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One thing I asked everybody I met in #Tigray was: how does this end? 80% Tigrayans expressed some expectation of an independence referendum. 20% of them, and everybody else, said 'no idea.' The TDF will never win independence for Tigray, but it won't stop fighting what has...1/6
become, for the majority of its citizens, an existential struggle. Young men wounded in the initial pogroms by #Eritrea troops—jobless amid economic destruction—are now joining the fight. And there's no shortage of small arms to go round...2/6
Eritrean soldiers now occupy entire swathes of the region, and #Ethiopia troops clearly have no control over them. Given it's a dictatorship with a requirement to keep enslaved military working, I can't see it pulling out from certain areas without massive int. pressure...3/6
#AbiyAhmed, meanwhile, shows no sign of backing out of a fight he began, and which could precipitate further unrest in #Amhara, #Oromia. Plus debt means China has more sway over him than ever, and it is unlikely to ecourage ethnofederalist defeats given #Xinjiang...4/6
The fighting has drifted out of the main towns and cities in #Tigray. And nobody is winning. The TPLF old boys will continue using young men as fodder; a large part of their goal is economic/power, which they won't regain. So Tigray is locked in a deadly impasse...5/6
As somebody said to me recently, "When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Tigrayan civilians are shellshocked, out of work and staring at mass starvation. The @UN, @EU_Commission and @StateDept must step in immediately to avoid further humanitarian disasters. 6/6
