Welcome to the weekend. This week on the show, we explored how even though troves of data are coming out of Ukraine, getting to the truth is hard. |
"Everyone always thinks that with technological advances that we get a better understanding of war," Julian E. Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times, said this week. "But it's a bit of an illusion. The fog of war still exists. We still have imperfect information." |
To explore this idea in greater depth, we wanted to look at the gaps in information coming out of another, less-covered war. In this newsletter, we revisit the latest updates on the war in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, since we last covered the conflict on the show. |
The big idea: How satellite imagery is helping tell the story of war |
The Daily strives to reveal a new idea in every episode. Below, we go deeper on one of those from our show this week on gaps in intelligence gathering in conflict zones. |
 | | Rebels surveyed the wreckage of a military plane downed by their forces south of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, in June 2021.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
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It was just after midnight in March 2021, and Emnet Negash was worried about home. |
As a doctoral student in Belgium, he was far from his family in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, where a civil war was raging in the dark — cut off from the rest of the world by a strict communications blackout imposed by the government. He wondered if his family was safe, and if his hometown, Adigrat, was still standing. |
So he opened Google Maps. Zooming in, he saw debris scattered across town and buildings partially or completely missing, the altered aerial outlines of what once was a hotel, a public library, an office for humanitarian assistance. He feared it was evidence of fire and destruction. |
"I saw what appeared to be the total collapse of some buildings," he said. "It was unimaginable. I couldn't work for a couple of days." |
He later published his findings with his geography colleagues at the University of Ghent, using satellite imagery to document the ruinous effects of the war. They are one of the few teams in the world dedicated to gathering and publishing remote sensing data about the conflict — and its impact on the land, cities and people living in northern Ethiopia. Their work, along with citizen reporting and dispatches from journalists, has formed a patchwork sense of what is happening in the region — one that is incomplete. |
Below, we share what we know about the latest updates on the war from their work and from Times journalists who have reported from the front lines of the conflict. |
Why is Ethiopia still at war with itself? |
As a refresher: Ethiopia is experiencing a brutal civil war. The deadly conflict in the nation, Africa's second most populous, has pitted the national military against rebels in the northern region of Tigray. |
The Tigray make up about 6 percent of Ethiopia's 110 million people, and they were the arbiters of power and money in the country from 1991, when they helped dismantle a military dictatorship, until 2018, when anti-government protests catapulted Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to power. |
How satellites are filling gaps in information |
Throughout the war, accessing accurate information about the conflict has been difficult at best, as a communications blackout has left most of the Tigray region without access to cell service or internet access. |
The blockade has made it challenging for researchers to verify the destruction they are seeing on satellite imagery — or to determine who specifically was responsible for it. |
"All we have is satellites," Negash said. "What we really need is reporting on the ground." |
The government has tried to limit critical coverage of the conflict with a campaign of arrests, intimidation and obstruction targeting foreign journalists. While two Times journalists, Declan Walsh and Finnbar O'Reilly, gained access to Tigray and were able to independently verify reports leaking out of the region, few foreign journalists have made it into the country — or have made it out without being detained. |
The threats extend to civilians, limiting access to videos or images taken on cellphones. |
"I have tried to ask my colleagues at Mekelle University if they would travel around Tigray and verify what we are seeing from remote sensing," Jan Nyssen, a professor of geography at Ghent University, said. (Mekelle is the capital of the region that Ethiopian forces left last summer.) "But it is too dangerous, they cannot leave their families. It's not certain they would return." |
It's a scale of need the team at Ghent University can only guess at, using their satellite imagery to deduce the scale of damage to irrigation infrastructure and the visibly altered landscape where crops once grew. |
In the meantime, they scour social media and wait for patchy calls from the region for clues of how their friends and families are doing. |
"People will go to the mountain tops on the border to get mobile access," Nyssen said. "It's dangerous, and it often drops out after only a couple words." |
Still, he said, Tigrayans "will travel, hike and call just to say, 'We are dying.'" |
The season finale of Still Processing |
Reunited at last, J Wortham joins Wesley Morris in the studio for the last episode of the season. They reflect on the challenges of being apart for almost a year while J was on book leave. |
How did J deal with the inevitable stretches of loneliness? How do you re-enter your home and your relationships after so much time away? |
J and Wesley discuss how they managed to stay connected over the past year, and the role of community and intimacy in moments of tragedy. |
Monday: How information gaps could have serious implications for the war in Ukraine. |
Wednesday: Can the Federal Reserve and the White House tamp down inflation without sending the U.S. economy into a recession? |
Thursday: What are the origins and symptoms of monkeypox — and what is America's plan to try to contain the outbreak? |
That's it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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