Considerable funds will have to be invested in the reconstruction of Tigray. The infrastructure no longer exists, neither do state buildings, even mosques and churches have been vandalized in the new ethnic violence in recent months which has also caused human tragedy.
A hundred days of war, a traumatized and hungry people, a total absence of peaceful solutions and no concessions on either side of the conflict ... Such is the situation in Tigray, one of the nine regions of Ethiopia - the region most further north, which shares 300 kilometers of borders with Eritrea.
Total annihilation
The consequences of the war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray rebels are of such magnitude that one might wonder how the region could become habitable again if the war ever ends.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (FLPT) revolted after the provincial authorities were suspended from the regional government on November 7, 2020. It is a former ethno-centered political dynasty that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wanted to dismantle . The Tigrayan ethnicity is made up of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, and has been in power in Tigray since ethnic federalism existed in Ethiopia.
In 2019, Abiy Ahmed's Nationalist Prosperity Party brought together all of the country's liberal parties, with a desire to end the ethnically-based federalism that divided the country. One of the few political entities that refused this merger was the FLPT.
Tensions mounted when the FLPT refused to participate in the national legislative elections, postponed since June 2021. The Front, which controls much of Ethiopia's armed forces and mechanized divisions, launched an offensive against Mekele, the capital of Tigray.
According to the Ethiopian government, FLPT soldiers disguised themselves as Eritrean soldiers in order to undermine the recent peace between Ethiopia and its northern neighbor.
Thus, Tigray has become the “no man's land” of East Africa. On November 9, in one night, the Tigrayan rebels killed 582 civilians in Mai-Kadra, for their allegiance to Abiy Ahmed. During the same period, the FLPT launched attacks against Eritrea.
The Ethiopian government's counterattack was violent, and for weeks many lives were shot from both sides of the conflict. At the end of November 2020, the Ethiopian state took over Mekele, the capital of Tigray, but the conflict caused much damage.
The heavy consequences of a month of clashes
The United Nations has said that between 2,5 and 3 million civilians are currently in need of food assistance. Refugees now number in the hundreds of thousands and the camps of the United Nations and the Ethiopian government are no longer sufficient to accommodate them.
Eritrean refugees have also found themselves caught in the crossfire north of Tigray. According to the UNHCR, these refugees are particularly threatened by the random bombings of the FLPT, some were forced to eat the bark of trees and drink contaminated water to survive.
Despite its defeat in Mekele, the FLPT adopted a more dispersed offensive, relying on the element of surprise and subversive actions against humanitarian NGOs. The Ethiopian government can no longer supply Mekele with basic necessities.
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be used to rebuild Tigray. The Ethiopian government has promised to pay these sums and restore the region's infrastructure after the war is over. However, the resolution of the conflict is still a long way off, and Ethiopia will struggle to resolve the humanitarian disaster in Tigray in time to save the lives of thousands of starving and homeless families.