Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict is back. But the battle lines have changed - DW News.

Renewed fighting in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region is raising fears of a return to a full-scale conflict just four years after the end of a brutal civil war that left hundreds of thousands dead. Clashes between rebels loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front and Ethiopian government troops have spread across Tigray and into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. Tigrayan forces have reportedly seized three local airports forcing Ethiopian airlines to suspend flights. Now civilians in the Tigray region have been stocking up on food, cash and basic necessities like medicine. In the previous war that ended in 2022, Tigray was largely cut off from the outside world pushing hundreds of thousands of people into famine-like conditions. A few people have followed the conflict as closely as Martin Plaut, journalist and senior researcher, research fellow at King's College London's Department of War Studies. He has written extensively on the Horn of Africa including the book Understanding Ethiopia's Tigray War. Welcome to the program and thank you so much for your time. What exactly happened this week? How serious is it? Oh it's very serious indeed. I'm afraid the situation could become absolutely catastrophic and people in Tigray are extremely worried. I mean they have little option but to you know support their own government and although yes the government in Addis Ababa calls them rebels, they're not rebels. They are a local regional government which has as much legitimacy as anyone else and they are now in a defensive war in which they are trying to push back the Ethiopian armed forces. But as you say there's now a new situation where they are in alliance with six other groups in Ethiopia and at least three of them have united to have a joint command and they are then attacking where they can, the Ethiopian armed forces. And for anyone who doesn't understand the backstory, can you fill us in on what the original war was about and how bad it got before the 2022 peace deal? Oh it was absolutely catastrophic. I mean 600,000 people died in it and the most appalling and they are worse. I've covered Africa for nearly 40 years and there were worse atrocities committed particularly against women than I have ever seen in any other conflict and that was really a clash between the Tigrayans on the one side and the Ethiopians and the Eritreans on the other side. Now what has happened since the peace agreement four years ago is that the Eritreans are flipped. They are now on the side of the Tigrayans who also have three other allies with them. So the situation is complex. It's difficult to understand for anybody who hasn't followed it for years obsessively shall we say. But it really has to do with regional autonomy and the rights of local people against the center. And can you distill it down for us and help us understand why the fighting broke out again now? Well everybody's been expecting this conflict now for the last 18 months. They've been predicting that war is going to break out. There are many reasons for it. One of them was that Prime Minister Abiy of Ethiopia has said repeatedly that he wants to have the Eritrean ports of Massawa and Asab as his gateway to the Red Sea. And the Eritreans have said absolutely not. We are a legitimate state. You can't just grab our ports. And that has turned the Eritreans against the Ethiopian Prime Minister with whom they were allied. And so the Eritreans have now been sending arms and weapons to other rebel groups inside Ethiopia. And they have now come together with the Tigrayans to try to, shall we say, overthrow the government in Addis Ababa. Now whether they will succeed is a completely different question. We just don't know at this stage. Last time during the previous war, drones supplied by Turkey played a critical role in reversing the Tigrayans' advances. What will Turkey do? Will they allow their technicians and their drones to be used against the Tigrayans again? Perhaps. We don't know. Will the United Arab Emirates, which funds Ethiopia, turn off the taps? We don't know. So there are many things that are at play. Also, President Trump has just mended fences with Eritrea, lifted sanctions. So he has begun to relax his relationship, partly because of his problems that he has in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Hormuz. You know, when we talk, I want to talk with you a little bit more about Eritrea, because this is a really interesting element of the story. You know, they come into play here, they deny involvement every time. What is Eritrea's stake in this conflict? Well, they in essence want to be an independent state. President Issaas, who has run Eritrea really since the 1970s, and Brooks absolutely no opposition, it's the most repressive state in Africa. He really is prepared to use any means possible. I mean, he even threatened to blow up the African Union meeting at one stage. And he's always been prepared to arm people inside Ethiopia if he thinks it's in his interest. At the same time, the Ethiopians have a longstanding argument with the Egyptians because they have damned the Nile. So Egypt has a long clash with Ethiopia. The Eritreans have a clash with Ethiopia. The Ethiopians are now in alliance with one of the groups that are fighting in the Sudanese civil war. You can see how complicated this becomes. I mean, almost everybody is involved in one way or another, and it could lead to a regional conflict. And that is why it's so serious. There's an enormous amount at stake here, as you've been articulating there, from a humanitarian, from a human rights perspective, from a regional perspective. So if you're someone watching this from Europe or from the United States who's never followed Ethiopian politics, can you give us a sense of what is more broadly at stake, even perhaps globally? Well, I think the real problem could be if the Red Sea is closed. I mean, the Houthis are now on the eastern side of the Red Sea. They control that. They seem to be making some relationship with President Trump. Can he maintain that? Can he keep that open? That is the biggest issue for Europe, because if the Red Sea is blocked and the Bab al-Mandab, which is the mouth of the Red Sea, is closed to shipping, just as the way that the Straits of Hormuz is closed to oil, then the situation becomes so much more difficult because we would then be cut off from, should we say, all our imports from China, which President Xi is just discussing with President Trump in the White House at the moment. So it's a very tricky situation. I mean, will it escalate? We just don't know at this stage. And one of the things you can be absolutely sure about is that both sides will prevent independent journalists from getting to the front line so that they can report. So we're going to have to be relying on secondhand reports for a lot of what we understand. And Martin Plaut, unfortunately we've run out of time, but we hope that we can continue to check in with you as this situation develops. Martin Plaut from King's College London, we appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.