In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has been experiencing a civil war for almost fifteen months, particularly in the Tigray region in the north of the country. But while the fighting had recently calmed down, giving hope for negotiations, a new front opened up at the end of January. The Tigrayan rebels have invaded the Afar region, in the northeast of Ethiopia on the border with Djibouti, creating at the same time a new humanitarian drama.
This region with a particularly inhospitable geography is the hottest in Ethiopia. With its sulfur deposits, the Dallol desert is also considered the hottest point in the world, the temperatures there constantly exceed 50 degrees. The war in the Afar is therefore above all a fight against nature, especially for the civilian populations fleeing the conflict across the desert, nearly 300,000 people according to the latest figures.
But they might be even more numerous because the north of the region is under Tigrayan control, cut off from the world, without access or communications. Within a month, 19 refugee camps were established in the region. Nour Burali won one of them. This shepherd fled with his four wives and ten children. “There are still people missing, we don’t know what happened to them”he says. “We do not know if they managed to flee, if they died on the way or if they are still in the wild. The war caught us off guard, we really did not expect it. We are waiting always the support of the government.”
Last year, the UN claimed that war crimes had been perpetrated by all parties to the conflict. It is difficult to verify these accusations in Afar, without accessing the north of the region, but all the testimonies of the inhabitants report the same brutality on the part of the Tigrayan forces. “They loot everything”explains Hassan Mohammed, an Afar militiaman injured in the fighting. “The animals, the houses are set on fire. We, their prisoners, treat them well. They, on the other hand, finish off our prisoners with knives.”
After a short lull in this war, the Tiger rebels decided to invade a new region, Afar. The Tigrayan party of the TPLF ensures that its intervention aims to eliminate Eritrean mercenaries. But the Afar is also strategic in several respects. First, its subsoil is rich: there is salt, potash, and gold. Then, it is through this region that the main road that connects Djibouti to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa passes. It is therefore through this that 90% of imports pass. In other words: cutting off this road would be tantamount to asphyxiating Ethiopia’s economy.