A displaced child from the Tigray region of Ethiopia and their mother.
A displaced child from the Tigray region and their mother. Credit: Valerie Browning Credit: Valerie Browning

“I’ve been very shaken by the stories I’ve heard from the people I’ve spoken to and I’ve interviewed in Ethiopia,” journalist Francesca Ronchin shared in an email with rabble.ca.

In particular, Ronchin was moved by the stories of women she met in Nefas Mewcha, Amhara region. It’s one of the areas occupied by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels from November 2021 until March 2022.

“These women — aged 20 to 50 — have all been raped by TPLF soldiers. They were devastated as their lives have been completely destroyed. Not only for the physical and psychological impact of having been raped, but also for the social stigma attached to it,” wrote Ronchin.

Ronchin recounted women barely able to contain their tears while describing what had happened to them. She said they were constantly covering their faces as if being raped was a personal guilt they had to be ashamed of and hide from their community.

According to Ronchin, “I think this was precisely the intent of the TPLF who instructed its soldiers and militiamen to use rape as a way to break apart the internal tissue of a society, of a community.”

In the course of her work in Ethiopia, Ronchin also met child soldiers receiving treatment at the Dubti Hospital close to Semera in Afar region.

She met two boys and two girls about 15-to-17-years-old. One of the boys had lost his leg, but all of them were visibly traumatized.

These child soldiers explained how they were literally forced to fight because the TPLF had blackmailed their families.

It’s a well-established fact that every Tigrayan family has to hand over at least one child to fight for the TPLF. Commonly known as the ‘one fighter per family’ rule, parents who refuse are denied much needed food and services. They are also threatened with arrest and imprisonment.

Ronchin said the child soldiers, some without weapons, were instructed to ‘open the road.’ That meant storming villages to steal whatever they could. A second wave of child soldiers with weapons was supposed to follow.

Those who refused were shot.

“Targeting the society tissue from inside can in fact be a powerful instrument of war, a way of weakening the spirit of a population. ‘Divide et impera,’” observed Ronchin.

During the internal conflict, the TPLF was not only using child soldiers, but telling the children, ‘do not give your hand,’ — code for never surrender. Instead, the children were told to commit suicide.

Any child soldier that surrendered, and many did, could never return home to Tigray.

Outsiders are influencing the debate around who is telling the truth about the internal conflict in Ethiopia with international mainstream media overwhelmingly supporting TPLF leaders.

That’s not surprising given the fact that the TPLF ruled Ethiopia for 27 years. During that time, they amassed large sums of money and cleared out government coffers before the 2018 transfer of power to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who chairs the ruling four-party coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

The theft of over $30 billion in cash has left the country effectively bankrupt.

These funds allowed TPLF leaders to send family members abroad, most notably to the United States (US). Once there, they established themselves and made in-roads with Washington-based lobbyists and law firms who were deployed to silence individuals, and their employers, not adhering to the TPLF narrative.

The pilfered funds also pay for the ‘digital army’ waging war on the internet.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), is one Tigrayan whose twitter traffic lays bare his allegiance.

He applauded child soldiers pictured holding very serious and lethal weapons. He also tweeted out TPLF leader statements after they launched a terrorist attack.

Ghebreysus met with the head of Egypt’s military after the Ethiopian government shot sown a fighter plane, piloted by an Egyptian, that was carrying arms to Tigray.

But perhaps, most egregiously, he failed to discuss the hardships caused when over 3,000 healthcare centres were destroyed in the regions of Amhara and Afar.

Tigray and its people remain under siege by the TPLF. They maintain strict control of outside access to Tigray making independent research and reporting from within the region virtually impossible.

The question now becomes how does this impact the tentative ceasefire signed November 2, 2022?

Ronchin believes that even though Eritrea was not involved in the negotiations, they have no interest in continuing the conflict.

She cites the fact that Eritrea signed a ground breaking agreement in 2018 to end their conflict with Ethiopia. Ahmed was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace prize in part for his role in negotiating the peace deal that accepted an international arbitration commission ruling in favour of Eritrea.

Ronchin believes that Eritrea would only resume fighting if there were undue external pressures.

The U.S. and China are embroiled in a proxy war. The U.S. needs access to green clean metals like niobium, tantalum, zinc and phosphate. These metals are largely found within the Arabian-Nubian Shield which includes Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The Biden administration needs partnerships in the region which may explain why its words and actions clearly reflect TPLF propaganda.

Canada has remained silent on TPLF crimes to humanity.

The TPLF is a non-State terrorist group that follows Mao Zedong’s insurgency doctrine making use of guerilla warfare and disseminating misinformation about the government that leads to civil war.

It was the efforts of the African Union that persuaded the TPLF to agree to a complete surrender.

U.S. policy is destabilizing the region by forcing a showdown, and potential war, between Ethiopia and Sudan over water rights. The Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty between Great Britain, representing the colony of Sudan, and Ethiopia (1902) included a clause that Ethiopia was prohibited from constructing any structures across the Nile which would impede the flow of water unless Sudan granted permission.

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1929), an agreement between Egypt and Britain, representing the colony of Sudan, gave Egypt the constitutional right to veto construction projects along the Nile.

A 1959 treaty divided water rights between Egypt (66 per cent) and Sudan (22 per cent) while allocating 12 per cent for evaporation. Ethiopia has no rights despite contributing over 85 per cent of the water that flows into the Nile.

Any discussion around Ethiopia’s water falls under the umbrella of the African Union. However, the U.S. needs Egypt’s co-operation if it’s going to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Egypt, in turn, is leveraging the situation to pressure the US into supporting the claim that their water access would be adversely affected should Ethiopia be allowed to fill its recently constructed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Truth is, filling the dam will help reduce flooding in Sudan, lower evaporation rates and increase water levels along the Nile while supplying much needed hydro electric power to the region.

Outside interference from the U.S., and abject apathy on the part of Canada, makes lasting peace in Ethiopia a very precarious proposition.

Doreen Nicoll

Doreen Nicoll is weary of the perpetual misinformation and skewed facts that continue to concentrate wealth, power and decision making in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. As a freelance...