We have been reporting on the escalating war in Ethiopia since it broke out in early November when it’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched an attack against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) after the region held its own election in September without Ahmed’s approval.
Last week, the BBC reported forces in Tigray launched rockets into Eritrea after accusing its neighbor of allowing the Ethiopian military to use an airport to carry out military operations.
Eritrean forces are accused of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region despite assurances from Prime Minister Ahmed that outside troops are not in the country.
The New York Times reported last week that two dozen aid workers and other officials confirmed Eritrea’s presence in the conflict and said these forces are fighting in coordination with Ethiopian troops.
“Abiy has invited a foreign country to fight against his own people,” Awol Allo, a former Abiy supporter, told The Times. He said, “The implications are huge.” Residents in the region have been “slaughtered like chicken,” Tigrayan elders said, according to The Guardian.
They said corpses have been abandoned in fields and left to be “eaten by hyenas.” The paper said that a communications blackout has essentially closed off the world from observing the horrors on the ground, which include looting and scorched-earth campaigns around refugee camps.
Wallelegn, a Tigrayan who worked in Shire during the onset of the war, told The Guardian that Eritrean forces have taken the lead in the conflict there.
“Their uniform is different and they are relatively old and skinny compared with the Ethiopian defense forces,” he told the paper. “In the early days of their arrival to Shire they were looting, randomly shooting, mainly youngsters, and burning factories.”
The Guardian report said thousands are believed to have been killed, and about 50,000 fled to Sudan. Villages have been flattened. The report said Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean leader, share a common enemy in the TPLF.
A spokesman from the U.S. State Department told the Guardian the U.S. is aware of “credible reports of Eritrean military involvement in Tigray and view this as a grave development. We urge that any such troops be withdrawn immediately.”
TREND FORECAST: As we have reported, Ethiopia’s economy had been steadily growing and was strong until the COVID War severely damaged it.
The greater the tensions rise and the deeper the nation falls economically, the more people in this highly populated nation will seek refuge in safe-haven European nations. This will in turn boost populist political party movements throughout the Eurozone. These movements will gain strength as economic conditions and calls for self-sustainability increase.
