Peace And Death In Ethiopia

Sunday, 13 November 2022, 1:59 am
Article: Alastair Thompson

Peace And Death In Ethiopia

A visit to Tigray the day after the Pretoria Peace Agreement

On a short post-Pretoria peace agreement visit to the city of Alamata and surrounding areas in Ethiopian army-controlled parts of Raya, Southern Tigray, traveling with a journalist and videographer from the Ethiopian News Agency, our party was shown a truly disturbing site on the outskirts of the city.

It was a mass grave in a lightly wooded area between the A2 highway and a small river, dating back to the beginning of the 2nd phase of the Tigray War in July 2021. Witnesses said it did not exist when the town was retaken during “Operation Alula”. This was launched on June 13th, and Alamata was one of the first cities to fall.

Local people in Alamata provided detailed and consistent accounts of how the mass grave area came about. They alleged that it resulted from a carefully coordinated plan by the TPLF to resurrect the Tigray Genocide narrative.

While our time did not allow for speaking to enough witnesses to fully confirm the accounts, “Tigray Genocide Commission” documents, found in the Alamata Woreda office after the TPLF fled three weeks ago, suggest that an elaborate effort to manufacture physical evidence of a Tigray Genocide using bodies of killed civilians and fighters from the July-December War may be in train.

The witnesses told us that the grave site in the town was a restricted and well guarded defence area and that anyone going near it risked being killed. They said everyone in the town was aware of it, as it was the site of numerous disappearances of youth activists. We were told that sino-trucks had been used to transport bodies from of Amhara civilians from the Wollo War front to the site.

Residents of the city also told us about and showed us evidence of a mortar attack in the town market, which killed 50 civilians. They said this had been intended for propaganda purposes to allege a drone strike on the town by the ENDF. However, it appears that the footage produced by a TPLF film crew, which was on the site, was never presented as evidence, perhaps because the injuries suffered by the victims, and physical damage in the square, was not consistent with a drone strike.

This report has been prepared with some haste and provides a full account of the three day field trip to Tigray, the first officially sanctioned journalism trip to Tigray since the TPLF re-took Mekelle on June 24th 2021.

A Side Trip From COP27

Through some unexpectedly good timing I had the honour of being the first journalist to visit the city of Alamata in Raya, Tigray.I travelled there at the invitation of the Govt of Ethiopia with a reporter, Getnet Shenkute, and videographer, Abraham Belay from the Ethiopian News Agancy. We departed Addis the day after the announcement of the Pretoria peace agreement on November 2nd. In the 10 days since developments in the peace process look increasingly promising - some reports suggest fighting has now ended in Tigray as a ceasefire negodiated by the TPLF’s military leader General Tadesse Werede and ENDF Cheif of General Staff Berhanu Jula has come into effect.

During our visit to the border city – population est. 800,000 – we found a population which was – as far as we could see, deeply relieved to have been liberated from TPLF rule.

We also found evidence of two significant alleged atrocities which are addressed in this story. A mass grave in plain sight on the edge of the city which was notorious to the locals – for being the place that arrested youth activists would be taken and killed.

We also recorded eye-witness accounts of a mortar attack by the TPLF on the city’s market, as it was packed with people – which resulted in the death of 50, including children – 28 instantly, and 22 from their wounds - and injuring a further 56.

We also collected testimony from Kobo Robit residents of their experience under the recent occupation of parts of Northern Wollo, Amhara Region, since soon after the beginning of the latest TPLF invasion of Amhara region which began on August 24th to the south of Tigray along the A2 highway towards Weldiya.

We spent our first night of the trip in Weldiya - an important large town to the south of North Wollo which is accommodating a large number of displaced people from further north.

In the morning on November 4th - the 2nd anniversary of the beginning of war in November 2020 - we headed north, speaking to residents of Robit about their experience under TPLF occupation, and In Kobo to young people, asking them how they felt about the peace agreement. At the end of the 2nd day we arrived in Alamata staying in a nice hotel on the outskirts of the town with a Tigrayan proprietor.

The following day we visited the mass grave which was nearby further up the A2 highway. And on the following field day headed north east to Chercher to visit a TPLF military Cemetery on the way observing an aid distribution near Raya Bala. At Chercher the frontline was a further 5kms north towards Mekelle.

A more detailed account of all this follows.

DAY 1: Arrival in Addis – Pandor – Obasanjo – Addis to Weldiya

The trip proposal was agreed to by the Government on Friday October 28th during the final scheduled days of the peace negotiations in Pretoria between the Government of Ethiopia and the TPLF’s (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) political and military leadership. We planned visiting liberated areas to observe the restoration of electricity, water and communications services, the delivery of humanitarian aid, and get the views of residents of Tigray on the peace negotiations.

On Sunday October 30th the South African Govt. hosted peace talks held in Pretoria were extended. Then on Wednesday November 2nd, whilst en-route to Ethiopia I heard news of the agreement whilst waiting the departure lounge in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. My ability to make the trip was facilitated by the fact I had arranged to arrive a week early for COP27 in Egypt.

A marathon four hop, 36 hour trip to Addis Ababa ended early in the morning on November 3rd at Bole Airport where I was met at the bottom of the disembarkation steps by a van and taken immediately to the VIP lounge.

As I observed the unexpected surroundings I was wondering who the woman was at the other end of the room facing me, and then I remembered - South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor. I plucked up the courage to ask her for an interview – which she declined informing me the parties had agreed that only they and the mediators were authorised to talk publicly about the process.

But at her suggestion I requested an interview with Obasanjo to which he agreed – a report from the Ethiopian News Agency - with whom I shared the audio is HERE..

Soon after I was met by Nebiyou Baye an official in the Prime Ministers Office, who briefed me on the outcome of the peace talks – in essence an agreement by the two parties with a staged path to peace under which the parties are obligated to meet deadlines to secure a durable ceasefire and ultimately a political settlement and the establishment of a new agreed interim Govt. in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

And very soon after we departed on a flight to Kombulcha to begin the trip north to Tigray. We picked up a driver and Toyota Land Cruiser in Kombulcha – then headed north towards Tigray passing through Dessie & Mersa on the way – eventually reaching Weldiya on sun set.

Weldiya was not taken by the TPLF in the most recent war, and has been housing a large number of displaced people from the war which has continued to the north of the town since it began on August 24. The town was full of UN and NGO vehicles as we arrived and all hotels were booked out. My escorts found me a room in a secure building which had armed guards and electricity, albeit no running water. I was in great need of sleep after 36 hours of continuous travel from France but woke up early wondering what to expect as we began the field work phase of the trip.

DAY 2: Heading North to Alamata through the area occupied during the 3rd phase of the war which started August 24th – Robit – Aluha Bridge – Kobo - Alamata

Early the following day we resumed our voyage north, passing through a narrow gorge heading further north on the A2 highway and passing a checkpoint on the outskirts of the town.

We descended out of the hills down to a plain which the A2 road runs up the western side of.

Robit was the first significant town and we stopped there to interview victims.

We conducted three interviews with four people in the back of a small building around which the community had been gathering.

A crowd joined in to watch as they all told much the same story. The TPLF’s occupying forces had stolen valuable items including cell phones and generators, demanded money and raped women in the town while they were there. These accounts are very similar to accounts of TPLF activities heard during my visit to Wolkaite in May 2021.

Robit was liberated - like all of this area in North Wollo north of Weldiya - during the Battle of the Gorge which raged for several weeks and ended two weeks before we arrived. We were told which told the TPLF had deployed 300,000 fighters in this last stand offensive - including Qemant, Oromo (Shene) , and Gumuz fighters as well as a contingent of Arabic speaking Sudanese soldiers trained in Sudan.

The battle had lasted for several weeks as ENDF and Amhara forces rapidly pushed north – taking care to keep the conflict away from the towns on the western edge of the area. A decisive phase in the battle occurred at Aluha Bridge, north of Robit and south of Kobo, during which the TPLF for a second time destroyed the bridge. When we passed efforts were beginning to reinstate it – and a ford had been constructed to enable vehicles to cross the river and head north in the meantime.

Out next stop was Kobo where we stopped to talk to a group of young men and women who were sitting beside the road. They recounted similar experiences those we had met in Robit.

Everyone we met was aware of the peace talk outcomes, and welcomed them, but all were also skeptical and worried about whether the TPLF would comply.

Kobo is the last major town before the border between Amhara and Tigray which is not marked. The last stretch into Alamata town crosses a fertile flood plain with several seasonal rivers (now dry) running east to west where they join a major river that then flows south into Amhara Region.

Night was falling as we arrived in Alamata but people were still in the streets and it was immediately clear that the town was peaceful and happy with the arrival of the ENDF. Soldiers were mixing freely with locals in the streets and water truck deliveries were underway.

Raya, like Wolkaite (or Western Tigray as it is called by the TPLF, Human Rights NGOs, and many Western Media) is populated mainly by Amhara people. Like Wolkaite it became part of Tigray in 1995 after they came to power over all of Ethiopia. And as in Wolkaite the majority of the people there want to return to Amhara Region control.

We were told later that unlike in Wolkaite, TPLF had not been oppressive in Raya after it became a zone of Tigray. But the friendly relations deteriorated after TPLF lost power in Addis Abababa in the wake of popular youth led movement called Qerooo which originated in the Oromo regsion and Abiy Ahmed Ali became Prime Minister in 2018. In 2019 Alamata youth protested seeking the freedoms enjoyed to the south in Addis Ababa and the protest was violently put down. Protesting youth were gunned down and later the TPLF hunted down participants in the protests and jailed a large number in Mekelle..

And this was the beginning of a period of deep darkness for the people of Alamata.

Day 3 – Mass Grave – Tigray Genocide Commission - Market Mortar attack

We spent the night in a nice hotel near the northern outskirts of Alamata on the A2 Highway. It was in good condition and the hotelier was Tigrayan. She was understandably reticent to speak with me but told me it was good that fighting had not entered the town.

We had thought we would spend the following day visiting Chercher to the North West where the ENDF had recently found a military cemetery on a hill over looking the predominantly Tigrayan town. However security considerations made that impossible and we instead went to look at a far closer mass grave only a 100 or so yards up the road from the hotel.

When we arrived there were two people who objected to us taking photographs. I did not know why and quickly backed away. But in the brief minutes we were on the site it was apparent that there were a huge number of graves in the area located between the highway and a small river. We were told there were some additional burials on the other side of the river too in a grove of trees – and later that there was another mass grave overflow site near the Church – which we did not have time to visit.

The video you see above records my reaction after returning an hour or so later and being briefed by the Prosperity Party Alamata Woreda administrator Zinebu who was briefly in the city during the time of the Interim Ethiopian appointed Govt following the defeat of the TPLF in the first round of conflict at the end of November. The war was initiated on November 4th 2020 with a surprise coordinated treacherous attack by TPLF loyal forces on their ENDF colleagues across the Tigray region in which 6000 ENDF members were murdered. On the morning of day 3 I met a survivor of that attack. The ENDF managed to retake Mekelle fairly swiftly after the attack - but its officer corps in particular had been decimated. The survivor told me he had seen his colleagues having their throats cut as they slept.

At the end of shooting this video - during which you can see I was rather confused about what I was dealing with II arrived back near the entrance where a group of townsfolk, all men had gathered to explain what had happened here. Before shooting the video I had taken a tour around the site with Zinebu, and it was his explanation which confused me.

A video of what followed at that point was shot by Ethiopian News Agency - and I will leave it to them to publish that, but basically there was a Q&A between me and the English Speaking leader of the group, Moges, during which they affirmed all the things that Zinebu had told us earlier.

In particular, that the bodies buried in the site were predominantly of Amhara civilians – killed during the July-December war, trucked back from Wollo in sino-trucks and buried several people to a grave. The video shows the depth of the graves. Zineby told me the mass grave also included townsfolk murdered, as well as some of the grave diggers who had been forcibly recruited to work on the project and sworn to secrecy on penalty of death.

My initial response to the group was simply that this was outside my area of expertise and that investigation of this was a job for the Ethiopian Federal Police to investigate.

Importantly Moges and his companions confirmed Zinebu’s assertion that the area I was looking at had been parkland prior to the TPLF returning to control over the area following Operation Alula, the June offensive of the TPLF which took place during the lead up to Ethiopia’s first genuinely democratic elections on June 21st which was famously reported on by Declan Walsh in triumphal terms in the NY Times in July..

On June 24th the TPLF retook Mekelle and four days later on June 28th the Govt of Ethiopia declared the first of three unilateral humanitarian ceasefires declared over the 2 year period of conflict.

This mass grave therefore dates from July onwards – during the period in which Alamata was under TPLF control and was a staging point for the deployment of its forces which were invading Amhara and seeking to retake control of the country. And the graveyard can therefore not contain victims of a Tigray Genocide as may soon be claimed by the TPLF’s information team.

The second phase of the war finally came to an end on December 21st 2021. The TPLF “withdrew” to Tigray and the Govt of Ethiopia did not pursue them.

And for the people of Alamata this meant continued TPLF occupation of their town – up until roughly three weeks ago when the ENDF forces fighting in the Battle of the Gorge reached Alamata and the TPLF forces retreated - and the mass grave continued to grow during this period.

Freshly dug open graves and what are clearly recent burials as described in the video further support this conclusion.

Moges further explained in this initial encounter another part of the story which I had found particularly difficult to understand. Namely a claim that the TPLF intended to use the mass grave for propaganda purposes, as proof of “Tigray Genocide” a claim which was launched as the #TigrayGenocide Twitter hashtag on the night of November 3rd when the war began (timed to coincide with the US election) – and which continues to be the main claim of international media, diplomatic and academic supporters of the rebel group.

After the TPLF fled Alamata three weeks ago, Moges had gone to the abandoned Woreda offices and found several documents from the “Tigray Genocide Commission” which appears to be part of a Tigray Region wide effort to falsify a list of the names of the victims of the alleged genocide – one which is supported by the physical evidence of actual mass graves inside Tigray.

I asked Zinebu and Moges if they knew of any other similar mass graves in Raya, to which the answer was no – at least not yet. But they told me that the instruction to start collecting names was issued to all local government public servants, and that the initiation of the Tigray Genocide Commission accompanied the beginning of the July-December War which was called “Operation Mothers of Tigray”.

We then left the site and went to a place where the document was kept and photographed it in full.

This link >> Tigray Genocide Commission Documents - Photos << is to a Google drive which contains photos of the documents Moges found.

Whilst we were having the documents explaoined to us, one showed us the video of the aftermath of an alleged mortar attack by the TPLF on the central market in the town which resulted in the death of 50, including children – 28 instantly, and 22 from their wounds - and injuring a further 56.

Acutely aware that we only had a day left we decided to go immediately to the market where this attack had taken place – and the video above contains some of the video we shot there. We spoke to several witnesses, people who were in the market on the day of the mortar attack.

One of the witnesses brought some fragments of a 31mm mortar in his hand which you can see in the video. Another, who lived close to the market square said he had seen TPLF forces officers in a car observing the square – waiting for it to be full of people - in the morning of the attack. Once the square was full of people they gave orders to fire the mortars from a nearby hill and two mortars landed at the Western side of the square.

After the interviews, we were shown evidence of damage on a metal wall which showed blast evidence in the form of embedded molten pieces of shrapnel – we took photos of these. We were also shown photos of damage inside houses from the blast where fragments of the blast went through walls.

Day 4 - Services Restored – Raya Abala Aid Distributon– Chercher Military Cemetery

On the final 3rd day of field work the cellular phone network was out, delaying our activities for the day. We had hoped to interview some of the surviving grave diggers who had worked in the grave yard - but time made this impossible. II spoke to some teenagers about what they observed during the occupation. I asked them about their interactions with the child soldiers who had passed through the town during the July- Dec war. They said that they had made friends with some of the young TPLF soldiers who had encouraged them to join the fight and also inquired as to why they did not speak Tigraynga.

They said the young TPLF soldiers were mostly 18 or over, but some were younger. None wore uniforms and nor did most of their older colleagues. Some were in partial or mismatched uniforms.

Cell coverage – for calls – which had been working the previous day was out for the day which made it more difficult to arrange activities and it was during this period that I met the survivor of the Northern Command attack. But we lost most of the morning due to the delay in communications. When we finally set off at around 10am we stopped briefly in the center of the town. There was a very cheerful and open atmosphere there – and I received the contact details of some English speakers to contact for further information later – once the data network is operational.

We then set off heading for Chercher.

Chercher is a town North East of Alamata where Tigrayan communities from the Adwa and Axuum clans resettled after Tigray incorporated Raya. On the way there we crossed a plain covered in bushes and small trees where “The Battle of the Gorge” had been fought. There were no visible signs of a recent battle which surprised me. I found myself wondering how a battle of such magnitude could be fought in such terrain almost entirely with Kalashnikovs. This is a conflict of many stories yet to be told.

Official ENDF policy is for nothing to be said about conflict, and there is a prohibition on taking pictures of soldiers or military equipment – which makes war journalism here a little tricky.

After the crossing a line of hills we reached Raya Bala and picked up the local - Raya Bala - security chief and resumed our journey. Passing through the beautiful farmland that is cultivated here – and where a harvest was underway. On the way we came across an aid distribution to the people of the area whose culture and dress is nearly identical to the Afar.

Geographically we were now fairly close to Ab’Ala which I had visited in May, a border town on the Djibouti-Mekelle road which has been the main/only humanitarian route into Tigray since TPLF retook Mekelle and Tigray in their June offensive.

The aid distribution was very heart warming.

Young men worked to divide the aid deliveries into piles for different parts of the surrounding areas. The supplies were a mix of Argentinian and Ethiopian (2021 harvest) wheat. As can be seen in the video above. The Afar/Wollo Amhara culture is wonderfully photogenic. And they were happy to be photographed on this very special day. Their first Govt of Ethiopian aid delivery.

Resuming our visit we traveled through more farmland and past military encampments associated with the recent battle that had pushed TPLF forces a few kms north of Chercher fairly recently.

In Chercher we met another Moges, a surveyor who had assessed the size of the TPLF military cemetery we were there to visit, positioned on a mountain over looking the town. We had to wait a short while to get permission from the local commander who had not been informed of our visit, possibly due to the cellphone outage. Fortunately the area we were in did have cellular coverage so we could contact Addis and sort out access.

After arrival onsite we walked up the small mountain which had a monument at the top – predating this latst war from the look of it - and an underground mausoleum for senior TPLF commanders.

Throughout our visit a group of hawks / eagles was overhead soaring on the light winds around the small mountain.. The older graves were marked with signs indicating which army the buried there were from. And there were a lot of empty prepared graves – mostly fairly shallow not yet occupied. It was a very somber and sad place.

My Ethiopian News Agency colleagues conducted an interview with Moges about the cemetery while I walked down a path with an escort to get an idea of the scale of the cemetery - which was much larger than it looked at first glance.

And it was during this second visit to a place of mass death that I came up with the title for this article, “Death and Peace” in Ethiopia, as death seemed to be very much the theme of our trip.

We returned to our Land Cruiser and headed back to Alamata arriving as rural folk were returning from the Alamata market with livestock and supplies. The supplies were variously loaded on to carts and camels and the livestock, cattle and goats, on foot.

For a time we drove directly into the setting sun as we discussed when to leave the following day to head home. Our hotel was fully occupied when we returned but we found some new accommodation down the road.

In the evening I conducted a lengthy final interview with Zinebu & Moges focused on the mass grave in Alamata and the “Tigray Genocide Commission2 documents which were far and away the most important discovery of our visit.

The team agreed to leave before daylight the following morning to ensure we got back to Dessie in time for our flight back to Addis. Overnight the Orthodox Sabbath liturgy rang out in a amplified duet of voices between two churches across the city. Alamata was another singing city – and I was reminded of my arrival in Addis back in April during a the religious observation of Easter and Ramadan which coincided this year. During that period the signing was nearly continuous for days.

DAY 5: Returning To Addis

The nearly deserted roads at 5am on a Sunday were perfect for making rapid progress south. I had a a head full of questions and concerns about what we had seen. As we arrived back at the Aluha river ford and the broken Aluha bridge the sun was rising and I stopped and shot a brief video of the sunrise.

We passed through Robit and stopped briefly in Weldiya which was just waking up. Then Mersa as we headed south arriving in Dessie in time to eat before catching our flight back to Addis out of Kombulcha. Our plane was also carrying several National Dialogue commissioners who had been consulting in Dessie about the dialogue, which will pick up in coming months hopefully enabling a peace and reconciliation process to address the scars of this war.

My Govt. hosts generously put me up in the Hilton Hotel for a night and I departed the following day after conducting an interview with Ethiopia News Agency and getting a yellow fever vaccination required for entry to Egypt where I am now attending #COP27 and writing this account.

As I finish this rushed account of the trop I am sitting in the corner of a concourse on the COP27 site with a view of the Plenary hall where President Biden spoke yesterday evening, it’s very hard looking back to believe that all of this happened in the last 10 days, it feels like several months.

/ENDS

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Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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