The last time he saw his son, on that morning in April 2021, Teklay Tiku knew right away that he would never see him again. His youngest child, Russom, 25, had just been rounded up in front of the family farm by Eritrean soldiers who had come to wage war in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, in support of the federal government. Ignited in November 2020 between the rebel region of Tigray and the powerful force of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the civil war, with the support of Eritrea, was in full swing. Forced into the back of a truck already full of young Tigrayans his age who had been abducted like him, Russom was taken to Eritrea. Since then, his family has never heard from him again.
From the foothills of Kerseber, a mountainous village in northern Tigray, 71-year-old Teklay Tiku has long since given up his illusions about a war that robbed him of everything he held most dear: his son Russom, of whom all that remains is a battered passport photo; his property; and, finally, his ideals. On the only door of his farm still standing, the old man points to a damaged sticker on which is written "Finally in peace," decorated with the colors of the Eritrean and Ethiopian flags. He had stuck it there in 2018, after the rapprochement between the two countries that was supposed to signal the end of the 20-year-old border conflict. "We were relieved to finally have peace with Eritrea, we believed in it," he recalled. Except that this "historic peace" quickly turned into an alliance between Ethiopian Prime Ministers Abiy Ahmed and his counterpart, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, who joined forces to attack Tigray, the Tigrayans and their party, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
After two years of this fratricidal war, only shreds of the former life are left in Kerseber. For three months, the mountain was used as a front line. Tiku's farm was gutted. Its cactus fields have been razed by Eritrean tanks. Mortar shells and other artillery remnants litter his courtyard. His livestock has been killed or stolen, his wheat reserves have been looted.
Hundreds of thousands of victims
Tiku is not only mourning his missing son. The man, who returned home in mid-February at the time of the Eritrean withdrawal, also counts the dead. "They were three elders from the hamlet, they were murdered because they were unable to flee," he says. His neighbor and friend Berhane Meles, a farmer like him, was the victim of Eritrean brutality. The slim, lanky, white-haired 67-year-old was executed in cold blood in his barn, below the hill, by Eritrean soldiers who had come to raid Tigray, which they had repeatedly looted during two years of occupation.
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