Report: Ethiopia’s war leads to ethnic cleansing in Tigray

NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the war-torn region in northern Ethiopia, according to an internal U.S. government report obtained by The New York Times.

The report, written this month, documents in stark terms a land of looted houses and deserted villages where tens of thousands of people are unaccounted for.

Fighters and officials from the neighboring Amhara region of Ethiopia, who entered Tigray in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are “deliberately and efficiently rendering Western Tigray ethnically homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation,” the report says.

“Whole villages were severely damaged or completely erased,” the report said.

In a second report, published Friday, Amnesty International said soldiers from Eritrea had systematically killed hundreds of Tigrayan civilians in the ancient city of Axum over a 10-day period in November, shooting some of them in the streets.

The worsening situation in Tigray — where Ahmed, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, launched a surprise military offensive in November — is shaping up to be the Biden administration’s first major test in Africa.

In a call with President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on Thursday, Biden brought up the Tigray crisis. The two leaders discussed “the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,” a White House statement said.

But thus far, Biden and other U.S. officials have been reluctant to openly criticize Ahmed’s conduct of the war, while European leaders and

United Nations officials, worried about reports of widespread atrocities, have been increasingly outspoken.

Ethiopia routinely dismisses critics of its campaign in Tigray as stooges of its foes in Tigray. But Friday, in response to the Amnesty International report, Ahmed’s office said it was ready to collaborate in an international investigation into atrocities in Tigray. The government “reiterates its commitment to enabling a stable and peaceful region,” it said in a statement.

Ahmed’s office also claimed that Ethiopia has given “unfettered” access to international aid groups in Tigray — in contrast with U.N. officials who estimate that 20% of the region can be reached by aid groups because of government-imposed restrictions.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Ahmed by phone Feb. 4 and urged him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the State Department said.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in emotional testimony delivered during a congressional hearing this month, bravely revealed that she was once the victim of a sexual assault. As a historian, her stunning admission reminded me instantly of former presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson. Not because they too were once sexually abused (or accused of abuse), but because of how often personal trauma seems to be a part of the histories of prominent politicians.

Exploring the connection between personal trauma and political success has been an obsession of mine since I first entered politics 20 years ago. I began to wonder why so many of the politicians I encountered seemed so emotionally needy — and, in frequent cases, emotionally damaged.

When some people think of politicians, they see the image of a square-shouldered Ronald Reagan, standing at Brandenburg Gate commanding Gorbachev to tear down that wall; or they remember Bill Clinton’s easygoing, Southern charm; or they recall Woodrow Wilson’s toothy, confident grin from textbook photos. But when I see Reagan, I see a man that, according to biographer Lou Cannon, was so emotionally damaged that even his closest friends struggled to understand him. When I see Mr. Clinton, I see someone shown by biographer David Maraniss to be so pathologically unequipped to manage his emotions that it almost ended his presidency. And when I think of Wilson, I think of a neediness so profound it rendered him dangerously prone to manipulation, according to biographers Alexander and Juliette George.

Meg Greenfield, the Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post columnist, wrote a famous book about politicians in which she described them as Boy Scouts. I remember reading it as a young staffer, wondering what people she was talking about. I knew these people too, but not as cocktail party guests or as objects of distant journalistic fascination, but as friends, colleagues and employers. I sat next to them on long car rides as I ferried them between campaign events, laughing at their jokes and enduring their dashboard confessions.

As director of intergovernmental affairs for the Maryland secretary of state, my job entailed daily interaction with politicians. I attended meetings of the state Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee; regularly participated in political events and fundraisers and, importantly, filled in holes in political campaigns temporarily until permanent staffers could be hired.

The politicians I knew might have been Boy Scouts under the public gaze, but in private they were more like Lost Boys. After observing them up close for years and writing two books about them, I came to see patterns in their personal histories and, like Ms. Greenfield, I could not resist slipping them into categories of my own. The Four Ds I called them: the four types of people who run for office — damaged, desperate, disenfranchised and duty bound.

The duty-bound candidates were politicians who came from families where public service was an expectation. Like President Lyndon Johnson or Senators John McCain and Carol Moseley Braun, they viewed elected office as a personal and professional obligation.

The candidates who fit into the disenfranchised category seemed to think winning public office would help them escape the margins of society. They had grown tired of being ignored for being women or people of color or members of the LGBT community, and pushed their way in to claim a seat at the table.

The desperate candidates all seemed to regard politics as a vehicle for achieving instant respect — a reasonable assumption, I guess. The nature of politics is such that one can attain office in a relatively short time with relatively little experience and effort. Like Presidents Trump or Truman, politics can be a way to reverse a history of professional disappointment, a path toward recasting a personal or public image.

The damaged people I encountered had been the victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment as children. Like President Reagan, their fathers drank or were abusive like President Clinton’s, or emotionally unavailable like President Wilson’s. Whatever hardships they suffered as children left them with a deep need for affirmation so intense that only a life in the saccharine sunlight of politics could satisfy it.

Categorizing candidates as one or more of the Four Ds had its obvious predicative limitations, but it turned out to be a useful tool for me as a young politico. It helped me to understand a candidate’s politics and to predict their needs and behavior. It also helped me understand whom to support, whom to avoid and who was a ticking time bomb.

K. Ward Cummings (kwardcummings@ gmail.com) is a former senior congressional staffer and the author of “The Capitol Hill Playbook” (2nd Edition), written under the pen name Nicholas Balthazar.