Mekelle, Ethiopia — "We didn't bring enough attention to it because it felt like doing so would diminish what was being done by the enemy."
As the fear of war returns to northern Ethiopia, with the regional authorities urging former Tigray Defence Force (TDF) fighters to re-enlist, women who served are speaking out about the sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of their own commanders during the 2020-2022 conflict.
Much of the focus on rights violations during the war has centred on the atrocities perpetrated by Ethiopian forces, and their Eritrean and Amhara allies, as they moved to crush a rebellion by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) party, and the TDF militia that had emerged to defend their homeland.
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But justice for Tigrayan women also means turning a critical eye to the sexual violence committed by TDF officers against female comrades in arms - many of whom had joined the ranks looking for protection from the abuses they had witnessed.
Acknowledging those experiences has implications for the role of women in present-day Tigrayan society, and the much-delayed process of transitional justice - truncated once more by the threat of renewed conflict involving the federal government and Eritrea.
The New Humanitarian spoke to roughly two dozen TDF veterans to discuss the extent of sexual violence during the 2020-2022 conflict, and how the abuse was largey ignored by a high command that believed admitting such crimes would undermine the war effort.
The abuse of power
Tirhas* was training to be a nurse in Mekelle, the Tigray capital, when war broke out in November 2020. Her decision to abandon her studies and join the TDF was driven by the brutality she had seen in the first few weeks of the conflict.
"I saw the bodies of elderly women with their throats slit; they had clearly been raped," she recalled. "Tigray was the only place I had ever called home. Was I supposed to run away now? Where would I go?"
The first few months of training were mundane until, one day, Tirhas and other female recruits were called to a meeting outside her regimental base on the outskirts of Mekelle. The room was packed with women - far more than she had realised were serving in the regiment - with the only males two senior commanders.
They were told that the gathering was meant to give female fighters a chance to speak about the obstacles they were experiencing in the TDF. Most of the complaints were about shortages and organisational shortcomings, until at the very end a woman stood up, visibly shaking.
She told the assembly that a colonel was recruiting women into the regiment, but instead of putting them through training, he was drugging and raping them. Some of his victims were aged as young as 12, others were old enough to be her mother, she said. The room fell silent.
A decision was made at the meeting that the regiment's gender focal team - set up throughout the TDF to communicate women's concerns up the chain of command - would investigate the allegation. Tirhas was asked to join.
Along with two other colleagues, she interviewed survivors and began piecing together the evidence. They found that at least nine women and girls had been sexually assaulted by the colonel.
One woman who resisted his advances, and threatened to report him, faced repeated harassment - including the detention of her son for days. They also found that wounded women were sometimes being sent back to their units before finishing their treatment because he feared they would report him.
According to Tirhas, the colonel was protected by a wider network of drivers, guards, and logistics officers who helped shield him and intimidate investigators. "He promoted unqualified people who, in turn, protected him," she said.
A "hostile environment"
Sex and romantic relationships were permitted within some TDF units, but the key stipulation was they had to be consensual. Some officers routinely ignored that provision yet were rarely punished - even when their behavior was reported.
The abuse of power could range from the merely suggestive to outright coercive. Awet, a young male TDF soldier, explained that senior officers typically offered young women more comfortable positions as "radio operators" and "secretaries" in exchange for sex. He described these arrangements as "widespread" throughout the TDF.
The abuse was especially galling as so many women had joined the TDF for protection from wartime sexual violence. Women comprised an estimated 30% of the TDF, making it one of the most gender inclusive armed forces in the world, yet despite their numbers, they found themselves in a "hostile environment", acknowledged Rahwa, a high-ranking female TDF member.
When asked about the struggles women had faced, she put sexual harassment near the top of her list -- alongside sexual violence by enemy forces, shortages of menstrual hygiene products, and discrimination in promotion.
She explained that physical assaults were not common, but commanders retaliated against the women that refused their advances by giving them uncomfortable assignments.
"The 'prettier' girls would always be assigned to 'staff positions', and work with the head of the unit," said one former senior female officer. She described the culture as toxic. "One officer told me it was irresponsible of me to hold private sessions with the women [to hear their grievances]. He said, 'Think of what they'll do to them when they get a hold of them on the front, and you're not around to help."'
Failure of the guardrails
The TDF in theory had guardrails against such behaviour. The gender focal person system was adopted in August of 2021, and required there be at least one delegated focal person at each unit formation level.
The focal person was supposed to hold regular meetings with female fighters and communicate any concerns to the TDF's central leadership. But in practice, the system was decentralised, personalised, and weak. In instances of sexual harassment, individual gender focal people were rumored to face retribution if they pushed too hard.
An additional hurdle was the difficulty of operating on the frontline. "We were on the battle ground for much of those two years; we didn't really have time to meet and organise our voices," said one focal person representative.
The fact such a reporting system existed reflected the central leadership's awareness of abuse. However, Awet noted, the TDF was a top-down command structure that ultimately condoned such behavior and protected guilty officers.
It was a culture of "protective stupidity", said Saare, a former senior TPLF official.
He recognises that a "special committee" should have been created "to look into the allegations". But during the war the TDF was "obsessed with maintaining a semblance of unity", and as a result women's well-being was put on the backburner.
Rahwa also acknowledges the TDF leadership's failings. "We didn't bring enough attention to it," she admitted, "because it felt like doing so would diminish what was being done by the enemy."
Fear of retribution or stigma - but also loyalty to the TDF - prevented some women from reporting. "The sad thing is that the work was so overwhelming that we didn't hear about the problem until after the war stopped," said Luwan, a former TDF veteran. She mused that some women kept silent because their focus was winning the war rather than their own well-being.
Yet the focal person system did score at least one success. Tirhas and her colleagues took the case of the abusive colonel to TDF prosecutors and a high-level general who escalated the process, eventually leading to both his arrest and his accomplices.
With those men removed from command, conditions improved. At least briefly. "Men and women were conscious after that," Tirhas said. "There were clearer boundaries between male and female fighters in the unit."
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However, Tirhas and her colleagues became a target of threats, seemingly organised from prison. It got so bad she was advised not to walk alone, until senior officers stepped in to warn that anyone making threats would also be arrested.
The colonel was released early from prison when the town he was held in looked likely to fall, but he didn't rejoin the TDF.
Fear of a return to war
The situation for women has only become more difficult in the aftermath of the signing of the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement. The failure to fully implement the peace plan has left close to a million people in Tigray unable to return to their homes, many of them women heading households and vulnerable to exploitation.
The Tigrayan interim government's internal divisions and fragmentation looks increasingly likely to boil over into open conflict that would draw in the federal government and trigger a wider regional war.
The compounding and mounting crises of insecurity, unemployment, the escalating cost of living, leaves little bandwidth to address issues of gender rights during the war - and the related continued challenges being faced today.
"Nobody wants to pursue issues of gender-based violence publicly, unless it's to attack [their political rivals]," said a feminist activist in Mekelle, who asked not to be named.
Yet justice and accountability in Tigray means addressing all of the sources of women's vulnerability -- even when some of it was at the hands of their brothers in arms.
*Pseudonyms have been used to protect people's identity to allow them to speak freely.
This article was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. Edited by Obi Anyadike.
Mehret Okubay Berehe, Journalist and communications expert based in Mekelle, Ethiopia
Hilary Matfess, Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs
