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At a funeral in Tigray, grief gave way to terror, as mourners gathered to bury their dead, regional Ethiopian forces stormed the ceremony, rounding up young men and bundling them into vans bound for military training camps. For many families in northern Ethiopia, the scene was horrifyingly familiar.
Witnesses and NGOs are now sounding the alarm over what they describe as a systematic forced conscription campaign sweeping Tigray, a region that only recently emerged from one of Africa’s deadliest civil wars, and now appears to be sliding toward another.
Abel, a man in his 20s currently in hiding after bribing a guard to escape, described the chaos at the funeral.
“We were suddenly rounded up and detained,” he said. Abel had voluntarily joined the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) in 2020 when war broke out between the region and Ethiopia’s federal government, a conflict the African Union estimates killed at least 600,000 people. This time, he wanted no part of it.
A ceasefire signed in 2022 has never been fully implemented. Security sources say troops are now massing on Tigray’s borders, with both sides accusing the other of preparing a fresh offensive.
Snatched From the Streets
Human Rights First-Ethiopia, an NGO that interviewed 27 witnesses, said there were clear indications that “forced military recruitment is taking place across most areas of Tigray.” The testimonies paint a picture of indiscriminate, escalating sweeps targeting young men wherever they can be found.
Gebre, 35, said he was arrested in March while opening his shop in northern Tigray.
“They informed us that we were entering the military,” he recalled. He managed to escape by jumping out of a window. He now lives in hiding, cut off from his five-year-old son.
Alem, also sheltering in Addis Ababa and near-destitute, said the campaign began in his area roughly a month ago.
“At first it seemed to be targeted operations, but progressively it came to target all young people,” he said. “I saw security forces unleash warning shots into the air to stop young people fleeing.”
Not the First Time
For Kinfe, 36, who fled to the capital, the pattern is grimly recognisable. During the civil war, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s dominant political party, went door-to-door checking that each family had contributed at least one son to the war effort. Families that hadn’t were pressured to send a parent instead.
This time, the TPLF has adopted a different method: blockading roads to trap young men, detaining them, and transferring them first to a holding compound and then to a training camp.
When contacted by AFP, TPLF vice-president Amanuel Assefa acknowledged that recruitment was ordinarily “only based on consent,” but insisted there were “exceptional provisions” given that “every Tigrayan has to defend the territory against an existential threat.” Federal authorities did not respond to requests for comment. Ethiopia’s constitution explicitly forbids arbitrary detention and forced conscription.
A Population Exhausted by War
The trauma of the previous conflict has left deep scars and significant reluctance.
“Nearly every family lost a family member,” said Kinfe. Many survivors are bitter that their sacrifices were not honoured.
“They kept their comfort while forgetting the martyrs,” he said, adding that widespread cynicism has taken hold — a belief that any new war will only serve the interests of a powerful few.
“The war shouldn’t happen, it has to be solved politically,” Kinfe said. “Firing bullets solves nothing.”
For the young men now vanishing from markets, funerals, and doorsteps across Tigray, that political solution may already be arriving too late.
