Second Afar Insurgency

Ethiopia / Eritrea / Djibouti · 1995–2018

“Follow the Afar lands across three states, where one people lived on several margins.”

The Afar homeland crosses Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, linking salt routes, pastoral lands and the Red Sea. From 1995 the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) took up arms against marginalisation, and the quarrel became a proxy war — Ethiopia and Eritrea each arming the other's Afar rebels along a contested border.

Jelikan · Ìtàn · A story is told at night

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.

244 tellings from the African Conflict Atlas, every one carried in the griot's own voice — empires and uprisings, taxes and stools, gold roads and broken promises. Told the way a griot tells them: by voice, by lesson, by question.

“A story, a story!”

32 fires burn through the year →

Choose a thread

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Tonight

All time

1200 CEToday

— and the circle answers: “Let it come, let it go.”

Sit by the fire.The griot remembers.

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.