New Footage Emerges of Possible War Crimes in Ethiopia

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The Washington Free Bacon | Two new videos have emerged showing what appear to be war crimes in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

A video released Monday by a watchdog site shows the bodies of at least 20 men strewn across the road of a Tigrayan village. The watchdog site reports that Eritrean and Ethiopian troops killed the young men in a January massacre.

Additional footage allegedly shows Eritrean forces shelling a hilltop church, leaving the building in rubble. The church neighbors a famed mosque that occupying forces have also targeted in recent months.

Armed conflict broke out between Tigrayans and the Ethiopian government late last year after the Tigray Regional Government conducted local elections against Ethiopia’s orders. New reports indicate neighboring Eritrea has also sent troops into the region to support the Ethiopian government.

Dade Desta, the director of the Tigray Center for Information and Communication, said these actions amount to genocide and warrant U.S. action.

“They are trying to ruin the region by attacking the community’s identity and destroying it where they can. They destroyed the church for the sake of it,” Desta said of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. “It’s happening everywhere in Tigray.”

Due to limited communications infrastructure and little on-the-ground reporting from the United States or United Nations, the full extent of war crimes in Tigray remains unknown. Both Tigrayan protesters and Republican lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to take action and pressure Ethiopia to end the violence.

The administration has thus far urged Eritrean forces to leave the region and asked for a ceasefire.

Desta said the Biden administration’s approach has been insufficient.

“Talking will never make them leave. You need action,” Desta said. “What we need today is a Kosovo-style intervention. People are dying in the thousands, it’s a genocide.”

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

How South Africa Helped Expel Mussolini From Ethiopia

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Warfar History Network | National Interest | Troops of the British Commonwealth, particularly those of South Africa, played a key role in driving the Italians from Somaliland and Ethiopia. 

Here’s What You Need to Know: For this greed, Mussolini paid a heavy price in North and East Africa.

Boarding a train at the famous station built by the French as a terminus on the line from Djibouti, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Ras Tafari, Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia left his capital Addis Ababa on May 2, 1936. He had been forced to abdicate by the indifference of the world to his plight and the impotence of the League of Nations to stop the march of fascism. Read more

Security agents killed in central Somalia roadside bomb attack

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Al Jazeera | Police say Abdirashid Abdunur, intelligence chief for Dhusamareeb town, was killed in the blast claimed by al-Shabab.

A roadside bomb went off just outside the central Somalia town of Dhusamareeb on Sunday, killing 12 agents working for the National Intelligence and Security Agency, police said.

Those killed included Abdirashid Abdunur, the head of the intelligence agency in Dhusamareeb, police officer Mohamed Ahmed said.

The al-Qaeda-linked armed group, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Political leaders have been meeting in Dhusamareeb, a town about 510 kilometres (317 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu, to try to resolve a dispute over how to hold an election due on Monday.

A deal on how to choose a new president on Monday has been elusive so far, threatening to unleash more political turmoil.

Somalia had initially aimed to hold its first direct election in more than 30 years but delays in preparations, and the government’s inability to rein in daily attacks by al-Shabab, meant switching to an indirect vote, with elders picking legislators who would choose a president.

However, regional authorities in at least two of Somalia’s five federal states, Puntland and Jubbaland, oppose holding the election for now.

Somalia’s opposition cease recognising president as election row escalates

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) – An alliance of Somali opposition parties proposed the creation of a national council of lawmakers, opposition leaders and civil society to govern the Horn of Africa nation after the president’s term expired on Monday with no clear succession plan.

The power vacuum and divisions between political leaders was a boost to the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab insurgency, a Somali security analyst warned, citing a spate of recent attacks in a relatively peaceful part of the country.

The opposition alliance said they would reject any attempt to extend the term of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and suggested the council could elect a transitional leader to govern until a new president can be chosen by lawmakers.

“We are against time extension, suppression, violence and further delay to the election,” the alliance said in a statement. “An election schedule should immediately without delay be displayed with agreed upon specified time.”

There was no immediate comment from the presidency. Aides had previously privately floated the idea of extending his term.

In a statement issued by its embassy in Mogadishu, the United States urged Mohamed to “act now to resolve the political impasse…and find agreement with Federal Member State leaders to allow the conduct of parliamentary and presidential elections immediately.”

“The political gridlock…has resulted in a disappointing lack of progress in fighting al-Shabaab.”

Somalia was initially planning to hold its first direct election since civil war erupted in 1991, but delays in preparations and continuous attacks by al Shabaab forced Somalia to plan another indirect vote.

Clan elders should have chosen lawmakers in December and the lawmakers were due to choose a president on Monday.

But selection of lawmakers was delayed after the opposition accused President Mohamed – who was seeking a second term – of packing regional and national electoral boards with his allies.

Leaders in two of Somalia’s five federal states, Puntland and Jubbaland, have said they will no longer recognise President Mohamed.

On Sunday night at midnight, the capital Mogadishu lit up with gunfire and drums as residents said they were celebrating the end of the president’s term.

“We are firing into the sky to say goodbye to the dictator Farmajo, he has burnt Somalia these four years,” said a soldier Aden Ali, using President Mohamed’s common nickname.

Hussein Sheikh Ali, Somalia’s former national security advisor and founder of the Mogadishu-based Hiraal think-tank, said al Shabaab had already taken advantage of the security vacuum to launch attacks in portions of central Somalia that had been relatively peaceful for around a decade.

“They (al Shabaab) are laughing out loud,” he said. “This is a failure by the president, Somalia’s political elite and the international community. They didn’t have a plan B to move forward.”

On Sunday, 12 security agents were killed by a roadside bomb outside the town of Dhusamareb in central Somalia where political leaders were meeting to try to resolve disagreements over the presidential selection process. Al Shabaab also launched repeated mortar attacks on the town.

The attack happened a week after four al Shabaab suicide attackers killed five people at a hotel in Mogadishu.

From Ethiopia’s Tigray region to Yemen, the dilemma of declaring a famine

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BBC | Every day, more and more reports of starvation trickle out of the Tigray region of Ethiopia that has been hit by conflict.

On Wednesday, Mark Lowcock, chief of humanitarian affairs at the United Nations, warned of a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in which aid still wasn’t reaching many affected people.

Earlier in the week, his predecessor Jan Egeland, now head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, was more blunt: “In all my years as an aid worker, I have rarely seen a humanitarian response so impeded and unable to deliver in response for so long, to so many with such pressing needs.”

Mr Egeland went on to say: “The entire aid sector . . . must also recognise our failure to define the scale of the crisis.”

In other words, will the United Nations call out “famine” and if so when?

Farming in Tigray’s rocky soils has long been a precarious endeavour, made worse over the last year by a plague of locusts. At the close of the growing season in September last year, international food security assessments were that 1.6 million of Tigray’s seven million people were relying on food aid to survive.

Conflict broke out on 4 November between forces from the region’s now-ousted ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and federal troops following sharp differences over the political make-up of the federal government.

The TPLF opposed the 2019 decision of Prime Minister Aibiy Ahmed to dissolve the ruling coalition, of which it was a part, leading to tensions that spiralled out of control.

The UN is now quietly admitting what others – including the United States – have been saying for weeks, which is that Eritrean troops control much of Tigray. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments continue to deny this.

Most of Tigray has been sealed off from the world since then. Aid agencies are beginning to send their staff back in, and what they describe is disturbing: hospitals ransacked, people living in fear unable to obtain food or money, deaths from hunger and treatable illnesses.

Some Tigrayans who are able to make phone calls tell of massive looting, burning of crops, and literally millions of people beyond the reach of humanitarian aid.

In a leaked internal memo from 8 January, humanitarian staff from the UN, aid agencies and local government warned that hundreds of thousands were at risk of starving to death. They reported that they could not reach 99% of those in need – a number that aid agencies estimate is 4.5 million – more than 60% of Tigray’s population.

The Ethiopian government insists that these reports are exaggerated at best, and that it has the humanitarian crisis under control. It says that only 2.5 million people are in need and says it can reach almost all of them.

Ethiopia’s history of famine denial

It asks the European Union – its biggest donor – not to be distracted by the “transient challenge” of emergency aid to Tigray, and to continue its generous development aid to the country.

However, there is a history of Ethiopian governments hiding their famines.

In 1973, Jonathan Dimbleby’s film The Unknown Famine exposed mass starvation, hidden from the world by Emperor Haile Selassie. About 200,000 people died in the famine.

The emperor’s callous indifference brought Ethiopians on to the streets to protest and he was overthrown the next year.

In 1984, Tigray and the next-door province of Wollo were the epicentre of another famine, this time caused by a combination of drought and war, that led to between 600,000 and one million deaths.

The Ethiopian government at the time denied the existence of that famine until it was exposed by a BBC film crew, led by Michael Buerk and Mohamed Amin. That news report moved pop star Bob Geldof to record Do They Know Its Christmas? and provoke a global outpouring of charity.

That famine discredited the military government of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam at home and abroad. Ethiopians hated being seen as beggars by the rest of the world.

In 2001, Ethiopia, then led by the TPLF, disputed the existence of famine conditions in the south-east of the country, where it was fighting an insurgency. An estimated 20,000-25,000 died in what was officially designated a “humanitarian emergency”.

Over the decades, the international humanitarian system has become far larger and more professional. There are sophisticated systems for monitoring child nutrition and food availability in African countries to give timely warning of food crises, to prevent famine.

Five years ago, the Ethiopian government and foreign donors responded to nationwide drought, setting up a relief programme that helped 10.2 million people.

Instead of old-fashioned food handouts, aid was designed to reach villagers before they were forced to sell their cattle and sheep, and to help them stay on their farms to plant for the next year.

But there are two big differences between the 2015-2016 emergency programme and the situation today: information and politics.

There simply isn’t enough information for the UN to declare a famine.

About 15 years ago, humanitarian professionals in the UN developed a standardized metric for measuring food insecurity. They came up with the “integrated food security phase classification” system, known as the IPC.

It has five levels, from “minimal food insecurity” through increasing degrees of severity to the worst level, “famine”. The IPC uses a standard set of indicators including food consumption, numbers of malnourished children, and death rates.

‘No data, no famine’

This official definition of famine is much more precise than its everyday use as “large numbers of people suffering life-threatening hunger”.

But in solving one problem, the IPC system set up another. Now the UN can only cry “famine” when it has certain very specific information.

And, determined to avoid getting a “famine” designation, governments often conceal or manipulate data to achieve their goal – and downplay the severity of hunger. Meanwhile, in the next levels down, “emergency” and “crisis”, people are still dying – just at a slightly lower rate.

The UN has encountered this problem recently in other humanitarian disasters. In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition, its client government and the Houthi authorities have denied humanitarian agencies access to hungry areas, meaning they can’t conduct surveys.

Without data on malnutrition, child deaths and food consumption, the members of the IPC committee arrive at the cautious conclusion that it’s an emergency, but they can’t say “famine” because they don’t have the information to prove it.

In South Sudan, the government couldn’t stop the data gathering. But it intervened in the IPC food assessment in December to downgrade the “famine likely” finding.

We shouldn’t be quibbling over definitions. According to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, over 380,000 people died of hunger and violence over the five years of South Sudan’s civil war – but only around 1% of these died in places that met the official threshold of “famine” in Unity State in 2017.

‘Dilemma for aid agencies’

The other big problem is politics. When the cause of mass starvation is military policy, humanitarian agencies face a terrible dilemma. Will they denounce the abuses and risk getting thrown out of the country? Or will they stay silent and become complicit in starvation crimes?

The Ethiopian government admits only to “sporadic fighting”. However, reports from the affected area show that vast swathes of rural Tigray are either battlefields or are controlled by the insurgent TPLF.

Under the definition of international humanitarian law, this is an armed conflict, and the Tigray rebels constitute a belligerent party. Getting aid to the hungry needs negotiations for a ceasefire with the TPLF – it simply can’t be done with the co-operation of one side only.

Up to now, the TPLF hasn’t offered a ceasefire or access to aid agencies. And there’s always a risk that the rebels will misuse the aid to feed their own troops. That’s why international monitoring is essential.

The starvation in Tigray poses the humanitarians’ dilemma in its sharpest form. How can they challenge the official story about the crisis without endangering their limited but essential operations?

There’s an old truism among aid workers: humanitarian crises don’t have humanitarian solutions. What’s needed is high-level political action.

Recognizing this as a problem that recurs in crises as diverse as Syria and Congo, three years ago the UN Security Council passed resolution 2417 on armed conflict and hunger.

As well as reiterating that the use of hunger as a weapon may constitute a war crime, the resolution, which has not been activated up to now, requires the UN Secretary General to alert the Security Council quickly whenever there is a possibility that armed conflict will lead to widespread food insecurity or famine.

The resolution could almost have been designed with the Tigray crisis in mind.

But humanitarian agencies are nervous about invoking it, because they don’t want to offend the Ethiopian government.

We can’t put reliable numbers on the hunger, sickness and death in Tigray, but we know enough to be sure that an immense tragedy is unfolding.

Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US.

European envoy in Sudan to ease tension with Ethiopia

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Anadolu Agency | Tension escalated between Sudan and Ethiopia over their border dispute

A European special envoy is set to arrive in Sudan on Sunday for talks aimed at easing tension with Ethiopia over their border dispute.

“The High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy in the European Union, Josep Borrell, assigned the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pekka Haavisto, to visit Sudan and Ethiopia as a special envoy of the European Union,” the EU Mission in Sudan said in a statement.

The visit aims “to help ease tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia, and to find out how the international community can provide support in finding peaceful solutions to the current crises facing the region”, the statement added.

Haavisto is expected to stay in Khartoum for two days where he will meet Sudan’s top officials, including Abdelfattah al-Burhan, chairman of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok and Foreign Minister Omar Qamar al-Din.

Relations between Khartoum and Addis Ababa witnessed tensions over Sudanese accusations to Ethiopia of supporting gangs that targeted Sudanese territories along with stuck talks over border demarcation.

Sudan: Further GERD filling ‘direct threat’ to national security

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Al Jazeera | Irrigation and water resources minister says the unilateral move by Ethiopia in July would ‘threaten the lives of half the population in central Sudan’.

Sudan has said neighbouring Ethiopia should not unilaterally go ahead with the further filling a massive dam on the Blue Nile River, saying such a move would threaten its national security.

The comments on Saturday by Sudanese Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasser Abbas marked the latest expression of Sudanese concern about Addis Ababa’s apparent determination to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) without first reaching an agreement with Khartoum and Cairo.

“The filling of the Renaissance Dam by one side next July represents a direct threat to Sudan’s national security,” Abbas told Reuters news agency.

In a separate interview with AFP news agency, Abbas said the filling the dam would also “threaten the lives of half the population in central Sudan, as well as irrigation water for agricultural projects and power generation from [Sudan’s] Roseires Dam”.

There was no immediate reaction by Ethiopian officials.

Ethiopia has been building the GERD on the Blue Nile, close to its border with Sudan, and says the dam is crucial to its economic development. Sudan hopes the hydropower dam will regulate annual flooding, but fears that its own dams, including the Roseires and Merowe, would be harmed if no agreement is reached.

Egypt, meanwhile, views GERD as a big threat to its freshwater supplies, more than 90 percent of which come from the Nile.

Ethiopia began filling the reservoir behind its dam after the summer rains last year despite demands from Egypt and Sudan that it should first reach a binding agreement on the dam’s operation.

The latest three-way talks were held last month in the presence of observers from the African Union (AU) and European Union, but failed to make headway.

On Saturday, Abbas said Sudan was also proposing a mediation role for the United States, EU, United Nations and AU as a way of breaking the deadlock in talks about the dam between Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

The Blue Nile flows north into Sudan, then Egypt and is the Nile’s main tributary.

The Nile, the world’s longest river, is a lifeline supplying both water and electricity to the 10 countries it traverses.

Its main tributaries, the White and Blue Nile, converge in Khartoum before flowing north through Egypt to drain into the Mediterranean Sea.

The warnings from Abbas come amid increased tensions between Addis Ababa and Khartoum in recent weeks following skirmishes at the Al-Fashaqa border region, where Ethiopian farmers cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan.

In December last year, Sudan accused Ethiopian “forces and militias” of ambushing its troops along the border, leaving four dead and more than 20 wounded. Both sides have since moved tanks and heavy weapons along the frontier, accusing each other of pushing further into the contested area.

Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed goes from flying start to a quicksand of troubles

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The National News | Prime minister faces civil war, ethnic divisions and simmering disputes with neighbours.

For Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the promise and optimism he projected when he took the reins in the Horn of Africa nation three years ago must have become a fading memory.

Those expectations have been replaced by a civil war, widening ethnic schisms and a growing crisis with neighbouring Sudan and fellow Nile basin nation Egypt.

Since winning the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize after forging peace with arch-enemy Eritrea in his first year in office, the prime minister has gone from being his country’s beacon of hope for unity and economic prosperity to a leader who shows little tolerance for dissent.

Significantly, Ethiopia’s woes and Mr Abiy’s own political predicament cast a dark shadow on the Horn of Africa and beyond.

“The high expectations of 2018 have proved to be misplaced,” said William Davison, the leading Ethiopia expert at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention organisation headquartered in Brussels.

“Everything that’s happening now demonstrates that hopes for a smooth transition to peaceful multi-party democracy were naive.”

Unrest in Ethiopia – at about 110 million people the second most populous African nation – could force millions to flee their homes and take refuge in neighbouring nations.

Addis Ababa also hosts the headquarters of the African Union and the country is among Africa’s largest contributors of peacekeepers. Some of its population share the same ethnic background with cousins in countries like South Sudan and Somalia.

With a burgeoning economy and the potential to export cheap electricity from its nearly completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile, Ethiopia has been viewed as a future engine for growth in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

Of all its troubles, the war between federal forces and separatist rebels in the northern Tigray region is by far the most worrisome.

Besides the financial and human cost of a full-fledged military operation raging there since November, the reported involvement of government-sanctioned militias from the powerful Amhara group threatens to deepen ethnic schisms and extend the conflict beyond Ethiopia’s borders.

The militias are believed to have wrested control of areas of Tigray they claim to historically belong to the Amhara.

There are also indications that forces from neighbouring Eritrea, a longtime enemy of Tigrayans, are fighting on the side of the government, something that could only perpetuate the conflict in Tigray, according to analysts.

There are credible reports of systematic atrocities and looting of heritage sites in the Tigray conflict committed by all parties, analysts said.

“Abiy has been undone by the Tigray conflict and he has administered brutal suppression of Tigrayans and brought the Amhara there to be their overlords,” said Gihad Auda, a political science professor at Cairo’s Helwan university.

The conflict in Tigray and the participation of the Amhara in the fighting have also inflamed a border crisis between Ethiopia and Sudan, which moved in December to regain control of some of its territory which had been settled by Amhara farmers for decades.

The Sudanese military’s operations in the area triggered deadly clashes with Ethiopian forces and allied militias, including mortar shelling and cross-border raids. The latest of these clashes took place on Thursday when one Sudanese soldier was killed and eight others were wounded, according to the Sudanese military.

The areas of Tigray seized by Amhara militias border Sudan, raising the likelihood of further clashes. Moreover, Ethiopia insisted that it will not negotiate on resolving the border crisis before Sudan pulls its troops from the areas retaken from Amhara farmers, a position rejected by Sudan.

Tensions between the neighbours have already been raised by the long-simmering dispute over Ethiopia’s new dam, located less than 20 kilometres from the Sudanese border.

Sudan wants Ethiopia to enter into a legally binding deal to share information and data on the operation of the dam to prevent flooding and the disruption of its own power-generating dams on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia will agree only to non-binding recommendations.

The dispute over the dam also involves downstream Egypt, which is alarmed by the possibility that the giant structure would significantly reduce its vital share of the Nile waters.

On the other hand, the dam has become a rare rallying point for Ethiopians, making it impossible for Mr Abiy to offer compromises on its operation to the Egyptians and Sudanese, according to the analysts.

“Ethiopia’s problems are converging in a negative way with its neighbours,” said Michael Hanna of the Century Foundation in New York.

“Facts on the ground are facts on the ground and neither Egypt nor Sudan can do anything about it. Time is on Ethiopia’s side since 2011 [when construction of the dam began] but its internal issues are complicating efforts to resolve the dispute over the dam and other issues.”

In all likelihood, according to Mr Davison, Mr Abiy’s party will retain power following elections scheduled for June, but that is unlikely to narrow Ethiopia’s domestic fault lines.

“For that, the country needs to embark on a comprehensive and inclusive national dialogue to try and come to terms with the past and chart a more harmonious way forward.”

Ethiopian Government Blocking Aid in Tigray, UN Says

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VOA | GENEVA – The United Nations says that the Ethiopian government is preventing aid from reaching non-government-controlled rural areas in the Tigray region, where most of the province’s 2.3 million people in dire need of assistance are living.

Violent clashes continue in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region three months after the government launched a military offensive on the regional capital, Mekelle.  The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says humanitarian conditions in the region are alarming and rapidly deteriorating.

It says millions of people are in dire need of food, water and other essential relief and services.  However, it says aid workers are unable to reach most of the rural areas in Tigray, where the greatest number of people in need are living.

U.N. officials say insecurity and bureaucratic obstacles are preventing aid workers from accessing those areas.  OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke says government clearances needed to move the necessary staff into Tigray have not been received.

“An increasing amount of humanitarian cargo has been mobilized, but without staff and access, it will not reach the people who need it the most, especially in rural areas…Access to the countryside is mostly blocked for both U.N. agencies and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations), and no humanitarian assistance is taking place in non-government-controlled areas,” said Laerke.

Laerke notes aid is available for people living in towns along the main roads from Mekelle towards Shire, which are controlled by federal government forces.

He says people in rural areas, where two-thirds of Tigray’s population live, are not so fortunate.

He says economic activity and access to essential services, including electricity, telecommunications, cash, and fuel are largely disrupted.  He says hunger reportedly is growing.

“Lack of food in markets is reported, as the conflict broke out during harvest season, leaving crops unharvested,” said Laerke. “Key supply routes to Tigray are still cut.  And malnutrition among the population was already on the rise because of COVID-19 and the desert locust situation.”

Laerke says more than 70 humanitarian staffers are still waiting for their clearances in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.  He adds they are ready to move into Tigray to resume aid distribution as soon as the government gives them the go-ahead.

Desert Locust situation update 4 February 2021 – FAO

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FAO | Numerous immature swarms persist in southern Ethiopia and Kenya. There has been increased swarm movement in Oromia (East Harerge, Bale, Borema, Arsi) and SNNP (South Omo) regions of the south. The few swarms that moved to northern Ethiopia (Afar and Amhara) continued to Eritrea and reached the Red Sea coast where they were controlled. In Kenya, immature swarms continue to spread westwards across northern and central counties where there are currently about 20 small swarms present, mostly about 50 ha in size. Some of the swarms are in community areas and therefore cannot be treated. A small swarm reached Keiyo-Marakwet county in the west and another one was reported today in Turkana county in the northwest; hence, there is a risk that a few swarms could reach eastern Uganda and southeastern South Sudan.

It appears that the peak of the Kenya invasion has now passed as there have been no new reports of incoming swarms in the past two days and no further swarm reports in the east (Wajir, Garissa). Intensive control operations are underway in Kenya and southern Ethiopia to reduce the potential scale of the next generation of breeding. If rains fall in the next week or so, the swarms will quickly mature and lay eggs that will hatch and cause hopper bands to form; otherwise, this will be delayed until the arrival of the seasonal rains in March.

In Somalia, hopper bands are present on the northwest coast and in the northeast where some have started to fledge and will be forming immature swarms. Intensive control operations are underway to reduce the number of new swarms that will form this month. Swarms that form on the northwest coast are likely to move to the plateau and adjacent areas of eastern Ethiopia while swarms in the northeast are expected to spread west along the plateau where they could mature and give rise to another generation of breeding from about mid-March onwards, especially if more rains fall. A few swarms could migrate from the northeast towards southern Somalia where crop damage has been reported from previous swarms.

Control operations continue in winter breeding areas along the Red Sea, mainly against hopper groups and bands that formed along the coast of Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent against hopper bands on both sides of the Eritrea/Sudan border. Any infestations that escape control in Saudi Arabia could form adult groups and swarms that would most likely move inland to the spring breeding areas of the interior. In Yemen, scattered adults persist mainly along the Red Sea coast and to a lesser extent on the Gulf of Aden coast in the south. There remains a risk that a few swarms may be present in inaccessible areas of the north, which could move to adjacent areas of southwest Saudi Arabia.

The situation remains calm in the other regions.