THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022 37
multuous condition of the United States.
“America’s politics have been ruined by
entertainment culture and media, which
is why its politicians are always trying
to behave as if they are in a drama,” he
said. “The world needs America, but it
needs it to be stable, and for its system
to reflect institutional continuity.”
Jeff Feltman, who served as the U.S.
special envoy to the Horn of Africa until
this spring, told me that he was famil-
iar with Abiy’s complaints, and with his
habit of discounting the evidence of war
crimes. “I had the same tour as you,” he
said. “Abiy was saying what a man of vi-
sion he was, that the U.S. simply did not
understand him, that he was trying to
move Ethiopia into the future, and that
Tigray was just a distraction. The charm
offensive didn’t work.” A current senior
U.S. official put it succinctly: “We’d like
to support the P.M.’s economic domes-
tic program, but we can’t until there are
no more human-rights atrocities.”
A
biy’s war with the Tigrayans had
a brutal second act. In June 2021,
days after the election in which he se-
cured his second term, the T.P.L.F.
launched a lightning counter-offensive,
retaking its capital, Mekelle, and parad-
ing thousands of captured Ethiopian
soldiers through the streets. Abiy was
humiliated. Almost overnight, his army
had been routed and Tigray had been
lost. There was even talk among some
Tigrayans of seceding from Ethiopia.
The conflict settled into a dismal
stalemate. Abiy’s government sought
to isolate Tigray, cutting off its electric-
ity, communications, air links, and food
supplies. The United Nations warned
of widespread starvation, and called for
humanitarian relief to feed four million
of Tigray’s roughly six million people.
Last fall, in an effort to break the
siege, Tigrayan forces went on the of-
fensive again, overrunning several Am-
hara cities and marching to within a
hundred and twenty miles of Addis
Ababa. Hoping to rally a patriotic de-
fense of the capital, Abiy travelled to
the front, where he was photographed
in fatigues alongside his soldiers. As
the international community urged the
Tigrayans to withdraw, Abiy’s forces
struck, with the help of drones, report-
edly supplied by Turkey, Iran, and the
U.A.E. By Christmas, the Tigrayan
forces had retreated.With the Tigrayans trapped in the
north, Abiy seemed to be looking for
a way to de-escalate. Gabriel Negatu,
an influential Ethiopian businessman
who lives in Washington, D.C., but re-
mains close to Abiy, told me that the
offensive had been halted for financial
reasons; the war was costing hundreds
of millions of dollars. “That was why
the P.M. pulled back,” he said. “Also,
he didn’t want to be responsible for two
to three million Tigrayans starving, pos-
sibly to death, because they hadn’t been
able to plant seeds.” Abiy thought that
a long-term occupation of Tigray was
unsustainable, Negatu said. But parts
of the military felt that he had given
up the fight too soon. His Amhara al-
lies and the Eritreans were angry, too;
they wanted to finish off the T.P.L.F.
Abiy’s aides insisted that he was
still seeking unity. “The P.M. believes
our strength lies in our diversity,” one
told me. But, as the conf lict grew
more intense, Abiy began referring to
T.P.L.F. members as “the cancer of
Ethiopia,” and as “devils” and “weeds.”
Even though he made a show of dis-
tinguishing between the T.P.L.F. and
ordinary Tigrayans—the “weeds” and
the “wheat”—the country’s ethnic fac-
tions understood that the constraints
on conflict were gone. Both the Am-
hara and the Tigrayans continued to
fight over territory. Oromo nationalist
groups were increasingly restive.
This summer, militias in the coun-
tryside carried out a spate of massacres.
In the first, in mid-June, hundreds of
ethnic Amhara civilians were killed in
Oromia; among the victims were women
and children who were shot or burned
alive. When I raised the slaughter with
Abiy, he brushed aside the news. He
said that there were always people “up
to mischief ” in the countryside, and
that he knew how to deal with them.
When a second massacre took place,
a few weeks later, the brutality became
harder to ignore. Abiy blamed the vi-
olence on a militia called the Oromo
Liberation Army, which was allied with
the T.P.L.F. But the O.L.A. denied in-
volvement, saying that the killings had
been carried out by government-allied
militias, while soldiers from the Ethi-
opian Army stood by. Ascertaining the
truth was impossible, because the gov-
ernment had restricted access to theThey harden as they hit the ground.They are a tribute scattered at her perfected feet.Unlike other forms of grief, they are durable, portable.A currency, they can be exchanged for other beautiful or useful things.His weighty head lifts, a sunflower at midmorning.His yellowed eyes open.The air glitters with particulate light.He takes a deep breath in.Aspiration.A nebula of gold stars swarms into his open mouth.Gold spangles the moving darknesses of his blood, his lungs.Even the rivers in this country pave their streets with gold.—Monica Youn