A regional conflict is now becoming a national crisis which the country’s leaders seem unable to solve, and the lives of millions of Ethiopians are at stake.John Sparks
Africa correspondent @sparkomat
Wednesday 20 October 2021 21:49, UK
We could see a seemingly endless line of trucks as we headed down the highway in northern Ethiopia.
As their contents drew closer we knew the battle ground was shifting in this country’s increasingly nasty civil conflict.
There were thousands of troops perched on the back, clutching automatic weapons while fighting to stay upright. They were accompanied by specialist vehicles hauling artillery and tanks, moving at speed towards the region of Afar.
This arid and underpopulated place has been utterly overlooked as Ethiopia’s federal government and leaders of the restive region of Tigray battle for power and control.
But a major offensive, sanctioned by the country’s leader, Abiy Ahmed, has almost certainly stalled and fighters from the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) were advancing on communities in Afar.
The region has played host to convoys of a very different sort in recent months as the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) tries to send emergency aid into Tigray.
Estimating that some 400,000 Tigrayans are living in famine-like conditions, the WFP has created a ‘staging post’ in the regional capital of Semera, where humanitarian supplies are loaded onto oversized trucks and we watched as drivers set out on the two-day trip to the Tigrayan border.