Ethiopia's Tigray conflict revives bitter disputes over land

As rifle-toting militiamen fired celebratory rounds into the air, young men marched through the streets denouncing the former ruling party of Ethiopia's Tigray region as "thieves."

The party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), is the target of military operations ordered by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, last year's Nobel Peace laureate, that have reportedly left thousands dead since early November.

But the impromptu parade this month in Alamata, a farming town in southern Tigray flanked by low, rolling mountains, was unrelated to any kind of battlefield victory.

Rather it was to hail the release of Berhanu Belay Teferra, a self-described political prisoner under the TPLF whose pet issue, analysts warn, risks becoming Ethiopia's next flashpoint.

In 2018, Berhanu, 48, was detained by the TPLF for advocating that his homeland -- located in an area known as Raya, of which Alamata is the biggest city -- had no business falling under Tigrayan control.

Berhanu argued that the TPLF had illegally incorporated the famously fertile land into Tigray after it came to power in the early 1990s.