I don’t need any permission from Dr Abiy to visit wherever I want. The same is true, he will not need my permission to go wherever he wants whether it is Massawa, Assab, Omhajer or Teseney.

How many can forget this lecture from President Isaias?

The recurring peace and love between the people of Eritrea and Ethiopia is not new rather we are reinstating it as both people have common historical and cultural values intertwined as one. I as an individual not as a President, getting [leader] like Dr Abiy is not easy: the opportunity that the people of Eritrea and Ethiopia have in common is tremendous. I have said this repeatedly; for anything that needs representation you will be representing us both [for Ethiopia and Eritrea]. You will be leading us ahead. It is neither for the sake of lip service nor to make him happy. I genuinely rely on you that the peace and friendship initiative of both people will be advanced to our development programs which the aspiration of the one people is not different than the other. For this to be achieved, Dr Abiy is here to lead us forward. He came to Asmara; we came to Addis Ababa and now to Hawassa this is only the beginning. As he [PM Abiy] mentioned it earlier, I will not need his permission to travel across every corner of Ethiopia. I don’t need any permission from Dr Abiy to visit wherever I want. The same is true, he will not need my permission to go wherever he wants whether it is Massawa, Assab, Omhajer or Teseney. We can speak that this love, peace, and unity between both people is historical. But we lost it in due course; now we regained it. We are moving forward with assured leadership commitment. Although there is nothing above the people for the people to thrive, leadership is vital. In this occasion today, I announce to the people of Hawassa that I have handed over the entire authority and leadership role to him. I am confident that he will win. Congratulations to all of us. (President Isayas in Hawassa, EBC, 2018, 8:29-11:44)

It did not prevent Isaias from recently falling out with Abiy. However, when they were still good friends he sent Eritrean troops to fight in Tigray alongside Ethiopian forces and militia.

This is an extract from a chapter by Professor Miram van Reisen, Kai Smits and Daniel Tesfa. This section deals with the terrible atrocities the Eritreans inflicted on Tigray.

Source: A Secret Deal to Conceal: The Eritrean Involvement in the Tigray War

Witnesses report on Eritrea’s participation in the war

After the start of the war on 3 November 2020 (ICHREE, 2023), Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers killed, arrested, and tortured civilians in Aksum (Tesfa et al., 2024). They looted public and private resources

including Aksum University from 19–27 November 2020, according to the focus group discussants (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023). The Eritrean

soldiers in Aksum separately continued looting money, jewellery and smart phones, searching house to house. The soldiers were raping adolescent girls as well as killing civilians (approximately 100 civilians were killed by shelling and indiscriminate killing including a university lecturer – most of whom were killed by the Eritrean Army)

(Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023).86

One of the participants remembered:

On 27 November 2020 in the midday, three trucks of EDF soldiers came to Aksum positioning themselves around Anbesa Lavajo (entry route from Adwa to Aksum), Negisa Hotel and St Mary Church respectively. The city was overwhelmed by their movement. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

Another participant in the focus group discussion stated:

As the following day was St Gabriel religious celebration day, many people already reached the St Mary Church of Aksum in the early morning; but sudden frequent clash exchange was heard from the hills in May Koho, where Eritrean soldiers had trenched for a week already. Some of the people were targeted from the top of the hill while trying to rush to their house while others who kept silent in the compound of the church were also targeted later. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

This participant herself witnessed the following:

The bodies of above 25 people who wore a netsela, [a white cloth which Christians wear while going to church], laid down from the edge of the St Marry Church to her home around Sabean Hotel. The clash then continued until around 3:30 pm Local Time. Then after, the Eritrean soldiers went down to the houses nearing the hill through St Mikeal Church, Sabean Hotel and Daero Piasa. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion with Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

One of the discussants who survived the Aksum Massacre stated:

As the fighting was moderately slowed down, the Eritrean soldiers immediately began house to house search. I was frightened because I was hearing a sound of fire guns in the house they entered before ours. The sister of one of the victims opened the door as soon as they yelled: ‘Agame [a slur for Tigrayan people used by Eritreans] open the house’. The oldest soldier, out of the three entered, ordered all men to lay down on the ground yelling ‘we don’t want to waste gun fire for Agame’. The two of them were counting the number of youth they shot. The oldest of them said ‘I had 23; the second said I had 18 while the third responded 11’. Then the oldest one ordered the youngest soldier to shoot us all. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)87

‘Agame’ is a derogatory term for Tigrayans, a term used by Eritreans when referring to people from Tigray they consider to be less worthy.

A survivor of the massacre explained the situation:

I was shot in my leg, while the other survivor on his hand; but the three others died immediately as they were shot repeatedly. A sister of the one who died grabbed the oldest soldier and begged them to kill her too while they were leaving the house. But he responded ‘you will give birth for us after we eradicate the Agame junta’. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

Another survivor who escaped by hiding on the roof of his house witnessed the massacre of six people, four of them were children under 18, including his son (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion with Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023). He said:

Searching every house in our compound one of the soldiers said ‘we came to slaughter every Agame’ ordering the youth to go out to the compound. The one who shot all of the men in the compound ordering them to lay on the ground, said ‘Agame, you locked us behind for 30 years, now it is our turn to drag you back 100 years if we couldn’t deracinate you all’ and he said ‘game over’. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

The utterances of Eritrean soldiers that they intended “to bring Tigray back” fifty or hundred years “into time” was also communicated in witness reports from Adigrat (communication to Van Reisen, WhatsApp, audiotape, 16 January 2024).

One of the participants indicated that the Eritrean soldiers continued the house-to-house search on 29 November 2020 where they captured him and around two hundred other youths, ordering them to travel barefoot through the breakers of glass of the Brana Hotel which Eritrean soldiers had demolished using tanks (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023).

The discussants also stated that they were denied a chance to bury the bodies of their children and relatives for three days (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to- face, 23 March 2023).

One woman said:

Eritrean soldiers ordered that anyone who attempted to take bodies would be slaughtered. Around Sabean Hotel alone I have counted 37 bodies. Then on the third day, people began collecting bodies. But the vulture kettles were already popular around these days. The St Mary celebration then turned a funeral in which everyone cried for each other. Relentless to disinform, the Ethiopian media then reported Aksum dwellers celebrated St Mary of Zion Day. (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023)

The discussants explained that in their eyes, Eritrea had perpetrated ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans, a plan which they believe had been explained on television by President Isayas when people were focused on the Peace Agreement (Interviewee GSFGD02, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 8 July 2023; interviewee SHIDI11, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 11 June 2023).

Respondents argued that Eritrea was among the main designers of the Tigray war, as Eritrea had mobilised and even trained Somali soldiers to engage in the war in Tigray (AXFGD01, a focus group interview with DT, face-to-face, 23 March 2023).

However, the respondents felt that international actors did not treat the involvement of Eritrea from the perspective of aggression and invasion (Interviewee AXFGD01, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 23 March 2023). The international policy actors focused on peace, but while doing so, failed to address the destabilising role of Eritrea in Tigray and in the Horn of Africa in-general (Interviewee GSIDI01, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 9 July 2023; interviewee SMIDI15, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 11 June 2023; interviewee GSFGD02, focus group discussion by Tesfa, face-to-face, 8 July 2023).

Referring to Tigrayans as ‘junta’, including Tigrayans as collectively responsible for the situation in Eritrea, the Tigray population was subjected to a so-called retaliation. A 17-year-old who was kidnapped by Eritrean soldiers on 11 September 2021 (which is the Geez New Year celebration) from her home in Sheraro was told that being Tigrayan was enough for her to be subjected to the violence perpetrated on her. She said:

As I was taken through Badme to Shambuko along with 46 other adolescent girls and women as well as 405 men all below 18 years old except 16 elders, they used to beat, harass and gang-rape me. When I asked them why to put all this suffering on me, they responded ‘you Agame, Tigrayan shut up, your game is over Ms. Junta now ours starts’. They used to claim Tigray for all they do not have. They even said ‘this suffering is small in comparison to the way you Agame locked us for 30 years. (Interviewee SHIDI10, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 6 June 2023)

Many children and a few elders were kidnapped by the Eritrean Army from Sheraro and were first taken to Shambuko, then finally, they were imprisoned in Adi-Beare for a month and 17 days (Interviewee SHIDI10, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 6 June 2023; interviewee SHIDI09, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 6 June 2023).

Another child, aged 15, who was kidnapped from a field where he was rearing cattle on the outskirts of Sheraro on 11 September 2021, stated that he was arrested and pummelled by the Intelligence Unit of the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) in Barentu Town. He said:

The place where I was arrested along with 4 children of my village for 11 months is called “Enda Sleya Mahyur” [literally translated as Intelligence’s Arrest Room]. We found ten people who were arrested before us. The soldiers usually told us that ‘the destiny of Agame men is to be slaughtered in the hand of Eritrean men while Agame women must give birth to an Eritrean child who takes his father’s role’. Out of the total of 15 men, most of us children, in the room I was arrested, the Intelligence Unit took the five men and they didn’t return until I was released after 11 months. Among them, I know two. (Interviewee SHIDI09, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 6 June 2023)

Since he came back to Sheraro in August 2022, he said he was still confused as to what to tell his parents and usually hid from them. He added “Explaining what happened to them is expected from me; but what should I say” he questioned “Though it was unlikely, I wanted to hope that they were alive” (Interviewee SHIDI09, interview by Tesfa, face-to-face, 6 June 2023).

The atrocities committed by Eritrea were hidden by a siege and communication black out, together with a disinformation campaign, and atrocities were committed with impunity. The failure to recognise Eritrea as a principal actor in the conflict, will continue to conceal the atrocities committed in Tigray, parts of which Eritrea continues to occupy, despite the signing of the Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities

Agreement on 2 November 2022 (Omer, 2022; Hochet-Baudin, 2022; Bariyo, 2023: Samuel, 2023).90

Conclusion

The chapter explored the secret lead-up to the 2018 Peace Agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2017 and 2018, revealing a disinformation campaign that used the peace process as a cover for preparations for war against Tigray. The collaboration between Eritrea and Ethiopia was concealed, allowing Eritrea to commit atrocities in Tigray with impunity. Eritrea’s active presence was only officially acknowledged on 23 March 2021, when Prime Minister Abiy thanked President Isayas for the Eritrean involvement and battlefield support to the war.

In late 2017, an Israeli diplomat visited the region to advance an Ethiopia-Eritrea peace plan, offering Ethiopia access to the strategically located Assab port in Eritrea and support for Eritrean infrastructure development. The TPLF rejected the plan. Shortly afterwards Eritrean President Isayas made a threatening statement towards Tigray. Abiy became Prime Minister in early 2018 and, by July, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace treaty with support from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US, leading to the lifting of UN sanctions against Eritrea. Prime Minister Abiy received the Nobel Peace Prize for these efforts in 2019.

European and French support for infrastructure and military development followed (including naval support), with President Isayas indicating that he had handed over significant authority to Prime Minister Abiy. The details of the peace plan remained undisclosed. Meanwhile, President Isayas framed the TPLF and Tigrayans as the problem, using derogatory terms such as ‘Woyane’.

While the international public agenda was fully framed on peace, a language of war against Tigray was introduced by the leaders in the region. The supposed peace process masked the formation of a war alliance against Tigray.

During the Tigray war, Ethiopia and Eritrea employed disinformation tactics to deny Eritrea’s involvement, while Eritrean soldiers committed atrocities in Tigray against Tigrayan civilians. The disinformation campaign to conceal their presence included a communication blackout, media censorship, and the intimidation of journalists. Ethiopian and Eritrean media and social media denied Eritrea’s involvement, framing the conflict as internal. The disinformation campaign was supported by pro-government diaspora groups of all sides.

Journalists in the local media faced intimidation to prevent them from reporting on Eritrea’s involvement and the atrocities committed. This repression continued after Eritrea’s involvement was revealed, making it difficult to investigate the situation on the ground. This disinformation campaign confused the public about the nature and severity of the conflict, leaving atrocities unreported and perpetrators unpunished. The result was a tragic confusion of war with peacebuilding, leading to long-lasting instability and impunity for those responsible for the atrocities.