Tigray, Ethiopia – Saba Gedion was 17 years old when the peace agreement ending the conflict in her homeland, Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, was signed in 2022.
So she hoped the fights would be a thing of the past, but the past few months have convinced her that fighting is coming once again, and she feels paralyzed by despair.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“Many people are leaving the region en masse,” Gedion told Al Jazeera while sitting under the shade of a tree, selling coffee to a casual customer in an area frequented by internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Tigray capital, Mekelle.
Gedion, herself a displaced person, is from the town of Humera, an area now disputed with the Amhara region that witnessed heavy fighting during the 2020-2022 war between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
The young woman who is now 21 years old remembers the horrors she witnessed. Some members of his family were killed, while others were kidnapped in neighboring Eritrea, he says. He hasn’t heard from them since.
Although she made it out alive, her life was turned upside down when she was forced to flee to Mekelle in search of safety.
Years later, Gedion sees similar patterns as people leave Tigray (most heading to the neighboring Afar region) once again in search of the safety that has become elusive at home.
“Recurring conflicts and civil wars have turned us into zombies instead of citizens,” he told Al Jazeera.
In recent weeks, enmity between Ethiopia and Eritrea has escalated amid separate accusations from both sides.
Speaking to Ethiopia’s parliament in early February, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed his landlocked country’s access to the sea, saying “the Red Sea and Ethiopia cannot remain separated forever.” This has led to accusations from Eritrea that Addis Ababa is attempting to invade their country and try to recapture the Red Sea seaport of Assab, which it lost in 1993 with Eritrea’s independence.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia accused Eritrean troops of occupying its territory along parts of their shared border and called for the immediate withdrawal of soldiers from the towns of Sheraro and Gulomakada, among others. Addis Ababa also accuses Eritrea of arming rebels in the vast Horn of Africa country.
Observers say rising tensions point to an imminent war between the two countries, a war that could once again involve Tigray.
Unhealed war scars
In the capital of Tigray, a once booming city of tourism and business, most streets are quiet.
Young people who once frequented cafes are now often seen applying for visas and talking to smugglers in the hope of leaving Tigray.
Helen Gessese, 36, lives in a makeshift camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Mekelle. He worries about what will happen to the already struggling region if another conflict breaks out.
Gesse is an ethnic Irob, a persecuted Catholic minority group from the border town of Dewhan, in the northeastern part of Tigray.
During the Tigray war, several members of his family were kidnapped, he said, as Eritrean troops expanded their control in the area.
When the war escalated, he fled to Mekelle, about 150 kilometers away, in search of safety. Her elderly parents were too frail to accompany her on foot, so she was forced to leave them behind. Like Gedion, he has not heard from them or the rest of his family since 2022.
“My life has been put on hold, not knowing if my elderly parents are still alive,” she told Al Jazeera, and the stress of recent years makes her look much older than she is.
In Mekelle, it is not uncommon to find people distressed or frustrated, some from renewed tensions and many from the trauma of the previous conflict.
More than 80 percent of hospitals were left in ruins in Tigray during the war, according to humanitarian organizations, while the sexual violence that defined the two-year conflict remains a recurring problem. Hundreds of thousands of young people are still out of school, foreign investment that created jobs in the past has largely evaporated and the economy remains paralyzed after years of war.
Meanwhile, nearly four years later, the federal government’s decision to withhold foreign funds destined for the region is deepening a humanitarian crisis. Most of the public service in the region, for example, has not been paid for months.
The relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea has also deteriorated in recent years.
The former enemies had fought a war between 1998 and 2000, but in 2018 they signed a peace agreement. They then became allies during the 2020-2022 civil war in Tigray against the common enemy, the TPLF.
But the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea has declined sharply since the signing of the 2022 agreement that ended the Tigray war, an agreement to which Asmara was not a party.
‘Acts of open aggression’
Earlier this month, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos wrote an open letter acknowledging the presence of Eritrean troops loitering on the Ethiopian side of the border and asking them to leave.
“The incursion of Eritrean troops…” he wrote, “are not just provocations but acts of open aggression.”
Asmara continues to deny the presence of its troops on the Ethiopian side, and Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel has called such accusations “a war agenda against Eritrea.”
In a sign of worsening relations between the two neighbors, Ethiopian Abiy, in his speech to parliamentarians in early February, also accused Eritrean troops of committing atrocities during the Tigray war. The allegation was the prime minister’s first, following repeated denials by his government over reports of mass killings, looting and factory destruction by Eritrean troops during the Tigray conflict.
The Eritrean government rejected Abiy’s claims of atrocities, with Gebremeskel calling them “cheap and despicable lies,” noting that until recently Abiy’s government had been “raining praise and state medals” on Eritrean army officers.
As tensions rise, many observers say war between the two is now inevitable and have called for dialogue and a de-escalation of the situation.
“The situation remains highly volatile and we fear it will deteriorate, worsening the already precarious humanitarian and human rights situation in the region,” United Nations human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said this month.
Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at the New University of Oslo, told Al Jazeera that a new war would have “wide-ranging implications for the region,” regardless of the outcome.
He believes the looming conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea could take the form of a new civil war, positioning Addis Ababa once again against Tigray’s leadership.
For Ethiopia’s part, he stated that the goal would be regime change in both Asmara and Mekelle, noting that “regime change in Eritrea may lead to Ethiopia gaining control of Assab.” For Asmara and Mekelle, the goal would also be regime change in Addis Ababa, he suggests.
“If it erupts, it will be devastating for Tigray,” Tronvoll said. “The outcome of such a war will likely fundamentally alter the political landscape of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. [of Africa]”he warned, noting that regional states could also be drawn into a proxy war.
Fears for the future
For many in Tigray, memories of the massacres committed during the 2020-2022 war are still fresh.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site in the central Tigray region, Axum is known for its tall obelisk relics of an ancient kingdom. But for 24 hours in November 2020, the city was the scene of massacres carried out by the Eritrean army. “Many hundreds of civilians” were killed, human rights group Amnesty International said.
While the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments denied the killings for many years, this month Abiy acknowledged that they had taken place.
However, despite talking about “mass killings” in Axum, he has remained silent about the fact that the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies openly worked together as allies during that war.
Marta Keberom, a resident in her forties from Axum, says very few people in her hometown have not been affected by violence in the past five years.
“The killings that occurred during the war were not just a conflict, they had the hallmarks of a genocide in which entire families were murdered without cause,” he said of the killings targeting Tigrayans.
“To relive that,” Keberom said, speaking at an internally displaced persons center in Mekelle, would be “something I can’t begin to understand.”
While waiting for customers at his coffee stand in the city, Gedion is also afraid of what might happen next.
She once aspired to be an engineer, but since being uprooted from her village, she now dreams of a future far from Ethiopia.
She has already contacted a smuggler to help her get out, she says, through Libya and into the Mediterranean Sea, despite the extreme risks of that journey.
“I would rather take the risk than suffer a slow and certain death with little prospect for the future,” he said.
