demanded we provide them food, give them our
livestock. They also demanded that we do not
plow and that we give them information on the
whereabouts of the militia.”
The United Nations has called for an inves-
tigation of war crimes, and the United States
has cut economic and security aid to Ethiopia,
banned travel to the U.S. by officials or com-
batants involved in the violence or in blocking
humanitarian aid, and sanctioned the head of
Eritrea’s military.
But Tigrayans have mounted the most effec-
tive countermeasures. The TPLF is flush with
recruits galvanized by the violence against their
communities. Twenty percent of the Ethiopian
army, and a large proportion of the officers and
technical staff, were Tigrayan; now they’re
fighting for the TPLF. Battle-hardened com-
manders, including Tsadkan Gebretensae, a
former chief of staff for Ethiopia’s military, have
come out of retirement. In June they began
retaking large swaths of Tigray, later marching
more than 6,000 captured Ethiopian soldiers
through the streets of Mekele.
After responding to the defeats with a face-
saving unilateral cease-fire, Abiy exhorted “all
capable Ethiopians” to join militias and defend
Ethiopia against the TPLF, which he described
as “traitors that bit the hands that fed them and
turned their backs on the Ethiopia that breast-
fed them.” There are reports of Tigrayans being
detained and disappeared and their businesses
being closed in cities across Ethiopia.
Still, the TPLF is on the offensive. “You don’t
win wars by mobilizing half a million peas-
ants with small arms,” says de Waal, especially
against a force “that has basically defeated your
regular army and captured all its equipment.”
The fighting has spread east into Afar, south into
Amhara, and west within Tigray to open a supply
line to Sudan.
Abiy faces an insurgency in his home state
of Oromia. There’s conflict between the Afar
and Somali people, between the Amhara and
the Oromo, and between the Gumuz and the
Amhara and Oromo.
External forces threaten Ethiopia as well.
Sudan seized the disputed territory of Al Fash-
aga, leading to the eviction of Ethiopian farmers
and clashes between the two countries. The fertile
borderland, called the Mazega by Ethiopians, is
leverage in the ongoing wrangling over the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The massive hydro-
electric dam on the Blue Nile has raised tensions
with Sudan and Egypt, and those two countries
have signed a military cooperation agreement.
The future of Ethiopia is increasingly tenuous.
A 47-year-old woman from Inda Silase in Tigray
knows what’s at stake for her. She was raped in
front of her children by soldiers who told her the
Tigrayan race must be eliminated.
Recent TPLF victories can’t erase her pain—
or that of all the others caught up in this churn
of war. At Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele,
hundreds of women have been treated for rape.
“But the numbers are not telling the reality on
the ground,” says Mussie Tesfay Atsbaha, the
hospital’s chief administrator. “If one person has
come, another 20 are dead somewhere.
“I never saw hell before, but now I have.” jPulitzer Prize–winning photographer Lynsey
Addario is the author of the memoir It’s What I
Do. Staff writer Rachel Hartigan is writing a book
about the search for Amelia Earhart.A WAR ON ITSELF 99