Tigray: Ethiopia's Cascade into Chaos

In November 2020 long-simmering tensions between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), formerly a ruling party in national politics, boiled over into outright conflict. Abiy Ahmed, who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, announced on November 4 in a pre-dawn Facebook post that he was sending troops into the northern Tigray region to detain and disarm the TPLF leaders. He promised that the war, or in his words the “law enforcement operation,” would be quick, causing only minimal, if any, harm to the population of Tigray, some seven million people.

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In the library of a primary school damaged during fighting in the Tigray region. According to locals, Tigrayan troops moved into the school after it had been closed because of the pandemic, and months before the conflict began. Village of Bisober, Ethiopia, December 9, 2020.