Tigray Fighting Returns as Ethiopia Faces Risk of Wider War

Fighting has returned to Ethiopia's Tigray region, where onetime adversaries are now aligning against the federal government and the peace agreement that ended one of Africa's deadliest recent wars appears close to collapse.

Federal and Tigrayan forces have accused each other of restarting hostilities nearly four years after the Pretoria agreement was signed. Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to Tigray this week after Tigrayan forces seized Mekelle airport. Residents said roads linking Tigray to the neighbouring Afar region had been closed, though the closures could not be independently verified. The internet monitor NetBlocks reported disruptions across northern Ethiopia, recalling the previous war when Tigray was largely cut off and civilians struggled to obtain food, medicine and reliable information.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front has joined six other opposition groups in an alliance aimed at removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government. Its members include the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army. Tigrayan and Amhara forces fought on opposing sides in the last war.

Magnus Taylor, deputy project director for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group, described the coalition as combining political opposition to Abiy with an "opportunistic military alliance." Effective coordination could force federal troops to fight across several regions, but it remains unclear whether groups divided by territorial disputes and deep grievances can conduct joint military operations.

The Pretoria agreement ended major fighting in November 2022 but left disputes over territory, security and accountability unresolved. Taylor said the agreement was "on life support," and a TPLF spokesman said this week that it was no longer valid. Laetitia Bader, a regional director at Human Rights Watch, said key provisions had been violated for years, citing continuing abuses including what the organisation describes as the forced expulsion of ethnic Tigrayans from western Tigray. The allegations could not be independently verified.

Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopia's federal forces in the previous Tigray war, but relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have since deteriorated sharply. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of supporting armed opponents, while Eritrea has accused Abiy's government of preparing for war as Ethiopia presses for greater access to the Red Sea. Taylor warned that the fighting could spread across Ethiopia and draw in Eritrea, creating another regional conflict next to Sudan, which is already experiencing a devastating war and humanitarian crisis.

Researchers at Ghent University have estimated that the earlier war caused about 500,000 civilian deaths in Tigray alone, most attributed to famine and the collapse of the region's health system rather than direct violence. The conflict also displaced millions across northern Ethiopia, and deaths from hunger were documented after the ceasefire. Bader warned that another Ethiopian conflict could deepen the wider regional emergency, with transport and communications restrictions quickly interrupting supplies of food and medicine while making civilian suffering harder to document.

Preventing a wider war would require an immediate halt to the fighting, renewed negotiations and sustained international pressure before Ethiopia's separate conflicts converge.