Issue No. 298

The Tigrayan exodus
 

At the beginning of August, an overcrowded vessel shepherding dozens of migrants across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen capsized. At least 90 drowned, and dozens more remain missing in the single deadliest incident on the 'Eastern Route' in the past 5 years. And not only were all reported to be Ethiopian, but all Tigrayan. The Tigrayan exodus of youth since the end of the devastating war in November 2022 has been immense, contributing to the 'brain drain' and the region's post-war limbo. The flight has been driven by a host of factors, not least the painful stasis of Tigray and the looming threat of a return to war.

Much of the Tigray region still lies in ruins, with few economic opportunities afforded to the young population. Key infrastructure and pre-war industries have not begun to recover from the destructive conflict, with estimates of the cost of restoring the region running into the tens of billions of USD. Most of the damage was not collateral, but rather systematic, with invading Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara allied forces methodically obliterating both the agrarian and industrialised elements of the Tigrayan economy. Grain stores were set ablaze, ploughs broken, livestock slaughtered, and anything of note looted, carted back to Eritrea in particular. Even the tools of Tigrayan shoe-shiners were broken. Coupled with the horrors experienced during the war, it is little wonder that many of the most educated Tigrayan youth left in the months after the blockade was lifted, seeking to reunite with friends and family elsewhere in the Horn of Africa and beyond. And since then, another wave of Tigrayans have departed, those able to stump up enough cash to start anew and return money to their families-- but often in the Gulf.

Tens of thousands have exited from Tigray in recent months, many through trafficking and smuggling channels to the 'Eastern Route.' A sizeable proportion of these journeys have been facilitated by the smuggling networks that emerged during the Tigray war amid the blockade. These transnational networks, incorporating elements of the Tigrayan military, have somewhat altered commodities and nature post-conflict. People and gold now flow alongside arms and equipment for the war, with wealthy brokers managing complex and extensive networks, promising vulnerable Tigrayans opportunities that their home region cannot currently afford. 

This human trafficking business intersects with a broader rise in organised crime and criminality within Tigray, involving a vast range of actors within the splintered region. However, the extraction of minerals —particularly gold —has become highly contentious within Tigray, with allegations of complicity within the Tigray Defence Force (TDF) and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Shire in the North Western Zone of Tigray has been a distinct epicentre for gold mining, with armed militias purported to be operating with impunity there and extracting significant quantities of the valuable resource. Amidst economic stagnation and political contestation between and within the TPLF and the Tigray Interim Administration, the contraband, arms trade, and smuggling have flourished. Investigations into the facilitation of illegal migration from Ethiopia across the Sudanese and Kenyan borders and the associated forging of records have revealed that they include everyone from senior military officers to airline employees to civil servants. 

But the journey's costs run into several thousand USD, with the route from the Horn into Yemen based on three principal 'jumping off' points — near the town of Obock in Djibouti, as well as locations in Somaliland and Puntland. The deputy chairman of the Tigray Independence Party, Alemseged Aregay, has stated that those being smuggled are charged as high as ETB 400,000 for the travel, alongside additional costs for fake ID cards. Such prices for impoverished Tigrayan families can be crippling, incurring substantial debts in the hopes that their sons-- the route is predominantly male-- can send home remittances from menial jobs in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Such traffickers in Tigray are not only serving Tigrayans, though, but Eritrean refugees as well-- again at reported costs of between USD 4,000 and 5,000. With the government's climate towards Asmara frosty at best, Eritrean refugees are currently facing particular restrictions, and there have been mass roundups of Eritrean citizens in Addis without due process. 

But the dangers of any such journey are significant, as evidenced by the horrific drowning last month and other mass-casualty capsizes like those in March. In the choppy August waters of the Gulf of Aden, any capsize of the overcrowded boats can result in dozens of casualties. Upon reaching the Arabian Peninsula, on the Saudi-Yemeni border, investigations by Human Rights Watch and others have uncovered Saudi border guards opening fire on Ethiopian migrants attempting to enter the country, killing hundreds over a period of several years. And once within gleaming Arab cities like Riyadh or Dubai, some are trafficked into brutal domestic or sex work, with their passports taken away from them. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has repeatedly warned that without urgent action, the human trafficking crisis within the Horn could further rise and that thousands more could end up at risk. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), human trafficking cases across the Horn have risen by 35% since 2020, the beginning of the Tigray war.

One area in particular is continuing to hinder a sustainable and equitable economic recovery for Tigray, as well as contributing to the dangerous illegal migration-- Western Tigray. The highly fertile region remains a cesspool of 'grey economy' actors, occupied by a violent, competing mixture of Amhara, federal, and Eritrean forces-- which continues to prevent the return of the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons to their homes. These Tigrayan IDPs have been forced into overcrowded, underfunded camps in which disease and malnutrition are rife, and hundreds have died since the cessation of hostilities was agreed upon nearly three years ago. Many of those aspiring to leave Tigray remain within these brutal displacement camps, while Southern Tigray-- another epicentre of continuing political tension-- has been identified as a hotspot for Tigrayans exiting the region. Although Addis could well restore Mekelle's control over Western Tigray, as stipulated in the Pretoria agreement, it may fear restoring access to the Sudanese border to the TPLF and prefers a weakened Tigray. 

The drowning off the Gulf of Aden was an avoidable tragedy. People and communities have long transited from the Horn of Africa to the Gulf and vice versa, and particularly the highland communities of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. At its height, the Axumite kingdom included parts of the Arabian Peninsula, while trade and cultural exchanges have shaped the distinct contours of communities along both sides of the arterial waterway. The trafficking and smuggling networks in place today, exploited by armed actors such as Al-Shabaab and the Houthis, are well-established. But the bleeding instability of the Horn, as well as Yemen, has created a chasm-like inequality between the Gulf and their African counterparts, pulling ever more desperate migrants towards the hopes of a better life.