‘No food for days’: Starvation stalks Tigray as the war drags on

Starvation stalks Tigray as the war drags on. Food insecurity in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit area remains severe, with growing indications of hunger-dying citizens.

Kiflom Tekleweyni has eaten very little in nearly two months.

The 23-year-old born with an undiagnosed mental condition, and his mother left their hometown of Dansha in the war-hit Tigray area in Ethiopia in mid-March.

“We expected food help after we got here,” Kiflom’s mother, Mulu Yirdaw, told Al Jazeera from the Shire, a city further east. “But it’s been two months since. We got none. “

Throughout this time, Mulu and her son sought refuge in a tiny room at a Shire resident’s house, relying on locals offering them kolo, an Ethiopian cereal. However, these nutritional donations are intermittent and insufficient since the locals are suffering too. The pair had previously gone a whole week without consuming something – and on one occasion, even more.

“The community tries to help us. But many people are displaced and hungry, they can’t feed us all,” said Mulu, 64.

Weeks of hunger had Kiflom and his mother losing considerable weight. Worryingly, Kiflom had reached the stage where he couldn’t hold any food, his mother said.

“He’s really sick. He has a high fever and fatigue. My son was never like this,” said Mulu, who started getting ill when she ate but was unable to get some medical treatment for her and Kiflom.

Now in its seventh month, Tigray’s violence is reported to have killed thousands of people and displaced 1.7 million, causing a huge humanitarian crisis in an already poor country.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed directed land and air campaign in Tigray in early November 2020 after accusing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of orchestrating assaults on federal army camps, an accusation denied by TPLF officials.

Abiy, whose forces are backed by Eritrean troops and fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region, declared victory in late November when his army entered Mekelle, the regional capital. Fighting, though, continues, and stories of bombings, rape, and widespread starvation continue to emerge.

Over the past six months, the UN, relief organizations, and world powers have consistently called for complete humanitarian access to the area of six million citizens in the face of increasing concerns of prolonged war with catastrophic consequences for civilians.

On Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization from Tigray, characterized the conditions in the area as “very horrific,” with “many citizens” dying “of starvation.”

The Ethiopian government pledged “unfettered humanitarian access” in December. However, large sections of Tigray, especially rural areas, are still largely cut off due to active warfare, according to an update (PDF) by the UN Office for Humanitarian Coordination earlier this month (OCHA). Parts of central, south and southeast Tigray have been blocked by disputing parties since early March.

According to OCHA’s study, food insecurity is “large and dire.”

The three food operators – Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC), USAID’s Joint Emergency Operation Program for Food Assistance in Ethiopia (JEOP), and the World Food Program (WFP) – distributed over 19,000 metric tonnes (MT) of food to 1.1 million citizens at the end of April.

NDRMC allocated 10,839 MT of food and distributed 427 MT of food to 27,466 citizens, said OCHA, stressing that restoring agricultural activities to their pre-conflict status in some of the accessible areas and helping seed farmers are among the immediate needs to restart farming and increase food availability.

A survey released last month by SCORE on humanitarian access in Tigray showed that 94 percent of the 614 respondents needed help, with food being the most pressing need since the start of the war. However, in the previous three months, 57% claimed they had not received any help.

According to humanitarian groups, restricted humanitarian access resulted in “alarming” malnutrition, notably among children, pregnant and breastfeeding women. OCHA said it had tested 19,324 children and reported 431 seriously malnourished and 3,473 mildly malnourished. Among 4,447 pregnant and lactating women tested, 2721 were reported as chronically malnourished.

“The crisis demands decisive intervention,” Karline Kleijer, head of Doctors Without Borders Emergency Programmes (also known as French acronym MSF), told Al Jazeera.

“There is a considerable risk of widespread malnutrition with pockets of hunger in the coming months,” she warned. “Over the past weeks, of the 309 children who came to our clinics, there was a global malnutrition rate of 26.6 percent.. Over 6% were chronically malnourished. “

After months of denial, on March 23, Abiy admitted about Eritrean troops in Tigray. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea have promised to pull Eritrean troops out of the area, but the testimony of people recently internally displaced (IDPs) say otherwise.

“Eritrean soldiers burnt all my crops and food stores. They took my sheep, “said Tekay Gebru, a recent arrival in Mai Woyni, a Mekelle high school repurposed to host IDPs.

“They burned my neighbor, an old blind woman with her crops and home,” said a 40-year-old mother of two to Al Jazeera.

“They burned another neighbor after he asked them to leave a tiny portion of crops for him.”

Witnessing these activities on April 12, Tekay said the same day she left Adi Awso’s village in southeastern Tigray. She remained in other villages near Samre until April 22, when freshly arriving Eritrean troops came to relieve those posted in the region for months.

“The villages are now entirely controlled by these new coming Eritrean troops. Almost everyone fled, except the ones who are too old and weak,” said Tekay, who lived in the other villages with the support of citizens until arriving in Mekelle on foot.

“The villagers I met before fleeing to Mekelle share what they have. But there’s little to consume and share, “she said. “When I get food, I give it to my daughters.”

I haven’t eaten anything in four days. I’m starving. ‘

Yohannse Araya is also among the 176,230 IDPs in 19 schools in Mekelle. The 60-year-old who left Ferese Maryam, Adwa’s rural village, lost his wife on the trip to the regional capital.

“On February 6, Eritrean troops plundered our crops. None was left to feed. We fled because of poverty. I made it to Mekelle. My wife couldn’t survive. Hunger killed her, “said Yohannse, who survived 15 days without consuming anything.

Yohannse stated that he received no food operator’s ration after arriving in Mekelle on February 28. Instead, he and other displaced people sheltering in schools depend on community-supported food and some nearby NGOs.

“There’s no response. “There were 8,000 displaced people in Mekelle just in December, but the number [of displaced people] is increasing daily,” a Tigray interim government aid coordinator told Al Jazeera.

The organizer, who asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of reprisals, also said local authorities had received reports of eight deaths from hunger since the war began.

“But I think there are more unreported deaths,” the official said.

In last month’s study (PDF), the World Peace Foundation, a research organization headquartered at Tufts University, cautioned of the looming possibility of widespread hunger and famine in Tigray and accused Ethiopian and Eritrean troops of “systematically” destroying the region’s economy and food system.

For comment on the accusations, Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Ghebremeskel and Abiy’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum was contacted, but they didn’t respond.

In a statement last month, Ethiopia’s London embassy said it “rejects, in the strongest words, the World Peace Foundation’s unsubstantiated allegations that Ethiopia’s government is’ starving the Tigray citizens’ and using ‘hunger as a weapon of war.”

“The government has taken proactive measures to react comprehensively to on-the-ground humanitarian needs by providing life-saving food deliveries to over 4.2 million Tigray people in collaboration with local and international partners,” the embassy said.

Eritrea has denied accusations of “use of sexual harassment and hunger as a weapon” and obstruction of relief in a country where some 1.6 million citizens have relied on humanitarian aid since 2009. Sophia Tesfamariam, Eritrea’s UN ambassador, also said in a letter to the Security Council last month:

“The allegations of rape and other crimes against Eritrean soldiers are not only outrageous, but a vicious assault on our people’s culture and history.”

But in an interview given to state-owned Tigray TV on May 11, Abebe Gebrehiwot, Tigray interim government deputy president, said there was a “plot” to ban Tigray farmers from ploughing their land. Trucks transporting seeds are also barred from entering Tigray, he added.

“This is nothing but a calculated act of starving the Tigray citizens. If the corridors to transport seeds to Tigray are blocked and if farmers are barred from farming their lands, what else could it be other than a desire to exterminate the people through starvation worse than the conflict?” Abebe said.

His interview came days after another top official of the interim Tigrays Disaster Management Bureau informed Al Jazeera that there was a “deliberate act of starvation” for the citizens of Tigray. Blaming the suspected actions on the joint powers of Ethiopia and Eritrea, the official said the northern, northwest, and eastern Tigray aid portions had been blocked since April 10.

“The Eritreans warn us if we pass, they’ll burn the food trucks. Ethiopian troops also obstruct aid. This is a deliberate act of starving the people, “the official said, asking to stay anonymous, for fear of reprisals.

Back in the Shire, Kiflom’s condition was deteriorating by the minute, his mother said.