This is the first time we’ve made two videos on a single national struggle. We probably aren’t going to do many more in the near future, although the Burmese civil war will doubtless need an updated treatment in the future. However, given how much has happened in Ethiopia since our video on the Tigray nationalists, our very first video in this series, we thought it was necessary to let our viewers know how things are going in not only the Tigray people’s struggle for independence, but also a number of parallel movements that have allied with them against the Ethiopian central state.

When we left off on New Years Day 2021, not much was known about the extent of the conflict despite it having been fought for almost two months at that point. The Ethiopian state suppressed international journalism about the conflict, and soon after verifiable news started trickling into the West, we learned why. The Ethiopians had employed Eritrean military units to help them crush the northern region, and these Eritreans had engaged in some truly barbarous war crimes, including indiscriminate killing of civilians, mass rape, and destruction of ancient churches with refugees hiding inside them. The Aksum massacre on November 28, 2020 involved the killing of at least 700 Tigrayan civilians in a church that traditionally held the original ark of the covenant. The Ethiopian military forces themselves had plenty of blood on their hands as well through drone and aircraft bombings of civilian areas against the Tigrayans. At this point it is almost certain that tens of thousands of civilians have died, and millions are at risk of starvation from the central government’s total blockade of Tigray held areas.

The Tigrayans however, have not been the victims in every case (although almost all of the claimed massacres have been done by their opponents). At first the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front was able to hold on to most of their regional territory albeit at heavy cost. However, as the war continued to go poorly for the majority Amharic Ethiopian state, the TPLF found new allies in the Oromo Liberation Front, which represents an Ethiopian ethnic group in the South of the country, and fellow Northerner Afar nationalist groups. The allied separatists have been able to make incursions into the central Amhara region of the country, the government’s heartland. On November 2 2021, as the TPLF and OLF mulled driving straight to the capital of Addis Ababa, the beleaguered central government declared a state of emergency and called on all loyalists to defend the capital region with their own arms.

Springtime of Nations does not want a repeat of the 1991 Ethiopian civil war, where the Tigrayans and Oromo simply become an elite cadre in a new “federalist” government. That was a broken promise in 1991, and there is no reason to believe it will create a lasting peace. The Ethiopian central state had a chance to allow the Tigrayans to secede peacefully. Their attempt to crush them has backfired on them spectacularly, but we can only hope that the cycle of violence can finally end when all nations in Ethiopia who wish to are granted independence. Long live Tigray, long live Afar, long live Oromo and may 1000 flowers bloom!