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Ethiopia (MNN) — Rebel groups in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have renewed their fight against government forces, raising fears that conflict will cross borders into neighboring Sudan, Eritrea, South Sudan, and beyond. 

Ethiopia has accused its neighbors, Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea, of supporting the rebel alliance it is fighting. Each country has denied this claim. 

However, things turned optimistic this week for Ethiopia’s government, after it gained control of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle. Despite rebel opposition, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, was sworn in for his second five-year term on October 5. 

John* with Greater Reach Alliance (GRA) has seen the cycle that conflict creates. GRA supports church planters serving Sudanese refugees in camps throughout South Sudan. 

He says South Sudanese people became refugees in Ethiopia during their own country’s war. 

“Now they are being driven back [from Ethiopia] across the border,” John says. “They have nowhere to go. They have nothing, and they add to the internally displaced group in South Sudan that is growing every day.”

Sudanese refugees who have fled the conflict in Sudan register for food aid in neighboring Chad.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/FCDO/Russell Watkins CC by 2.0)

He calls it an “exchange” of refugees, “as they (leaders) drive their own people from their land.”

“None of these countries values their people. They value power. They value the resources that they can glean, but they have little or no regard for their people,” says John. 

Sudan’s current civil war began in 2023. According to the United Nations, 19.5 million people there face crisis-level food insecurity today. 

“You have war in Sudan, displacing thousands and millions. You have war in Ethiopia. You have pending war in South Sudan,” says John. “And then on the border with the DRC, you have the looming threat — for South Sudan — of Ebola.” 

He says if Ebola reaches South Sudan, its medical system is not capable of dealing with it. 

In the hunger, displacement, and political enmity present in Ethiopia, Sudan, and their neighbors, John says, “The only answer — the only answer — is the intervention of God.” 

Please take a moment to ask God how He would have you take Great Commission action amid the suffering in East Africa. 

“The people of God need to become concerned about the things that concern God,” says John. “We [in the West] live in a culture that it’s so easy to become consumed with just living your life. But for the Christian, God says, ‘I have more for you. You are part of my plan.’”

 

*Not real name. 

 

Header photo: South Sudanese woman (Photo courtesy of Speak Media Uganda via Pexels)