One of northern Ethiopia’s most beloved cultural celebrations centered on women and young girls will not go forward this year in Mekelle, the capital of conflict-weary Tigray region, after authorities called off the main Ashenda festival gathering over growing threats of drone attacks and renewed civil conflict.
The three-day Ashenda festival, whose name translates to “tall green grass” in the local Tigrinya language, blends Orthodox Christian religious observance of the Virgin Mary with decades of cultural tradition that centers the joy and community of girls and women. Every year, thousands of participants dress in elaborate traditional garments, style their hair in intricate braided patterns, and gather for open-air dancing and socializing — a rare seasonal freedom from the social restrictions that govern women’s public gatherings at other times of the year. For communities across Tigray and northern Ethiopia, the annual event is one of the most anticipated highlights of the cultural calendar.
This year, the core event was scheduled to be a large public gathering at Mekelle’s main stadium on Saturday. But the cancellation announced by Tigray’s culture and tourism bureau comes on the heels of a series of recent deadly drone strikes across the region that have stoked widespread fears that the 2020–2022 Tigray civil war, which killed an estimated hundreds of thousands of people, could reignite after two years of fragile peace.
Tigray regional authorities have pinned the recent wave of drone attacks on Ethiopia’s federal armed forces, though the federal government has not yet responded to requests for comment from the BBC on these accusations. The most recent strike hit Mekelle last Thursday, wounding 13 civilians and damaging residential buildings, according to Tigray’s communications affairs bureau. Regional officials also documented two earlier strikes near Dandera, a town just nine miles outside of Mekelle, on August 18 that left one person dead and another injured. A strike in the Raya-Alamata district on August 10 killed three people, regional officials confirmed.
Announcing the decision to cancel the main stadium gathering, Dori Asgedom, head of Tigray’s culture and tourism bureau, said the event could not proceed due to “ongoing drone strikes and the threat of war.” He added, “The drone attack on innocent citizens in Mekelle city is an act that history will not forgive and should be condemned.”
The Tigray regional administration has called on global actors to step in amid escalating tensions, urging the “international community to break their silence” on the recent strikes, condemn the violence, and launch urgent diplomatic efforts to prevent full-scale conflict from reigniting.
The fragile peace deal signed in 2022 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s federal government brought an end to two years of brutal fighting that devastated Tigray’s infrastructure and left a massive humanitarian crisis in its wake. But tensions have spiked sharply in recent months after the TPLF dissolved the interim administration established under the peace agreement and reinstated its pre-war governing council. Both sides have repeatedly accused one another of failing to uphold the terms of the 2022 peace deal, pushing the region back to the brink of open conflict.