*The Basket is Empty: Tigray's Agony and the Betrayal of the Salt-Lickers*

  The dust of Tigray is no ordinary dust. It is the pulverized remains of homes, the ash of burned crops, the dried blood of the abandoned. Five years. *Five years.* Children have been born in makeshift shelters who have never known a wall without bullet holes. Grandparents have died under tarpaulin roofs, whispering the names of villages erased from maps. And still, the siege tightens. Still, the genocide continues – not with the blunt roar of artillery alone, but with the silent, suffocating weapons of starvation, denied medicine, and a calculated, international indifference. Tigray bleeds, not just from wounds, but from betrayal.

The world sees the skeletal frames flickering in dim footage. It hears, distantly, the statistics – millions displaced, thousands starved, healthcare annihilated. But it struggles to grasp the *soul* of this catastrophe. It struggles to grasp the depth of the betrayal that compounds every physical wound.

For woven into the fabric of Tigray's suffering is a thread of profound treachery: the rise of the *Tequilanists*, the *Macchiatonists*, and the myriad other opportunistic bandits. These are not mere political opponents; they are Judas figures clad in the stolen robes of Tigrayan identity. They are men and women who watched their people sacrifice *everything* – sons, daughters, homes, futures – in a desperate struggle for survival and dignity against genocidal aggression. They saw the rivers of Tigrayan blood spilled to defend not just Tigray, but arguably, the very notion of resistance against tyranny in the Horn.

And what did they do? When the guns momentarily fell silent, not in victory but in exhaustion and deceit, they slithered towards Addis Ababa. They offered their services – their tongues, their networks, their willingness to vilify their own – to the architect of Tigray's misery, Abiy Ahmed. They traded the sacred blood of martyrs for a seat at the table of the butcher. They exchanged the collective dream of Tigrayan self-determination for the clinking coins of personal privilege, fleeting power, and the illusion of security bought with the suffering of their kin.

*Abiy Ahmed himself laid bare their pathetic reality.* With chilling contempt, he dismissed them: *"ባንዳዎች? ጨው እይላስክ የራሳቸው ህዝብ ለመግደል ትልካችዋለህ!"* – *"Bandits? All you do is make them lick salt and send their own kin to kill for crumbs!"*

There it is. The brutal, unvarnished truth from the mouth of their master. They are not partners. They are not equals. They are *salt-lickers*. Reduced to animals craving the most basic mineral, performing tricks for a master who views them with utter disdain. Their function? To be used as tools – cheap, expendable tools – to fragment Tigrayan resolve, to sow discord, to provide a thin veneer of "inclusivity" for Abiy's regime while it systematically finishes the genocide by other means: starvation, disease, and economic strangulation. He sends them, these hollow men, to recruit the desperate, the hungry, the broken – to turn Tigrayan against Tigrayan, sending them to kill their own brothers and sisters for the meager "crumbs" Abiy allows to fall from his table.

*This betrayal is a wound deeper than any bomb crater.* While mothers in Adigrat watch their children wither for lack of a single antibiotic pill, the Tequilanists dine in guarded villas. While elders in Shire scavenge for roots, the Macchiatonists posture on platforms paid for by the blood money of their people's suffering. They have forgotten the mass graves of Axum. They have forgotten the rape camps of Humera. They have forgotten the hospitals looted and destroyed. They have forgotten the *sacrifice* that momentarily stayed the hand of annihilation. They forget that their own temporary safety was bought by that very sacrifice – a sacrifice they now spit upon.

*Tigray is dying by a thousand cuts.* The siege is absolute. No fuel. No cash. No medicine. No seeds. No fertilizer. Aid trucks are blocked, diverted, or arrive as cruel taunts – too little, too late. The "peace" promised is the peace of the grave, the peace of surrender to annihilation. The international community wrings its hands, issues muted statements, and moves on. The Eritrean invaders, though less visible, remain embedded like poison. And the collaborators? They lick their salt and sharpen their knives for their own people.

*But the soul of Tigray is not so easily extinguished.* It flickers in the eyes of doctors operating by phone light. It resonates in the quiet hymns sung in darkened churches. It pulses in the stubborn determination of farmers trying to coax life from barren, shell-pocked earth. It lives in the diaspora, screaming into the deaf ears of the world. The call echoes, ancient and urgent: *"ወጣ ወጣና እንደ ሸምበቆ!" – "Come out, come out, like a basket!"*

It is a call not just for survival, but for *reckoning*. Empty the basket of lies. Empty the basket of collaborators masquerading as leaders. Empty the basket of international apathy. Pour out the truth – the whole, unvarnished, horrific truth – onto the world stage. Scatter the seeds of resistance, unity, and unwavering defiance. The basket of suffering is full to overflowing; it’s time to upturn it and demand justice.

Tigray cannot wait on the promises of enemies or the crumbs offered to traitors. The salt-lickers have made their choice, marked forever by Abiy’s own damning words. Their legacy is written in the salt tears of a betrayed nation. The true spirit of Tigray, however, endures. It endures in the rubble, in the hunger, in the unbroken will of a people who have stared into the abyss of genocide and refuse to blink. The world must hear their cry before the basket is emptied not just of hope, but of life itself. The time for action, for *real* action, is not tomorrow. It was yesterday.