They Came for the Land. They Are After the People.

Our urgent task is not to guess every move on the battlefield. It is to protect Tigray’s people, economy and collective identity, because no people disappears in a day. It disappears when it hands over its institutions, its language and its memory. We will hand over none.

Yes, Abiy’s army has entered Tigray, and nobody outside the command rooms can tell us how long it will stay. It could be weeks, months or years. We still do not understand why they advanced so fast, or why our forces left some places. Maybe it is a plan, maybe a breakdown, maybe a secret arrangement that none of us can see yet. I will come back to that question another day. But I do not think we should spend our energy guessing every move on the battlefield. Whatever the answer is, they are here now, and every day they stay they are doing something to our society. That is what we need to watch.

And I think we all must be honest and clear about what they want, whether we are pro-TPLF or anti-TPLF. That does not change the danger facing us. They do not only want to hold Tigray’s land and roads. I fear that they want a Tigray that is smaller, weaker and quieter: a people who no longer matter, and, better for them, who no longer exist. I am not saying this from imagination. In September 2021, at the height of the war, Daniel Kibret, adviser to Abiy, said that “they” should be removed from people’s consciousness and erased from the historical records so completely that anyone who studies them will find nothing. Later he said he only meant the TPLF. But he said it during a war in which political labels were being stuck on all Tigrayans, and Tegaru understood who he was talking about.

For me, those words had a meaning I knew on the concrete floor of a concentration camp in Addis Ababa, the city where I was born and raised. I still carry the trauma of being surrounded by faces that seemed to give Daniel Kibret’s words a human form. Is there any Tigrayan who does not feel what it means to be called Woyane? It is a name we carry with pride, and a label used against us. Woyane is part of who we are as a people, and not only the name of a party. When Daniel Kibret speaks of erasing it from people’s minds and from history, I hear a call to erase a people’s memory of itself.

I have heard others, including many Amhara activists, point to Biafra and to the Aboriginal people of Tasmania as examples of what can happen to a people, as if that were the fate waiting for Tigray. Biafra was starved into surrender by a blockade that killed hundreds of thousands. The Aboriginal Tasmanians were hunted and driven from their land by colonial settlers until the settlers spoke of them as finished. We will not forget those words either.

I also remember how Jawar Mohammed and others in the Oromo political class spoke about Tigrayans in general, giving all of us names like “Agazi” and “Hagos,” as if every farmer, teacher or trader carried the guilt of a system. This is not the same as an explicit call for extinction. But it helped make a whole people answerable for the actions of a government. Once that happens, it becomes easier to justify what is done to individuals simply because they are Tigrayan.

I believe part of this hostility comes from political elites who see an organized Tigray as an obstacle to their power and to the Ethiopia they want. That is how I understand the hostility of many Amhara political elites, and I fear the same thinking among Oromo elites who now hold power. I am speaking about leaders and activists who think their position is safer if Tigray is smaller and quieter. Their words matter because ordinary people can repeat them and accept what is done to us. While I was in prison, I heard people say, “እሰይ፣ እናንተንስ ይበላችሁ!” (“Good! Let it devour you!”). I cannot forget that. It does not make every Amhara or Oromo person responsible. But it shows how hostility toward a whole people can enter everyday speech. We must take it seriously, and preserve the memory and belonging they would have us lose.

None of this is new to us. Menelik, Haile Selassie, the Derg and Abiy were different rulers in different times, using the methods available to them during their reigns. But when I put together what Tigray lived through under them, I see a recurring effort to weaken us: conquest, redrawn borders, our language placed below others, our region neglected and starved of investment, our people treated as suspects, and war again and again. I also remember the Derg’s resettlement in the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of people from Tigray and the north were moved, in the name of famine relief, to the south and west of the country. Many died on the way and in the new settlements, and those who survived, and their children, lived far from our language, our churches and our communities. Many held on to their language and faith against the odds, but across generations our identity was too often overshadowed and diluted. Moving by choice is not an attack on us. Being moved by power and pressure, away from the communities that sustain a people’s language and belonging, is different. The effects did not end when a battle ended. Decisions about administration, land and language continued to shape where our people could live and how they could remain Tigrayan.

Western and Southern Tigray are the lesson closest to us. In 1944, under Haile Selassie, Welkait was placed under a Gondar administration, and parts of Raya that had always been connected to Tigray were placed under Wollo. Nobody erased us in a day. It was done slowly, through administrators, appointments, schools, land and the language of government. Years later, the arrangement they had imposed was used as evidence that the land had always belonged to someone else. What started as an administrative decision became a political claim, and the claim was then used against the very people it had been imposed on. That is why I am afraid of the word “temporary.” Time is not neutral. What we accept as temporary today can be defended as permanent tomorrow, and what happened in the west and south can come deeper into Tigray. We must see that.

But the division goes deeper than the west and south. After the victory at Adwa, which we rightly celebrate, our Tigrinya-speaking people were left divided between Ethiopia and Italian-ruled Eritrea. I hold Menelik responsible. In 1889 he signed the Treaty of Wuchale, which recognized Italian possession of the land along the Mereb, and after Adwa he chose to settle with Italy instead of pursuing it out of the land. Whatever his reasons, it was a choice, and in my view it was a deliberate weakening of our shared identity, because it cut one people in two. I find it painful that some of our own people on the other side of that border, who fell under colonial rule, now see us as a threat to reclaiming their identity. I hope the time has come for all of us Tegaru to recognize what is unfolding and come together to reclaim the civilization we have carried for centuries.

If I am going to speak plainly about what they want, I must also speak plainly about ourselves. For more than a century Tegaru treated Ethiopia as our common home. We still need to ask why our families gave so much to Ethiopia while investing less in Tigray itself. I leave that question for every Tigrayan to consider. We defended Ethiopia’s borders, helped build its institutions, taught in its schools, opened businesses in its towns, and paid for it with our blood. Wherever we settled we shared our culture, our discipline and our work with the people around us, and we were often resented for exactly those things: our principles, our hard work and our discipline. I believe we were naive. We gave so much of ourselves to a house that did not see us as its own. ስደት (migration), living away from home, can slowly strip us of our identity if we do not consciously keep it alive.

And in giving so much, we weakened what was ours. I do not say we abandoned our identity; in many places we kept it with great care. But we did not guard every part of it. We seldom expected public life outside Tigray to make room for Tigrinya, and sometimes we did not insist that our children carry the language as confidently as we carried our other traditions. Our names slowly drifted toward the languages of the cities where we lived. Our numbers have always remained small, and war, famine, displacement and emigration made them smaller. One of the oldest peoples in the world finds itself a minority in a country it helped to build. When you keep all this in mind, you understand that the army entering Tigray today is not entering a strong and healthy society. It is entering a society that was already exposed.

Look at the condition in which Abiy’s war has left us. After years of war, displacement and destroyed livelihoods, many families have very little left. Now drought stands at our door. The rains have failed in parts of Tigray, harvests and pasture have suffered, and our children are already malnourished. A hungry family will do what it must to eat. A worker who has not been paid will do what he must to be paid. Whoever controls the food, the salaries, the banks, the roads and the medicine can make people obey without firing a single shot, and I believe this is how Abiy hopes to get what he wants without ever having to win our consent.

What frightens me most is what all this can do to us as a people. Sexual violence in the last war was documented on a very large scale. Tigrayans were driven out of Western Tigray, and many are still not allowed back. Hunger and the lack of medicine have already killed people in our displacement camps. Poverty makes people vulnerable to pressure from those who control food, money, work or protection. A young person who sees no future at home will leave. When insecurity continues for years, families leave, and those who remain may delay building families of their own. I do not have numbers for all of this, but I know households whose children are gone, and many of us know them too. These losses weaken our population whether or not each one follows an order from someone.

I believe this weakening of our people is also being pursued deliberately. That is what I mean by demographic engineering: using displacement, dependency and prolonged insecurity to change who can remain in Tigray and in what numbers. What has been said openly about us, and what happened in the west and south, are why I take this seriously. I cannot establish that every harm follows one coordinated plan. But we cannot wait to know every intention before protecting our people. Families still need protection, displaced people need to return, and our young people need a future at home.

That is why I speak directly to our families, and especially to our girls and women. I believe Abiy intends this army to do more than occupy our land: to weaken us inside our homes and communities, where his war has left families hungry, separated and unable to protect one another as they once did. Armed men entering a society in that condition have power over people who need food, money, work and safety. They can use those needs to prey on our daughters, sisters and wives. We have already seen what sexual violence did to our families in the last war. We cannot take this danger lightly.

We already know how desperation can expose girls to exploitation. Tigrayan girls who went to Addis Ababa and other cities seeking work and a way to survive have faced this, and it should warn us about what hunger and dependency can do inside Tigray. We must not leave another girl to face that danger alone. Families must speak openly with their daughters, communities must support households in need, and those who offer help must be answerable for what they do. Our anger belongs with those who exploit them. If a girl or woman is abused, we must stand beside her. The shame belongs to the abuser. Protecting our people means protecting her life, her dignity and her future.

I will not be diplomatic about the soldiers either. We have seen, and we are seeing, what many of these soldiers are doing. They make videos of themselves belittling our identity and making fun of it, and they do it with open hate. I cannot tell you that these are innocent men placed inside a design they did not make, because that is not what we are seeing. The commanders who carry out the design and the leaders who gave the order are responsible, and so are the men who laugh while they humiliate our people. What I ask is something different: that we answer their hate with discipline, with documentation and with organization, and not with a hatred that teaches us to become what we are fighting.

We have already seen what happens when our own communities are not prepared. Sadly, when widespread looting happened in Mekelle, the Mekhete administration was not prepared for it, and it did not put the community in charge of its own security and the safety of its people. I am devastated by how little we have learned from our past. This was a simple thing, and it was not done. That worries me, because a failure this simple may be a sign of graver mistakes and unpreparedness ahead of us. We cannot wait for someone else to organize our protection.

We must keep our own people’s administration alive. Mekelle matters. It is the seat of our government, the world watches it, and today the Prosperity Party (PP) holds the roads from the south all the way to it. But holding a capital and a highway is not the same as holding a society. Our real administration lives in every Woreda and Tabia, in our local administrators, teachers, health workers, elders, churches and mosques, and women’s and youth associations. Whatever their party affiliation, their duty is to the communities they serve. PP can occupy offices and announce appointments in Mekelle, but it cannot easily make a deeply rooted society obey it. The real contest will happen inside these local institutions, over who keeps the land and population records, who distributes the aid, who runs the schools and clinics, and whose authority people recognize. We should not romanticize them, and we should not assume they will all hold. Some people will be threatened, some removed, and some pressured into compliance. We must stand with them, record every case of pressure and forced replacement, and prepare our communities to guard their own security and safety.

Protecting those institutions also means refusing to give legitimacy to what can be imposed on us. I expect Abiy to want an administration in Mekelle to paint a picture of normality for Ethiopians, donors and diplomats, even if that administration does not last long. Once the picture exists, others will quote it. So we must watch every appointment, directive and regulation from the first day, especially those on land and property, business, jobs, schools, movement and aid. We must also watch federal laws passed while Tigray had no seat in the House of Peoples’ Representatives, so that our absence is not turned into consent. Where our rights are violated, let us resist peacefully and patiently: document everything, challenge them in law, stand together across professions and faiths, speak loudly inside Tigray and abroad, and refuse to cooperate wherever we can do so safely. An administration can be installed in a day. Legitimacy cannot.

I am also worried about PP reaching into our communities through local allies, appointments and money. An office held by a Tigrayan does not by itself mean that the community has a say in what is done there. We need to ask who gave that person authority, whose instructions they follow, and to whom they answer. The same care is needed when services resume. Flights to and from Mekelle would help our people, and we want them. But we should watch who controls access, and whether services are being used to reward political compliance or to punish those who refuse it.

Our economy is part of this struggle over who controls our lives, and aid is the most urgent part of it. Every farm, workshop, transport service and diaspora investment keeps part of Tigray alive, and a people who are made poor and jobless are easier to rule and easier to push out. Aid can save lives in a drought, but control over aid can become control over people. Our community institutions must have authority over how aid is distributed, and the work must be transparent: how much comes in, who receives it, and where it goes. International agencies should support that work and not govern Tigray through it. No soldier, party appointee or outside administrator should decide which family eats and which clinic gets medicine. We welcome real humanitarian help. We must also watch for conditions that turn relief into surveillance or political pressure. Families must be able to receive food and medicine without having to give their political obedience in return.

Keeping people alive and keeping families in Tigray also means protecting what they belong to. We need a cultural awakening among ourselves: a serious conversation about our identity, language, culture and traditions. I am worried about our young people in particular. Many of them are being pulled, without noticing it, toward Amharic language, drama and music, while Tigrinya, our songs and our stories become something that belongs to their grandparents. Learning another language or enjoying another culture is not wrong. I want our children to speak Amharic, English and any language that opens a door for them. But they must also know what is theirs. Otherwise the loss can pass from one generation to the next, and some of what is lost will never come back.

So let us speak Tigrinya at home, in Washington, Riyadh, London and Melbourne as much as in Mekelle. Let us give our children Tigrayan names and tell them what the names mean. Let us teach them our history, our proverbs, our songs and the stories of our fields and our dead. Our schools, churches, mosques, media and artists all have a part in this. During the last war we learned how our names, accents and identity cards could make us suspect. We should not wait for anyone’s decree to teach us what is worth protecting. A grandmother’s blessing stays alive because someone hears it, understands it and passes it on.

None of this will happen by itself. Tigray has already given lives beyond measure, and I no longer think we should speak about sacrifice as if the only proof of loyalty is the willingness to die. The sacrifice asked of us now is disciplined work: to organize, to teach our children, to support families in need, to document every abuse with names, dates and places wherever that can be done without endangering survivors, to save and invest at home, to carry our case abroad, and to answer propaganda with evidence. Those of us in the diaspora must build lasting channels of investment, education and help, and not wait for the next emergency appeal.

All of this, for me, is what Woyane means. It is not blind loyalty to the TPLF or to any leader. I understand it as the Tigrayan character itself: perseverance, unity, trusting ourselves, courage, hard work, generosity and loyalty to Tigray. It existed before today’s leaders, and it will outlast them. It also means questioning our leaders when they endanger the people, because loyalty without accountability is not Woyane. And it is calm. Years ago I compared it to trusting oneself to water: the swimmer who panics grabs at what cannot hold him and sinks, while the one who trusts the water stays calm and moves through it. Calm is not surrender, and confidence is not believing comforting rumors.

Woyane lives in that daily work. The farmer who keeps producing and the teacher who gives children their language are keeping Tigray alive. So is the survivor who refuses the shame others put on her. But a people cannot survive on fear and sacrifice alone. Tigray must remain something our children want to belong to, not only a history of suffering they are told to remember. There must be room for joy, for learning and for creating something of their own.

Our artists have a special duty here. A song can reach a house that an essay never enters. Film and theatre can bring our history and language into young people’s lives, and can make them recognize exploitation or question the shaming of a survivor. I ask our artists to help our children feel that being Tigrayan is something they can live with pride and joy. They inherit a civilization and a language, as well as the suffering of their parents. They need to see what they can make of that inheritance.

I do not know what turning point will come, or when. But whatever it is, I hope it will be measured by the civilians it protects, the occupation it ends and the freedom it secures, and not by the destruction it causes or the slogans shouted in its name. Its purpose must be to close the road to another cycle of revenge. The fall of one regime alone will not give back what Tigray has lost. What we can do now is protect the people, the institutions and the economic strength we will need on that day.

So Tigray’s future cannot depend only on who rises or falls in Addis Ababa. Armies can enter our cities and control our roads. They can appoint administrators and force a silence on us. But silence is not settlement. They cannot decide what Tigray becomes, unless we hand over the institutions, relationships and memory through which Tigray lives.

They may enter Tigray. They cannot decide what Tigray becomes.

ትግራይ ትስዕር！ሰላም ንህዝብና！