Running a hair salon in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region, is not easy right now, Firut Me'ar told the BBC. "People can't prioritise beauty over daily basic needs. For many residents, thinking about self-care is a luxury, at a time when they can't feed their kids." After a brief war, the city is under the control of the national army, but life is far from normal, said Firut, a single mother of a 10-year-old. "Things are better than during the war, but people still have no money, no morale. Business is almost non-existent." Above all, she said, people are uncertain about what comes next.
Fighting broke out in late September between the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the party that had run Tigray for decades, and the national army, a resumption of the two-year civil war that officially ended in 2022. Within less than two weeks, federal forces marched into Mekelle. The TPLF made what it called a "strategic withdrawal" from the city and Tigray's other main towns, and the army met little resistance. Hundreds of people are reported to have died, including dozens killed by drone strikes and bombing raids, the BBC said.
Ethiopian officials and supporters argue that the war is effectively over and that the remaining task is to clear Tigray of TPLF elements. Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF official who switched sides and is now an adviser to the prime minister, declared that the war had ended and that stabilizing the region should be the immediate priority. Analyst Cameroon Hudson told the BBC the TPLF lost popular support, is fragmented, lacks the technology to match the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, and has lost generals, strategists, diplomats, and fighters to defections or arrests. Abraha Hailezgi, a scholar at Mekelle University, also pointed to damage from infighting in the TPLF leadership.
Many residents remain wary of the federal government's intentions and ask whether Addis Ababa is addressing Tigray's problems or taking advantage of the region's weakness. "Peace seems slow in coming. Most people are tired of politics. Whatever happens, we only want peace and a chance to rebuild our lives," Firut said. The BBC's account is of a military campaign that ended quickly, and of a city that is not being bombed but is not yet at peace.
The 2022 settlement officially ended a brutal two-year war. The September fighting showed how quickly that settlement could break, and how quickly it could appear to end again when the TPLF pulled back from the cities. Hundreds of deaths, including in air strikes, are part of that short campaign, as reported by the BBC. A government adviser who once sat with the TPLF now says the war is over. Residents in Mekelle, speaking from shuttered or empty shops, are describing something else: no bombing, and no ordinary economy either. That gap is the point of the dispatch.