For Tinseu Hiluf, a widow living in the parched depths of Ethiopia’s Tigray region and nursing four children left behind by her sister’s recent death in delivery, the harsh realities of war and drought seem to have combined.
One of her own sons was murdered in a two-year war between federal and regional forces; the other sons are now adults. The youngest child she is parenting is now underweight due to a scarcity of food brought on by the region’s drought.
She makes an effort to gather seeds from the sparse vegetation in the rocky, yellow landscape of the desert. To try to save the one-year-old infant, she recently had to travel to the local Finarwa health clinic in southeast Tigray.
“Hunger makes us eat” anything from the desert,” she said. “Otherwise, nothing.”
At the center, in the isolated Nebar Hadnet administrative area, she joined a number of other women in need of assistance. A mother of five lamented that she was unable to provide her eight-month-old child with breastmilk. An additional mother of twins aged one claimed that she relied on baby food sachets to keep “my babies alive.”
Although Tigray is now peaceful, the repercussions of the war continue, made worse by the drought and a degree of mishandled aid that forced the United Nations and the United States to briefly halt relief delivery last year.
Formerly verdant fields have become desolate.
Maternals, their faces etched with concern, watch helplessly as their malnourished children become weaker. The national ombudsman disclosed in January that around 400 individuals in Tigray and the surrounding Amhara region perished from famine in the six months preceding January, a rare admission of hunger-related deaths by a federal government.
With 5.5 million residents, Tigray is home to the majority of those fatalities.
The area was the site of a bloody conflict between federal soldiers and forces loyal to the region’s now-ousted ruling party until a peace agreement was signed in November 2022. However, the United Nations and the United States withdrew food supplies for Tigray months after the fighting ended due to a large-scale plot by Ethiopian officials to pilfer humanitarian grain.
A poor growing season ensued.
Just 49% of Tigray’s farmland was planted during the main planting season last year due to persistent insecurity, according to an assessment reviewed by the AP that was conducted by U.N. agencies, NGOs, and the regional authorities. In these places, crop output accounted for only 37% of the total predicted.
Tigray’s authorities have warned of an “unfolding famine” that could match the 1984-5 famine, which killed hundreds of thousands of people across northern Ethiopia. Food deliveries to Tigray in the second half of last year have been limited, with only a small fraction of needy people receiving food aid. Finarwa, a farming community of about 13,000 people, is among the worst-hit places.
The town’s health center still has war-damaged equipment and some rooms appear abandoned. The lack of food at homes has forced children to flee and beg in nearby towns. Local leaders, feeling helpless, have been turning their own people away. Access to water is another challenge, with only five of the 25 wells that once sustained the community and its animals remaining functional. The region’s drought has led to some areas receiving only a few days of rain during the rainy season.
Some farmers, like Haile Gebre Kirstos, continue to plough their land and plant sorghum, even though rain fell only two days during the last rainy season. The memory of the 1980s famine is haunting, as it affected the entire region, and now, in some districts, it is either as bad as the 1980s or even worse.
(AP)
