As we have forecast since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched the war against Tigrays last November, the conflict in the country would destabilize the Horn of Africa, create a humanitarian crisis, and would not end quickly, as he had promised.
Ethiopia also remains in a standoff with Sudan over territory disputes along their borders, and there have been ethnic massacres with Eritrean troops being accused of committing war crimes.
Ethiopia has brought in troops from neighboring Eritrea to help them battle the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Prime Minister Ahmed – who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 – admitted the troops were playing a role despite earlier assurances they were not.
The New York Times, citing a senior U.N. official, reported on 16 April that Eritrean forces “continue to commit atrocities” in the region despite Ahmed’s claim that these troops would be leaving by late March.
Mark Lowcock, the top U.N. humanitarian official, told the paper that Eritrean troops last week killed civilians in indiscriminate attacks. Sexual violence accounts for almost one-third of these attacks and is being used as a weapon of war, officials said. Some women have been gang-raped for several days by Eritrean soldiers, Lowcock said.
“To be very clear: the conflict is not over and things are not improving,” he said, according to DW.com. He estimated that 91 percent of the six million people in Tigray need emergency food.
The paper reported residents in the region are still fleeing.
In March, Amnesty International issued a report that put the spotlight on an Eritrean troop offensive in November in a town north of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, where soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in a “coordinated and systemic” manner.
Human Rights Watch has called for the U.N.’s Security Council to discuss the situation during a public hearing to shed light on the human catastrophe playing out.
TREND FORECAST: As we have noted, Ethiopia’s economy had been steadily growing and was strong until the COVID War severely damaged it.
As the “Greatest Depression” worsens, economic conditions will deteriorate and civil unrest, which had been quelled, will escalate. As Gerald Celente has long noted, “When all else fails, they take you to war.”
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 anti-immigration populist political party movements throughout Europe.
