The West Is Ignoring the Nightmarish War in Ethiopia
The war in Ethiopia has largely been ignored by the outside world, and information has been hard to come by. But what we know about the conflict is horrific: at least 500,000 civilians have been killed, and 5 million have been displaced.
The remains of a house that had been occupied by a TPLF fighter in the city of Mersa in North Wollo, Ethiopia on January 12, 2022. (Photo by J. Countess / Getty Images)
The miserably bloody war in Ethiopia has been going on for the last couple of years, largely out of view of the outside world. It’s the latest chapter in decades of factional and ethnic conflict in that country.
In this latest round, which began in November 2020 and appears to have paused somewhat following a peace agreement late last year, at least half a million civilians have died and five million have been displaced.
Some background: Emperor Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia for much of the twentieth century until he was overthrown in 1974 by the Derg, a brutally authoritarian group. The Derg was, in turn, deposed after a fifteen-year war by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled through 2018.
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