Conflict in Ethiopia

Tensions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have escalated significantly, threatening to reignite conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea and destabilize the Horn of Africa. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is embroiled in a power struggle with the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA), appointed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2023 as part of the Pretoria Agreement that ended the civil war from 2020 to 2022. This internal division has led to violent clashes, with TPLF-aligned forces seizing control of key areas in Tigray. Eritrea is reportedly supporting these dissident factions of the TPLF, potentially undermining Ethiopia’s ambitions for sea access. The situation is further exacerbated by the incomplete implementation of the Pretoria Agreement, including the Tigray Defense Forces’ disarmament and the continued presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia. These developments have raised fears of a potential war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which could have far-reaching consequences for regional stability and humanitarian conditions.

Background

Between 2020 and 2022, Ethiopia fought a war with militants from its northernmost region of Tigray, then under the control of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The conflict was one of the deadliest in recent history and drew international attention for alleged war crimes, human rights abuses, and ethnic cleansing. The war formally ended in November 2022, but Tigray was left in ruins, and its capital was turned over to the federal government.

For decades before the war, the TPLF was a dominant political force in Ethiopia. Between 1991 and his death in 2012, Tigrayan soldier-politician Meles Zenawi governed Ethiopia as an autocracy with the backing of a TPLF-dominated coalition. The Zenawi regime oversaw rapid development and increased Ethiopia’s international prominence, but his government marginalized ethnic groups, including the Oromo and Amhara, to solidify government power. Additionally, Ethiopia was at war with Eritrea [PDF] from 1998 to 2000. The war was followed by a nearly twenty-year-long frozen conflict, effectively paralyzing both countries politically and economically.

The TPLF continued to govern Ethiopia after Zenawi’s passing until 2018, when protests, especially among the Oromo population, prompted the government to appoint Abiy Ahmed Ali as the next prime minister. Abiy, born in Oromia, was heralded by international actors and Ethiopians as the country’s new hope for peace and ethnic harmony. Early in his premiership, he promised to heal broken trust between the country’s ethnic groups and began to roll back restrictions on certain political freedoms. In 2019, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to Ethiopia’s two-decade standoff with Eritrea.

By 2020, ethnic relations within Ethiopia began to deteriorate once again. Repeated delays of long-promised national elections and the June 2020 extension of Abiy’s first term provoked indignation from the TPLF. The Tigray State Council’s decision to hold local elections in defiance of federal orders further inflamed tensions. These elections ultimately solidified the TPLF’s control over the region. On November 4, 2020, Abiy accused Tigrayan troops of attacking a federal military camp in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle, and ordered Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) troops to move north. This marked the beginning of a military campaign known as the Mekelle Offensive, which quickly escalated as the ENDF advanced deeper into Tigray, and the Tigray Defense Force, or TDF, ramped up their response.

Abiy initially framed the offensive as a targeted operation against TPLF leadership. A communications blackout at the outset of the conflict shuttered coverage of ground conditions. However, by December 2020, media and UN officials began sounding the alarm about the improper treatment of civilians, predominantly ethnic Tigrayans. Ethiopia’s neighbor and former adversary, Eritrea, intervened militarily on the side of the Ethiopian government. After months of denying their presence, Abiy admitted that Eritrean troops were fighting in Tigray in spring 2021. 

In 2021, the United States characterized the war as an ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans, and some NGOs raised concerns about the potential of genocide. In March 2021, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced a joint probe with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to investigate alleged abuses and rights violations in Tigray, although the impartiality and accuracy of the report [PDF] were called into question following its presentation at the United Nations.

Tigrayan forces retook the regional capital of Mekelle from the ENDF in June 2021. A month later, Addis Ababa announced the results of a national parliamentary election, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won in a landslide. The TPLF boycotted the election, and opposition leadership in parliament accused the Abiy government of banning poll observers in some states. Later, in the summer of 2021, Abiy called on all capable citizens to join the war against Tigrayan forces as the conflict began to spill over into the Afar and Amhara regions, growing closer to Addis Ababa. In November 2021, Tigrayan troops and allied Oromo militants marched within eighty-five miles of the capital but were forced back north by ENDF forces.

The conflict divided Ethiopia along ethnic lines. Oromia’s regional army, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), allied itself with the TPLF, while militants from Amhara and Afar, regions bordering Tigray, sided with federal forces. In 2021, the government declared a state of emergency in Amhara after a series of attacks against ethnic Oromos. Similar bouts of ethnic violence occurred in Oromia, where local militants began attacking Amhara-majority enclaves in March 2021, forcing thousands to flee. As the war intensified, the attacks worsened. In June 2022, more than two hundred Amhara were murdered in Oromia. By July, several hundred had been killed in massacres across the region. 

After a series of failed efforts to negotiate a settlement to the civil war, the TPLF and the Ethiopian central government signed a cessation of hostilities agreement on November 2, 2022, in Pretoria, South Africa. Followed by implementation negotiations in Nairobi, the agreement promised to disarm Tigrayan troops, hand control of Tigray to the Ethiopian federal government, end the Mekelle Offensive, and permit full humanitarian access to Tigray. 

Notably, the Pretoria Agreement does not explicitly mention Eritrea, nor were Eritrean representatives present at the negotiations. This omission raised international concern that Eritrean troops would continue operations within Ethiopia despite the agreement between the Ethiopian government and TPLF. Indeed, displaced Tigrayans reported in January 2023 that Amhara and Eritrean soldiers continued to occupy Western Tigray. The Amhara continued to contest ownership of the area, and the federal government eventually announced that the political fate of the territory would be decided in a referendum. As of early 2025, however, the referendum is yet to take place.

The effects of the war have been devastating. In 2021 alone, 5.1 million Ethiopians became internally displaced, a record for the most people internally displaced in any country in any single year at the time. Thousands fled to Sudan and other neighboring countries. By the time the Pretoria Agreement took effect, the Tigray War had killed approximately 600,000 people. 

Despite the signing of the Pretoria Agreement, instability and violence continued to characterize Ethiopia throughout 2023. In April, the central government announced that all regional security forces—permitted to operate under the national constitution—would be integrated into the national security services. The decision was largely seen as an attempt to degrade the autonomy of the regions, and it sparked violent protests and militia activity across the country. Resistance proliferated in Amhara, forcing the ENDF, in a reversal of alliances, to spend much of the year fighting against regional special forces and a powerful militia known as the Fano, as both groups refused to disband and join the national army. Operations also continued against the OLA, despite several rounds of unsuccessful peace talks. 

In 2023, Ethiopia and Eritrea reignited political hostilities, marking a troubling shift in their relationship. Tensions flared between the two countries when Abiy began signaling Ethiopia’s intention to secure a Red Sea port, and, with it, participation in international maritime trade. Ethiopia has been landlocked since the 1990s when the coastal region of Eritrea broke away to form an independent state following a decades-long war of independence. Explaining the importance of sea access for Ethiopia, Abiy commented, “By 2030 [the population of Ethiopia] will be one hundred and fifty million … A population of one hundred and fifty million can’t live in a geographic prison.” The comments were met with widespread concern as a prelude to military action against Eritrea. 

In January 2024, Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland (a semi-independent state in Somalia), in which it promised to recognize the latter’s independence in exchange for access to a nineteen-kilometer-long stretch of coastline on the Gulf of Aden. Somalia, which has never recognized the independence of Somaliland, threatened war in response. 

Insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara intensified in 2024, further challenging the federal government’s authority. In Amhara, the Fano militia launched offensives against major cities for the first time in nearly a year, including Bahir Dar, the region’s capital. Fighting similarly escalated in Oromia, where the government intensified its efforts against the OLA as violence spread ever closer to Addis Ababa. Perhaps most worryingly, conflict returned to Tigray for the first time since the end of the civil war in 2022, signaling a failure to enforce the disarmament provisions laid out by the Pretoria Agreement. 

Recent Developments

Recent events have further destabilized Tigray, raising fears of a return to civil war. In August 2024, the TPLF excluded Getachew Reda, the interim regional administrator for the federally-appointed Tigrayan Interim Administration (TIA), from its fourteenth Congress. Getachew responded by declaring the gathering “null and void,” before being permanently expelled from the TPLF in September, along with several senior TIA officials. 

Amid growing tensions in Tigray, Prime Minister Ahmed’s government won a series of political victories. In December, it revealed that the Oromia regional government had signed a peace deal with a breakaway faction of the OLA. Then, in December, the Turkish government announced it had mediated a productive discussion between Ethiopia and Somalia, and that the two countries would thereafter recognize, as per the Ankara Declaration, “the potentially diverse benefits that could be derived from Ethiopia’s assured access to and from the sea, whilst respecting the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia.” Ethiopia and Somalia formally restored diplomatic ties in January 2025. 

Since then, however, urgent challenges have emerged for the Ethiopian government. In Tigray, federal authority is quickly shrinking. The TPLF has taken effective control of the region’s two largest cities, Mekelle and Ad Gudan, after a series of skirmishes with federal forces that have killed, injured, and displaced thousands of civilians. The violence threatens to escalate into a regional war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The two countries have traded diplomatic accusations in recent months, and now appear to have mobilized forces to the border. Eritrea fears an emboldened Abiy may look to seize Assab and Massawa, two ports along the Eritrean coast, in his quest for sea access. Meanwhile, Ethiopia believes Eritrea will capitalize on instability in Tigray to launch an offensive into the region. 

Ethiopia’s destabilization holds significant security implications for the Horn of Africa, a region that is facing armed conflict in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan. Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan have been locked in a political dispute since 2011 over Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a hydroelectric dam on the Nile River that restricts the northern flow of freshwater. During the Tigray War, tensions were also reignited between Ethiopia and Sudan over the fertile border region of Al Fashaga, where governance rights have been contested since the early 1900s. The dispute was exacerbated by Sudan’s support for the TPLF and persists to this day.