Middle East & Africa | Uneasy peace

Ethiopia’s war in Tigray has ended, but deep faultlines remain

Lands remain occupied and Eritrean troops have not left

A worker carries a sack of grain in a warehouse of the World Food Programme (WFP) in the city of Abala, Ethiopia, on June 9, 2022. - The Afar region, the only passageway for humanitarian convoys bound for Tigray, is itself facing a serious food crisis, due to the combined effects of the conflict in northern Ethiopia and the drought in the Horn of Africa which have notably caused numerous population displacements. More than a million people need food aid in the region according to the World Food Programme. (Photo by EDUARDO SOTERAS / AFP) (Photo by EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP via Getty Images)
Image: Getty Images
|Um Rakuba

Inside his makeshift hut, Fisseha Gebreselassie contemplates all he has lost. Days after Ethiopia’s civil war began in November 2020, Ethiopian soldiers killed his 12-year-old son in front of him. Fearing for his life, he fled Tigray, the northern region at the centre of the fighting, for Sudan, leaving behind his wife and three remaining children, hoping they would be safe. But militiamen from the neighbouring Amhara region soon seized their home, forced them onto a truck and drove them across the river to central Tigray.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “A fragile peace”

From the January 14th 2023 edition

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