Why New War in Ethiopia’s Tigray Threatens to Trigger Wider Conflict

Regional forces in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray on Wednesday seized control of three airports and clashed in multiple locations with federal troops, signalling the start of a major offensive after months of growing tensions. The move shatters a peace deal that ended the 2020-2022 conflict between ​the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and federal forces, and comes amid a backdrop of deteriorating ties between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ‌Sudan’s civil war, tensions over Red Sea access, and the Horn of Africa being dragged into Middle East conflicts. … Diplomats warn that a renewed Tigray war would no longer be a largely isolated Ethiopian conflict. Instead, it would unfold as the Horn of Africa ​faces its most volatile security environment in years, with war raging in Sudan, persistent instability in Somalia, ​tensions over the Nile ⁠and expanding war and geopolitics from the Middle East spilling into the region. (Reuters)