How Satellite Imagery Can Help One Analyse The Tigray Conflict.

This conflict seems to be getting worse and worse every time, there is always a ray of hope in terms of a cease-fire between the two warring sides, but a week later, back to square one. There are no winners or losers in this conflict, just mass casualties.
I am referring to the Tigray Conflict in Ethiopia which started on the 3rd of November 2020 as the Ethiopian National Defense Forces have launched a full war on the Tigray Defense Forces in the Amhara region located in the Northern side of Ethiopia. This in turn has created a humanitarian crisis as several innocent civilians have been killed or forced to flee their homes.
For this article I will not dive into the historical details regarding the root causes of the conflict, neither am I taking sides in suggesting who is right or wrong in this situation. In other words, I am not engaging in any form of activism or advocacy. The essence of this article is to understand the dynamics of the conflict using Satellite imagery.

SATELLITE IMAGERY AND THE CURRENT SITUATION

The satellite time-lapse analysis above shows the damaged that the conflict has caused in the last 8 months since November 2020. As months go by, more and more buildings continue to be damaged, keeping in mind that it has hardly been a year of fighting. It is only a matter of time before the entire Tigray region is completely turned into rabbles.

The two satellite images above tell a story of what types of civilian utilities are being destroyed which include referral hospitals, churches, universities, hotels, these seem to be the main civilian target by both military and militia. They have either been damaged or reduced to debris.

These facilities are crucial for humanitarian aid workers to use in distributing relief and providing shelters to the thousands of refugees affected by the fighting. Human Rights Watch researcher Alex Valman recently told the BBC that the destruction of these civilians objects will hamper aid relief.

Satellite imagery has become a powerful full effective method to understand conflict, as more and more satellites are being launched into space, extracting and computing information will be at the fingertips of anyone interested in monitoring conflict.
The situation is very desperate in Ethiopia and we all hope the warring parties will sit down and agree to a cease-fire as soon as possible. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”