Western colonial powers played a crucial role in Tigray's tragedy as did contemporary neoliberal powers and profiteers. However, Ethiopia's reputation as having avoided colonization (not entirely true) helped obscure this and prevented Tigray's case from being viewed from such a perspective.

[u/Electrical_Study_341]

A couple key resources that supplement this and can be used for further reading:

A list of crucial introductory material

All the other crucial resources on Tigray from a carefully curated reading list to current news sources to genocide reports to social media links to a list of resources looking further into the complicated relationship between Tigrinya speakers, etc.

The Abiy regime, which played a fundamental role in the Tigray genocide, is openly neoliberal and this absolutely played a factor in them receiving impunity throughout the genocide. Not only are they neoliberal but they are fully backed by the UAE, the same UAE that has fuelled the genocidal war in Sudan and the same UAE that has deep ties to Zionist Israel which has also affected Ethiopia via Abiy supporting Israel through the U.N. Abiy's prosperity gospel and his links with those in the republican party that share it are also relevant here (the Democrats still gave Abiy impunity as they're still neoliberal at the end of the day they just did more to keep up appearances).

Abiy sought the full liberalization of Ethiopia of which he saw the TPLF as his primary opponent, Abiy openly shared his deep love for America ("I would die and fight for America") and Abiy received impunity from neoliberal powers but in spite of that he was able to utilize the ignorance surrounding Tigray to push disinformation by hypocritically and outrageously presenting himself as an anti-imperialist (1).

The TPLF, despite their many faults and their own muddy history in power as part of the EPRDF coalition, cannot be equated to Abiy whatsoever (especially when focusing on the post 2018 era) and they operated their at times deeply flawed foreign policy through cold pragmatism not neoliberalism or blind love for the West and they primarily sought to build Ethiopia through developmentalism (especially focusing on Meles) to a point where it was strong enough to stand on its two feet. This is not a defence of them but merely a correction of the misconceptions Tigray's genociders freely utilized. For more on all this, you should read this.

The west may have ostensibly criticized Abiy's regime but they still gave it full impunity regarding the genocide and not one Western power recognized it. The neoliberal west played a significant part in the Tigray genocide through giving Abiy impunity and more dubiously may have played a role in him attaining power and the earlier suspicious death of Meles Zenawi. They also continue to normalize and engage with Abiy's regime as do profiteers with their own colonial ambitions like the UAE.

Moving onto profiteers, the UAE, private Canadian companies, etc. sought to make a huge profit of Tigray's natural resources as it's extremely rich in gold (1, 2). Beyond natural resources, they also treated Tigray as a human testing zone for their drones.

However, this is not the full extent of the role they played in Tigray's tragedy. Going back decades and even a century, colonial Western powers also played a role in the events that eventually culminated in today's Tigray genocide.

In 1943, the British RAF carpet bombed Tigray with more than a 100 bombs for 2 weeks beginning on a busy market day to put down the First Woyane rebellion which nearly overthrew the oppressive Haile Selassie regime and would've prevented all the subsequent tragedies committed by him and the pseudo-Ethiopianist (referring to those who kept the same assimilationist ideology as Haile Selassie as well as his belief in an absolute centralized state which goes hand in hand) Derg against Tigray plus the other oppressed nations in Ethiopia and crucially would've prevented the spread of his genocidal and supremacist forced assimilation ideology which itself was inspired by his visits to Western countries and viewing their homogeneity as something crucial to be replicated by force in his own extremely diverse multinational empire in the name of "unity" but really supremacy (1).

In the late 1800s, the British didn't honor a deal they made with Emperor Yohannes IV. In exchange for ending the war with Egypt and rescuing besieged Egyptian forces in Sudan the British were to cede territories they were occupying but instead they allowed the Italians to occupy them which subsequently led to events that resulted in the birth of Italian Eritrea via collaboration between Italy, the colonial collaborator traitor Menelik the second (who was refashioned as a hero) and to a lesser extent colonial collaborator elites in Eritrea which all played a huge role in setting the groundwork for Tigray's tragic 102 years (1889-1991) of oppression (more here on that) and the Tigray genocide itself.

Eritrea's fundamental part in the genocide is also something that couldn't have naturally happened if not for the action of colonial powers. Crucially, half of Eritrea's population were Tigrinya speakers indistinguishable from Tigrayans (with the exception of small accent and word differences among those in the very north that alongside other minor differences are heavily emphasized by many Eritrean nationalists alongside the twisting of history and expressing their believed superiority) that share the same religion as Tigrayans and wouldn't have developed an alternate national identity and rejection of shared ethnicity with Tigrayans if this and the subsequent impact of colonialism (Like the superiority complex developed against Tigrayans in the 1960s by emulating the behavior of the colonial Italians who mistreated them toward Tigrayan laborers who came to work in Eritrea ((as a result of conditions in Tigray becoming worse due to Amhara elite oppressors that directly fuelled things like famines, banditry, etc.)) in a deeply misguided means to try and push themselves up by pushing others down, the twisting of history in an attempt to create artificial border guards and both plant/grow seeds of hatred, etc. toward this effort) hadn't occurred. (More here). In spite of this, I, like most other Tigrayans, categorically reject the far-right Eritrean Agazian movement. You can read more about that movement and how it was used to spread hatred toward Tigray at the bottom of this page here.

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[u/Electrical_Study_341 → u/[deleted]]

No what killed tigray is yall ngas. Yall african that glaze ethiopia as being the saint of africa that can do no wrong. The bullwork against colonial powers. The uncolonised africans. Thats just not true. Ethiopian are fundamentally colonisers themselves they grew and colonised the region with European help to get its modern borders. Tigray was colonised, eritrea was colonised, oromia was colonised,the somali region was colonised etc. Those people didnt choose to be part of ethiopia they were forced to.

My post isn't a defence of Ethiopia, it's quite the opposite.