Addis Abeba — The people of Tigray, Ethiopia, have been stuck in misery and deprivation for the past five and a half years. Now, a new war looms over the region as the Ethiopian federal government has reportedly positioned a sizable force on the Tigrayan border. It's anyone's guess whether Tigray will be a target or a staging ground to attack Eritrea. Either action would be cataclysmic for several million Tigrayans who recently survived one of the most brutal wars of the century.
The cause of Tigrayan suffering has been a matter of recent debate. During my recent trip to Tigray, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia told Parliament that the Eritrean military had acted alone in the targeting of civilians and civil infrastructure. However, the consensus of independent investigators outside of Ethiopia and in Tigray has documented human rights abuses, mass looting and destruction, sexual violence, and acts of genocide committed by actors from both Eritrea and Ethiopia, including members of the Amhara Fano militia.
A new war in Tigray would carry a grave risk of a new round of atrocities against civilians. But even beyond that, it would guarantee that millions of innocent people, who have been forced to struggle every day since November 2020 just to survive, will be asked to bear an even heavier burden. Before the last war in Tigray, the region was on solid footing for food security, had a functional economy and health care system, and had almost no displacement. These indicators have now taken a turn for the worse. Tigray is already in an existential war for survival, but it is being fought peacefully. On the front lines are farmers who should be preparing their fields, doctors who should be treating patients, and aid workers who should be providing support to the most vulnerable. A new war would make their heroic efforts impossible.
Inside Tigray's survival story
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The cause of Tigrayan survival is only partially understood. The actual value of outside aid that has been sent to Tigray has never been reported, but it has been substantial. However, the work of the humanitarian response in Tigray has been carried out primarily by Tigrayans. This phenomenon is most apparent during the siege and more recent aid funding cuts by donor countries. Outside funding comes and goes, but the people of the region never stop trying to keep Tigrayans alive.
While in the region, I saw the humanitarian response in Tigray up close and very personal. I visited with community leaders, local officials, academics, clerics, and aid workers from Mekelle, as well as people in need in some of the hardest-hit places in the Eastern, Central, and Northwestern zones. Each place I visited in Tigray was different, and every day brought fresh insights into the conditions people were facing and how they were surviving.
Some things were the same from one end of Tigray to the other. Suffering and despair are endemic. If you take an inventory of the basic things that are needed to get from one day to the next, like clean water, food, medicine, or shelter, almost everyone in Tigray is missing at least one or two of these items. Self-reliance is another unmistakable feature of the post-conflict Tigray.
During my visit, it was apparent that, with few exceptions, everyone helping Tigrayans survive is from Tigray. The people staffing international NGOs are Tigrayans, as well as local NGOs. The doctors, experts, academics, and policymakers are all Tigrayan. Many people are working for free, and others are working to serve people in the same programs and projects where they received services themselves.
Through solidarity, the people of Tigray have survived five and a half years of brutal violence, siege warfare, and extreme deprivation. But everything has a limit. Many people associated with the humanitarian response in Tigray are despondent and anxious about the rapidly shrinking funding. At one displacement camp that I visited in the Central zone, a meeting was being held with community leaders about what they would do following the collapse of outside aid. The facilitator was on contract for a few more months. When I asked her what she personally planned to do when the aid budgets ran dry, she simply said, "Keep helping vulnerable people." I wondered how long she could.
The humanitarian crisis in Tigray is particularly severe due to systematic destruction, looting, and violence committed in the region that began in 2020, followed by a year of siege warfare and another round of violence and brutal occupation. The war ultimately ended through a cessation of hostilities agreement that did little to address the needs of civilian survivors. The promises made in the agreement to address the forced annexation of Western Tigray and areas along the regional border with Amhara were never kept, leaving displaced Tigrayans to languish in camps throughout the region.
With or without a potential new conflict in Tigray, the region is facing cataclysmic outcomes."
Tigray is not the only region of Ethiopia with grave humanitarian needs. Lower-intensity conflicts are also being conducted in the Amhara and Oromia regions with a similar disregard for civilian safety or human rights. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) has struggled in its coverage in Tigray, but is insightful elsewhere. It shows that food insecurity is at crisis or emergency levels in parts of the Amhara, Oromia, Somali, and South Ethiopia regions. Even in Gambella, where food security appears relatively stable in host communities, budget shortfalls are believed to be causing crisis levels of food insecurity amongst the region's nearly one million refugees.
Since the 2022 ceasefire, reconstruction in Tigray has not gotten off the ground in a meaningful way. Many Tigrayans are still sifting through the rubble, in half-finished buildings or in displacement camps.
There has been some visible success in rehabilitating Tigray's larger towns and cities. Mekelle is a bustling, moderately sized city, but most people remember a more vibrant time. In the Northwest zone, Shire has a cosmopolitan feel, with busier clubs, hotels, restaurants, and shops. In the East, Adigrat is a good-sized city with beautiful streets and stores. In the central zone, Adwa was smaller but lively on a weekday morning, and Aksum was still the same town of ancient cultural heritage and Christian spirituality.
All of the towns that I visited show the signs of war, with damaged buildings and collective shelters for people who are displaced. Most of the post-war rehabilitation has been done without the right kind of materials. There were a lot of plastic tarp walls and makeshift repairs.
Outside of the urban areas, many Tigrayans are still living as they were on the day that the war stopped. Agriculture is slowly coming back, despite substantially damaged infrastructure. Many live without basic amenities like electricity, clean water, or medicine.
In the displacement camps, conditions are usually worse. One internally displaced person (IDP) camp director in Adiy Abbi told me that life inside the displacement camps has gotten harder than it was during the war. Additionally, he said that new households continue to arrive almost every week from Western Tigray.
IDPs left in endless limbo
According to the Tigray Bureau of Social Affairs and Rehabilitation (BoSAR), more than 2.5 million people were forcibly displaced in Tigray during the previous war. It is estimated that nearly one million people are displaced in Tigray right now. Most fled ethnic cleansing and hoped they would be able to return home after a few months. Nearly all were expected to be allowed to go home after the fighting was over. However, the war ended two years ago without any right of return and hardly any peace. When a Cessation of Hostilities was signed in Pretoria, nearly half of Tigray was occupied by forces who are widely believed to have committed ethnic cleansing and war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity. This land is still occupied by forces that targeted Tigrayans for extermination.
As long as ethnic cleansing remains a tolerated practice in the so-called "contested areas," most displaced people will do anything to avoid bringing their families back. However, if conditions in the IDP hosting sites get bad enough, people may choose to return home and face unknown hazards over inevitable starvation in the camps. Other risky escapes from displacement could become more attractive, which often leads to exploitation, kidnapping, and death.
Resource scarcity dominates the lives of people in the displacement camps and often determines mortality. When people are malnourished and do not have access to clean water or medicine, they die or develop lifelong disabilities from curable conditions. People with chronic diseases are not treated, and I saw a full range in the camps: diabetes, cancer, AIDS, autism, schizophrenia, and PTSD. Throughout most of Tigray, there is no care available aside from a devoted family member, in the most fortunate cases. In the capital of Mekelle, there is a hospital and a handful of service care centers. If they are free, they are completely full. If they cost money, they are beyond the reach of displaced people.
Resource scarcity dominates the lives of people in the displacement camps and often determines mortality."
Despair is heavy in the displacement camps. The people feel dehumanized and forgotten. One camp leader said, "We are being reduced to animals: eating, sleeping, and coupling." Another man at a different camp in the Central zone said that they were being "regarded as dogs... given treats and then ignored." After more than five years living in limbo, people just want to be recognized as human beings and allowed to go home. A camp administrator told us, "We don't want any more handouts... just tell people what you have seen... we want to go home."
Home, but not safe
Some people have left the camps, but they often face the same daily struggles that they tried to leave behind. Those who have returned home are often cut off from services or live under the constant threat of violence, or both.
Recently, local Tigrayan news reported that more than 10,000 people who had previously returned to their homes in Tselemti and other areas of Tigray's Northwest zone have been displaced yet again by targeted violence. The return journey for this group began gradually in early July 2024 and was extensively covered by AS. It was immediately clear that these returnees were being sent back to rubble with no humanitarian support or physical protection. By December, conditions were being described as a full-blown humanitarian crisis that had engulfed both those who had recently returned from displacement and those who never left. In January, Lt. Gen. Tadesse Werede, President of Tigray's Interim Administration, reported that returnees had faced violence and harassment by Amhara forces and that many had been displaced again.
Elsewhere in Tigray, those who have returned home are often cut off from services. According to a 2025 assessment, nearly 18,000 formerly displaced people have returned to Zalambessa from IDP hosting sites. The assessment was very precise about the characteristics of this group. Most were in a particularly vulnerable group, meaning that either they were pregnant (175), living with a disability (25%), or had a chronic illness (18%).
Almost a third of returnees came back to homes that were damaged or destroyed. From direct observation of Zalambessa and the surrounding area, there has been some restoration, but structural damage is still everywhere, and the region is littered with buildings that were half-built and abandoned at the start of the war. During my visit to the town, I saw schools and deep water wells that had been deliberately destroyed and never rebuilt.
People in Zalambessa have no local water, no electricity, almost no schools, and no health care. Tigray's Bureau of Social Affairs and Rehabilitation (BOSAR) conducted a multi-sectoral needs assessment last July and found that only 25% of people in Zalambessa had a reliable source of food. They are surrounded on three sides by Eritrea, whose military is responsible for brutal violence against civilians in Zalanbessa and the surrounding areas.
There are around 1,600 households still displaced from Zalambessa. Some will not go back because of the lack of water and assistance; others worry about the open border with Eritrea. One man from Zalambessa living in a displacement camp in Mekelle explained that most of his family members were killed by Eritrean soldiers, and he cannot bring the rest of his family back without better security.
It does not seem like better security is on the horizon. In Zalambessa, I spoke to a security official who is hoping that electricity can be restored to at least have lights around the border at night. It is impossible to protect people under these conditions, and everyone knows they are vulnerable. In the July 2025 assessment, Zalambessa was the only location visited where 100% of the people that the assessment team spoke to felt unsafe. From what I observed on the ground, there did not appear to be hostility towards Eritrean civilians, but there was fear of Eritrean military action.
A recent article from Africa Reports claimed that the Eritrean military had already infiltrated the town by February 2026. While entirely feasible given the insecurity in Zalambessa, this claim appears to be based on a single anonymous "Ethiopian military" source, and the details were inconsistent. We spoke to a woman in Zalambessa who did not want to be photographed or named, but she had one of the many tiny stores in the town. She said that she tried to flee last time, but the enemy armies were everywhere, so she "went home to die." If Zalambessa becomes a battlefield again, there will be nowhere for civilians to flee and no aid to help them survive.
Facilitating safe and dignified returns of displaced people was a priority in 2024. Still, people who returned to Zalambessa made what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) calls a "spontaneous return," which is usually when the amount of aid being distributed to displaced people is so inadequate that families are forced to make high-risk returns or die in the camps.
Since the aid shutdown in 2025, no active programs are available to facilitate future returns. If the availability of aid drops further, pushing more households back to unsafe or unsustainable conditions in Zalambessa, conditions of survival will become more difficult for everyone. For example, there are only two small water tanks in the town, and they are being filled using donkeys. Everyone is already using less water each day than the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum; if a large number of people came back without humanitarian support, the strain on the water supply would become a new crisis.
Some people have left the camps, but they often face the same daily struggles that they tried to leave behind."
People who are currently displaced in Tigray are trapped. If the food aid is cut off, they might return to their homes, but it will be neither dignified nor safe. It will not be spontaneous; it will be desperate. People will return hungry and ill-prepared, and there will be little hope for them to receive the support needed to survive.
Shadows of starvation, echoes of renewed war
With or without a potential new conflict in Tigray, the region is facing cataclysmic outcomes. Even if Tigray is fortunate enough to avoid another war in the region, civilians will still be at the end of their rope. Unless there is some revolutionary change of thinking in the donor community, humanitarian aid will dwindle to almost nothing in Tigray and Ethiopia more broadly.
It gets worse. Multiple sources have confirmed to me that that the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC) is scheduled to take ownership of food distribution in June. This effectively places all aid under the authority of the same federal bureaucracy that has consistently denied the suffering of people in need all over Ethiopia.
If the humanitarian response in Tigray continues to degrade and the economic penalties remain in place, the competition for scarce resources will weaken social cohesion both inside the IDP camps and between displaced and host communities. Social tension has already increased inside many camps, particularly in the Northwest zone.
One aid worker spoke to me about the recent collapse of cohesion in camps like Hitsats and Adi Mohammadiya where aid services have already been withdrawn. He warned that the lack of community solidary makes everyone, particularly women and children, more vulnerable to human traffickers and other bad actors. The aid worker said: "People used to know when someone went missing, they used to come outside and investigate if they heard a commotion... now they don't know each other."
Hostility between displaced and host populations was not as noticeable. Many people that I spoke to commented that they were no longer able to provide the same kind of support as before, but they expressed sorrow rather than resentment. Elsewhere, in the past, I have seen host communities develop anger or fear towards displaced or refugee populations. This is not happening in Tigray, for now.
According to Lt. Gen. Tadesse Werede, Tigray Interim Administration President, there are around 900,000 people still displaced in 146 hosting sites across the region. If social tension becomes a more serious problem in and around displacement sites in Tigray, the fallout could crush the already weakened social infrastructure around the region.
If there is war, a second cataclysmic outcome for the people of Tigray is unnervingly possible. Right now, broadly speaking, there are three factions in Tigray with opposing views on how to respond to the new military posturing. The official policy of the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) is conditional neutrality, with vigilance to protect the people of Tigray. The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has made no secret of its plans to resist any deployment into Tigray by force. A third faction has been publicly supportive of a new military operation against Eritrea. It is not entirely clear how much influence each of the factions has over the Tigray Defense Force (TDF). However, each faction has enough fighters to play spoiler either to Tigray's peace or Ethiopia's war.
If an attack is launched against federal forces inside Tigray, it is equally likely that the response will involve collective punishment, as previously witnessed in Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray itself. There is little evidence to suggest that such tactics have changed.
From the rural displacement camps to the hotels and coffee shops in the urban areas of Tigray, there is no support for war to be found. This could change very quickly if it becomes apparent that Tigrayan civilians are once again being targeted. Any use of collective punishment against civilian populations could plunge the entire region back into conflict. The Tigrayan factions, who have recently pledged not to fight (or even to support) military action in Tigray, would find their positions untenable and would likely reverse their support if civilians become targets.
A new war in Tigray will be different than the last one in two critical ways. First, the TDF will be disjointed. It will now be a confederation of mistrustful rivals who lack the cohesion to mount an effective defense. Second, Eritrea could intervene on behalf of Tigray. However, even if a combined force pushes the ENDF out of Tigray, they will undoubtedly be put back under siege by the Ethiopian government. It is more likely that an Eritrean intervention will only be partly successful, and Tigray will become the battlefield upon which the Eritrean-Ethiopian war is fought.
One thing will not change from 2020: the people of Tigray will be made to face the brunt of the violence, suffering, and mortality. The impact of the war on Tigrayan civilians may not necessarily be improved by a peace agreement. After two years of so-called "peace" in Tigray, it is clear that civilians are expected to languish in abject misery until the next war.
Just a few months of fighting in Tigray, even confined to a single zone, would likely cause the major harvest to fail next year, which carries a high risk of famine with no major international response. As noted, by the time that people start dying in September or October, the distribution of food aid will be entirely in the hands of the EDRMC. It is unlikely that the EDRMC will try to stop the next famine in Tigray, and it is even less likely that they will be successful.
Renewed conflict will also create a new wave of displacement. Nearly one million people are still displaced by the last conflict. The humanitarian support system for people who remain displaced in Tigray has been strained over the past two years and is now woefully under-resourced. If the population of displaced Tigrayans doubled next month, they would effectively be without any assistance whatsoever.
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Survival Has Limits: Tigray needs recovery, not another war
The bottom line is that Tigrayans have lifted their people over challenges that few on earth can even comprehend, but there is a limit to self-reliance. For Tigray to survive, it must be allowed to move forward; it cannot stay the same and cannot get worse.
It is not enough to spare Tigrayan civilians from the next war; they have to be allowed to recover from the last one."
Years of war without recovery have left everyone in Tigray in a much worse situation than they were in previously. The threat of a new war is a threat to choke off the last hope of a more prosperous Tigrayan future. The people of Tigray need this next war not to happen, but they also need a more sustainable peace.
For example, the people of Tigray absolutely need to prevent the region from turning into a battleground for a war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, but even beyond that, they need years of peace and stability to farm and rebuild.
People in 60% of Tigray absolutely do not need to be placed under military occupation, but beyond that, people in the other 40% of the region need the military occupation to end.
The six million Tigrayans who are not currently displaced absolutely need not be displaced by a new war, but beyond that, the one million people still displaced from the last war need to be allowed to go home.
The people of Tigray need to not be placed under a new siege, but beyond that, they need to not be penalized with discriminatory policies designed to keep the region weak and unstable.
The things that the people of Tigray need are heartbreakingly reasonable, particularly given the living hell that everyone in Tigray has already been through. It is not enough to spare Tigrayan civilians from the next war; they have to be allowed to recover from the last one.
Way out of isolation, unending war
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has an opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of many around the world. He could keep Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia open to independent human rights observers, humanitarians, and journalists. He could keep the electricity and telecommunications working. He could allow civilians to access their bank accounts and merchants to process electronic payments. He could maintain the salaries of civil servants and doctors. He could protect civilians from slaughter, farmers from theft, and women from sexual violence. He could use the labor of his soldiers to repair and rebuild homes, infrastructure, and schools. He could stop health facilities from being looted and water wells from being destroyed.
A hearts and minds strategy would cost very little. Of course, no one would trust it at first, but there is no need for them to do this quietly. If schools and wells and health posts were actually being rebuilt rather than destroyed, credible voices from Tigray to Amhara to Oromia would have to acknowledge the change.
Forgiveness is too much to ask after years of ethnic cleansing, weaponized rape, and a multitude of human rights abuses, but peaceful coexistence is still possible. If the federal government cannot stop waging war on its people, it will eventually lose the war against its people.
As a former conflict analyst, it is very hard to see the end of internal violence in Ethiopia, but it's also very clear that it does not need to be this way. Ethiopia does not need to be an ethnically divided country. However, every single time that a federal soldier kills a civilian in Ethiopia, burns a family's crops, sexually assaults a woman, dumps sand in a seed bank, or loots an irrigation system, it tells everyone that their self-defense can only rest in the hands of their own neighbors. Dialogue will not bring peace to Ethiopia if people legitimately feel that their only guarantee of physical security rests in the hands of an ethnic militia.
Sadly, yet again, the world does not appear to be watching what is happening in Tigray, just like they were not watching in Amhara and Oromia. But people in Amhara and Oromia are watching what is happening in Tigray, just like people in Tigray watch what happens in Amhara and Oromia. Everyone is watching the "reward" that six million Tigrayans have earned through two years of peacefully struggling to survive.
What happens in the farmlands of Tigray over the next couple of months will determine the future fate of the region. If Tigray becomes the battleground in a war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, it could easily become a wasteland of human suffering for the foreseeable future. If the farmlands are left to the farmers of Tigray, with a little luck, they will save the region from famine. No one else will. AS
Editor's Note: Duke Burbridge is a former Research Associate at the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy, where he provided support for community-based peacebuilding and counter-radicalization projects around the world. Now, as an independent researcher, he has been focused on the conflict in Tigray for the past five years. Burbridge can be reached at burbridgeduke@gmail.com
