In November 2022, Ethiopia's federal government and the rebellious authorities of Tigray agreed in South Africa to a ceasefire after two years of bloodshed and atrocities that left hundreds of thousands dead.
The guns at last silent, the northern region of six million has begun the huge task of rebuilding.
"I am surprised how fast the situation changed in one year... We are still far from pre-war, but it improved quite a bit," said one member of a non-governmental organisation active in Tigray who requested anonymity to freely discuss the situation.
The war which also drew in Eritrean forces inflicted terrible damage on the region: Ethiopian Finance Minister Ahmed Shide recently estimated the cost of reconstruction in the battle-scarred north at $20 billion.
Outside Tigray's capital Mekele, the restoration of electricity, telecommunication and banking services has been "very slow and gradual", said a teacher at a university in the region who asked not to be identified.
Close to 90 percent of Tigray's health facilities were totally or partially destroyed in the conflict, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report.
"Health facilities were looted, for some you only still have a shell, a concrete shell," the NGO worker said.
The university academic said Tigray's agriculture, manufacturing, service and business sectors had been largely destroyed, leaving almost 200,000 people out of work.
Salaries for civil servants resumed in December 2022, but 18 months of wages frozen during the war remain unpaid.
- 'Rupture' -
The suspension of food aid to Tigray by the US government and the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in May following allegations of misappropriation slowed efforts to address chronic hunger in the region.
According to a recent study by foreign aid organisations and local health authorities, nearly 16 percent of children under the age of five in Tigray suffer from acute malnutrition, above the critical threshold defined by WHO and UNICEF.
More than half of the population reported going hungry in the previous month, the study found.
"In the rural areas, there's nothing left after two years of war," the NGO worker said.
Among the worst affected are the one million people inside Tigray forced to flee fighting.
Many were driven out of territory still under control of security forces from neighbouring Amhara, Tigray's rival region, which sided with the national army during the conflict.
In defiance of the Pretoria peace accord, these forces have refused to leave western Tigray and part of the region's south that the Amhara have long considered ancestral homeland, raising tensions with their former allies in Addis Ababa.
"As a result of the agreement, the normalisation of relations between Tigray and the Government of Ethiopia saw a simultaneous rupture between the Amhara and the federal government," said the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a think tank based in South Africa.
For the Amhara, the Pretoria agreement represented a "reversal of alliances", said one diplomat in Addis Ababa.
Tensions spilt over into armed violence in April when the army sought to disarm regional militias including those in Amhara, the second-most populous region in Ethiopia, with 25 million people.
The conflict was "set to last... and could destabilise the country", said the diplomat.
- 'Prisoner of alliance' -
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed also remains a "prisoner of his alliance with Eritrea", said Patrick Ferras, president of Strategies Africaines, a think tank.
"He doesn't know how to get rid of the Eritrean soldiers still present in border areas," he said.
The end of fighting in Tigray has only served to spotlight the many other hotspots raging in Ethiopia, often along ethnic lines, troubling a vast and diverse country of 120 million people.
Multiple, simultaneous but unrelated conflicts were "ongoing in the country at any given time", said the NGO monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) in September.
Across swathes of Ethiopia's largest and most populous region, Oromia, armed groups with ill-defined contours have been waging an escalating campaign of violence since 2018, including ethnic massacres.
"No Ethiopian region is truly stable today," said Ferras, who warned of hardening lines around ethnic identity.
"All these security conflicts, particularly in Oromia and Amhara, are only accelerating the fracturing of Ethiopia, which will probably not fracture completely, but which will remain a difficult country to govern."
Voices from Ethiopia's war-scarred Tigray
Addis Ababa (AFP) Nov 1, 2023 -
One year after Ethiopia signed a peace deal with the Tigray People's Liberation Front, ending a brutal conflict that killed hundreds of thousands by some estimates, life in the northern region is slowly limping back to normal.
But the legacy of the two-year war is everywhere in Tigray, even though fighting has ceased and access to key services including banking, electricity and internet has resumed in some areas.
Many Tigrayans told AFP they were struggling to find their feet after the November 2022 peace agreement, some losing their homes and livelihoods to the war, others grieving family members killed in the conflict.
The fighting, which also drew in Eritrean forces, left Tigray's infrastructure in ruins, with hospitals still lacking medical equipment and some schools yet to reopen.
A million people remain displaced across the region, according to the International Organization for Migration, with around 234,000 in Tigray's capital Mekele.
Many have been forced to beg to make ends meet, their conditions worsening after the discovery of diverted aid shipments led the World Food Programme and the US government's humanitarian agency USAID to suspend food assistance to Tigray in May.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia's skyrocketing inflation and job losses in Tigray mean some households are struggling to buy basic supplies, including food.
Those who have a stable source of income are trying to savour whatever pleasure they can in everyday activities, from spending time with loved ones over a meal in a restaurant to taking their children to school.
Yet they are holding their breath, afraid that peace will not prevail as long as Eritrean troops continue to operate in border areas and the thorny question of western Tigray -- disputed territory captured by regional forces from neighbouring Amhara -- remains unsettled.
AFP spoke to Tigrayans from varied walks of life to get a glimpse into their experience:
- The activist and humanitarian worker -
Yared Berhe Gebrelibanos, who heads ASCOT (Alliance Of Civil Society Organizations of Tigray), said he had "mixed feelings about the peace deal".
"The guns have been largely silenced, we have seen improvements in access to services like banking and electricity, some schools have also reopened.
"But 90 percent of Tigray is dependent on aid. And the humanitarian situation is getting worse.
"I can access my savings and get a regular salary but I am privileged. Many people are not being paid anything.
"It is heartbreaking to witness so much suffering."
- The hospital worker -
Hiluf, a 36-year-old who only gave his first name, said he was mired in debt because he had not received wages for a period "of almost two years" during the war.
"Life in Mekele is very difficult.
"Many doctors have left their jobs because their salaries have not been paid and they cannot feed their families.
"I have been relying on natural resilience to live."
- The border resident -
Desta, a woman living in Irob, near the Eritrean border, told AFP in a phone interview that foreign troops were still operating in the region, despite the peace deal calling for their withdrawal.
"Eritrean troops are engaged in illegal trade in the bordering areas of Tigray, without paying taxes to Ethiopia's government.
"Sometimes they block the roads and kidnap young men."
- The makeup artist turned humanitarian worker -
Wegahta Gebreyohannes Abera said she was grateful not to hear the sound of "drones and gunshots" anymore.
"When the war started, my sisters and I didn't leave the house for six months, we were very scared of sexual violence and I got very depressed.
"Then I started doing relief work and eventually set up Hdrina, the organisation I run.
"I am thankful that we can go out now.
"During the war, I was only concerned with surviving. Every day, I thought I was going to die.
"Even now sometimes it is hard to think straight. We keep hearing rumours of a new war erupting between Ethiopia and Eritrea and we don't want that to happen.
"So many families are still learning about their missing relatives. We just heard that some of my cousins and uncles in rural Tigray died in combat.
"The whole region is grieving."
- The woman forced to flee -
Genet, a 26-year-old who was forced to leave her home in western Tigray as troops from Amhara moved into the region, said she was finding it "difficult to express" her emotions about her situation.
"Food aid distribution has stopped for six months because of theft allegations. Because of this, life as an IDP (internally displaced person) is like waiting for death.
"I cannot feed my family. The markets are expensive and inaccessible.
"We have no hope of returning to our home."
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