Tigray as a Death World: Frantz Fanon, colonialism, and the limits of liberation struggles

Ethiopia’s relationship with its constituent peripheries and Tigray in particular can without any doubt be described as colonial—a peculiar example of internal colonialism, in the sense that it is not European. The modern Ethiopian state took shape toward the end of the 19th century, when Emperor Menelik II, emulating European colonial powers, violently annexed several previously independent ethnic groups and much of the present-day territories south of Addis Ababa. In the north, Tigray was part of the older Abyssinian kingdom and had historically maintained its relative administrative autonomy — with some periods of disruption— until 1889, when it fell under Menelik II’s control. This history of imperialist consolidation and centralisation of power foregrounds cycles of contestation by people forcibly absorbed and marginalised by the empire. The tactics and strategies employed by imperial Ethiopia to maintain control over the peoples and territories under its rule are strikingly similar to those used by European colonial powers.

While Ethiopia’s colonial practices borrow elements from the European model, they also possess unique characteristics rooted in the specific nature and history of the Ethiopian state’s formation. Moreover, while most African territories have largely achieved some form of political independence from European colonial rule, the peoples and territories brought under Ethiopian control in the 19th century remain under its domination. Violence in various forms to maintain the colonial creation continues to this day. Dissenting populations face brutal repression, including siege, mass violence, and extermination. Tigray, in particular, has endured several waves of large-scale violence — most recently, a genocidal assault —throughout the history of the modern Ethiopian state. Siege, mass starvation, rape and sexual violence, massacres, and the marginalisation of the region constitute the primary modus operandi of Ethiopia’s containment of Tigray.

At various points in the past, these conditions have sparked organised struggles for self-determination by Tigrayans, Oromos, Somalis, and others. In Tigray, some of the most notable examples include the 1943 Weyane Revolt, the 1974–1991 armed struggle led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) against the Derg regime, and the more recent resistance mounted by Tigrayans from all walks of life in response to a genocidal campaign by the Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes. 

The 2020–2022 armed resistance marks one of the most tragic episodes in Tigray’s history, given the scale of destruction and human suffering.  It is estimated that up to a 800 thousand Tigrayans perished, and tens of thousands of Tigrayan women and girls were subjected to rape and sexual violence at the hands of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers.

One defining feature of the Ethiopian state’s use of violence against Tigrayans is its heavy reliance on support from foreign allies, who often supply it with weapons and military assistance. During the 1943 Weyane Revolt, Emperor Haile Selassie invited the British Royal Air Force to indiscriminately bomb Tigrayan market towns, resulting in the deaths of an unaccounted number of civilians and the end of the rebellion. In the 1974–1991 civil war, the Derg regime deployed weapons and experts supplied by Soviet Russia to massacre civilians.

The most recent war on Tigray involved the combined forces of the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, along with various ethnic militias from across Ethiopia. There are also confirmed reports of the deployment of Somali national troops, who have been accused of committing gruesome acts of violence against the Tigrayan population. Furthermore, the war also saw the widespread use of advanced military technology, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) supplied by countries such as China, the UAE, Turkey, Iran, and Israel. These countries did not have any common cause in Tigray other than a cynical desire to use Tigray as a testing ground for their new weaponry.

Witnessing the horrors unleashed on the Tigrayan population by these forces, people from all walks of life joined the armed resistance, which led to the liberation of large parts of Tigray, including Mekelle, the capital, in June 2021. The violence and large-scale mobilisation in response also brought the Tigrayan people’s long-standing dream of independence into public imagination and discourse. During that period, many — if not most — Tigrayans envisioned an independent or at least a self-governed Tigray as the natural outcome of the war.

However, to the dismay of close followers of the Tigrayan struggle, things took a different turn following the signing of a ceasefire agreement in November 2022. After the signing of the agreement, frustrations within the traumatised society began to surface. Many started blaming the region’s political leadership not only for failing to achieve the desired objectives of the war but also for the war and genocide itself. The ceasefire was followed by a period marked by crazed mutual recrimination and widespread allegations of corruption involving a significant portion of the political and military leadership, including the looting of wartime resources and gold mines in the region. This has created a deep sense of bewilderment among many Tigrayans and those who stood by our side during the horrors of the two-year war and siege. 

Why have the same military and political leaders — once seemingly willing to sacrifice their lives for the liberation of Tigray — now descended into corruption, failed to see the bigger picture, and allegedly begun colluding with the very regimes that committed genocide? Why have the youth who took up arms to resist these enemies allowed themselves to be used by political and military leaders in pursuit of ends they once opposed during the war? Moreover, how did the dream of independence and self-rule slip away from the Tigrayan imagination? 

Frantz Fanon and the lessons of anti-colonial struggle

There are very few scholars in the world who have so profoundly understood — and so eloquently written about — the failures of independence movements and their underlying causes as Frantz Fanon. A Martiniquan psychiatrist and social theorist, Fanon is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers on colonialism and decolonisation. Trained in psychiatry, he worked within the French colonial health system in Algeria, where he witnessed colonial violence firsthand. Disillusioned by the system, he eventually joined the Algerian resistance against French rule. In his seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, first published in French in 1961, Fanon analyzes the complexities of anti-colonial struggle and the enduring structures of neocolonialism—structures strikingly similar, I argue, to those facing Tigray today.

Frantz Fanon emphasises that through violence and deliberately imposed restrictions, colonies are often turned into destitute spaces of death and deprivation. Fanon observed: “The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light.”  Deprivation and hopelessness push the colonized into a state of despair, leaving them susceptible to even the smallest gestures of kindness from the colonizer. He captures this dynamic powerfully: 

“The native is promoted; they try to disarm him with their psychology, and of course they throw in a few shillings too. And these miserable methods, this eyewash administered drop by drop, even meet with some success. The native is so starved for anything, anything at all that will turn him into a human being, any bone of humanity flung to him, that his hunger is incoercible, and these poor scraps of charity may, here and there, overwhelm him. His consciousness is so precarious and dim that it is affected by the slightest spark of kindliness. Now it is that the first great undifferentiated thirst for light is continually threatened by mystification. The violent, total demands which lit up the sky now become modest, and withdraw into themselves. The springing wolf which wanted to devour everything at sight, and the rising gust of wind which was to have brought about a real revolution run the risk of becoming quite unrecognizable if the struggle continues: and continue it does. The native may at any moment let himself be disarmed by some concession or another, 
The discovery of this instability inherent in the native is a frightening experience for the leaders of the rebellion. At first they are completely bewildered; then they are made to realize by this new drift of things that explanation is very necessary, and that they must stop the native consciousness from getting bogged down. For the war goes on; and the enemy organizes, reinforces his position, and comes to guess the native’s strategy.” (The Wretched of the Earth, page 141)

Tigray’s current political crisis mirrors Fanon’s analysis.  The stated aim of the war was to render the region incapable of self-rule—unviable as either an independent state or an autonomous unit within the federation. In July 2021, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared that he had turned Mekelle into “Beshasha”, referring to his hometown in western Ethiopia—an obscure small town. This statement, which he presented as one of the key objectives of the war, implied a deliberate effort to reduce Mekelle— and by extension, Tigray — into a marginalised periphery. At a press briefing following the withdrawal of federal troops from Mekelle, Abiy stated:  “When we went to Mekelle seven-eight months ago, the conflict at the time was between a centre of government and a centre for both known and unknown resources [Mekelle, Tigray]. When we withdrew – with the exception of 80,000 more people that have been embedded and left [in reference to the Internally displaced Persons that had moved into Mekelle] to steal and rob – It is not at this time any different from Abiy-Adi, Sheraro, or Beshasha. It is no longer a centre with any power [economic or military] as it now stands. As things stand we see no difference (now) between Mekelle, Abiy Addi, or any other places. Indeed, Gedu Andargachew, Abiy’s then Foreign Minister and now in exile in the United States, recently confirmed that this was the goal. In an interview, he confessed that Abiy once told him he had “crushed the people of Tigray so they would never rise again.”

A prolonged siege, ethnic cleansing, and the annexation of fertile and resource-rich territories such as Western Tigray, along with the deliberate destruction of social and economic infrastructure, were among the tactics weaponized to undermine the region’s aspirations for self-rule and make them appear unfeasible. This, it seems, at least for now has worked. Cities and villages across Tigray that were devastated during the war are in crisis. As Mulugeta Gebrehiwot observes, Mekelle, which is one of the least affected areas during the war, is indeed now a mere skeleton of what it was before the war. Towns such as Shire, Axum, Adwa, Adigrat, and Mekelle now host populations up to three times their pre-war size due to the large-scale displacement of Tigrayans from Western and Southern Tigray, as well as from vast areas along the border with Eritrea that remain under occupation. Additionally, many Tigrayans who fled violence and internment across the country have sought refuge in these towns putting immense pressure on their dysfunctional infrastructure. 

Across towns and villages, destitute, displaced people wander in search of a loaf of bread, uncertain of when —or if — they will ever return home. Gas stations stand empty as restrictions on fuel supplies to the region get tighter, and people are unable to travel between towns to even see their loved ones. Universities, once vibrant hearts of major cities, have become ghost towns. Farms that once sustained Tigray’s markets now lie abandoned, and factories that employed tens of thousands are in ruins. In sum, the region has been transformed into a “death world” — a place where crime, deprivation, and hopelessness prevail, and where the youth flee in every direction, desperate to escape. The condition in Tigray today is such that the people are subjected to life-threatening circumstances that render them the “living dead,” trapped in a state of extreme precarity and exposed to various forms of premature death. This has resulted from the deliberate deprivation of food, medicine, and other essential services, as well as direct violence. These conditions are not incidental; they are intentionally produced and sustained by the regime and its allies. 

In the aftermath of the ceasefire agreement, the absence of a clear political roadmap — coupled with a deliberate campaign by Abiy Ahmed’s regime to sow division within Tigray —has further destabilised the region. This fragmentation, combined with ongoing deprivation, has reshaped Tigray’s political landscape. In the wake of the ceasefire, political leaders sidelined the broad rural and urban masses, as well as the strong diaspora movements that had formed the backbone of the resistance. The region’s political and economic interests became increasingly concentrated in the hands of party and military elite circles based in Mekelle, with little regard for the agency or participation of the wider population. As a result, the once-central goals of independence— or even meaningful self-rule—now appear to have been set aside.

Abiy Ahmed Ali and his former allies —including the Eritrean regime and Amhara militias, both credibly accused of committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other crimes against humanity — have since turned into mutual adversaries. Ironically, these same former allies are now realigning and forming tactical alliances with factions inside Tigray that see no clear path out of the region’s worsening crisis.  

For Abiy and the genocidal establishment in Addis Ababa, this represents a strategically favorable situation: a fragmented Tigray, in which some factions align with him against others who still hold him accountable for the genocide. The travesty lies in the fact that Abiy and his supporters now appear to be using one of the TPLF factions’ alleged ties with Eritrea as a pretext to further isolate and besiege what remains of Tigray — despite their own open alliance with the Eritrean regime to turn Tigray into a wasteland.