Two weeks ago, the three biggest wars in the world were in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Yemen. Now truces have silenced the guns and the air strikes in two of the three. They are only temporary truces so far, but there is a reasonable chance that they could grow into something more permanent.
The Ethiopian government's declaration of a "humanitarian truce" on March 24 came as a surprise. Six months ago rebels advanced from their home province of Tigray more than halfway to the country's capital, Addis Ababa, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seemed on the brink of defeat.
The Tigrayans made an alliance with another separatist movement, the Oromo Liberation Army, and were close to linking up with them physically. The survival of Africa's second-biggest country seemed to be hanging by a thread, and the border wars if it broke up into ethnically defined successor states could have lasted for decades.
