Artillery shelling booms in the distance. Pyramid-shaped anti-tank cement blocks called dragon’s teeth line major streets in preparation for a potential Russian onslaught.

Pokrovsk’s schools and hospitals are closed. A general curfew starts at 3 p.m.

On his way from a quick snack run to rejoin the front-line battle just a few miles away, drone operator Max offers a grim assessment of Ukrainian efforts to stave off steadily advancing Russian forces in the embattled Donetsk region.

“We are losing territory, that’s it,” says the fatigues-clad soldier, call sign “Roland,” setting down the six-pack of liter bottles of Pepsi he just purchased.

“It’s not big losses all at once,” he explains. “They gain some ground one day and a small settlement the next. But it’s putting the pressure back on Pokrovsk.”

At its peak a vibrant city of 60,000, Pokrovsk is a key railway junction critical to Ukraine’s coal and steel industries and a strategic military hub in the ferocious battle for Donetsk.

In September it appeared on the verge of falling. Russian forces were advancing to the city’s south, east, and west.

The local military administration ordered a general evacuation of civilians. Shops, businesses, and gas stations that had hung on shuttered. A city known for its rose-filled gardens turned increasingly quiet.

And yet almost two months later, Pokrovsk remains in Ukrainian hands, with nearly 12,000 resilient residents still doing their best to make their besieged, damaged, and emptied city a home.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Anti-tank cement blocks called dragon's teeth are positioned on a principal thoroughfare in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, Oct. 30, 2024.

“The pressure will return to Pokrovsk”

Earlier this month the military administration ordered the city “closed,” aiming among other things to discourage residents who did evacuate from returning. But officials also announced that heating centers would be opened across the city, signaling a plan is in place to get Pokrovsk through the winter.

“Of course we encourage people to evacuate, but we know some will stay. So we will be here to perform our duty as long as we possibly can,” says Vasyl Rudyi, chief of Pokrovsk’s last operating fire station.

Noting that the intensity of the nearby fighting and of drone and missile attacks on the city lessened after September, Mr. Rudyi says he doesn’t expect the relative calm to continue.

“The Russians turned their attention to ... other towns south of here,” he says, “but after their recent advances around us, I expect the pressure will return to Pokrovsk.”

The amiable fire chief, who coos to a station dog named Vasia, is not alone in his pessimism.

In Washington, U.S. officials and military analysts paint a mostly discouraging picture of Ukraine’s war against invading Russian forces.

After 2023’s counteroffensive against Russian positions in occupied Ukraine failed, the war was widely judged a stalemate. But that characterization is no longer accurate, some experts say, as Russia has in recent months ground its way to significant territorial gains, advancing its stated goal of taking all of Donetsk.

According to the Ukrainian website Deep State, Russia seized nearly 200 square miles of Ukrainian territory, much of that in Donetsk, in October alone.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Vasyl Rudyi, Pokrovsk fire station chief, shows some of the besieged station's equipment. Station mascot (and rescued abandoned dog) Vasia is next to him in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, Oct. 30, 2024.

U.S. officials and military experts say a growing problem for the Ukrainian military is a dwindling pool of fresh recruits – a numerical disadvantage that has only been deepened by the recent arrival on Russia’s side of an estimated 12,000 North Korean soldiers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed last week that Ukrainian forces had engaged North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk border region. He said North Korea’s entry into the war constituted a “dangerous escalation.”

Western aid and new combat units

In that context, Pokrovsk’s ability to hold on against the September onslaught offers something of a glimmer.

“Attacks on Pokrovsk stalled out over recent weeks as Russian forces got stuck and the Ukrainians improved their response to some degree,” says Karolina Hird, Russia team deputy lead at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

“Russians have advanced amid the heavy fighting for towns and settlements to the south,” she adds, “but that has exhausted those troops that are meant to be taking Pokrovsk.”

Several factors explain why Pokrovsk has held on so far, she says.

Promised Western aid has started to arrive more regularly, allowing the Ukrainians to reduce Russia’s advantage in artillery shells and other armaments. Whereas Russia’s advantage over the summer and into September in artillery firing was around 7-to-1, Ms. Hird says, that has recently been reduced to 2-to-1.

Confirmed Ukrainian attacks on arms depots inside Russia have contributed. She also cites a Russian redirection of assets from Donetsk to areas of Kursk held by Ukrainians.

The recent arrival of new combat units also buoyed Ukrainian defenses, some say.

“The most important factor in holding the Russians back is that we were supplied with fresh units to reinforce us here while allowing some units to be rotated out,” says Serhii Tsekhovskyi, spokesperson for the 59th Motorized Brigade. “When the Russians realized they would not be able to take Pokrovsk directly,” he adds, “they focused instead on areas to the south. And they turned their attention to other regions.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Serhii Tsekhovskyi, spokesperson for the 59th Motorized Brigade, stands in a bed of the Donetsk region's famed roses, Oct. 31, 2024. He says Russians may have turned their attention away from Pokrovsk for now, but that civilians should still evacuate while they can.

That does not mean Pokrovsk is in the clear, he insists.

“Even with the improvement in conditions, we can say the risks to civilians still in the city are growing every day,” he says. “We understand that some people might want to stay no matter what,” he adds, “but we try to tell them that if the aggressor does arrive, that is the most dangerous time to decide it’s time to leave.”

“It’s our duty to stay here”

At the Pokrovsk fire station, a crew of 82 stands ready with pump and ladder trucks – and hydraulic “pillows” that can lift up to 40 tons of concrete to assist in freeing trapped bombing victims.

Station chief Rudyi says firefighting’s usual risks are compounded in Pokrovsk by Russian strategies aimed at decimating emergency service providers. Russian drones regularly target firefighters answering routine calls, including a close friend who was killed responding to a grass fire in an industrial area in September, he says.

Missile and bomb attacks on civilian buildings are often carried out with what is called a “double tap,” he adds. A building is struck, and then a second strike lands 10 or 15 minutes later when the Russians know rescue services will be on the scene.

Pokrovsk no longer has a functioning hospital, so city residents rely on the closest medical emergency response teams stationed 12 miles away in the safer city of Dobropillia.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

In Dobropillia, Ukraine, medical emergency responders await calls from Pokrovsk, which no longer has an open hospital or medical emergency response teams. Team leader Olha Klivkina (left) and responders Tetiana (center) and Ilya all say it's their duty to assist the civilian victims of the war.

“Things have quieted down recently; it’s not as ‘hot’ as it was in September,” says Olha Klivkina, who manages a team of five emergency response crews and five vehicles from a Dobropillia hospital. “But so many of the people who have stayed in Pokrovsk and the small villages around it are the most fragile population, the elderly and the sick,” she adds, “so we feel strongly that it’s our duty to stay here and serve them.”

At a sidewalk market in Pokrovsk just feet from the newly installed dragon’s teeth, resident Mykola, who offers only his first name, sighs before deeming evacuation versus staying put “a complicated question.”

On the one hand, “We know that here there is danger; for sure life gets harder every day,” he says, picking leaves out of the bins of red and green tomatoes he’s hoping to sell to augment a state pension he describes as “almost nothing.”

But he says the number of neighbors he’s seen return after evacuating tells him there are also advantages to remaining in Pokrovsk, at least until Russian troops are on the doorstep.

“Here we have our houses and our gardens that we can eat from to stay alive,” he says. “That’s enough to keep me here until the last moment.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

Alex Brandon/AP

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, at the National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Feb. 23, 2024.

With shock and awe, President-elect Donald Trump has dropped a trifecta of Cabinet nominations that center on a quality he may value above all else: loyalty.

Pete Hegseth, a Fox News personality, is the choice for defense secretary. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat-turned-Republican and dabbler in conspiracy theories, is up for director of national intelligence.

And most eye-popping of all, Rep. Matt Gaetz – a political bomb-thrower who has faced federal and congressional investigations into alleged unsavory personal conduct – is now President-elect Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general.

If confirmed, the Florida Republican would run the very department that, until last year, considered indicting him for alleged sex trafficking, among other charges. Many senators, including Republicans, voiced immediate skepticism over the Gaetz pick, raising the possibility of a recess appointment with no Senate vote at all. Either way, Mr. Trump has immediately put new Senate Majority Leader John Thune – who was elected Wednesday – in a difficult position.

On Wednesday night, the 42-year-old Mr. Gaetz resigned from Congress, ending the ongoing investigation by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee into allegations that included sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and improper gifts, according to a committee statement in June.

But that doesn’t mean a confirmation hearing, if it happens, won’t surface those questions.

Chris Szagola/AP

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida speaks at a Trump campaign rally, Nov. 4, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He has been tapped for secretary of state.

Mr. Trump’s controversial Cabinet choices came after a series of selections widely deemed more credible, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Now, the once-and-future president is doing what many expected all along after he won the Nov. 5 election: nominating people who would poke Washington in the eye and test the boundaries of credibility.

The Cabinet picks also underscore Mr. Trump’s main takeaways from his first term as president and a postpresidency spent battling federal and state criminal indictments – and verbal attacks from former top aides and Cabinet secretaries.

“If anything, his concern with loyalty has intensified after four years of fighting off legal battles and experiencing some criticism from former members of his administration during the first term,” says William Galston, chair of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The lesson Mr. Trump seems to have taken from his first term, Mr. Galston adds, isn’t that he should be more prudent, but that he should “surround himself with people who will enable his instincts, whatever they are.”

Mr. Gaetz’s loyalty to Mr. Trump, and willingness to toss proverbial bombs in Washington’s corridors of power, has shown no bounds, at least in public.

When he attended Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan in May, he posted a photo of himself on social media that echoed language the president-elect had used during a 2020 debate in reference to the far-right militant group Proud Boys.

“Standing back and standing by, Mr. President,” the Florida Republican wrote.

In the announcement Wednesday of his attorney general nomination, the president-elect offered effusive praise for Mr. Gaetz.

“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department,” Mr. Trump said in his statement.

Jeenah Moon/Reuters

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, now President-elect Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, attends a Trump campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Nov. 4, 2024.

Former federal prosecutors expressed concern over the Gaetz pick and its possible implications for Mr. Trump’s second term.

“The great fear is that the enormous power of the attorney general’s office is going to be handed over to someone who has personal vendettas and political agendas rather than a desire to be a champion of justice,” says Jeffrey Cohen, a former assistant U.S. attorney and associate professor at Boston College Law School.

Barbara McQuade, another former U.S. attorney and a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, echoes Mr. Cohen’s comments and adds concern about Mr. Gaetz’s “lack of experience.” He has a degree from William & Mary Law School, but practiced law only briefly before becoming a state representative and, since 2017, a member of Congress.

“Charging, plea, and sentencing decisions all require a delicate balance of multiple facts,” says Ms. McQuade in an email. She finds it hard to imagine someone could do that effectively at the highest level of our government without ever having done so at other levels.

Beyond that, Ms. McQuade says there are concerns over accusations that the Department of Justice has become “weaponized” and is engaging in “lawfare.” She describes Mr. Gaetz’s accusations as lies meant to discredit the prosecutions of Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the former president’s possession of classified documents.

Those cases will effectively end after special counsel Jack Smith steps down, his reported plan before Mr. Trump takes office again. Ms. McQuade expresses concern that “ending those cases would restore trust only to members of the public who have been disinformed by Trump. The rest of the country will lose faith in the department.”

Some observers have speculated that Mr. Trump may have nominated Mr. Gaetz knowing he’d be shot down, and thus clearing the way for slightly less controversial picks to be confirmed.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File

President Donald Trump is interviewed by "Fox & Friends" co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House, April 6, 2017.

Mr. Trump could also confirm some nominees – including Mr. Gaetz – via recess appointments, a way to bypasses the Senate that’s legal but circumvents its advise-and-consent role as laid out in the Constitution. To smooth his path to election as majority leader Wednesday, Senator Thune agreed to consider recess appointments of Trump nominees.

Still, many senators from both sides of the aisle expressed surprise and skepticism over Mr. Gaetz’s nomination to head the Justice Department.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for attorney general,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters Wednesday.

“He’s got his work cut out for him,” GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said shortly after Mr. Gaetz’s nomination, suggesting that defending it would be challenging.

Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s new sidekick, shared on his social media platform X an NBC News video of Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who suggested the Gaetz pick was a strategic move to upset Democrats. Mr. Fetterman called the nomination “god-tier-level trolling” meant to “own the libs in perpetuity.”

By Thursday morning, Mr. Musk’s post had 10 million views.

When military-officer-turned-Fox-News-commentator Pete Hegseth was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be America’s next secretary of defense, a video began circulating.

In a podcast hosted by former U.S. Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, Mr. Hegseth said he’d been deemed a white nationalist by his National Guard unit.

Pulling back his button-up shirt collar, Mr. Hegseth flashed a tattoo of what is sometimes known as the Jerusalem cross, adopted by some extremists and widely on display among Jan. 6 rioters. He said it was the reason his orders to stand guard during the 2021 Biden inauguration were revoked.

On the same podcast, Mr. Hegseth also called for the firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, currently Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black officer to serve in the job. “Any general that was involved – general, admiral, whatever – in any of the DEI woke [expletive] has got to go,” he said, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

These comments in particular were top of mind around the halls of the Pentagon when news came in quick succession of Mr. Hegseth’s nomination and of Mr. Trump’s reported draft plan to create a “warrior board” tasked with reviewing senior military officers and, according to The Wall Street Journal, removing any deemed “unfit for leadership.”

What, exactly, the criteria for this designation will be remains unclear but the ultimate aim, some analysts suspect, is to purge officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump – a litmus test, they warn, that’s incompatible with an apolitical military.

“If Trump has an issue with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the Department of Defense, he should point his finger at the Biden administration or the Obama administration, not at the officers,” says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus and now a professor of military history at Ohio State University.

“To all of a sudden turn around and say, ‘Well, you’ve been following your [legal] orders – and now you’re going to be eliminated from the service for doing that – sends a message that will politicize the officer corps in the future and perhaps make it more loyal to a serving president than to the Constitution.”

Kevin Wolf/AP/File

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. speaks during a press briefing with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (at left) April 26, 2024, at the Pentagon in Washington.

It is the Constitution, not the president, that service members pledge to protect – a point Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appeared to emphasize in what was described as a rare election-timed memo.

“As it always has, the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” Secretary Austin wrote to Defense Department personnel after Mr. Trump was declared the winner of the presidential race on Nov. 6.

“The U.S. military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security,” Mr. Austin added.

This emphasis on modeling democratic norms and obeying military orders that are legal – as opposed to, say, illegal – is notable, because it seems to indicate that the Pentagon believes such reminders are likely to be relevant in the near future.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump often described immigration as an invasion best remedied by mass deportations, and spoke of using U.S. forces to, among other things, secure the border. Depending on how this plays out, it could run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.

One exception is under the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that allows the president to deploy U.S. troops on American soil to suppress unlawful rebellions or to enforce federal law. Mr. Trump considered invoking it in the summer of 2020, after widespread protests erupted following the killing of George Floyd by police.

George Walker IV/AP/File

Pete Hegseth hosts the Fox Nation Patriot Awards on Nov. 16, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee.

He was talked out of this move at the time by his top military advisers including Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their entreaties were in keeping with the job of senior U.S. officers to offer their best military counsel even when it runs counter to the president’s inclinations.

Should the president decide nonetheless to proceed with a lawful order, it’s the job of America’s civilian-controlled military to carry it out. Failure to do so, as some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have noted, is a fireable offense.

Critics fear, however, that since Mr. Trump has won the presidency, some former White House officials will want to make good on reported wishes to call Gen. Milley out of retirement to face court-martial. As a civilian, Mr. Milley called Mr. Trump “a total fascist.”

“We’re going to hold him accountable,” Steve Bannon, White House strategist in Mr. Trump’s first term, is quoted as saying in investigative reporter Bob Woodward’s latest book.

This potential politicization of the military comes with opportunity costs to U.S. national security, says Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy think tank.

“If the military is turning its focus towards domestic politics, it is not focusing on its core responsibilities of national defense.”

It could also have negative effects on recruitment, as most service members want to serve their nation, not to be drawn into partisan fights.

The temptation to weaponize American forces was anticipated by the founding fathers – and they didn’t like it.

“If you look at the Declaration of Independence, misuse of the military domestically was explicitly one of the reasons the founders presented as justification for revolution,” Mr. Nunn says. “They saw, based on their own experience at the hands of the British military, that an army turned inward could become a tool of tyranny and repression.”

“And the last people you want to be thinking about how they can influence domestic political disputes,” he adds, “are the people who have guns and tanks.”

Ludovic Marin/AP

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer review troops aboard a command car during commemorations marking the 106th anniversary of the Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice, ending World War I, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Nov. 11, 2024.

The choreography was impeccable, the setting majestic, as the leaders of France and Britain made their way up the Champs-Elysées this week to pay their respects at the eternal flame beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

The intended message of this joint observance of Armistice Day – the first since Winston Churchill strode side-by-side with Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1944 – was to reaffirm and reinvigorate the bond between two of Europe’s leading political, economic, and military powers.

Yet the weather struck an appropriately cautionary note. The air was drizzly, the Parisian skies gray.

Rarely since the end of World War II has Europe’s political and economic future seemed so clouded by uncertainty, or so threatened by stormy weather.

Across the continent, nearly three dozen NATO and European Union partners are facing a time of reckoning.

The question before them: Can they find the means, and the political will, to safeguard their security, peace, and prosperity if America is no longer playing its traditionally indispensable role on this side of the Atlantic?

It’s a challenge Europeans have known was coming ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

But Donald Trump’s reelection has made it far more urgent.

And despite the show of Franco-English amity in Paris, a combination of political tremors and economic headwinds across Europe is making the task far more difficult.

Two related imperatives loom largest: saving Ukraine from defeat at the hands of President Putin, and reviving the economic growth indispensable to Europe’s ability to back Kyiv and to shore up its own defenses against Russia.

If Mr. Trump acts quickly as president to make good on his campaign rhetoric regarding Ukraine and Washington’s allies in Europe, it is hard to see how either goal is realistic.

Susan Walsh/AP/File

President Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019.

Europeans’ security concerns focus on Ukraine. They worry that Mr. Trump’s promised “peace” would mean an end to U.S. military support and recognition of Russia’s control over the parts of Ukraine it has annexed.

The economic concern is that the new president will slap across-the-board tariffs on the EU, for which America is its main export market.

The Europeans hope to persuade the incoming administration to proceed more cautiously on both fronts. They’ll argue that an endorsement of a Russian victory in Ukraine would convey the same message of U.S. weakness as Washington’s sudden retreat from Afghanistan, and that a tariff war would harm America as well as Europe.

But they know the broad direction of travel under Mr. Trump – requiring Europe to invest far more in its own security, and to rebalance transatlantic trade – is unlikely to change. Nor is the shift in America’s foreign policy priorities away from Europe and toward the U.S. rivalry with China.

In other words, the prosperous family of European democracies built with the help of huge American economic, political, and military support after World War II is going to have to stand on its own two feet.

Increasingly, European politicians are talking the talk. They know that NATO members are going to have to increase defense spending – well beyond the current alliance target of 2% of gross domestic product.

But finding the political will – walking the walk – will not be easy.

More guns will mean less butter: fewer of the generous social programs made possible by the Europeans’ small defense budgets and cheap Russian gas imports.

Markus Schreiber/AP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivers his government statement in the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Nov. 13, 2024.

Germany is in recession and political crisis. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left coalition fell apart just a day after Mr. Trump’s victory. Early elections are due next February.

The other traditionally dominant political force in the EU, France, is also in political flux. President Emmanuel Macron still has over two years left in office, but he has lost his parliamentary majority, weakening his position.

The result has been a shift of Europe’s political fulcrum to other countries that would have seemed unlikely leaders just a couple of years ago – Poland, the Nordic and Baltic countries near Russia, and Britain.

A 2016 referendum in Britain pulled the United Kingdom out of the EU.

But the Conservative government that delivered Brexit was voted out of office this year. The prime minister who traveled to Paris this week, Keir Starmer, while not ready to revisit Brexit, is seeking closer security ties with mainland Europe.

The Nordic countries, along with the formerly Soviet Baltic states, are equally determined to buttress their security.

Above all, there is Poland, which voted out a Trump-friendly government last year. It has been building up its own military, and now spends more than 4% of its GDP on defense.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has voiced alarm about the possibility that the Ukraine war might end on Russia’s terms, has scheduled meetings starting this week to discuss the way forward with President Macron, Prime Minister Starmer, the leaders of the Nordic and Baltic states, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

While concerted Europe-wide action may be difficult to achieve, he’s determined to try to forge the next best thing: a coalition of the willing.

AP

Ethiopian women gather at a community meeting in the Tigray region.

In the mountainous regions of northern Ethiopia, a people divided by a horrific war that ended just two years ago are about to find out what they share. If they succeed, it could shape a new approach to what is called transitional justice for postconflict societies.

As part of a peace deal between the central government in Addis Ababa and rebellious militia in the state of Tigray, both sides have committed to reconciliation. Skeptics of the process abound, but as one local teacher told University of Gonder researchers, forgiveness and reconciliation can end “misunderstandings and disobedience to promote harmony in daily life, ... creating a united society.”

The conflict, one of the deadliest since the end of the Cold War, killed more than 500,000 soldiers and 360,000 civilians. During two years of fighting, the government sealed the Tigray enclave from humanitarian aid. More than 80% of the population of 5.5 million people was put at risk of deliberate starvation. Rape was weaponized. 

In April, the government approved establishing a special prosecutor and court as well as a truth commission with the power to grant amnesty for admissions of guilt and remorse. Since then, however, international agencies and civil rights organizations have accused Addis Ababa of dragging its heels.

Yet throughout the country, even in places where ethnic skirmishes continue, communities are beginning the work of building peace on their own. Local initiatives are turning victims into healers. A key target of their work is overcoming traditional social taboos and gender-based inequality through empathy and listening.

In Bora, a valley in Tigray terraced by farms, women who lived through the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are training local women to set up groups to salve the wounds of sexual violence and promote economic independence through small female-owned businesses.

“In our culture, women are considered as less,” Elizabeth Kidane, a Tigrayan medical student who is helping survivors, told Al Jazeera last month. She said that attitudes are changing through “community-based healing sessions, creating awareness on mental health ... [and working] with service providers, teachers and religious leaders.”

The mood Ethiopians share for peace and reconciliation may be most apparent in their desire for forgiveness. In late September, thousands gathered in cities across the country to celebrate the Orthodox Christian festival of Meskel. Its importance, Berhanu Admass, a church deacon in Addis Ababa, told The Associated Press, is “to have us embrace forgiveness and pray for our peaceful co-existence.”

The University of Gonder study of forgiveness rituals published last month offered a granular look at how Ethiopians resolve family, ethnic, and religious conflict locally through dialogue. It found that “encouraging the character virtue of forgiveness is crucial for effective and sustainable peacebuilding.”

Since the end of World War II, according to the website Justice Data, 76% of countries have established some form of justice prior to fully ending hostilities. Sometimes, as Ethiopia is showing, that work starts with ordinary people seeing peace as greater than social differences.