Ethiopia / Tigray: the underside of a war behind closed doors
Women mourn the victims of a "massacre" attributed to Eritrean soldiers in the village of Dengolat, north of Mekele, the capital of Tigray, on February 26, 2021. © EDUARDO SOTERAS / AFP
By: Chantal Lorho Follow
2 min
On November 4, 2020, the Ethiopian federal army launched a military operation in Tigray, a dissident region in northern Ethiopia, bordering Eritrea.
Its objective: to overthrow the party in power in the region, the TPLF, the Front for the Liberation of the People of Tigray, accused of having attacked several of its bases.
After the capture of the Tigrayan capital Mékélé, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed proclaimed, on November 28, 2020, the victory of his army, "without civilian casualties".
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Since then, testimonies on the atrocities, looting, massacres, gang rapes, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Tigray have multiplied.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accuse in particular the Eritrean forces, which came to lend a hand to the Ethiopian federal army, of having killed at the end of November 2020 hundreds of civilians, including children, in the village of Dengolat and in Aksum, above. place of the Orthodox Christian Church ... On March 10, the United States for the first time denounced acts of ethnic cleansing in western Tigray perpetrated this time by forces from the neighboring Amhara region ... For 4 months, more than 60,000 Tigrayans have fled the hell of violence to seek refuge in neighboring Sudan.
Where is this conflict today?
What are the motivations of the local and regional actors involved?
How did a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed, become a warlord?
Why are the African Union and the UN Security Council unable to bring the violence to an end?
Is there a risk of conflagration in the region?
Three guests:
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René Lefort,
independent researcher, specialist in the Horn of Africa
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Roland Marchal,
researcher at Ceri / Sciences Po
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Marc Lavergne,
geopolitologist, emeritus research director at CNRS.
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To read also:
The video of a massacre in Tigray overwhelms the Ethiopian army.
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Ethiopia: the increasingly deafening silence of the authorities on Tigray
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Tigray: the United States continues its diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia
Ethiopia: revelations on crimes committed in Tigray multiply