‘I Didn’t Expect to Make It Back Alive’: An Interview With Tigray’s Leader

The leader of the restive Ethiopian region presented the rebels’ side of a conflict that plunged the country into chaos after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began a military operation there in November.

GIJET, Ethiopia — The convoy sped down from the mountain, slipping and sliding on roads greasy from a recent shower of hailstones. As it descended toward the regional capital of Tigray, curling through rocky hills and remote hamlets, people clustered along the route in celebration. Women stood ululating outside stone farmhouses, and fighters perched atop a ridge fired their weapons into the air as the vehicles curled around the detritus of battle: burned-out tanks, overturned trucks and a mucky field where on June 23 an Ethiopian military cargo plane, shot down by the Tigrayans, had smashed into the ground. The leader of Tigray, Debretsion Gebremichael, was going home.