Top-secret internal communiction by DERG regarding the population of Welkait and Tsegede (Western Tigray, Ethiopia), 1984

During the civil war in Ethiopia between the military “Derg” regime and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) the Dejena mountain range in Welkait became, around 1980, the main base for Tigray resistance against the Derg regime that was in power at the time. In the Ethiopian federal state, after 1991, Welkait became part of Tigray, Western Tigray zone, which is contested by the core Ethiopian Amhara elites. A rare communication document between Derg’s military command and the Ministry of Defense, dating back to 1984 has been retrieved, where they lament that the population of the Welkait and the adjacent Tselemti districts supports the TPLF, because the people are Tigrinya speakers. Up to this date, the archive is top-secret, and photos of the document were furtively taken. This typical document from the 1980s, prepared on carbon copy paper using a ge’ez font type writing machine, was shown to a well-informed Ethiopian analyst, who confirmed its authenticity.