Between Two Wars: A Tigrayan Survivor’s Testimony

Five thousand birr. That was all my nephew asked for—to hide, to escape forced conscription, and to remain free. Hours later, telecommunications services in Tigray were shut down, and I could no longer reach him. 

For me, this was not simply another troubling development in Tigray. It was the terrifying feeling that the wounds of the 2020–2022 war were beginning to open again—and that another generation of Tigrayan young people could once again be pulled into war.

I am writing this as a Tigrayan, as a survivor of the 2020–2022 war and genocide, and as a member of a family that has experienced the destruction and suffering that war brought to Tigray.

I am not writing as a politician, a military strategist, or a neutral observer sitting outside the conflict.

I lived through the first war.

I watched what happened to Tigrayans.

I know what it means to lose people, to live with fear, to see communities destroyed, and to watch an entire generation have its future interrupted.

That is why I cannot describe the history of Tigray through the language of political convenience or a simplistic “both sides” narrative.

For me, the central reality is clear: the Ethiopian federal government under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched the military operation against Tigray in November 2020, and Ethiopian, Eritrean, and allied forces subsequently fought across Tigray. The investigation by the UN human rights office documented grave violations during that conflict, while the UN-appointed International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia later found reasonable grounds to believe that the Ethiopian federal government and its allies committed crimes against humanity in Tigray. 

The destruction was not simply a political disagreement. It was a human catastrophe.

2020–2022: The First War

On November 4, 2020, the Ethiopian federal government announced a military operation against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), citing the fighting around the Northern Command as its justification. But what followed went far beyond a conventional military operation.

The stated justification became a pretext for a much broader campaign against Tigray. Federal forces, together with their allies, launched a devastating war that inflicted catastrophic and targeted destruction on Tigrayan civilians, communities, and institutions. From my perspective, the objective was not merely to defeat the TPLF militarily, but to break Tigray’s political resistance, dismantle its capacity to challenge the federal government, and remove any obstacle to Abiy Ahmed’s increasingly centralized and potentially indefinite grip on power. 

Going beyond this, evidence suggests that the federal government and its allies committed acts of genocide–with the intent to destroy the people of Tigray through wholesale destruction, massacres, extrajudicial killings, and widespread sexual violence. While the UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia did not go as far as labeling the crimes committed acts of genocide, it documented killings, sexual violence, torture, displacement, attacks affecting civilians, destruction and looting, and serious violations of international humanitarian and human-rights law. 

The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that federal government forces and their allies had committed crimes against humanity and that the federal government and its allies had obstructed humanitarian assistance and basic services to millions of people. It also found reasonable grounds to believe that Ethiopian forces carried out a drone strike on the Dedebit internally displaced persons’ camp in January 2022 that killed civilians, including children. 

Separately, Human Rights Watch documented ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity against Tigrayans in Western Tigray, including killings, detention, looting, forced expulsion, and the seizure of property. 

For those of us who survived the war, these are not merely paragraphs in international reports.

They are our lives.

They are our missing relatives.

They are our destroyed homes.

They are our wounded friends.

They are the people who never came home.

They are the women and girls who survived sexual violence.

They are the children who grew up surrounded by displacement and death.

They are the students whose education was interrupted.

They are the families that have never recovered.

The Pretoria Agreement did not restore our lives.

The November 2022 Pretoria Agreement stopped the large-scale fighting.

For that, there was hope.

Tigrayans wanted peace.

We wanted our children to return to school.

We wanted hospitals to function.

We wanted displaced families to return home.

We wanted our dead to be mourned.

We wanted survivors to receive justice.

We wanted to rebuild.

But the cessation of hostilities did not resolve the fundamental problems created by the war.

The agreement itself recognized the need for transitional justice, accountability, truth, reparations, reconciliation, and healing. OHCHR and the EHRC later emphasized that these principles were essential to achieving sustainable peace.

But in practice, the so-called transitional justice process became a farce. You cannot search for a lost sheep alongside the wolves that killed and ate it. A process controlled or constrained by those implicated in the crimes cannot deliver genuine justice.

Instead of holding perpetrators accountable, transitional justice became, in my view, a mechanism that shielded the Ethiopian government from accountability for crimes committed against Tigrayans. Tigrayans did not need justice from those accused of committing the crimes; they needed justice through independent national and international mechanisms capable of investigating the crimes and holding those responsible accountable under international law.

Yet years later, major questions remain unresolved.

Tigrayan territories, including Western Tigray, remain under occupation, while millions of displaced Tigrayans continue to be denied the right to return safely and with dignity to their homes.

A peace agreement can stop shooting. 

It cannot by itself heal a society.

It cannot return a murdered parent.

It cannot rebuild every destroyed home.

It cannot erase rape.

It cannot restore years of education.

And it cannot create genuine peace while fundamental political and security questions remain unresolved.

Then came another crisis.

In 2026, the situation deteriorated again.

Tensions between the federal government and Tigray’s political leadership intensified. The unresolved questions surrounding the implementation of the Pretoria Agreement—including territory, displacement, and political authority—remained at the center of the crisis. Despite the Pretoria Agreement ending large-scale hostilities, repeated drone and air strikes against Tigrayan civilians and civilian institutions show that serious human-rights violations and unresolved grievances persist.

Then came reports of renewed military mobilisation, including conscription inside Tigray.

Human Rights Watch reported in June and July 2026 that Tigrayan authorities and forces had forcibly recruited civilians, including children as young as 15, and had introduced a proclamation providing for compulsory military mobilisation. 

For me, this is where an important distinction must be made.

I want Tigray to survive.

I want Tigrayans to survive.

I want Tigray’s people to have security, dignity, political rights, and a future.

But I cannot accept the idea that Tigray’s survival must be traded for another generation of Tigrayan children.

I cannot accept that a young university student should have to hide from his own authorities because he fears being forced into another war.

And that brings me back to my nephew and the events of September 24, 2026.

My nephew is a third-year university student.

He should have been preparing to continue his education.

Instead, on the evening of September 24, 2026, he contacted me through imo.

He asked me for 5,000 Ethiopian birr.

That was all.

He needed the money to move from place to place, hide, and try to avoid conscription.

His older brother had already been conscripted and taken away by military forces.

Their family had already suffered an unbearable loss: my sister’s children lost both of their parents.

Two of the younger children are under five years old and have a growth disorder. They are among the most vulnerable members of the family.

And now another young man in that family was trying to escape military recruitment.

My nephew’s ask was not a comment on politics. It is the devastating reality of war

He was afraid.

Five thousand birr.

I could not send the money that evening.

I still think about that.

Five thousand birr.

To many people, it might sound insignificant.

To him, it represented the possibility of moving.

The possibility of hiding.

The possibility of escaping.

The possibility of remaining alive and free.

Only a few hours later, telecommunications services in Tigray were shut down.

And suddenly I could no longer reach him.

His messages remain in my phone.

The screenshots remain.

The date remains.

The time remains.

His request remains.

But I do not know where he is.

I do not know whether he escaped.

I do not know whether he was detained.

I do not know whether he was conscripted.

I do not know whether he is safe.

That uncertainty is its own form of suffering.

This is what another war means to survivors.

For people who did not experience the first war, the return of fighting may appear as another political crisis.

For survivors, it is different.

We remember.

We remember what it felt like when communications disappeared.

We remember being unable to reach family members.

We remember displacement.

We remember hunger.

We remember the fear.

We remember the dead.

We remember the sound of drones.

We remember hospitals without medicine.

We remember children who lost their parents.

We remember people who disappeared.

And when the same political and military tensions begin returning, the psychological wound does not begin from zero.

It opens again.

Tigray must survive—but not by sacrificing its children.

I believe Tigray has the right to survive.

I believe Tigrayans have the right to defend their communities and existence.

But I also believe that enforced military conscription is not the path to Tigray’s future.

A young person who survived one war should not automatically become the soldier of another.

A university student should not have to abandon his education.

A family should not have to hide its sons.

Parents should not have to pay money to prevent their children from being taken.

And a child should not grow up believing that the only future available to him is a battlefield.

Tigray’s struggle for survival must also be a struggle for justice, civilian protection, political legitimacy, diplomacy, and international accountability.

The international community has already recognized the need for accountability and transitional justice in Ethiopia. The Pretoria framework itself contains commitments toward truth, accountability, redress, and reconciliation. 

Those commitments cannot remain on paper.

The international community cannot abandon Tigray again.

One of the greatest lessons of the 2020–2022 war should be that waiting until civilians are already dead is not prevention.

International actors knew that Tigray was facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

The UN Commission later reported that millions had been denied access to basic services and that humanitarian access had been obstructed. 

The international community should therefore not wait for another enormous death toll before acting.

It should use diplomacy, international law, human-rights mechanisms, and prioritize comprehensive peace, demanding:

•⁠  ⁠Protection of civilians;

•⁠  ⁠An end to forced recruitment;

•⁠  ⁠Restoration of communications;

•⁠  ⁠Humanitarian access;

•⁠  ⁠The return of displaced civilians to their homes under safe conditions;

•⁠  ⁠Accountability for serious violations;

•⁠  ⁠independent investigation of new allegations;

•⁠  ⁠Meaningful implementation of the Pretoria Agreement; and

•⁠  ⁠A political process capable of addressing the unresolved causes of the conflict.

If the international community abandons Tigray again, it risks allowing another generation to become victims of a conflict that should have been resolved politically.

I am not asking for another war.

I am asking for something that should be much simpler.

I want my nephew to live.

I want him to return to university.

I want his older brother to come home.

I want the children who lost their parents to grow up safely.

I want displaced Tigrayan families to return home.

I want survivors to receive justice.

I want Tigrayans to be able to determine their political future without being subjected to collective punishment or forced military mobilisation.

And I want the international community to understand that Tigray is not merely a place on a map where another political crisis is unfolding.

Tigray is made of human beings.

People who have already survived one devastating war–that was genocidal in nature– should not be forced to survive another.

The conversation I cannot forget.

My nephew’s conversation with me on September 24 may eventually become one of the smallest pieces of evidence in the history of this period.

There were no generals in that conversation.

No diplomats.

No politicians.

No military communiqués.

Just an uncle and his nephew.

A young university student asking for 5,000 birr because he was afraid of being conscripted.

A few hours later, communications went silent.

That is the reality I am left with.

And that is why I am documenting it.

Not because I am a politician.

Not because I am trying to speak for every Tigrayan.

But because I am a Tigrayan survivor.

I lived through the first war.

I know what it took from us.

And I refuse to accept that the next chapter of Tigray’s history must be written with the lives of another generation of young people.

Tigray deserves to survive.

But survival should mean that our children are alive to see the future—not that they are sent to die for it.