The exodus out of Tigray
Young people are leaving en masse – and don’t know if they’ll ever come back.
Zeywegih Leyti in Semera, Afar
On the morning of 3 August 2025, a boat carrying at least 200 migrants sank in the Gulf of Aden, off the Yemeni coast. At least 90 people died, all of them from Tigray in northern Ethiopia. A short video online showed their bodies as they washed up ashore. From their clothes and jewellery, I could tell they came from Raya, the region of southern Tigray where I grew up.
Like those young people, I know firsthand the pain of leaving your homeland because you are too afraid to stay. It has been nearly six months since I left Tigray, which had already experienced a devastating war between 2020 and 2022, in which hundreds of thousands of people died.
I fought in that war.
Now, as tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea escalate, different factions within Tigray are again making preparations for war. Another conflict seems inevitable. I felt I had no choice but to leave. I was lucky: I did not have to take the perilous route across the Red Sea. I flew to Addis Ababa from Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.
I was one of many. Hundreds of thousands of people across Ethiopia are fleeing, especially from Tigray. In 2024, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) tracked 446,000 people leaving the Horn of Africa via the “Eastern route”, crossing into Yemen to reach the Arabian Gulf. Ninety-six percent were Ethiopian, and a third of those were Tigrayan – although Tigrayans make up only 6% of Ethiopia’s population.
The shadow of the last war hangs over all of us in Tigray. In 2020, I was a junior government official in Addis Ababa. Tensions had been rising for months as Ethiopia’s federal government vilified the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Tigray’s ruling party. Soon, all Tigrayans were treated as enemies. I was not a member of the TPLF, but even playing Tigrayan music in front of colleagues drew insults from my bosses. By September 2020, the hostility became unbearable. I quit my job and went home.
‘I was not a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, but even playing Tigrayan music in the office drew insults from my bosses’
A few weeks later, fighting broke out in my village between TPLF militias and the Ethiopian army. I had fled with my parents to hide in the hills and caves above our village. The militias inflicted heavy losses on the army and then vanished into the hills. The Ethiopian soldiers were humiliated and were hungry for revenge. From my hiding place, I saw them go door to door, killing civilians. I heard the commander order them to kill every male over the age of seven.
Within an hour, over 170 unarmed villagers were dead. I lost many childhood friends. That night I realised this was no longer a political war – it was a campaign to exterminate my people. I decided to join the resistance. Better to die fighting, I told myself, than to be slaughtered in front of your parents like an animal.
After two years of war, a peace deal was signed in November 2022. But little has changed. Tigray’s economy is shattered, its infrastructure remains in ruins, and the fear of another war lingers.
Before I left Tigray myself, I saw this exodus up close. I was on a recent trip to Semera, the capital city of Ethiopia’s Afar region, which neighbours Tigray. At my hotel, I met dozens of Tigrayan youths with backpacks coming into the hotel to eat before continuing with their journey.
While eating shiro, one young man in his late twenties told me he was from Atsbi Wemberta and on his way to Saudi Arabia. “I see no hope in Tigray,” he said. “People with money go to Kenya or Uganda, but I can only afford this route.”
He had thought about migrating through Sudan and Libya, but said conflicts there made it too dangerous. Pointing to a group of young women nearby, he added that they too were bound for Saudi Arabia.
That evening I met my friend Awol*, a lecturer at Semera University. We talked about politics and the situation along the Semera-Djibouti road. “Migration is normal,” he said, “but this is shocking. Every day Tigrayan youth arrive, rest a little, then continue toward Djibouti. Wallahi, I’ve never seen anything like it. When I see those boys, I wonder who’s left in Tigray.”
The next day, I was on a bus to Aba’la near Mekelle. When the bus driver stopped for a break I ran into Berihuley*, a young man I’d met months earlier. He told me he had spent two-and-a-half years in Rago, on the Yemeni-Saudi border. Before that, he’d been working on a construction site in Saudi Arabia, without papers. He was deported, then tried to go back through Yemen, where he was shot by Saudi border guards. Eventually, he returned to Semera.
“Saudi Arabia isn’t what it used to be,” he told me. “Tigray’s young people are desperate. We fought and sacrificed in the war and now we’re exiles. Life abroad is a nightmare. That’s why I decided to return home with the idea of dying in the land I grew up in. But things are worse now. Everyone knows how dangerous the road is – yet it’s still full of Tigrayans trying to leave.”
Echoes of the past
The next morning, on another bus ride, I saw a group of traffickers sitting with young Tigrayans by the roadside, right beside an Afar police checkpoint. As the bus rolled on, I found myself thinking about history – about Gebrehiwot Baykedagn, the great 19th century Tigrayan scholar who stowed away on a ship from Massawa, studied in Germany, and returned to serve Emperor Menelik II. His story once symbolised the promise of Tigray’s talent abroad returning home to help rebuild it.
Yet despite all of his successes, returning home to Tigray filled him with despair. Menelik II’s rise marked Tigray’s loss of power and prosperity.
Gebrehiwot writes about the collapse of Tigrayan society during Emperor Menelik’s reign.
“You will not find a cultivated village anywhere you go. There are more ruins of ancient civilisation than inhabited homes … Like a swarm of bees without a queen, they have been scattered in all four corners of the world without knowing their destination,” said Gebrehiwot.
A century later, the region regained influence under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who was Tigrayan. His two decades at the helm brought relative stability and development – and accusations that Tigrayans were concentrating power and wealth amongst themselves. That ended when Ethiopia’s current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, ascended to power.
Today, Tigray is broken. Its leaders are divided, some aligning with Addis Ababa, others with Eritrea. Another war looms, one that could pit Tigrayans against each other. I fought once to defend my people; I will not fight again in a war that will destroy what remains. That is why I left.
At the airport in Mekelle, I thought again of Gebrehiwot Baykedagn. Like him, I long to study abroad and return home to rebuild. But I fear that when I do, I will return to ruins, just as he did.
Bet UAE is supplying military equipment like they’ve done in Sudan. Again to steal the gold.