Intensified fighting between Ethiopia’s federal army and forces from the northern region of Tigray has raised fears that the peace agreement that ended a devastating two-year war in 2022 could collapse. The escalation came days after seven armed groups from across Ethiopia formed a new alliance which seeks to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, with each side of the conflict blaming the other for instigating the latest flare-up in violence. The immediate fear for many in the country is a return to the war they have spent nearly four years trying to recover from.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, began as an armed movement against Ethiopia’s military government in the 1970s. It later became the dominant force in the coalition that governed Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That influence was contentious in a country with many ethnic groups, where Tigrayans account for only about 6 percent of Ethiopia’s population.
When Abiy became prime minister in 2018, he created the Prosperity Party to replace the governing coalition, sharply reducing the TPLF’s influence at the centre of government. Relations between Abiy’s government and the TPLF deteriorated until war broke out in November 2020. Federal troops, Eritrean forces and some fighters from the neighbouring Amhara region fought against Tigrayan forces.
The conflict killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and left Tigray largely cut off from the outside world. A peace agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, in November 2022 ended the full-scale war. But it did not settle some of the disputes that had helped fuel it.
One of the deepest disputes concerns western Tigray. Fighters from the neighbouring Amhara region, who fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal army during the 2020-2022 war, took control of western Tigray. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans were driven from their homes, and Tigrayan leaders now want the territory returned and those displaced to be allowed to return to their homes.
Many in Amhara reject Tigray’s claim to the territory, however. They argue that western Tigray should not have been incorporated into Tigray when Ethiopia’s regional boundaries were redrawn in 1992, after the fall of the military government. That dispute is ongoing, even though the TPLF and the Amhara Fano National Movement have now joined the same alliance against Abiy Ahmed’s government.
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