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Ethiopia Is Still Reeling from Genocide. Now Another War Looms

I travelled there and found alleged war criminals still in power and fresh atrocities being committed

WORLD / JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2027

Ethiopia Is Still Reeling from Genocide. Now Another War Looms

I travelled there and found alleged war criminals still in power and fresh atrocities being committed

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY MEGHAN DAVIDSON LADLY

Published 6:30, NOVEMBER 11, 2026

This story contains details about sexual assault and violence that some readers may find disturbing.

LEMLEM ALAYAHU ONCE owned a farm and raised livestock. Now in her sixties, she’s widowed and raised her four children as a single parent.

Before civil war broke out in Ethiopia in late 2020, Alayahu lived in Kafta Humera district in what is now called Western Tigray, a zone whose borders have long been disputed. In the early 1990s, Ethiopia’s transitional federal government redrew regional boundaries and annexed land then belonging to the ethnic Amhara into the Tigray region. Tigrayan authorities forced Amharas to keep silent about their ethnic claims to the land or leave, often using strategies of violence and intimidation.

Decades later, the resulting hostilities helped trigger one of the world’s deadliest conflicts of this century. The two-year Tigrayan war initially sparked in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, with Ethiopia’s federal government battling the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a powerful political organization. It soon pulled in neighbouring regions, various militias, and Eritrean forces. In November 2020, federal and Amhara special forces joined with armed informal Amhara militia, the latter known as Fano, and seized control of Western Tigray.

When Fano forces entered Alayahu’s town, she was out feeding her animals. The troops captured her and held her along with thirty other women, several of whom were pregnant, in a detention centre. At night, soldiers “would take someone outside . . . and commit crimes,” Alayahu recounts. They repeatedly sexually assaulted her and other women. “People were killed. We were interrogated for over a week.”

Though some locals spoke Amharic, they were often identifiable as Tigrayans through their tattoos, Alayahu recalls, gesturing to the ones on her wrist as an example. Many women, particularly in rural areas, have small crosses, dots, or lines tattooed on their faces, necks, hands, or gums as cultural markers. The practice, known as Nikisat, is common throughout both Amhara and Tigray; the tattoos differ based on ethnicity.

While the fighting in wars like Ethiopia’s is often framed as the product of rivalries between ethnicities, it’s frequently about land and power. The focus on identity groups shapes who is targeted, directing extreme violence against women and children.

Federal forces eventually collected the women and deposited them in the surrounding hills. And then the women walked. They crossed checkpoints, where they were mocked by Eritrean soldiers but ultimately left to continue on their way. Alayahu walked for over a month to reach the Seba Kare camp for internally displaced people, on the outskirts of Mekelle. Her adult children made their journeys here separately, but all of them survived.

By the time the federal government and the TPLF signed what many describe as a peace agreement, in November 2022, at least 600,000 people are believed to have died from violence, disease, and hunger, though sources vary widely on the death toll. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans experienced famine. And millions of citizens of various ethnicities were displaced either internally or across the border, into Sudan. In November 2023, the federal government announced the territorial dispute in Western Tigray would be resolved through a referendum, but this has yet to occur.

Alayahu is one of over 1.2 million people who fled Western Tigray. At Seba Kare, over 20,000 IDPs live in white tarpaulin tents battered by years of exposure to the elements. Last September, a hyena snatched and killed a toddler. Another child has since been attacked but survived.

Amongst the rows of tarps and makeshift clothing lines, Alayahu’s tent is a small quiet space. When I meet her, in November 2025, she shows off the pictures and poetry her granddaughter inscribed on the walls, including a cat in black marker. A poem praising the strength of women, written in large letters, takes up almost a whole tarpaulin panel.

Sitting in a yellow plastic chair, Alayahu pauses periodically to fuss over her kitten curled up on some fabric in the corner.  In the rainy season, her tent leaks. There are problems with water sanitation, and she suffers from stomach issues. The interim regional authorities governing Tigray promised those who were displaced that they would be able to go back to their homes, says Alayahu, “and yet we remain here.”

If the stories of Alayahu and other Tigrayan women articulate anything, it’s that the peace agreement utterly failed to usher in peace. Now, four years after the deal was signed, the country is erupting into another war.

THE TPLF BEGAN as a guerrilla militia in 1975. It formed to oppose the military junta known as the Derg, which came to power the previous year with the overthrow and murder of Haile Selassie, Ethiopia’s last emperor.

With Eritrean support, the TPLF overthrew the Derg in 1991 and transformed into a political party. It became the dominant power in Ethiopia’s national governing coalition, eventually ruling alongside three other ethnically based contingents: the Amhara Democratic Party, the Oromo Democratic Party, and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement.

But the administration proved to be autocratic, stirring years of anti-government protests. In 2018, the backlash forced then prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn to resign. When the federal coalition appointed Abiy Ahmed to take his place, he promised reform and anti-corruption initiatives.

Initially, Abiy’s rule was greeted with euphoria inside the country and cautious optimism outside its borders. The enthusiasm was, in part, owing to his Oromo and Amhara parentage, which made him the first Oromo prime minister. Oromos are the largest ethnic group within Ethiopia—comprising nearly 36 percent of the population, as compared to the 24 percent who are Amhara and the 6 percent who are Tigrayan—but they had long felt excluded from federal power and economic opportunities.

Abiy’s........

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