The Genocide the World Ignored
February 04, 2025 at 03:30PM
Drew Philp | The Atavist Magazine | January 2025 | 1,282 words (6 minutes)
This is an excerpt from issue no. 159, “There Will Be No Mercy.”
Warning: The following story contains graphic depictions of sexual violence and other atrocities.
Day One
Saba would have preferred to be an architect. A young woman who exuded effortless cool and liked aviator glasses and Pink Floyd T-shirts, she had instead been thrust into studying medicine by her upwardly mobile family. Saba was the eldest daughter, and the first in her family to go to college. In Ethiopia, that meant that she was expected to become a doctor or engineer. Her family chose medicine.
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Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Saba Tewoldebrihan Goitom attended medical school in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Her family is part of the Tigrayan ethnic group, but she never felt particularly Tigrayan. Saba considered herself a citizen of her nation, one of the pluralistically minded youth who would inherit the empire of dozens of ethnic groups that the world called Ethiopia.
Saba moved to Mekelle because she had extended family in the city, and because Tigray—which is about the size of Denmark and is Ethiopia’s northernmost region—was more stable than most of the country. A two-decade conflict over Ethiopia’s border with Eritrea, which borders Tigray, had ended with a much lauded peace agreement in 2018. The accord earned Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize.
Saba liked Mekelle. When she wasn’t studying, she enjoyed the city’s coffeehouses and kaleidoscopic nightlife. She had a diverse group of friends—many of her fellow students weren’t Tigrayan. She even grew to like medicine, particularly when it meant playing disease detective by trying to determine the illness afflicting a patient. Then, only a few months before Saba was set to begin her internship, the outbreak of COVID put her education on hold. Like many young people, she moved back home. She helped her mother around the house, looked after her sisters, and watched countless movies. In the fall of 2020, she was summoned back to school. The 24-year-old expected that the pandemic would be the only disruption on her path to becoming a doctor.
But on November 3, as her father drove her to the airport for the return flight to Mekelle, his phone rang. The caller bore distressing news: Her father’s best friend had been arrested. Law enforcement detained him without explanation when he went to a government office to pay his taxes.
Saba’s father was as confused as he was frightened. Both he and his friend, who was also Tigrayan, were law-abiding men who made no trouble. When Saba said goodbye to her father at the airport, she hoped that he would soon have answers. The call left her feeling uneasy.
Saba had kept her apartment in Mekelle, a five-minute walk from Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, where her medical school was located. But the government required a COVID test upon arrival to the city; she spent the night in a hotel downtown while awaiting the results. She checked in late and spoke on the phone with her mother. There was no news about her father’s friend. She looked at social media for a few moments. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She fell asleep around 11 p.m.
By the time she awoke the next morning, both internet and cell service were gone. Power in the neighborhood appeared to be out too, but the hotel had a generator, so Saba turned on the television. Tigray’s regional president was on screen saying that a war had begun. Tigray Special Forces* had launched several attacks on federal troops in Tigray, including one at their headquarters in Mekelle. The federal government claimed that the assault was unprovoked. Tension had simmered between the federal and Tigrayan governments in recent months, but Saba couldn’t fathom that anyone in power would be “stupid enough to start a war.”
* Ethiopia’s constitution authorizes each regional government to maintain its own armed forces.
Saba ran downstairs. The hotel receptionist told her that banking in the city had been suspended. Saba had only 1,500 birr in cash (about $40), and more than half of that would be covering the hotel room. She was on the verge of tears, but the receptionist assured her that she’d be able to withdraw money soon. Whatever was going on, it wouldn’t last long.
Saba wanted to believe the receptionist. She had never felt afraid in Mekelle before. After covering the cab to her apartment and buying a few necessities, Saba had 300 birr ($8) left. She didn’t know it then, but the money would have to last her a month.
Tesfaye* woke up on the morning of November 4 to the sound of gunfire. An ob-gyn at Ayder, he was a physically imposing man who was accustomed to deference from others in light of his professional skills and stature. His father had been a farmer, like his father before him, but Tesfaye’s drive and intelligence helped him escape a life of manual labor. His star rose so fast that he never had to apply for a job—he was always offered them. He was a man completely in control of his domain, a master of his trade. Nearly every day, people lived or died at his hands. Mostly they lived.
Tesfaye wan’t sure where the gunfire was coming from, and with service outages across Mekelle, he couldn’t look online for answers. He was certain something was very wrong. But what could he do? He got dressed and did what he did most mornings. He went to work.
*The Atavist is using a pseudonym to protect his safety.
Ayder was the second-largest hospital in Ethiopia, a public institution serving seven million people. It was the jewel of the Tigrayan health system, a network of hospitals and clinics painstakingly built over decades into one of the most comprehensive in sub-Saharan Africa. Ayder’s campus consisted of a complex of white buildings encircled by low trees, and that November the skeletons of two new structures—a multistory oncology unit and an emergency complex—were visible on the property.
When Tesfaye arrived, the hospital was busy with patients—women in white headscarves and flower-print dresses, men in Western-style collared shirts buttoned to the neck, some wearing head wraps or cotton shawls. But there was also something surprising: soldiers. They lined the halls of Ayder’s ER bearing gunshot wounds.
Tesfaye moved quickly through the hospital to attend his daily staff meeting. The morning assembly typically involved a case review of the previous 24 hours, discussions about the work of interns and residents, and updates on general goings-on throughout the hospital. At this meeting, however, there was talk only of conflict.
Employees in white coats and scrubs wondered aloud: Is it really war or just a skirmish? How long will it last? There were already soldiers arriving at Ayder for medical assistance; would there be civilians, too? Tesfaye was due to travel to Addis Ababa soon for further training. Rumors circulated that the federal government was rounding up prominent Tigrayans in the capital. Would it be safe for him to go?
Tesfaye was no stranger to conflict. He had seen the Ethiopian civil war, which had lasted from 1974 to 1991, and ended with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leading a coalition that overthrew the Derg, the country’s military junta. At the time, Eritrea was also fighting a war of independence against Ethiopia. Eritrea became a sovereign nation in 1993, but peace was fleeting. Five years later it invaded Ethiopia, triggering what became known as the Badme War, which lasted two years.
Tesfaye knew that war had a way of leaving no one untouched. He had a wife and child at home. He looked at his colleagues and wondered how many of them would be injured, sustain scars, possibly die. Would he be among them? Would his family?
For now there were only questions.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/02/04/genocide-ignored-atavist-magazine/
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