Dallol
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Ten years ago things were very different, with huge growth in tourism. The famine of the early 80s finally receding into history. In the 2020s, war and starvation have returned.
I especially loved the Tigray region. The people were amazing. There was an innocence similar to that I encountered in Türkiye, decades ago. It is hard to reconcile the recent violence, and the universally kind and generous people we met there. We regularly saw young women and girls walking down dark alleyways alone after dark--the place felt safer than any place I've ever been.
The people we met in Tigray were amazing. The folks we encountered there were probably not affiliated with militias. I imagine (possibly wrongly) that militia members would make up a small fraction of the population? And that an ethnic militia would probably be more likely to contain folks who subscribe to ethnic hatreds etc. than the general population. Similar to white supremacist militias in the US-- they exist, but they are a marginal group who's viewpoint does not represent the majority of society (even among ethnic groups identifying as "white").
I've met people like you describe, just not in Ethiopia. I'm glad my path somehow avoided that. My memories of Ethiopia are 100% good/happy ones.
Per wikivoyage, the guards in Afar are guards. The wikivoyage article attributes the attacks on tourists to Afari rebels in the talk section, but not in the main text (I remember reading in a travel wiki that the attackers were Eritrean; but that could have been un-sourced BS). There are no references listed for any claims made in wikivoyage about the attacks.
Refusing guards and getting shot sounds like it supports it being a mafia protection racket, but rephrased, "the people shot were tagging along a bit behind, but not within the group ahead with the guard," just makes them sound more vulnerable to attack. Both descriptions are consistent with what you described. Seems like attacks would be greater in number, and more frequent than two attacks, 5 years apart (2012 and 2017), if it were a protection racket. Perhaps the wikivoyage list of tourist attacks is incomplete, but if attacks were common, it seems there would be more than two in over 10 years recorded.
The word is "horrible".
Returning to the Afar, the story about tourists being gunned down was told to me by an embassy source, but it may have been unrelated, older than stated, or even plain false (the seeds of doubt are now sown in my mind!). The whole thing being at least in part a mafia protection racket was something I was told by the folk who set it up for us, however, and something that felt realistic at the time given that we were targeted for random things like trying to cross a government bridge without also paying for the barge that it replaced. I actually tend to believe that there would be more attacks if insecurity were the cause. Clearly, few travellers would go up to Dallol and then cheap out by refusing to pay 50 or 100 bucks for protection, especially seeing all those weapons around them.
Any recommendations for tour companies? Do you have to bring your own tent? Any need for special masks/filters for volcanic gases?
I have added it to my bucket list since I find deserts to be a fascinating environment.
But maybe check, if you have to pass through a war zone to get there:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_civil_conflict_(20...
Things seem to have calmed down a bit again, but there was very brutal violence going on since 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna
Etheopia had one of the earliest Christian communities (that early on split from what became the larger group of Christians) so I could easily imagine Dallol being inspiration for the book of Revelation and/or otherwise influential in forming the Christian idea of hell.