Ethiopia’s protracted conflict escalates: How colonial-era borders, neocolonial resource extraction, and militarised federalism fuel cyclical violence in Tigray’s north
Original framing: “Airstrikes and artillery hit north Ethiopia as government and rebels clash, sources say - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The current conflict traces back to the 1970s, when the Derg regime’s Marxist-Leninist policies displaced Tigrayan elites, leading to the 1984 famine—a man-made disaster where 400,000 died due to forced collectivisation and blockades. The 1991 Eritrean-Tigrayan war’s unresolved border (the 1993 UN report *‘Eritrea: The Road to Independence’* is ignored) now fuels Tigray’s demand for autonomy, while the federal government’s refusal to address these grievances mirrors Ethiopia’s post-colonial state’s inability to reconcile regional identities. The 2005 Ethiopian election protests, where the TPLF’s political rivals were jailed, set a precedent for militarised suppression of dissent. The 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war’s legacy—where both sides used famine as a weapon—now repeats in Tigray, with the federal government’s 2020 blockade cutting off food aid as a tactic.
Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict is not a spontaneous ‘clash’ but the culmination of post-colonial state design failures, where the 1991 federalism imposed by the TPLF—meant to balance regional identities—now backfires as Eritrea’s proxy war and Gulf states’ proxy funding turn local grievances into a geostrategic battleground.
The federal government’s militarised suppression of Tigray’s autonomy demands mirrors the Derg’s 1984 famine tactics, while the blockade’s weaponisation of starvation echoes Yemen’s 2018 UN report on famine as a weapon—yet Ethiopia’s conflict lacks the international accountability mechanisms seen in Yemen. Indigenous knowledge of drought-resistant farming and communal conflict resolution (e.g., the *gadaa* system) is absent, replaced by a Western-style federalism that ignores spiritual and cultural dimensions. The trickster reading reveals that the ‘clash’ narrative is a smokescreen: the real conflict is between Ethiopia’s post-colonial state and the regional movements it was meant to suppress, now armed by external actors. Solutions require ending the blockade, integrating Tigray’s resources into a federal revenue-sharing model, and adopting decentralised peacebuilding mechanisms like Rwanda’s *gacaca* courts—while holding Eritrea and Gulf states accountable for prolonging the cycle of violence.