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Ethiopia鈥檚 Tigray crisis: Why Middle East countries have a stake

The Red Sea has become a strategic area as a "back door" for major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia to export their oil. The UAE has been establishing control of a whole string of ports on the Red Sea and has been a significant backer of Ethiopia's President Abiy Ahmed. There have been reports from Tigray that armed drones from the Eritrean ports of Assab, which is run by the UAE, have been firing on Tigrayan forces. Alex de Waal, an Ethiopia analyst and executive director of the World Peace Foundation, at Tufts University in Boston, says that UAE involvement would be alarming.

Photo A member of the Amhara Special forces walks in Dansha, Ethiopia in front of a wall damaged during the attack by the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) on the Ethiopian Army November 2020

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3 minutes