Dejen Mezgebe is standing in the office of the Tigray Independence Party, behind him a small partition with the party's logo, in the adjoining rooms there are deserted desks and empty bookshelves. It doesn't seem like many people have stopped by here in the past few months. "I was in the bush," says Dejen, referring to the civil war in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, which began in November 2020 and lasted almost two years. A fragile peace has...
In recent history, Ethiopia has never managed to resolve its conflicts at the negotiating table. Now an agreement is supposed to silence the guns. Can this work? source site
Almost to the day two years after the start of the civil war in Ethiopia, the parties to the conflict agreed on a ceasefire on Wednesday evening. Millions of people in the embattled Tigray region in the north of the country are to receive food aid from the United Nations again. The UN has repeatedly accused Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of using "hunger as a weapon" in the civil war. The conflict is currently considered the most serious war...
If you look at what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is circulating on his Twitter channel these days - you could get the impression that Ethiopia currently consists primarily of blooming landscapes, of a new beginning, optimism and happiness. Abiy visits a banana plantation, lush wheat fields just before the harvest, he inaugurates a library and is cordial in conversation with heads of state from the region.Abiy seems to be moving in a kind of parallel world, large parts of his...
Fighting has resumed in the Ethiopian state of Tigray. Millions of people are threatened by hunger and genocide - but the conflict is hardly an issue internationally. Would it be different if the victims were white?Of Bernd Dorries, BerlinOn Facebook you can still see what the little amusement park for children looked like before the bombs hit it. There is a climbing wall, a big carousel like at a folk festival, car scooters and video games. "The safest place for...
It's a realization that took a lot of time. 17 months after the start of the civil war, the Ethiopian government announced on Thursday evening that it would call for an immediate unilateral ceasefire for the regional fighting in the north - to "pave the way for a solution to the conflict without further bloodshed".The war between the breakaway region of Tigray and the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began at the end of 2020, a year after...
During the Ethiopian civil war, the leadership of the breakaway region of Tigray announced that it would withdraw its troops from the rest of Ethiopia and offered an immediate ceasefire. "I have ordered the units of the Tigray Army that are outside the borders of Tigray to withdraw into the borders of Tigray with immediate effect," wrote Debretsion Gebremichael, the president of the region, in a letter to the UN on Sunday General Secretary António Guterres.The civil war began at...
On Sunday it sounded a bit as if Olusegun Obasanjo was already at the end of his patience. The former President of Nigeria has only been the African Union's Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa since August; As such, he should find a solution to the war in Ethiopia, which so far has probably cost tens of thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands are on the run, millions are suffering from malnutrition. Over the past few days, Obasanjo had...
Solomon Alebachew points to the mountains on the other side of the valley, the peaks of a plateau in northern Ethiopia, they are magical landscapes, part of the Unesco world cultural heritage. It stands on a concrete viewing platform from which tourists normally admire the lush green hills and gorges. But now he is holding binoculars in his hand and is looking for the positions of the opponents on the other side. Around him stand about 30 men in camouflage...
