Farmer Kiros Tadros
plows his land in the
southeastern region
of Tigray after Eritrean
soldiers took the food,
livestock, and seeds
from his village. They
demanded that the
villagers not farm, but
Kiros has no choice.
If he doesn’t farm, his
seven children will
have nothing to eat.
distribution of humanitarian aid, looting pro-
visions and livestock, and preventing farmers
from tending their fields.
Abeba Gebru, pregnant with her sixth child,
hid from the violence in a cave where she had
only roasted beans to eat. Her baby was born
malnourished and Abeba could not produce
enough milk to breastfeed. “I was much wor-
ried about her,” she says. “I tried to squeeze my
breast to get some.” She and her daughter are
being treated at a clinic in Abiy Adi.
The war began during harvest season. In May
it was time to plant. In a village on the road
between Mekele and Abiy Adi, Kiros Tadros, a
father of seven, was back in his fields. Climate
change had already made the past few years
difficult: “It’s like doomsday—all of this war
followed the frozen rains and the locusts.
“Our land as well as the mountains overlooking
our houses were invaded by Eritrean soldiers,”
he says. “They came to each household andbeen stripped bare. “There were two types of
looting here,” says Adissu Hailu, head of the
general hospital in Abiy Adi. “First the Eritrean
troops took what they can. Then this hospital
was serving as a military base.” He says the sol-
diers sold everything, including the refrigerators.
When the soldiers left, the hospital was able to
reopen, but the staff didn’t have any medical
equipment, not even microscopes. Still, the hos-
pital was overwhelmed with patients.
MEANWHILE, people are starving.
“A total of 5.2 million people, a staggering
91 percent of Tigray’s population, need emer-
gency food assistance,” says Peter Smerdon, a
spokesman for the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP) in East Africa. Fifty percent
of mothers and nearly a quarter of the children
whom WFP has been able to screen are malnour-
ished. Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers wield
hunger as a weapon, blocking and diverting the
98 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC