Fears of renewed civil war in Ethiopia
Publish date: 28 September 2026
Issue Number: 1196
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: General
There are growing fears of a return to civil war in Ethiopia following renewed fighting between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's army and fighters belonging to the formation of a new rebel alliance aimed at overthrowing the government, notes Legalbrief Africa. Tigray residents, who have been trying to recover from a brutal two-year war that ended in 2022, fear a return to full-scale conflict, according to BBC News. There are reports of panic buying, and now internet and call services have been disrupted. This means people cannot get access to their money via digital apps in what has become a largely cashless society after ATMs stopped working several months ago. It follows more than six months of worsening relations between the government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that runs Tigray. The African Union brokered a peace deal, known as the Pretoria Agreement, between the two sides, ending the war nearly four years ago, but several issues have remained unresolved that have inflamed tensions. This year, both sides have been trading blame while troops have mobilised amid pockets of fighting. Last week, major clashes erupted in Tigray and quickly spread into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. The two sides disagree over who started the latest escalation. The TPLF says it was responding to a federal offensive, including drone strikes, while the government says Tigrayan forces attacked first after seizing control of airports in Tigray. The war which erupted in in 2020 was one of the most deadly conflicts this century. The AU mediator estimated some 600 000 people died during the war, which totally cut off Tigray from the outside world and drove the region to the precipice of famine. An uneasy truce was agreed in November 2022.
Why has the peace deal faltered? There are four key issues - and two concern the fertile area of western Tigray. The TPLF lost control of this territory in the early days of the war to Amhara, a region which neighbours Tigray to the west and whose fighters had fought on the side of the Ethiopian army. Many people in Amhara believe the territory of western Tigray should never have been incorporated into Tigray when regional boundaries were redrawn after the military regime was ousted in 1991. When its fighters seized control during the recent civil war, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tigrayan people fled and are now living in homeless camps in Tigray and in the capital, Addis Ababa, states BBC News. The TPLF wants western Tigray back and for those displaced from the territory to return. The government says the future of the territory needs to be decided by a referendum.
The fighting was sparked by an offensive by fighters from Tigray into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara and the formation of the new rebel alliance. The current fighting reflects shifting dynamics from the civil war, when Eritrea and Fano, an insurgent group that is now part of the new alliance, both fought with the government against the Tigrayans, reports africanews. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, the Ethiopian President, Taye Atske-Selassie Amde, decried ‘the forces of destruction and mayhem’ and ‘interference in our internal affairs by adversarial elements’. He said Ethiopia had exercised ‘immense restraint’ and made progress with its neighbours. Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, said members of the alliance had been collaborating for a while with the financial backing of Eritrea, which has repeatedly denied similar accusations. The TPLF ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before being sidelined by the rise of Abiy, eventually triggering the civil war. The renewed fighting marks the most serious challenge yet to the 2022 Pretoria agreement, which ended the civil war and maintained an uneasy calm until late last year, when clashes resumed. It raises fears of a broader regional conflict that could draw in armed groups from across and further destabilise a region already strained by war in neighbouring Sudan and tensions along the Red Sea.
The intensified fighting comes after seven Ethiopian armed groups, including longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of a 2020-2022 civil war, said they have formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing the Ethiopian Government, reports Business Day. The announcement of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival brought together a geographically and ethnically diverse body of groups ranging from Tigray in the north to the Somali Region in the south. Some remain at loggerheads with other members over territory and other issues. Last month, after reports of a possible coalition of armed groups, an adviser to Abiy said any such formation would seek to wreak havoc but would not be able to overthrow the federal government. The new alliance includes the TPLF and the Amhara Fano National Movement. Fano, a coalition of armed groups from the Amhara region, fought in support of the federal government against the TPLF during the 2020-2022 Tigray war. Fano subsequently rose up against the federal government in a conflict that has killed thousands in Amhara since 2023. Many of the groups have accused the government of centralising power and marginalising the regions. The government says it has launched a national dialogue meant to address longstanding political divisions and internal conflicts. The announcement of the alliance, which also includes groups from the Oromia, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, follows reported skirmishes between federal and Tigrayan forces.
Ethiopia’s army says it has killed at least 272 fighters from the TPLF in a counter-offensive in the Amhara region, reports Al Jazeera. The Ethiopian National Defence Force said that another 260 Tigrayan fighters were wounded and several were captured. ‘We are in the situation of full-blown war now,’ TPLF vice-president Amanuel Assefa told AFP. He confirmed that Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside local armed groups in Afar and Amhara. Meanwhile, the escalation has disrupted air travel, as Tigrayan forces seized three local airports in the region. Flights to Lalibela, a Unesco-listed site in Amhara known for its medieval rock-hewn churches, were suspended last Thursday, according to Reuters. AFP also received reports of fighting around Lalibela, causing its airport to close. Ethiopia’s domestic conflicts are becoming harder to separate from wider rivalries in the Horn of Africa, particularly Addis Ababa’s deteriorating relationship with Eritrea and Sudan’s civil war. Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has visited Asmara twice since July for talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, while Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo reportedly visited Addis Ababa in late August.
Communications have been limited since Friday when telecoms providers reported major disruption to phone and internet services in Tigray, making reporting on the conflict difficult, reports France24. Many in Tigray fear a repeat of a blockade imposed by the federal government during the 2020-2022 conflict when electricity, banking, and almost all aid were cut off. UN chief Antonio Guterres raised the alarm on Friday, with his spokesman saying he was ‘particularly troubled by reports of the use of drones as well as incidents of harm to civilians’. The government has a significant military advantage, with a large arsenal of drones, some 500 000 troops, and support from abroad, notably the United Arab Emirates. But the conflict could draw in neighbouring Eritrea on the side of the rebels, as it fears landlocked Ethiopia has been planning to invade and seize a direct point of access to the Red Sea.
