How a Century of Broken Alliances Produced the Ethiopian Civil Conflict?

On September 21, 2026, Ethiopia produced one of the most hybrid alliances that could be ever seen. Seven armed organizations announced that they were joining forces against the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Among them were the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army. Only a few years earlier, some of these forces had been trying to destroy one another.

During the 2020–2022 Tigray war, Amhara Fano fighters fought beside the Ethiopian federal army against the TPLF. The Oromo Liberation Army has its own long history of conflict with both the Ethiopian state and rival ethnic movements. Yet all now find themselves, however uneasily, on the same side of a struggle against Addis Ababa.

The coalition, calling itself the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, says Abiy’s government has centralized political power and marginalized Ethiopia’s regions. The government accuses the alliance of working with and receiving financial assistance from neighboring Eritrea, an allegation Asmara denies.

The African Union reported that TPLF forces had seized the airports of Mekelle, Axum and Shire and detained federal personnel, while hostilities were escalating in southern Tigray and neighboring Afar. The AU warned that the developments threatened the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement that had ended Ethiopia’s previous civil war.

To understand how former enemies could arrive at this point, however, it is necessary to look considerably further back than Abiy Ahmed, or even the TPLF.

Ethiopia’s recurring wars revolve around whether Ethiopia has a single historic nation represented by a united central state, or a diverse nation of different ethnicities, each one of them holds full rights to sovereignty under a federal coalition. Almost every Ethiopian regime has answered the question differently, but what unites all answers is that they all had produced a rebellion somewhere.

Imperial history

The modern Ethiopian state took much of its present territorial shape during the late nineteenth century, particularly under Emperor Menelik II. From his base in Shewa, Menelik extended imperial authority southward and eastward over Oromo and other societies while simultaneously consolidating a state capable of resisting European imperial expansion. His victory over Italy at Adwa in 1896 preserved Ethiopian independence, turning the country into an enduring symbol of African resistance to colonialism.

But Menelik’s state-building contains one of the central disagreements of Ethiopian historical memory. One tradition depicts the period as the reunification and modernization of an ancient Ethiopian polity. While Oromo and other southern historiographies have often interpreted the same expansion as conquest and, in some accounts, a form of internal colonialism.

Contemporary historians tend to emphasize the complexity, whereas incorporation involved warfare and exploitation in some places, negotiation and accommodation in others. What is not disputed is that Menelik’s expansion created a far more ethnically and linguistically diverse state and left later governments with the problem of constructing political unity across it.

Emperor Haile Selassie pushed that project toward stronger centralization. His government promoted an Ethiopian national identity in which Amharic language, imperial institutions and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church occupied privileged positions. The approach helped strengthen the central state but also intensified resistance among communities that regarded it as cultural and political domination.

Eritrea became one of the most consequential examples. After the Second World War, Eritrea was joined to Ethiopia under a federal arrangement. Haile Selassie abolished that arrangement and incorporated Eritrea directly into Ethiopia in 1962, helping transform an emerging Eritrean rebellion into a prolonged war for independence.

Politics and constitution

The monarchy finally collapsed in 1974. But the military-Marxist Derg regime that replaced Haile Selassie changed the ideology of the Ethiopian state more than its instinct for centralization. The Derg carried out radical land reform and proclaimed socialism while brutally suppressing political opponents during the Red Terror. At the same time it fought multiple insurgencies across the country.

Two of those insurgent movements would ultimately reshape the entire Horn of Africa.

In Eritrea, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, or EPLF, fought for independence. In northern Ethiopia, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front emerged in 1975 and eventually became the most powerful component of a broader rebel coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF.

The EPLF and TPLF were not identical movements and frequently disagreed, but their common enemy was the Derg. By 1991 the Derg was collapsing. EPRDF forces entered Addis Ababa while the EPLF captured Asmara.

The victory created two new political orders. Eritrea held a referendum and became formally independent in 1993. Ethiopia remained intact under an EPRDF government dominated by the TPLF and led by Meles Zenawi.

Meles attempted a radically different solution to Ethiopia’s nationality problem. Instead of denying ethnic political identity, the new constitutional system institutionalized it. Ethiopia was reorganized as a federation whose regions were largely defined along ethnolinguistic lines. The 1995 constitution recognized extensive regional autonomy and even the principle of self-determination.

Yet the system contained a contradiction that would eventually help destroy it. Ethiopia became highly decentralized constitutionally while remaining highly centralized politically.

The EPRDF controlled the state from the center, and the TPLF—the organization originating in relatively small Tigray—exercised influence far beyond Tigray’s demographic weight. Regional parties affiliated with the ruling coalition dominated local governments, while opposition organizations faced restrictions, arrests and political pressure. Ethnic federalism gave nationalities unprecedented cultural and administrative recognition, but it did not produce an equally competitive political system.

Local identities became stronger and territorialized, while real political authority remained concentrated inside an authoritarian ruling coalition.

The Breakdown

Meanwhile, the old revolutionary friendship between Eritrea’s EPLF and Ethiopia’s TPLF collapsed spectacularly.

In 1998, Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war over their border, particularly the small town of Badme, as well as wider political and economic disputes. Tens of thousands were killed before the 2000 Algiers Agreement ended the fighting. A boundary commission subsequently awarded Badme to Eritrea, but implementation stalled, leaving the countries in a state of heavily militarized hostility for almost two decades.

That war is indispensable to understanding Eritrea’s role today. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki came to regard the TPLF leadership in Addis Ababa as an existential enemy. During the long postwar standoff, Ethiopia and Eritrea repeatedly accused one another of supporting insurgent movements operating inside the other’s territory; Eritrea developed relations with a number of Ethiopian opposition organizations. Proxy warfare became part of the political repertoire of the Horn.

Inside Ethiopia, meanwhile, the EPRDF’s developmental state delivered years of rapid economic growth and enormous infrastructure investment, but political discontent accumulated. After Meles Zenawi died in 2012, his successor Hailemariam Desalegn inherited a system whose internal equilibrium was beginning to break down.

From 2015 onward, mass protests swept Oromia and parts of Amhara. Many Oromo protesters complained that the country’s largest ethnic community remained politically and economically marginalized despite the federal system established in its name. Amhara activists had their own grievances about political representation, territorial arrangements and the TPLF’s dominance of national institutions. Security forces responded harshly, and political unrest eventually made the existing EPRDF arrangement untenable. Hailemariam resigned in 2018.

The man chosen to replace him was Abiy Ahmed. Abiy initially seemed capable of resetting the entire political system. He released political prisoners, welcomed exiled opposition movements home, loosened restrictions on the media and initiated economic reforms. Most dramatically, he accepted the border settlement with Eritrea and travelled to Asmara, ending two decades of formal hostility. The rapprochement earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

But the reconciliation with Eritrea concealed a major realignment inside Ethiopia. Abiy began dismantling the old EPRDF structure and created the Prosperity Party in 2019. Most components of the ruling coalition joined. The TPLF refused.

What looked organizationally like a party merger represented a break with the EPRDF, which had been a coalition of ethnically based organizations. Abiy’s Prosperity Party was a single nationwide organization. Supporters saw the transformation as a way of escaping ethnic political fragmentation. Opponents, particularly in Tigray, interpreted it as an attempt to weaken the federal bargain and rebuild a powerful central state.

The dispute became a struggle over sovereignty. When national elections were postponed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tigray’s authorities rejected the extension of federal political mandates and organized their own regional election in September. Addis Ababa declared the election illegal. Tigrayan leaders in turn questioned the legitimacy of the federal government. The federal government began restricting funding to the regional authorities. Political disagreement was turning into competing claims about which government possessed constitutional authority.

Tigray civil war

On November 4, 2020, Abiy announced military operations after accusing TPLF forces of attacking bases of the Ethiopian army’s Northern Command in Tigray and attempting to seize military equipment. Tigrayan leaders presented their actions as pre-emptive, arguing that federal forces were preparing to attack them. Whatever the competing interpretations of the immediate trigger, months of constitutional and political confrontation had now become civil war.

The alliance assembled against Tigray was extraordinary. Abiy’s federal military fought alongside Amhara forces and alongside Eritrea, the country with which Ethiopia had been formally at war only two years earlier.

For Isaias Afwerki, the TPLF was the old enemy from the 1998–2000 war. For many Amhara nationalists, the conflict offered an opportunity to reverse territorial arrangements imposed during the TPLF-dominated federal era, especially in contested areas of western and southern Tigray.

The war lasted two years, spread into Amhara and Afar, displaced millions and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Deaths toll is estimated at hundreds of thousands who died from combat, hunger and related causes. Ethiopian federal forces, Eritrean forces, Amhara forces and Tigrayan forces were all accused of grave abuses during different stages of the conflict.

Then, in November 2022, the alliances shifted again. The federal government and TPLF signed the Pretoria Agreement under African Union mediation. Large-scale fighting stopped. The agreement provided for disarmament, humanitarian access, restoration of public services and political normalization. An interim government was eventually created in Tigray.

But two crucial actors were not parties to the settlement; Eritrea and the Amhara forces that had fought alongside Addis Ababa. That omission helped plant the seeds of the present crisis.

Asmara had entered the war partly to weaken its old TPLF enemy. Pretoria ended the war without destroying the TPLF. Eritrea was excluded from the negotiations, and its relations with Abiy steadily deteriorated afterward. At the same time, unresolved territorial disputes—including Western Tigray—left Tigrayans and Amharas deeply suspicious of what the peace settlement would eventually mean for them.

Postwar rupture

In 2023, Abiy’s government ordered Ethiopia’s regional special forces dissolved and their members incorporated into the federal army, federal police or regular regional police. The policy formally applied nationwide, and the government argued that parallel regional military structures threatened national cohesion. But many Amharas interpreted the move as an attempt to disarm them while territorial and ethnic security disputes remained unresolved.

Thousands of regional fighters refused integration, and many joined Fano. The militia that had fought beside Abiy against the TPLF was now fighting Abiy’s army. By 2024, federal forces and Fano were engaged in a sustained insurgency across Amhara. Amhara forces and Fano elements were alleged to maintain connections with Eritrea; links viewed in Addis Ababa as foreign interference.

At the same time, war continued in Oromia. The Oromo Liberation Front had fought Ethiopian governments since the 1970s. Abiy reached a reconciliation agreement with the OLF after coming to power in 2018, but part of its armed wing refused to disarm and continued operating as the Oromo Liberation Army. The OLA has since fought a prolonged insurgency in rural Oromia despite attempted peace talks. Thus Abiy—himself Ethiopia’s first Oromo prime minister—came to face an armed Oromo opposition rooted partly in the same grievances that had helped propel him to office.

Then the northern settlement began unraveling as well. The TPLF split internally after the war. In March 2025, forces aligned with TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael seized control of Adigrat, prompting the rival Tigrayan interim administration to request federal intervention. The interim administration accused Debretsion’s faction of endangering the Pretoria settlement; the struggle also became entangled in allegations that Tigrayan factions were developing relations with Eritrea.

At precisely the same time, relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara were collapsing over another historic issue; access to the sea. Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrean independence in 1993. Beginning in 2023, Abiy publicly emphasized Ethiopia’s need for reliable access to the Red Sea. Although he later repeatedly said Ethiopia would not invade Eritrea and called for a negotiated arrangement, references to the Eritrean port of Assab generated acute suspicion in Asmara. By early 2025, Eritrea had reportedly mobilized forces and Ethiopia moved troops toward the border, raising fears that the two former allies could again become interstate enemies.

In February 2026, Ethiopia made the accusation formally. Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos wrote to his Eritrean counterpart accusing Eritrean troops of occupying Ethiopian territory, supplying armed groups inside Ethiopia and conducting joint military exercises with Ethiopian militants. Eritrea has denied similar accusations and has not publicly acknowledged sponsoring the new opposition coalition.

Inside Tigray, the breakdown accelerated. In May 2026, the TPLF re-established its pre-war regional political institutions and restored Debretsion Gebremichael as regional president, challenging arrangements created under Pretoria. The federal government considered the move incompatible with the peace agreement.

Meanwhile, Abiy remained electorally dominant where voting could be held. In the June 2026 election, his Prosperity Party won 438 of the seats whose results were announced—roughly 90 percent—giving it another commanding parliamentary majority. But voting did not take place in Tigray and was impossible in parts of Amhara because of insecurity. Opposition parties accused the government of restricting their activities through arrests and legal obstacles; the government denied the allegations.

TPLF and Fano fought one another in one of the twenty-first century’s deadliest wars. Oromo insurgents and Amhara nationalists have competing territorial and political visions. Tigrayan and Amhara forces still disagree bitterly over territory. Yet each now identifies the federal government as its principal adversary. Even analysts watching the alliance closely question how effectively such geographically dispersed groups with profound political disagreements could coordinate.

That paradox reveals the larger story of modern Ethiopia. The country has moved repeatedly between two political solutions. Centralizing governments—from the imperial state through the Derg and, in a different form, Abiy’s Prosperity Party—have feared that strong regional nationalism could dissolve Ethiopia. Ethnonational movements have feared that a strong central government will eventually turn federal autonomy into administrative fiction.

The actors change sides. The underlying question barely changes. More than a century after Menelik consolidated the modern Ethiopian state, Ethiopia is still arguing—sometimes constitutionally, sometimes electorally and repeatedly through war—over where power should ultimately reside: in Addis Ababa, or in the peoples and regions that make up the country.