for the T.P.L.F., which refused to join.
The Tigrayan leadership decamped
to northern Ethiopia. In the regional
capital of Mekelle, the former national
government became an alternate cen-
ter of power, with much of the coun-
try’s bureaucratic expertise and a sig-
nificant portion of its military force. In
2020, when Abiy postponed national
elections, saying that COVID-19 pre-
sented too great a threat, the Tigray-
ans defiantly held elections of their own.
The T.P.L.F. received ninety-eight per
cent of the vote, giving its chairman,
Debretsion Gebremichael, control of
the regional congress.
The war began two months later,
with what the T.P.L.F. has described as
both a “preëmptive operation” and a “le-
gitimate act of self-defense” against
forces that Abiy had mobilized around
the region. Before daybreak on Novem-
ber 4th, Tigrayan soldiers attacked a
key Ethiopian Army garrison near Me-
kelle. Within hours, Abiy’s warplanes
and Army units were on their way to
counter the attack and to seize Me-
kelle. After three weeks of fierce fight-
ing, Abiy declared military operations
“completed,” and Debretsion and his
comrades vanished into the Tigrayan
countryside.
But Abiy hadn’t fought by himself;
his forces weren’t strong enough. In-
stead, he had made a kind of devil’s
bargain. To take on the T.P.L.F., he had
formed a military alliance with Eritrea,
which has a powerful army and one of
the world’s most repressive govern-
ments. He had also solicited support
from Amhara militias. Both the Eritre-
ans and the Amhara had old grievances
with the Tigrayans. During the fight-
ing, reports spread of gang rapes, and
of widespread killings of civilians. The
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken,
said that “ethnic cleansing” seemed to
be taking place.
Abiy’s government heatedly denied
the charge, but videos were circulating
that appeared to show persuasive evi-
dence of war crimes. One particularly
gruesome video, from January, 2021,
shows Ethiopian soldiers filming one
another as they murder at least thirty
residents of a village in central Tigray.
The soldiers urge one another on as
they lead captives—young men in
civilian clothes—to a cliff and begin
shooting. One man calls out to a com-
rade to shoot his victim again, because
he is still moving; another tells his
fellow-soldiers, “Use no more than two
bullets—two is enough to kill them.”
In the end, the soldiers toss their vic-
tims off the cliff, shooting some of them
again on ledges where they have fallen.
The soldiers carry out the killings with
an air of complicit glee. Their victims
are eerily silent.
Finally, in March, 2021, Abiy ac-
knowledged that the Eritreans had
been involved in the fighting, and al-
lowed that atrocities may have been
committed. He promised, somewhat
vaguely, to seek justice. Western ob-
servers were outraged, but Abiy’s con-
stituents seemed not to care. Three
months later, he held a national elec-
tion—excluding Tigray—and easily se-
cured a new five-year term. His slogan
was “New Beginnings.”
Within the government, though,
some of his loyalists were appalled.
When Abiy took power, he had built
an inclusive administration, with wo-
men in cabinet positions and Tigray-
ans—those who weren’t loyal to the
T.P.L.F.—occupying key posts. Among
them was Berhane Kidanemariam, who
served as second-in-command of theEthiopian Embassy in Washington,
D.C. At the beginning, Berhane told
me, he was hopeful that Abiy could
bring the country together, but he
quickly developed doubts. In July, 2018,
Abiy visited the U.S., and spoke before
a crowd of expatriate Ethiopians. As
Berhane introduced him, the crowd
began insulting him for being Tigrayan,
and jeering at him to get off the stage.
He hoped that Abiy would say some-
thing to calm things down. Instead,
the Prime Minister went on with his
speech as if nothing had happened.
When Berhane registered concern af-
terward, he told me, Abiy chided him
for being too sensitive.
Berhane reassured himself that it
was an isolated incident. “I thought
things would resolve themselves,” he
said. But then the war broke out, and
the news emerged that the Eritreans
were fighting on Abiy’s side. “We were
told to publicly deny the reports—but
how could we deny it?” Berhane said.
“That was a sign to me that the gov-
ernment would destabilize not just
Ethiopia but the whole region.” When
the videos of war crimes came to light,
Berhane resigned from his post. For
people who had believed in Abiy’s
early promise, the videos felt like a“I liked this place better when it was a cat café.”