in the state capital of Mekele, Kesanet Gebre-
michael wails as nurses change the bandages
and clean the wounds on her charred flesh.
The 13-year-old was cooking with a cousin in
the village of Ahferom, in central Tigray, when
her grass-mud home was hit in a mortar attack.
“My house was destroyed in the fire,” says her
mother, Genet Asmelash. “My child was inside.”
The girl, already malnourished, suffered burns
on more than 40 percent of her body.
At a women’s shelter in Mekele, a 33-year-old
woman recalls being raped by soldiers on two
occasions—in her home in Idaga Hamus and
as she tried to flee to Mekele with her 12-year-
old son. (The names of the rape victims in this
story are not being used, to protect their privacy.)
The second time, she was pulled from a minibus,
drugged, and taken to a military camp, where
she was tied to a tree and sexually assaulted
over the course of 10 days. She fell in and out of
consciousness from the pain, exhaustion, and
trauma. At one point, she awoke to a horrifying
sight: Her son, along with a woman and her new
baby, was dead at her feet. “I saw my son with
blood from his neck,” she says. “I saw only his
neck was bleeding. He was dead.” With her fists
clenched against her face, she howls a visceral
cry of pain and sadness, unable to stop weeping.
“I didn’t bury him,” she screams between sobs.
“I didn’t bury him.”
What started as a political dispute between
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed and
Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liber-
ation Front (TPLF), has exploded into a war with
genocidal overtones—a grave humanitarian crisis
threatening the lives of millions of people andA WAR ON ITSELF 87