OPINION | MAI KADRA, SIX YEARS ON

TPLF’s Ship of Destruction and Its Final Port

Sixth anniversary commemoration of the Mai Kadra ‘terminal genocide’ and the demand for justice

By Dr Sosena Tadesse

Political and Strategic Studies · 9 November 2026

Six years after the killings in Mai Kadra, Dr Sosena Tadesse traces a line from the massacre to today’s proxy war on the Sudanese border and the ‘Tsimdo’ coalition — and sets out what justice must now demand.

Introduction: The Storm of Destruction and the ‘Terminal Genocide’

In Ethiopia’s modern political history, the storm of destruction that the TPLF unleashed over five decades reached its tragic climax at the end of Tikimt 2013 E.C. (November 2020). It entered history as a harrowing chapter of bloodshed and betrayal, marked by the anguished cries of women and children.

It came while the world was in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and Western nations were racing to develop vaccines. As the global community turned to science to save human lives, Ethiopia’s former TPLF rulers were preparing a feast of war and mutual destruction.

Their plan unfolded in an orchestrated sequence:

• 22 Tikimt 2013 E.C. (1 November 2020): At the school compound in Gawa Qanqa, West Wollega, gunmen whom the Oromia regional authorities identified as the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) — the group the government calls ‘Shene’ — rounded up and massacred Amhara civilians, at least 54 of them according to survivors interviewed by Amnesty International, and set homes ablaze. The OLA denied responsibility.
• 24 Tikimt 2013 E.C. (night of 3–4 November 2020): In a coordinated, treasonous attack on the Northern Command at Mekelle, Adigrat, Agula, Seroc and Dansha, TPLF special forces launched a surprise assault on the Ethiopian National Defence Force, killing, by the federal government’s account, thousands of Ethiopian soldiers.

The storm pressed on. On 30 Tikimt 2013 E.C. (9 November 2020), the TPLF’s ship of destruction, which had sailed for 50 years, chose its final port: the historic town of Mai Kadra. There it committed a ‘terminal genocide’ before abandoning a land it knew had never been its historical patrimony.

1. Mai Kadra: From ‘Terminal Genocide’ to Historical Reality

From the early 1990s Mai Kadra grew into a town some 30 km from Humera, in fertile ‘white gold’ (sesame) country that serves as a strategic gateway to Sudan. In 1995 E.C. (2002/03), the TPLF forcibly resettled thousands of Tigrayans across the Tekeze River in place of refugees (lajin) returning from Sudan, while systematically dispossessing, expelling and killing the indigenous Amhara landowners to strip them of their land and identity.

Settlers from the rocky Samre area of Tigray established what became known as the ‘Samre District’, while dispossessed Amhara landowners were pushed into the ‘Ginb District’, surviving as day labourers and farmhands. The divide between the two neighbourhoods inflicted profound suffering on the native landowners and stirred in Amhara elders a grief beyond words.

The decades-long struggle of the Wolkait-Tegede Amhara falls into two distinct chapters:

• Before Mai Kadra: the era of occupation, in which indigenous Amharas endured mass arrests, displacement, exile and killings while fighting continuously for their very survival.
• After Mai Kadra: the peak of atrocity, when the TPLF’s ship of destruction, setting out from the Samre District, fell upon the town. In about six hours, between 1,600 and 2,000 Amhara civilians and day labourers, by community estimates, were slaughtered with machetes, axes, knives, clubs and ropes.

This atrocity stands as the TPLF’s defining crime: the terminal genocide.

2. Eyewitness Accounts, Human Rights Reports and the Amnesty Evidence

On 9 November 2020, from 3pm to 9pm, a six-hour campaign of systematic killing targeted Amhara residents of the Ginb District. Community estimates put the dead at 1,600 to 2,000; the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) preliminary investigation documented at least 600 deaths and warned that the true toll was likely to be higher.

Haymanot Ashenafi, an EHRC investigator, recalled the scene on arriving in the town:

‘When we reached the town, the asphalt was littered with burnt belongings, abandoned shoes and stretchers. A disturbing stench of decomposing bodies hung in the air … In the compound of the Abune Aregawi Church, we saw mass graves where victims were buried; the burials took days to complete.’

Survivors gave testimony confirming the targeted nature of the attack:

• Mrs Tirfay Girmay, herself Tigrayan, watched her Amhara husband of 12 years slaughtered before her eyes. ‘My husband committed no crime,’ she said. ‘He was killed solely because he was Amhara.’
• Mrs Yeshi Laqem pleaded for their lives when Samri youths dragged her husband, Ayenew Mulat, and his brother from their home. The attackers replied, ‘Today we only want the men; your turn will come,’ before executing them in front of her children.
• Mr Tilahun Atalay and Mr Gebremeskel Mengistu confirmed that the attackers checked identity cards to single out Amharas, used tractors for transport and killed workers systematically; up to 20 bodies were collected from single residences.

Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab digitally verified photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or carried away on stretchers, and used satellite imagery to geolocate them to Mai Kadra. The joint investigation by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the EHRC, published in November 2021, documented the killings by the Samri group and concluded that violations committed in the conflict may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

3. From Mai Kadra to Sudan: How ‘Samri’ Became ‘Army 70’, a Proxy Mercenary Force

The trajectory of the Samri group did not end in Mai Kadra. After the massacre, its members fled across the border into Sudan. There, with the reported backing of regional actors and elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, they received military training in refugee camps and regrouped as ‘Army 70’, a proxy armed force.

During this year’s rainy season, on 1 August 2026, this ‘Samri/Army 70’ force attempted an incursion at Shererina in western Tigray and was beaten back. From a political-science perspective, this confirms two structural realities:

1. The TPLF’s armed structure is an existential threat to the Amhara people. Whatever its name or location, its core objective remains the destruction and subjugation of the Amhara population.
2. Proxy mercenarism. External regional actors use the perpetrators of the Mai Kadra genocide as third-tier proxies to destabilise the Amhara region and Ethiopia as a whole.

4. ‘Fish’ and the Zemene Kasse Coalition: The Depths of Self-Hatred and Moral Collapse

On the evidence available to this author, the Mai Kadra massacre was trained, organised and directed under the command of Lieutenant General Fisseha Kidanu, known as ‘Fisseha Manjus’, today the commander of the TPLF’s forces.

In audio recordings circulating on social media, which The Ethiopian Tribune has not independently verified, Zemene Kasse, chairman of the ‘Alliance for Survival’ coalition widely known as ‘Tsimdo’, is heard repeatedly addressing General Fisseha by the affectionate nickname ‘Fish’. If authentic, the recordings indicate that the man this author holds to be the chief architect of the Mai Kadra massacre serves as the military head of the Tsimdo alliance.

Examined through the lenses of political science and social psychology, this alignment reveals:

• The denial of justice: aligning with ‘Fish’ and the TPLF’s Debretsion Gebremichael before the blood of the Mai Kadra martyrs has dried is a betrayal of the Amhara survival struggle and a commercialisation of the martyrs’ sacrifice.
• Self-hatred and a slave mentality: a faction that acts dictatorially towards its own people while bowing to Fisseha Manjus and Debretsion — the men this author holds most responsible for Amhara bloodshed — in search of political validation demonstrates complete moral bankruptcy and psychological self-hatred.

5. Political-Science Recommendations and the Legal Path Ahead

The EHRC and OHCHR have documented the Mai Kadra massacre among violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law; this author contends that it also meets the legal definition of genocide. To redress five decades of suffering endured by the people of Wolkait, Tegede, Telemte and Raya, the following strategic actions must be pursued:

1. International legal accountability: ensure that members of ‘Samri/Army 70’ sheltering in Sudanese camps, their commander General Fisseha Kidanu (‘Fish’) and senior TPLF leaders are investigated under international war-crimes frameworks and brought to justice.
2. Reparations and restitution: engage legal experts to frame international claims for restitution, compensation and formal apologies for the genocide committed against the Amhara people over the past 50 years.
3. Rejecting the treasonous ‘Tsimdo’ path: the fighting forces on the ground and the wider Amhara public must formally reject the political brokers of ‘Tsimdo’ who, in this author’s view, traded the blood of Mai Kadra for power, and anchor the survival struggle firmly in principled Amhara nationalism.

Conclusion

Atrocities against humanity may be concealed for a time through political manoeuvring and opportunistic propaganda, but justice can never be buried for ever. The blood of the Mai Kadra martyrs will not have been shed in vain.

Truth and history remain on our side; victory belongs to the righteous struggle of the Amhara people.

Justice for the Mai Kadra martyrs!

Justice for the Amhara and Orthodox martyrs killed for their identity!