Ethiopia: Borders that Bleed
Ethiopia’s Interlocking Wars
This gallery is a brief selection from a much larger body of work. The remaining images and full narrative are reserved for my forthcoming book. For commissioning or licensing enquiries, please contact me directly.
On an atlas Ethiopia is tidy; on the ground its borders ooze grief. Addis tries to douse Tigray only for Benishangul‑Gumuz to reignite—and vice‑versa.
A decade after I first came to photograph families hollowed by HIV, I boarded an Addis airport bus. A stranger in a scarlet tracksuit cracked a joke across the aisle, and the coach erupted in that effortless Ethiopian warmth that once kept orphans alive. Yet the route north is now sealed. The ENDF and Tigray Defence Force trade fire while Eritrean troops linger and Western Tigray stays under Amhara control; the Pretoria pact is, at best, a cease‑fire riddled with loopholes.
To the south‑west, Metekel smoulders. Fano militias and Gumuz insurgents clash over gold seams, dam land and ancestral soil. More than 600,000 people have already fled. Agaritu Beleta, four years in a tent stitched from UN tarpaulin, told me, “We used to help others—now we have nothing.” Her cousin is cornered in Tigray by soldiers who never signed any deal.
Aid crawls in; clinics run on expired formula. A doctor feeding a skeletal toddler whispered, “Help her now—don’t wait for the world to feel sorry.” Camera shutters can’t double as IV drips.
This gallery is a brief selection from a much larger body of work. The remaining images and full narrative are reserved for my forthcoming book. For commissioning or licensing enquiries, please contact me directly.
On an atlas Ethiopia is tidy; on the ground its borders ooze grief. Addis tries to douse Tigray only for Benishangul‑Gumuz to reignite—and vice‑versa.
A decade after I first came to photograph families hollowed by HIV, I boarded an Addis airport bus. A stranger in a scarlet tracksuit cracked a joke across the aisle, and the coach erupted in that effortless Ethiopian warmth that once kept orphans alive. Yet the route north is now sealed. The ENDF and Tigray Defence Force trade fire while Eritrean troops linger and Western Tigray stays under Amhara control; the Pretoria pact is, at best, a cease‑fire riddled with loopholes.
To the south‑west, Metekel smoulders. Fano militias and Gumuz insurgents clash over gold seams, dam land and ancestral soil. More than 600,000 people have already fled. Agaritu Beleta, four years in a tent stitched from UN tarpaulin, told me, “We used to help others—now we have nothing.” Her cousin is cornered in Tigray by soldiers who never signed any deal.
Aid crawls in; clinics run on expired formula. A doctor feeding a skeletal toddler whispered, “Help her now—don’t wait for the world to feel sorry.” Camera shutters can’t double as IV drips.
© Liz Loh-Taylor
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