Irish Examiner view: The unseen war in Ethiopia

Conflict in Tigray

People walk past destroyed heavy artillery equipment in Hayk, Ethiopia.

Sadly, war has become a global obsession in the past eight months, but there is a conflict in Africa right now that appears not only to have been forgotten by the rest of the world but to be one which could, without much prompting, become one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in living memory.

Fighting in the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray in a civil war has been ongoing since November 2020 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the government’s Ethiopian National Defence Forces and has now drawn in the army of neighbouring Eritrea, the EDF. A truce was brokered last March to stop the fighting, but it collapsed in August.

Renewed conflict in this unseen war — hidden behind a government siege which has severed communications in the region and mainly unreported because journalists are largely locked out — has left 5.2m people urgently needing emergency aid across a territory the size of Switzerland.

Artillery barrages, drone strikes, and pitched battles have pulled in neighbouring countries and have reportedly involved hundreds of thousands of combatants. In recent weeks, according to UN observers, hundreds of civilians have died and as many as 500,000 people have fled their homes.

The stakes for the civilians of the region are very high and while the African Union is desperately trying to organised peace talks — negotiations were supposed to take place last week only to be cancelled — as each of the warring parties has been accused of war crimes; of using starvation as a weapon of war, and sexual slavery to subjugate women.

This is a conflict which has worsened with every day that passes and the international community now needs to work together to stop this conflict with a humanitarian nightmare facing this part of the horn of Africa.