The head of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, Debrasion Gebre Mikael, stressed that even if the conflict with the Ethiopian government ends soon, the future of the Tigray region as part of Ethiopia remains in doubt, adding that trust has been broken, however it depends on the politics of the center.

"If they don't want us (the Ethiopians) among them, why do we have to stay?" asked the Dabarsians, whose name means "Mount Zion" in the Tigrayan dialect.

This was stated

in an interview

with the American newspaper "New York Times", which is the first of its kind conducted by a media outlet with Debarision since his forces regained control of Mekele, the capital of the region in northwestern Ethiopia.

In an interview with Declan Walsh, the newspaper's chief correspondent for African affairs, Debsion presented the Tigray People's Liberation Front's vision of a conflict that plunged the country into chaos after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military campaign on the rebellious region on the 4th of November.

Back to Mikkeli

From the city of Jigit in southern Tigray, Walsh gave a detailed account of the return of Debsersion to Mikkeli in a convoy of cars that was taking a slippery road up the mountain towards Mikkeli.

Debarision - the name given to him by his father - returned to the capital of Tigray after spending 8 months in hiding in the mountains, where he was leading a war to restore his rule over the region.

His return came two days after the Tigray Liberation Front recaptured the capital of the region from the forces of the Ethiopian central government, which abruptly abandoned the city.

Commenting on the escape of government forces from Mikkeli, Debrasion said, "I did not expect to come back alive, but this is not a personal matter. The most important thing is that my people are now free, after they were liberated from the invaders. The people used to live in hell, and now they can breathe again."

Debsersion - born in June 1950 in the town of Shira Enda Selassie of an Orthodox Christian family - claims that his forces defeated 7 of the 12 divisions of the Ethiopian army and killed at least 18,000 of them.

wide plans

Debrasion detailed his plans to extend the war to all of Tigray to expel "any external force" from the region, including Eritrean forces and militias from the neighboring Amhara region, defying international calls for a ceasefire.

In this regard, the Tigray leader says, "They seized the land by force, and we will take it back from them by force," referring to those forces that he described as the Foreign Ministry.

Journalist Declan Walsh says that when he arrived in Mikkeli for the interview on a windy afternoon last Thursday, Debrasion was at work on a laptop in a nearly darkened room upstairs in a "fortified-like" house, and the central government had cut off the city's electricity and telephone network. .

Debsion apologized to the American journalist for the situation, and said that the region is "under siege", at the same time criticizing his former political ally, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abi Ahmed, describing him as "a cranky and inexperienced leader who has exceeded his limits."

Marxist viewer Mengistu

Despite his religious orthodox upbringing, Debrasion turned away from it when he joined the Faculty of Engineering at Addis Ababa University, where he embraced Marxism in thought during the rule of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974-1991).

And when he was not satisfied with the tyrannical government of Mengistu despite his leftism, he was forced to break with it and a group of Ethiopians to announce the birth of the Tigray People's Liberation Front on February 18, 1975.

After the fall of the Mengistu government in 1991, Dabarsiyon continued his studies at Addis Ababa University, which he had left in 1977, where he obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, and then obtained a doctorate by correspondence from Kabila University in Congo in 2011 for his thesis in information technology and community communications.

In his interview with the New York Times, Debarsion describes Ethiopia as a "complex country, mired in chaos", and that Abiy Ahmed is "inexperienced and immature".

He goes on to describe the Ethiopian prime minister, saying, "But because of his ambition to be king or ruler of Ethiopia, he saw us as an obstacle in his way."

The humiliation of Abi Ahmed

Last Friday, the Tigray Defense Forces organized a march that seemed to "humiliate" Abi Ahmed, as at least 6,000 Ethiopian prisoners of war marched through the city center of Mekele, while residents lined the roadsides chanting "Abe is a thief!"

The American newspaper points out that the Tigrayan leader fought his first war in the eighties of the last century when he ran the revolution radio "Voice of Wayani" of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which was leading the opposition against the Marxist regime at the time in Ethiopia.

After the fall of the Mengistu regime in 1991, a coalition of several organizations led by the Tigrayans dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades, until Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018.

This stage witnessed stability in Ethiopia and the coalition government was able to achieve economic growth that has been prosperous for nearly a decade.

Advance at the expense of civil rights

However, this progress came at the expense of the basic civil rights of the people of the country, and it was that the Tigray People's Liberation Front won successive elections with 100% of the vote.

At that time, Deberision was not a well-known technocrat. He served as the Minister of Communications and in charge of the electricity utility, where he oversaw the construction of a dam to generate hydroelectric power at a cost of $4.5 million, which, when completed, will become the largest of its kind in Africa.

And when popular protests disturbed the rule of the Tigray Liberation Front in Ethiopia since 2015, the star of Dabarsiyon rose within the ruling party.

However, the war that broke out changed everything, says Declan Walsh in his report in the New York Times.

Abi Ahmed said at the time that he had no choice but to launch a military operation after the Tigray forces attacked a military base in the Northern Territory on the fourth of last November, and Debrasion responded to Abi Ahmed’s account by saying that Addis Ababa had been for days mobilizing its forces along the border With the territory of Tigray in preparation for launching aggression against it

Emirati role

And the American newspaper quotes Debrasion as saying that the Tigray forces were initially surprised by a torrent of raids with drones against their artillery systems and supply lines, adding that this was done by the United Arab Emirates, which he describes as an ally of Abi Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.

The New York Times says that it did not get a response from an Emirati official to questions related to the alleged attacks by drones, noting that Debrasion claimed that these attacks changed the course of the war.

The leader of the Tigray region said in the interview with the American newspaper that "without these drones, the fighting would have been different."

Debarissun revealed that they would release most of the Ethiopian prisoners who were offered by his forces in the march organized in the streets of Mekele last Friday, but he stressed that the Ethiopian officers will remain in prison.

He called on the international community to ensure that those responsible for the atrocities committed in Tigray in the past months, including massacres, rape and the use of hunger as a weapon of war, are held accountable.

Rejection of the UN investigation

Although some Tigrayans are also accused of committing atrocities during the conflict, Dabissioun rejected the investigation being conducted by the United Nations and a human rights body linked to the Ethiopian government as "biased".

Debrasion warned that if Abi Ahmed tried to rally his forces again in the provinces bordering Tigray, he would hasten to send his fighters to intercept them.

And the New York Times reported in its report that some Tigray leaders indicated that their forces might advance towards Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to oust Isaias Afwerki, who harbors hostility towards them.

But the Dabisians seemed more cautious - according to the newspaper - as he confirmed that they would fight to push the Eritrean forces out of the borders, "not necessarily going further than that."

In this regard, he says, "We have to be realistic. It is true that we want to remove Isaias, but in the end the Eritreans have to bring him down."