Civil war in Ethiopia: “I wish for nothing more than peace”

Civil war has been raging in northern Ethiopia for months. Hundreds of thousands are fleeing, nobody has counted the dead exactly. Young people were also recruited as fighters – they couldn’t say no.

Mabrit Tekleberhan didn’t think she would ever carry a gun. Until the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) came to her house to recruit her father as a fighter. Because he was bedridden, the 18-year-old had to stand in for him. She received two months of training from the TPLF. Then she should fight against the Ethiopian army.

“We’ve been overwhelmed since the beginning of the war”

The young woman is now a prisoner of war in a hospital in the Afar region bordering Tigray. Eventually, as the army closed in, she and others left and was hit in the thigh by a bullet.

She is one of many victims of this war, which has been going on for almost 16 months now. In November 2020, Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed sent his troops to Tigray in the north of the country to take action against the TPLF. Before that, there had been long political power struggles. The People’s Liberation Front, once the country’s dominant force, has been marginalized or provincial since Abiy took office.

Dubti Hospital, a few kilometers from Afar’s capital Semera, has long since exceeded its capacity. Many patients are housed in the open air, where goats roam between the beds. “We’ve been overwhelmed since the beginning of the war,” says the head of the hospital, Hussen Aden. “Actually we can take about 140 patients. But now we have up to 300. Almost all of them were wounded in the war.”

Lack of food, water and shelter

The Afar region is many hours’ drive from the capital, Addis Ababa. Burnt-out tanks line the roadside. Silent witnesses of the fighting. The war quickly spread from Tigray to other parts of the country. One of the reasons why Afar is of strategic importance is that a large connecting road from Addis Ababa to the port of Djibouti runs through the region. Whoever occupies them has control over the goods that come into the country, says Dawud Mohammad from the university in Semera. The people of Afar have become the plaything of these interests.

The scientist spent a long time researching the development opportunities in his region. But everything that used to give him hope is now destroyed. The leaders in Addis Ababa have forgotten Afar, he says. “We wonder how many more people will have to die in Afar before the Ethiopian government intervenes. We are citizens of this country and it would be their job to protect us.”

Almost seven million Ethiopians need help

According to the local government, around 300,000 people have now been displaced in the region. Nobody has counted the dead exactly. In the city of Afdera, some refugees have found shelter in an old salt factory. A few days ago, Asia Nuru Ali came to the huge, bare hall with her four children. She has tied medical gloves around the bare feet of one of the youngest so that the soles are at least somewhat protected from the many sharp stones on the ground. The 25-year-old fled when the TPLF entered her village and was unable to take anything from her home.

“We haven’t received any support yet,” she says. “We hope that food and other things will arrive soon.” Otherwise she would no longer know how to feed her children. According to the World Food Program, almost seven million people in Ethiopia are now dependent on food aid. The effects of the war are made worse by a drought.

“Every family had to send someone”

In the Dubti Hospital, too, the poor supply situation quickly becomes apparent. The doctors lack important medicines and painkillers. Many patients are emaciated. So did 18-year-old Filimon Gebremariam, also a former TPLF fighter. Like Mabrit, he could not resist being recruited into the People’s Liberation Front. “Every family had to send someone. The TPLF needed new forces because too many young men had already been killed.”

Gebremariam was so badly injured at the front that his lower left leg had to be amputated. Completely weakened, he sits on a mattress on the floor. This war was never his war. Now he just hopes it ends, he says in a low voice: “I wish for nothing more than peace for me and my family.”

His former comrade-in-arms Tekleberhan feels the same way. The young woman from Tigray has hung a note over her bed. Then her very personal declaration of peace: “I love Afar” she wrote – I love Afar.

There is more on the topic today at 10:15 p.m. in the daily topics