Pauls' Revere
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After Secret U.S. Talks Fail, a Hidden War in Africa Rapidly Escalates
https://www.yahoo.com/news/secret-u-talks-fail-hidden-152223572.html
NAIROBI, Kenya — As fighting flared in northern Ethiopia last month, shattering a five-month truce and reigniting a destructive civil war, a small U.S. military aircraft carrying senior American diplomats crossed the front line on a secret mission to halt the bloodshed.
Flying low and taking measures to avoid detection, the jet traveled to Tigray, the besieged northern region that has been at war with the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, before continuing to Djibouti for a round of tense peace talks, according to people familiar with the negotiations. In a measure of the distrust between the two sides, Mike Hammer, the American envoy to the region, flew aboard the U.S. Air Force plane as an assurance that it would not be shot down.
Tigray is the world’s unseen war, a sprawling conflict hidden behind a punishing government siege that has severed communications in the region, locked out reporters and left 5.2 million people in urgent need of food aid. United Nations investigators have called it a war crime.
But in recent weeks the fighting has surged to its most intense level yet — and the secret efforts at peace have given way to raging combat that many fear could quickly spiral across the Horn of Africa, destabilizing the region.
While the world’s gaze is largely fixed on the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Tigray is also huge, with three major armed forces, including two of Africa’s largest armies, those of Ethiopia and of Eritrea, battling on multiple fronts across a rugged region twice the size of Switzerland.
The latest fighting, featuring pitched battles, drone strikes and artillery barrages, has pulled in neighboring countries and involves hundreds of thousands of combatants, by most estimates. At least a hundred civilians have died and as many as 500,000 have fled their homes in recent weeks, a senior U.N. official said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/secret-u-talks-fail-hidden-152223572.html
NAIROBI, Kenya — As fighting flared in northern Ethiopia last month, shattering a five-month truce and reigniting a destructive civil war, a small U.S. military aircraft carrying senior American diplomats crossed the front line on a secret mission to halt the bloodshed.
Flying low and taking measures to avoid detection, the jet traveled to Tigray, the besieged northern region that has been at war with the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, before continuing to Djibouti for a round of tense peace talks, according to people familiar with the negotiations. In a measure of the distrust between the two sides, Mike Hammer, the American envoy to the region, flew aboard the U.S. Air Force plane as an assurance that it would not be shot down.
Tigray is the world’s unseen war, a sprawling conflict hidden behind a punishing government siege that has severed communications in the region, locked out reporters and left 5.2 million people in urgent need of food aid. United Nations investigators have called it a war crime.
But in recent weeks the fighting has surged to its most intense level yet — and the secret efforts at peace have given way to raging combat that many fear could quickly spiral across the Horn of Africa, destabilizing the region.
While the world’s gaze is largely fixed on the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Tigray is also huge, with three major armed forces, including two of Africa’s largest armies, those of Ethiopia and of Eritrea, battling on multiple fronts across a rugged region twice the size of Switzerland.
The latest fighting, featuring pitched battles, drone strikes and artillery barrages, has pulled in neighboring countries and involves hundreds of thousands of combatants, by most estimates. At least a hundred civilians have died and as many as 500,000 have fled their homes in recent weeks, a senior U.N. official said.
