AMHARA
CONFLICT – INTERNATIONAL
News:
Residents Say Ethiopian
Soldiers Kill More Than 50 Civilians in Amhara Town
What's
in the news?
●
Ethiopian soldiers killed more than 50
civilians this week in a town in the Amhara region during house-to-house
searches that followed fighting with a local militia, three residents told
Reuters.
Amhara
Conflict:
●
The Ethiopian
national ombudsman has reported nearly 400 starvation deaths in the Tigray and
Amhara regions, acknowledging hunger-related fatalities amidst a backdrop of
drought and the aftermath of a civil war that concluded 14 months ago.
Causes:
●
The
slow pace of aid distribution is compounded by logistical and technical
challenges, including the introduction of new systems like GPS trackers for
food trucks and QR codes for ration cards, which have faced implementation
difficulties.
●
The pause
in food aid by the U.N. and the U.S. last year, due to a large-scale theft
scheme, significantly exacerbated hunger levels.
●
The recent conflict in Tigray, which
resulted in significant casualties and displacement, has led to accusations
against the Ethiopian government of using starvation as a method of warfare.
Go
back to basics:
Tigray
War in Ethiopia:
●
Long disputed ownership over territory
along their shared regional border.
●
This territorial
dispute is rooted in ethnic tensions between the Tigrayan and Amhara peoples,
as well as competing nationalist political agendas.
●
Led to the armed conflict in northern
Ethiopia between the Tigray People’s
Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian federal government supported by
Eritrean troops and Amhara regional forces.