Issue No. 317

A brief resumption of fighting in Western Tigray between Tigrayan and federal troops last week has returned the fraught context of northern Ethiopia back to the precipice of full-blown conflict. Details remain murky, but for at least three days, deadly clashes flared in the contested Tselemt area between Tigrayan troops and the Ethiopian military. A spate of government drone strikes and fighting in Southern Tigray between the proxy Tigray Peace Force (TPF) and Tigrayan troops has returned as well. But it is the particularly alarming bout of fighting in the tinderbox of Western Tigray that raises the stakes dramatically, following months of sharply deteriorating relations between Addis and Mekelle. Now, with the threat of war inching closer, a starkly divided Horn of Africa threatens to refract across any renewed Ethiopian civil war as well.

In the wake of the Tselemt clashes, Interim President of the Tigray Interim Administration (TIA) Lt. Gen. Tadesse Werede announced the withdrawal of advanced Tigrayan forces, insisting that dialogue under the Pretoria agreement remained possible and that he has no "desire to return to war." The interim president has further stated that Tigrayan interests remain unchanged, not least the return of internally displaced persons and the restoration of the region's sovereignty, including the restitution of Western Tigray. Western Tigray, however, remains under partial Amhara regional administration backed by federal security structures, with mass displacement and demographic disputes still unresolved. 

Even so, it is apparent that the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) have been preparing for a return to conflict for some time, cognizant that the outbreak of the last war in 2020 caught them unawares. To this end, increased clandestine coordination among elements of the TDF, the Fano insurgency, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), and Eritrea has been reported in recent months. Though these disparate forces hold radically contrasting ideologies and politics, they appear increasingly bound by a shared opposition to Addis.

Yet whether the government is listening to the calls for negotiations from the TIA — a body wholly captured by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) — is less obvious. Grimly reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters of the Tigray war, several drone strikes on civilian targets were also carried out in recent days, including one that targeted trucks in the Enticho area of Central Tigray, killing at least one person. And the probing of the TPF — the government proxy forces based in the Afar region — into Southern Tigray, too, threatens to escalate the conflict to an uncontrollable degree. According to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, there have been displacements from Alamata and other towns due to renewed conflict and movements of troops. These renewed displacements follow successive clashes in both Afar and Tigray between the TPF and TDF in late 2025. Even so, it is difficult to gauge the situation, as it was in November 2020, in the early days of the war. But reports from Mekelle and other major Tigrayan towns nevertheless suggest heightened anxiety, with banking reportedly shut down and Ethiopian Airlines resuming service only this morning after five days of cancellations.

Addis has often portrayed the TPLF's actions as justifying renewed force, using the Pretoria agreement as a political tool to delegitimise Mekelle rather than as a framework for sustained dialogue. Relations between the TPLF and the federal government have been strained for some time, with Addis repeatedly delaying the return of Western Tigray to Mekelle and the integration of the northernmost region back into the decaying state's architecture. The necessary political talks never took place, and in turn, Tigray has remained in a subdued 'no war, no peace' -- overseen by a caustically fractured and navel-gazing TPLF. 

At the same time, PM Abiy Ahmed has apparently feared returning Western Tigray to Mekelle, out of concern that restoring a border between the historic allies of the Sudanese army and the TPLF would create a new channel for weapons and supplies. Further, Tigrayan forces and ethnically cleansed civilians returning to these areas would likely further inflame the Amhara nationalist sentiment embodied by the Fano insurgency as well. But throughout 2025, as the TPLF grew increasingly divided, Addis saw opportunities to further diminish Tigray, bringing the ousted TIA President, Getachew Reda, to Addis and funding the TPF and other opposition movements. Last October, in a letter addressed to the UN, the Ethiopian government accused Eritrea and the TPLF of "actively preparing to wage war." Few doubt that if Abiy's hands were freed from economic constraints and American pressure, the Ethiopian military would have launched another conflict, be it to seize the Eritrean Port of Assab or to attack Tigray once more. 

The African Union Chair, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, has called for restraint, saying he is watching the situation with concern. Youssouf may have only been in post for a handful of months, but as the principal observer, the AU has shirked its duty to ensure the government and the TPLF abide by the Pretoria agreement. Meanwhile, other onlookers of the flawed deal—including the UN, the US, and the EU—have largely avoided the idea of preventive diplomacy altogether. A broader conflict in Tigray may be avoided, but this will be no thanks to the traditional international community, which has instead preferred to ignore the dangerous slide towards conflict for many months. Still, US diplomats — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — have made it clear that Washington does not want to see a resumption of conflict, either between Addis and Asmara or between Addis and Mekelle. Whether that is enough is another matter.

Yet the federal government can ill-afford another large-scale conflict; its finances are strained, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is breathing down its neck. But more fundamentally, any broader resumption of the Tigrayan conflict could pull the once-imperial state under. Ethiopia's domestic and regional position has deteriorated sharply since the first Tigray war began in 2020; today, it faces a sea of internal troubles and diplomatic isolation. From 2020 onwards, the Amhara-Addis-Asmara axis was able to encircle Tigray, blockading the territory and inducing a famine that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Certainly, the region remains mired in a grim humanitarian crisis, but the effects of the conflict have severely eroded the Ethiopian state as well. In particular, the army remains bogged down in attritional warfare in the Amhara region, struggling to make headway against the increasingly cohesive Fano militias. 

Beyond the battlefield, the geopolitical environment surrounding Ethiopia has shifted in ways that narrow Addis's room for manoeuvre. Once the regional behemoth, Ethiopia's haphazard foreign policy and particularly the pursuit of restoring 'sea access' have left it adrift in the region. Gladhanding of Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, PM Abiy Ahmed, and Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh in the Somali Regional State last week may give the sense of a broad alignment, but it cannot paper over the deep fissures Ethiopia faces. Eritrea is now part of the constellation of Arab-African allies, alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and others. Ethiopia may be able to seek military and budgetary assistance from the Emirates, but with the UAE grappling with Saudi Arabia in Sudan and Yemen, its own appetite for facilitating another domestic war in Ethiopia is unknown. 

Most concerning for Addis, though, elements of the TPLF have developed incongruous ties with Asmara-- an alliance dubbed 'Tsimdo.' The extent to which this relationship has been formalised is disputed, but Eritrea has increasingly funnelled weapons through Tigray en route to Fano in recent months, with some reports suggesting that Asmara has also distributed military hardware to the TDF. Isaias Afwerki, the region's hardened despot, still harbours no love for Tigray or Ethiopia, with his motivations as ever driven by cold self-interest—most prominently the concern that Abiy could seek to seize Assab or Asmara. Eritrea may thus well arm and sustain Tigrayan forces in the context of a broader war, seizing an opportunity to degrade the Ethiopian state further. 

But with the Tigrayans and their body politic now so divided, would tens of thousands of wearied youth be mobilised to fight under the TPLF once again? The existential threat to the Tigrayan people bonded them during the 2020-2022 war, but the corruption and persistent quarrelling within the dominant political party have eroded much of this. Coupled with the failures of Pretoria-- hundreds of thousands remain displaced in shoddy camps and the grim humanitarian conditions-- all want peace. A fight for the survival of the TPLF and for the Tigrayan people is a radically different prospect, and the scope of any renewed conflict remains unknown. Toppling Abiy is another matter altogether, different to defending or even recapturing lost territory in Western Tigray. The nature of a broader conflict to retake Western Tigray is also immensely thorny, setting up a potential confrontation between elements of the nationalist Fano militia and Mekelle. And any renewed conflict would likely collapse the already fragile aid pipeline into Tigray, where food insecurity and displacement remain widespread.

The first Tigray war was extraordinarily destructive, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, the Tigrayan economy and culture deliberately eviscerated, and generational scars on the ancient civilisation. Now, any new war could draw in a new set of actors, forging a single conflict zone spanning multiple countries and spurred on by rival Gulf powers. A fresh war in Tigray would not only shatter fragile hopes for peace but could embroil neighbouring states and reshape regional alignments in a way no party can truly envisage.