledged recently that the highly mobile Tigrayan guerrillas were stretching the Ethiopian military, springing ambushes from the rugged highlands where they hide.

In April, the International Crisis Group predicted that entrenched resistance on both sides meant “the conflict could evolve into a protracted war.”

Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for Abiy’s office, told reporters on Thursday that “the suffering of Ethiopians who are victims of a situation that is not of their choosing is a source of pain.” Efforts to alleviate the suffering of Tigrayans “have been marred by various challenges given the complexity of any armed engagement,” she said.

Residents of Hawzen said the town of a few thousand people had seen fighting four times since November. Many spoke disapprovingly of Abiy, saying they no longer trusted him to keep them safe.

As the two sides fight, civilians are suffering heavily. More and more children are caught up in shelling in Hawzen and other nearby areas, with at least 32 admitted to the regional Ayder Hospital in Mekelle for blast injuries from December to April. Thirteen left with limbs amputated, according to official records.

Some of those victims might have had limbs saved if they had received first aid at the nearest health centers. But such facilities are shells right now — systematically looted, vandalized and turned upside down.

Eritrean soldiers set up camp in the Hawzen Primary Hospital, which once boasted of equipment ranging from X-ray machines to baby incubators. Now it is trashed and looted, and heaps of stones litter the compound where fighters had set up defensive positions.

Many Tigrayans from contested towns like Hawzen end up in camps for the internally displaced in Mekelle, mostly women and children.

And so the fight continues.

Source: Voice of America

For weeks now, Niger state in Central Nigeria has remained a hotspot for kidnappings in the country.

State authorities said around 70 gunmen on motorbikes carried out an attack on the Islamiyya School on Sunday afternoon. One person was killed during the attack and scores of children between five and 13 years old were herded into the nearby bush.

But that wasn’t Niger state’s only kidnapping last weekend. Resident Enoch Obemeasor said his neighborhood was also the scene of an attack in which numerous people were abducted.

“They started operation around 10 o’clock, over three hours operation,” Obemeasor said. “They kidnapped 17 people, but two escaped and they took away the remaining 15.”

For months, kidnap-for-ransom crises have rocked Nigeria, especially in the north of the country. School students have been most adversely affected.

Since December, nearly 1,000 school children have been kidnapped, leading to the shutdown of schools, leaving millions of kids without a place to learn.

Experts, however, said although citizens are growing weary of the frequent mass kidnappings, public outrage in diminishing.

Hosea Adama, former chairman of the Chibok community where some 276 girls were taken by Boko Haram in 2014, explains why.

“Everybody is tired, people are suffering,” Adama said. “You’re facing your own problem. It will be difficult for you to come out for somebody else. Everyone is facing his own problem. So it has become difficult for people to come out and make agitations about kidnappings.”

The Chibok abductions in 2014 sparked global outrage and announced Boko Haram’s notoriety.

Recent mass abductions in the country have yet to attain that level of recognition.

Vivian Bellonwu of Social Action Nigeria says the level of outrage remains the same, but citizens are becoming more tactical in their expression of outrage as a result of a government efforts to suppress its most vocal critics.

“Nigerians are responding in diverse ways; truly, the thing is that we have never had it this bad,” Bellonwu said. “We’re having a situation where we are being bombarded by multifaceted dimensions of insecurity. So citizens have been reacting. There have been reactions, but what you are seeing is a systematic attitude by the state to suppress these reactions.”

This week, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari responded to rising insecurities and tweeted, “There must be zero tolerance for all those bent on destroying our country by promoting crime and insurrection.”

Source: Voice of America

The breezy, cool markets are moderately crowded on Wednesday afternoon, and blue tuk-tuks whiz through the streets. Sidewalk juice and coffee shops are busy, in what appears to be a relaxed regional capital.

But it is not long before we notice glimpses of how much this city is not relaxed. War has permeated every aspect of life here, from mundane activities to unspeakable horrors, such as children being shot at and knifed.

Mobile phone data doesn’t work, and only a few hotels and organizations have Wi-Fi. In our hotel lobby, one of the lucky few with a connection, the bar area is packed with college-age men and women, and soldiers with their AK assault rifles on the tables. Most eyes are glued to mobile phones.

But they are not just catching up on emails and Facebook. Everyone seems to be worrying about someone who is out of contact and possibly displaced, injured or worse.

An evening curfew begins at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on whom you ask. Either way, they say, getting home before night falls is preferable because the streets are dangerous after dark.

Only last year, Mekelle was run by an entirely different government, and when the federal government took over last year, the police just left, many presumably to fight with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which formerly controlled the city.

“Every night we have to take everything we have in our store back home and bring it back the next morning,” a tailor in the market tells us as he closes up shop, adding that he doesn’t want his name or picture in the press for security reasons. “It’s not safe.”

Displaced

The next morning, we visit the newest displacement camp in the city — it is only a month or so old. It is one of 26 camps in this city, where 200,000 people are displaced. Across Tigray, about 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes since last November.

At first glance the camp looks quaint and comfortable. It is an adapted school campus, with ample trees and stone buildings painted with things like maps and microscopes.

But we soon learn that the more than 7,000 residents are not enjoying the views. The camp is overcrowded, with as many as 100 people sleeping in a classroom about 10 meters by 8 meters. What’s more, there is very little food. By midafternoon, almost no one we speak to has eaten yet.

Less than a year ago, this region was at peace. Displaced families here now mourn their thousands of dead and missing, along with their homes, farms and businesses.

“I had my own kiosk in my hometown,” says Merchawit Kiros, a 27-year-old mother of one, who is six months pregnant with her next child. Merchawit was stoic when she described the violence of displacement, but when her shop comes up, she bursts into tears. “When the soldiers came in, they looted it and took everything. I used to sell many things, like sugar, coffee, candles and matches.”

Another camp in town also looks like a tiny village. It is a converted campus, with English lessons dangling from the ceilings of the classrooms. It is smaller than the first camp, and a Catholic charity provides food for the residents. It’s still crowded, with 35 to 45 people packed in a room, and there is a monthslong waiting list to get in.

On a bench in what once was a play yard, we meet Gebre Gebreslase, a 70-year-old former cattle farmer, as he waits for news of his place in line. Right now, he is staying with family in the city, but it is crowded and his family is poor.

He wears a fraying cowboy hat and a black mask against coronavirus, one of the few to be seen in the yard. Tigray is unsure of how much COVID-19 is present — they started testing only about a month ago, according to local hospital workers.

Like others from his community who are sitting on the bench, Gebre cannot imagine ever going back to his home, which he fled as gunfire blasted through the town. He says he is certain that his properties and animals have all long been confiscated by the controlling forces.

“I had 130 cows, 70 goats and a villa,” he says. “Now I am a beggar.”

Injured

As dismal as the camps are, nothing could prepare us for what we see at the hospital later in the day. Dozens of children with missing limbs, broken bones and gunshot wounds fill room after room, with quiet parents by their side. The children are also mostly silent.

“The only noise she makes is crying or asking for her mother,” says Gabre Hiwet, a young father, speaking of his 4-year-old daughter, Samrawit, who winces at the metal bars stuck in her broken leg.

Gabre then goes on to describe how he wasn’t home on March 30, when eight members of his family were killed, including his wife. Little Samrawit was the only survivor, after being knifed in the leg and shot through her left hand.

“She was bleeding so badly, we thought she was dead,” Gabre says. “We couldn’t believe she survived.”

It’s a story so gruesome, we might not believe it, if it weren’t for the fact that displaced families and refugees from Tigray have told us stories like this, over and over, from every corner of the region.

We meet other children wounded from sniper fire, point-blank shootings, artillery fire, planted mines and other explosives. A 15-year-old girl, Beriha, was hit in the face by a bullet that exited through her left eye. Her doctors say she will survive, permanently blinded, but hopefully one day with less pain.

Downstairs, the cheerful hospital garden belies the facility’s lack of medical supplies.

“There is a shortage of everything,” says one medical student, briskly explaining the snowball effect of substandard medicine that allows the patients to get sicker and puts them in need of even more advanced treatments that the hospital doesn’t have.

Around the corner, a military truck of injured soldiers reminds us there is a war still going on, and hospital workers say more wounded fighters arrive almost every evening. Much of the region is closed to reporters and, more tragically, aid workers, leaving 90% of the people in Tigray in desperate need of emergency food.

At the hospital, there are no battles and hardly any noise. No one appears to be starving. Just a stark view of the horror that families in Tigray are facing.

“Forget the bang-bang,” says Yan Boechat, our photojournalist. “This is the real war.”

Source: Voice of America