Issue No. 307

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Tigray war and the third since the signing of the Pretoria agreement. Five years since Ethiopian federal forces, Amhara militias, and an invading Eritrean army launched a joint offensive that would leave between 300,000 and 600,000 Tigrayans dead and over 120,000 women and girls raped. 

When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki embraced in 2018, ending two decades of frozen conflict, the international community celebrated what appeared to be a historic breakthrough. The opening of political freedoms in Ethiopia and the rapprochement between the two capitals helped award Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, though Isaias's own prize was conspicuously absent. But their agreement was never about liberalising Isaias's hermit kingdom or ushering in genuine peace in the Horn. Rather, it was a political-security pact hellbent on inflicting ruin on the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and, ultimately, the Tigrayan people.

But there are particular events that remain seared into the collective memories of Tigrayans, such as the massacres at Axum and Adigrat in the first weeks of the invasion. In the holy city of the former, hundreds of young boys and men were summarily executed by Eritrean forces over several days, with Ethiopian troops complicit in the violence.

The tide of the war ebbed and flowed, with Tigrayan forces rallying in the mop-up, pushing the joint forces out of Tigray and advancing into Afar and Amhara in 2021. But injections of fresh armaments from Addis's allies and mass mobilisations turned the war again in favour of the government later that year. All the while, Tigray remained effectively severed from the outside world, with famine setting in due to the blockade. Here, too, do the scars run deep, with families forced to choose which starving child to feed, which neighbour to turn away. Other atrocities were carried out on Tigrayan women and children, and, to a lesser extent, by advancing Tigrayan troops as well. Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers explicitly told victims they were being raped to ensure they could never bear children, to "cleanse" the Tigrayan bloodline. Many were raped in front of their families. The estimated 120,000 victims represent a staggering quarter of Tigrayan women and girls.

The federal government's transitional justice model and National Dialogue Commission are widely regarded as toothless exercises in political theatre, lacking any capacity to prosecute perpetrators and designed primarily to deflect international criticism. The very notion of "transitional justice" without any genuine transition is nonsensical – yet this is what Addis offers. Any conclusions it reaches will be rubber-stamped by a Prosperity Party-dominated House of Representatives and disregarded by a polarised country that has lost all faith in Addis's commitment to justice or reconciliation.

The humanitarian situation in Tigray today remains dire, though it has marginally improved from the catastrophic conditions of 2021-2022. Over 750,000 people remain displaced across the region, living in overcrowded camps with rampant malnutrition and preventable diseases. The region's ruined hospitals, schools, roads, and telecommunications infrastructure remain in tatters as well. Not to mention the decimated economy, with illicit gold mining being one of the few profitable activities that enriches only a handful of TPLF-connected elites, while the population suffers. Fuel and goods into the region have been repeatedly choked by the federal government throughout 2025.

The Pretoria agreement, signed in November 2022, was always a deeply flawed document – a rushed process lacking an implementation matrix, secured with the Tigrayan delegation under intense pressure to sign. With the Eritrean forces and Amhara militias excluded from the settlement entirely, the agreement could never address the fundamental issues driving the conflict. And in the three years since, the federal government has demonstrated no genuine commitment to implementation. Western and northern Tigray remain under occupation by Amhara militias and Eritrean forces. The hundreds of thousands of displaced Tigrayans cannot return to their homes and fertile lands. Federal funding for reconstruction has been deliberately withheld as part of Addis's strategy to keep Tigray subdued in a state of "no war, no peace." 

Meanwhile, the internal politics of Tigray have descended into a dysfunctional morass of competing factions. The schism between TPLF Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael and former Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) President Getachew Reda erupted into open acrimony in August 2024, politically paralysing the region. The current TIA President, Lt. Gen. Tadesse Werede, has proven unable to effectively communicate with the Tigrayan population or separate the interim administration from the TPLF. The politicians of Tigray, while bringing the region together under existential threat during the war, have proven themselves mightily unfit for peace. 

The consequences of the Tigray war extend far beyond the region itself. It helped form and then shatter the destructive alliance between Bahir Dar, Asmara, and Addis, inflamed the Fano movement into the major insurgency that now consumes Amhara, accelerated the militarisation and authoritarian contraction of Ethiopia's federal state, and severely damaged the officer class and capacity of the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF). With the federal government now unable to project power into much of Ethiopia's periphery, the state continues to shrink while insurgencies rage.

And this brings us to the most horrifying prospect of all: despite the vast, brutal horrors of 2020-2022, the impossible seems possible again. With war looming between Addis and Asmara, Tigray would be caught in the middle once again. Any renewal of conflict would see Tigray as the inevitable battleground, its traumatised population subjected to yet another round of violence, displacement, and destruction.