When the world is ushering a new year, celebrating the ending of a year of biblical calamities, Tigray will be in pitch black darkness. Tigrayans will be suffocating under the alliance of the iron boots of Isaias Afewerki, Abiy Ahmed and the Amhara chauvinists.  As if the recurring civilian killing in villages and towns of Tigray, bombing of civilian targets, a widespread of rape and daily imprisonment of citizens as weapons of war are not enough, the unholy alliance of the three are very much determined to sentence Tigrayans to death by starvation. Abiy (and his representative in Tigray) is pulling out every trick from the chronicle of dictators to conceal his crimes against humanity from the public view. According to United Nations conservative estimates, there are 1.3 million Tigrayans displaced by this war who are in need of emergency assistance. “ Some 2.3 million children in Tigray, Ethiopia, remain cut off from humanitarian assistance amid continuing violence since the beginning of November. ” This was a warning by the Executive Director of UNICEF, Henrietta Fore.  By now, the fate of such a vulnerable sector of the population, including the elderly, is anybody’s guess. Yesterday, city dwellers of Mekelle were hoping to get access to withdraw money from some of the banks around town after two months of closure.  Sadly enough, they rudely awakened to a sick joke of being told the banks are only opened to those who could deposit money. The sudden closure of banks in Tigray for the last two months has added to the widespread starvation and to the loss of human life. In highly ruralized societies like Tigray, researchers (such as Amartya Sen) have identified the cause of starvation as being the inadequate command over foodstuff. This is currently happening in Tigray due to mainly looting, burning of crops and slaughtering animals by the invading armies of Isaias, Abiy and the Amhara Fano. Thereby destroying the endowment of farmers. The second factor is the dwindling sources of foodstuff coming from other regions and Abiy’s blockage of safety nets provided by international assistance groups. These two main factors coupled with the closure of banks and the immobility of people due to violence surrounding areas are quickening the widespread starvation in Tigray. It should be noted here these acts are deliberately done by Abiy Ahmed and his imps running rampant over the forces of well-meaning humanitarian organizations.  To put it another way, this war is a savage war imposed by strong men who are itching for personal concentration of power in the region at any cost. Abiy, Isaias and the Amhara Fano are operating as if they had received their instruction and their historical compass, from the fascists of the world of the 1930’s and 1940’s.  I am still stunningly in disbelief that the Abiy regime deployed the flag-waving killers of the Amhara Fano and the Tigrgna speaking Derg army (aka Isaias’ army) against innocent Tigrayan. At the end let me note the following. For some curious reasons, most of the Amhara elites have largely bypassed the suffering of the Tigrayans. The consequence of this neglect or silence has been the prevalence of an amazing set of cliches about the country’s shared values and our willingness to live and let live. Suffice it here to note the widespread indifference of Ethiopians to the ongoing suffering of Tigrayans under the guise of “law enforcement operation” is bringing about the collapse of “Ethiopianess” which brings nostalgic tears to the eyes of many Tigrayans.  The state of mind of Tigrayans is understandable.  Whatever biases I may have, I submit that the evidence is clear in the role of Tigrayans in building the country from looking back at the great distance all Ethiopians have traveled in their history. Given this history, Tigrayans deserve better than they are treated now.
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