Renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia has left the Pretoria Peace Agreement, the November 2022 deal that ended the brutal civil war between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in tatters. The two-year civil war left 600,000 dead and was considered one of the world’s most lethal conflicts. The TPLF and Ethiopian government forces had been engaging in low-level skirmishes since 2025, leading many observers to warn that the situation was ripe for a return to full-scale war. These fears seemingly came true overnight on September 22-23, when TPLF forces seized control of the airport in the regional capital, Mekelle, and battled with federal troops at two locations in the Afar region.
Just days before the seizure of Mekelle airport, the TPLF announced it had joined a seven-group military alliance, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, whose goal was to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and install a transitional administration. The coalition includes the Oromo Liberation Army and the Amhara Fano National Movement, groups that have previously been at odds over competing ethnic and territorial claims.
The formation of the alliance marks a significant development in Ethiopia’s security landscape. The decision to coordinate against the government creates the possibility of simultaneous pressure on Addis Ababa from multiple regions. Tigray has long served as the TPLF’s political and military heartland while the Oromo Liberation Army and the Amhara Fano National Movement represent Oromia and Amhara, respectively. Other militia groups in the coalition represent regions as far south as the Somali region. However, it remains unclear whether these groups will be able to work together logistically and politically.
Ethiopia’s army chief, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, accused Egypt and Sudan of supporting this alliance, saying their success was “pushed, supported and supplied” from abroad. Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, also criticized Eritrea for its alleged role in financing some of these groups. Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the TPLF during the 2020-2022 war, but relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara soured after Eritrea was excluded from the Pretoria agreement, and Asmara has since drawn closer to its former enemy, the TPLF. Eritrea has also aligned itself with Saudi Arabia — which prefers Eritrean access to the Red Sea over Ethiopia — as well as Egypt and Sudan’s army-led government, both of which have long opposed Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile, which they fear threatens their access to the river’s vital waters. At the same time, Ethiopia, along with its ally the United Arab Emirates (UAE), helps to fund and supply the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, which have been in a brutal civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since 2023.
The ongoing conflicts across the Horn of Africa, not only in Ethiopia and Sudan but also in Somalia, raise serious concerns for the broader Red Sea region, particularly as fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis escalates on the eastern shore. In Somalia, al-Shabaab has clawed back much of the territory it lost during the government’s 2022-2023 offensive. Across the water, the Houthis have launched their first major ground offensive in four years, seizing the port city of Mokha and pushing onto islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. These conflicts are already increasingly difficult to separate as the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE runs through nearly all of them. Beyond supporting opposing militants in Sudan and between Ethiopia and the TPLF, the two powers are vying for influence in Somalia, where Mogadishu revoked all of its agreements with the UAE in January, citing sovereignty violations, and signed a military cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia weeks later.
Additionally, the porous borders between the countries of the Horn of Africa heighten the risk of further spillover. TPLF advances in Afar threaten the supply routes to Djibouti, through which roughly 95 percent of Ethiopia’s imports pass. Afar’s governor told Al Jazeera that Eritrean forces were participating in the fighting and moving to cut the region’s road link to Djibouti, though Asmara has not responded to the allegation. If true, that would place the war at the southern mouth of the Red Sea, directly across from where the Houthis are pushing into the Bab el-Mandeb. Should Addis Ababa conclude that Eritrea’s role in the conflict poses a serious enough threat to its security, it could strike Eritrea directly, something Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has threatened to do in the past when vying for direct access to the Red Sea. This would transform Ethiopia’s civil conflict into an interstate war likely drawing the relevant external actors further in, and causing one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes to be surrounded by conflict on all sides.
The renewed fighting has also prompted concern for another potential humanitarian crisis similar to the one resulting from the prior civil war in 2020-2022. Although the Pretoria Peace Agreement allowed for some humanitarian improvement, Tigray had not fully recovered from the conflict, and there are still hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the region. Conflict in other regions, such as Oromia, has also led to additional displacement. This situation is further complicated by the humanitarian crisis in the ongoing civil war in Sudan, in which approximately 14 million people have become displaced. Of that 14 million, approximately 100,000 have fled to Ethiopia.
Beyond displacement, Ethiopians are still vulnerable, with millions still unable to access food, clean water, and health care, among other vital needs. Additionally, key infrastructure, such as telecommunications networks, including the internet and phone networks, is at risk. According to Reuters, these systems were disrupted last Friday in Tigray, with reports that the TPLF asked companies to take down their services as a tactic to prevent government forces from utilizing Wi-Fi networks to operate drones. Therefore, with Ethiopia facing conflict in multiple regions, a prolonged war in Tigray could further overwhelm humanitarian response mechanisms not just in Ethiopia, but throughout the Horn of Africa.
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