Ethiopia

As renewed fighting spreads across northern Ethiopia, the government has accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing armed opposition groups, raising fears that the conflict could draw in regional powers.

Over the weekend, Ethiopian army chief Birhanu Jula attributed his country’s unrest to those he called Ethiopia’s “historical and contemporary adversaries”.

Birhanu accused Eritrea of being the go-between linking these external powers – including Sudan and Egypt, which he explicitly named – with armed groups inside Ethiopia.

Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt have all rejected the accusations. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nader Zaki said that Egypt’s foreign policy was founded on “full respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states, and noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries”.

Zaki added that Egypt “is fully committed to the rules of international law and the Charter of the United Nations, and rejects any practices that would undermine regional security and stability”.

Major-General Samir Farag, the former head of the Egyptian Armed Forces’ Morale Affairs Department, also told Al Jazeera that the accusations against Egypt were false. “It has not been Egypt’s policy to interfere in the internal affairs of any state in the region,” he said.

Sudan’s military also dismissed the accusations as “baseless” and levelled its own charge of destabilising behaviour at Ethiopia, accusing it of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces since 2023. Ethiopia has denied those allegations.

Troubled relations

Ethiopia’s relations with the countries it has accused have already been strained by other disputes that predate the latest fighting.

Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have remained tense as a longstanding dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) remains unresolved. Competition between the two has increasingly extended to regional security, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

Sudan’s relations with Ethiopia are similarly troubled. Since the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war, Khartoum has accused Addis Ababa of providing training, supplies and the use of Ethiopian territory to the RSF.

Eritrea had fought alongside Ethiopia against rebel groups in the latter’s Tigray region during a war between 2020 and 2022, but relations between the two neighbours have since soured, with Eritrea alarmed by Ethiopia’s attempts to gain access to the Red Sea.

Against that background, some analysts and Ethiopian opposition figures say that Addis Ababa is pointing the finger at foreign conspiracies in a bid to rally support behind its national army.

Mohamed Selim, deputy chair of the Egyptian parliament’s African Affairs Committee, told Al Jazeera that he believes the accusations were an attempt to shift attention from Ethiopia’s domestic problems by creating an external enemy and seeking to unify the internal front.

Amani al-Tawil, director of the Africa Programme at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, similarly described the accusations as “an understandable attempt to escape from internal crises”.

She questioned why Egypt would choose this moment to intervene militarily in Ethiopia, given the two have been in dispute over GERD since 2011.

Al-Tawil said the breadth of the new opposition alliance in Ethiopia – seven groups representing disparate ethnic groups and regions announced the coalition last week – presented a challenge to Addis Ababa.

Spillover concerns

The renewed fighting in Ethiopia has spread across Tigray and into neighbouring Amhara and Afar.

Mohammed Hussein, the chairman of the Prosperity Party Afar Region Branch Office – the ruling party in Ethiopia’s Afar region – told Al Jazeera that the three regions together have a population of more than 38 million, according to his estimate, and include areas near the borders with Djibouti and Eritrea, raising fears of a regional war.

Ammar Arki, a writer focusing on Horn of Africa affairs, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had, at various stages, blamed Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea for contributing to instability inside Ethiopia.

He said the latest accusations could be interpreted as an attempt to redirect some domestic attention towards an external threat and build support around the federal government.

But Arki warned that the longer Addis Ababa continued to explain its internal crisis in terms of an “external conspiracy”, particularly if neighbouring states responded in the same way, the greater the risk that Ethiopia’s conflict could move beyond Ethiopia’s borders and become regional.

Army chief accuses Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s federal military has said it is handling rising tensions in the country’s north with restraint, as fears grow that Ethiopia could be heading towards another civil war.

In his first comments on the recent military developments, Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Berhanu Jula said the army was responding to what he called provocations from the Tigray front with “wisdom and restraint”.

He accused Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia, describing the “Tsimdo” alliance as an extension of a longstanding pattern of hostile alliances, which he said cannot confront the state without outside backing.

Eritrea, wary that landlocked Ethiopia may be seeking to invade it to gain access to the Red Sea, denied the accusations.

The fighting has spread from Tigray into neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions after seven armed groups announced an alliance, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, committed to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

In Afar, the latest battles have taken place around Abala, where the military has been trying to prevent rebels from seizing control.

Separately, in North Wollo, a zone of Amhara bordering Tigray, the army said on Thursday it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in a counter-offensive, reporting heavy losses for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The TPLF’s Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones.

Abdisalam Balema, a TPLF central committee member, told Al Jazeera the situation had become a “full war”.

Fighting has also continued around Sama, Soqota and Raya Alamata, with government forces reportedly closing in on the town of Alamata.

The army command said it prefers a strategy of “strategic calm” over a large-scale military confrontation, arguing the Tigray front’s popular support is dwindling and its leadership divided.

Internet access was reportedly cut across northern Ethiopia on Friday, a day after the UN said it was alarmed by reports of drones being used against civilians there.

The renewed fighting has put the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended a brutal two-year civil war in Tigray, under severe strain. It comes weeks after Washington lifted sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea tied to atrocities from the last war, saying the “national emergency … has expired”.

It marks the most serious challenge yet to that agreement, raising fears of a wider regional conflict that could draw in armed groups from across Ethiopia.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Ethiopia’s president sought to portray the country as a force for regional stability, accusing unnamed external actors of meddling in Ethiopia’s affairs while highlighting Addis Ababa’s role in supporting peace efforts in neighbouring Sudan.

Alemayehu Weldemariam, a professor of law at Indiana University, told Al Jazeera that the federal government bears much of the blame for the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement.

“This war has been in the making for a while now. Much of the provisions in the cessation of hostilities [in the 2022 agreement] were primarily sabotaged by the federal government itself,” he said, citing fuel, service and cash restrictions imposed on Tigray, and the government’s failure to set up the interim administration the deal had promised.

“What was supposed to be an interim arrangement turned out to be permanent,” with Tigray excluded from national elections since, he added.

Tigray was cutoff from the world during the 2020-2022 civil war, which killed around 600,000 people.

Fears of a communications blackout in northern Ethiopia have increased as fighting flares between the federal military and forces from the Tigray region and ⁠their allies.

Telecom and internet networks were reported to have stopped working on Friday as the conflict threatened to develop across the country into a full-scale war.

The interruptions have provoked fears of a repeat of the communications blackout and supplies blockade during the 2020-2022 civil war in ⁠northern Ethiopia, when Tigray was largely cut off from the outside world.

Web monitor NetBlocks said it had detected an “internet disruption in northern Ethiopia corresponding to reports of a telecoms blackout in Tigray”.

The Reuters news agency reported that Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, had ordered private operator Safaricom and state-owned Ethio telecom to cut off access ⁠to phone and internet networks in the region.

Full-scale war

A source said the restrictions may be part of a tactic to neutralise the advantage of government forces using battlefield drones.

Lower-level clashes between federal and Tigrayan forces have been ongoing for some time. However, fighting intensified this week across Tigray and later spread to the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, after seven armed groups announced they have formed an alliance.

The Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival has committed itself to removing the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones, and said its forces had begun what they called a defensive war to counter aggression by Abiy’s government.

The alliance forces have seized three airports and launched attacks against ⁠federal troops in Afar and Amhara.

The ⁠federal government has accused Eritrea of financially backing the TPLF and its allies, which leaders in the capital Asmara deny.

Abdisalam Balema, a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) central committee, told Al Jazeera that the situation has become a “full war”.

The outbreak of violence is the most serious escalation ⁠since the civil war in 2020-2022. During that conflict, which killed an estimated 600,000 people, the telecoms blackout and supplies blockade imposed on Tigray caused famine-like conditions for hundreds of thousands of people.

People in Tigray are reported to have rushed to stock up on basic supplies and withdraw cash.

The renewed fighting comes at an awkward moment for the United States, which only this month lifted sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea related to atrocities committed during the last civil war, saying the “national emergency… has expired”.

The conflict could also draw in neighbouring Eritrea, which fears landlocked Ethiopia is planning to invade it to gain access to the Red Sea.

Tigray People’s Liberation Front says in a ‘situation of full-blown war’ with Ethiopia’s government.

Ethiopia’s army says it has killed at least 272 fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in a counter-offensive in the country’s northwest Amhara region.

The Ethiopian National Defence Force said on Thursday that another 260 Tigrayan fighters were wounded and several were captured.

“Government forces launched a counter-offensive that inflicted heavy personnel and equipment losses on the TPLF” after the group and its allies attacked several areas of North Wollo, a region of Amhara that borders Tigray, the army said in a statement on Facebook.

The intensification came days after TPLF and six other armed groups from across Ethiopia announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which committed itself to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

The coalition brought together the newly-formed Amhara Fano National Movement, the Oromo Liberation Army and other movements from the Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regional states.

‘Full-blown war’

“We are in the situation of full-blown war now,” TPLF Vice President Amanuel Assefa told AFP news agency on Thursday.

He confirmed that Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside local armed groups in Afar and Amhara.

The alliance marks a striking realignment that had been almost a year in the making, bringing together armed groups with very different histories and grievances against the central government, including forces with histories of conflict among themselves.

In a statement issued as the fighting widened on Wednesday, the alliance said the federal government was attacking its forces on several fronts and presented their response as part of the broader struggle that had brought the coalition together.

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 on Thursday, according to Reuters news agency.

AFP also received reports of fighting around Lalibela, causing its airport to close. The area has often been targeted by the Fano, a local armed group that is now operating alongside the TPLF.

Wider regional rivalries

TPLF last went ⁠to war with the Ethiopian federal government in 2020, leading to a devastating two-year conflict that ended with a peace deal in 2022.

In his address at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Ethiopia’s President Taye Atske-Selassie Amde blamed the escalation on “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.

Analysts say the Tigray rebels have support from Eritrea, which fears landlocked Ethiopia is planning to invade its territory to gain access to the Red Sea.

The TPLF’s Assefa told AFP “we have no information about Eritrea’s plan”. Asked if they would request Eritrean intervention, he said: “Not yet.”

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 (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, reportedly visited Addis Ababa in late August.

“They’ve begun an offensive around southern Tigray,” Abdisalam Balema, a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) central committee, told Al Jazeera by phone from Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, on Wednesday morning.

“They’re carrying out strikes in many places. We are not sure of the extent of it or whether they will continue, but we will assess it.”

Balema did not know it then, but he was describing the start of a major military escalation.

Fighting intensified across parts of Tigray and later spread to the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, pitting federal forces against several armed groups. A day later, Balema told Al Jazeera that the situation had become a “full war”.

The Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones, and said its forces had begun counteroffensive operations.

Getachew Reda, a former senior TPLF figure who now advises Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, gave the opposite account of how the fighting began, accusing the TPLF of launching the attack.

The escalation disrupted air travel, as Tigrayan forces seized airports in the region and Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights across Tigray. Local reports also said they had captured Abala, a district capital in neighbouring Afar.

Amid the competing accounts of how the escalation began, the immediate question may now be whether Ethiopia has crossed into a wider conflict.

The intensification came days after seven armed movements from across Ethiopia, including the TPLF, announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which committed itself to removing Abiy’s government.

The coalition has brought together the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army, alongside other movements from Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz areas.

The alliance marked a striking realignment that had been almost a year in the making, bringing together movements with very different histories and grievances against the central government, including forces with bitter histories of conflict among themselves.

In a statement issued as the fighting widened on Wednesday, the alliance said the federal government was attacking its member forces on several fronts and presented their response as part of the broader struggle that had brought the coalition together.

The regional East African bloc IGAD called for hostilities to cease and direct dialogue to resume, while the United Nations has expressed concern over the formation of the new armed coalition and reports of drone attacks.

About three-quarters of a million people were already internally displaced in Tigray because of the earlier war, according to UN migration data.

Formation of the alliance

The alliance grew out of the political realignment that followed the Pretoria agreement, which ended the two-year Tigray war in November 2022. The deal brought peace between Addis Ababa and the TPLF, but fractured the coalition Abiy had assembled to fight the war.

Neither Eritrea nor Amhara forces, whose troops had fought alongside the federal army, were parties to the final agreement, and both later fell out with the federal government.

In Amhara, tensions over plans to dismantle regional forces helped trigger open conflict between the Ethiopian government and Fano fighters, organised under the Amhara Fano National Movement, in 2023. Relations with Eritrea also deteriorated, first over the Pretoria settlement and later over Abiy’s push for access to the Red Sea through Eritrean ports.

The Pretoria agreement also deepened divisions within the TPLF, between figures such as Reda, who continued to defend the settlement, and a faction led by Debretsion Gebremichael that increasingly rejected the political order it had created.

Pretoria “changed the equation”, Faisal Roble, a regional analyst and member of the East African Parliament, told Al Jazeera. “Abiy alienated all of them at different levels.”

The faction led by Debretsion later seized power in Tigray and repaired relations with former enemies, including Fano fighters in Amhara and Eritrea, upending the alliances that had defined the previous war.

The government’s spokeswoman, Billene Seyoum, told the Reuters news agency after the new coalition was announced that its members had already been collaborating with financial backing from Asmara and that the formal declaration confirmed statements by government officials.

Eritrea has repeatedly denied supporting Ethiopian armed groups.

Reda had dismissed the alliance’s chances of ousting the government shortly after it was announced. “I don’t lose sleep over that,” he told state media this week.

“Now it [the TPLF] goes back to the drawing board, and declares Pretoria dead and starts an alliance with the very people who fell out with the federal government because Pretoria was signed,” he added.

Balema, the senior TPLF official, said the party’s decision to join those former enemies reflected its determination not to find itself isolated if the conflict widened again.

“We’ve been forced to ally with other movements who also face an existential threat from the government,” he told Al Jazeera. “We don’t want a repeat of 2020 when we were encircled and alone.”

Balema acknowledged unresolved disputes within the alliance, including competing claims over western Tigray involving Amhara forces, but said the groups had agreed to address them through dialogue.

“We have a political charter, and our aim is to remove the personalist regime of Abiy Ahmed, establish a transitional government, hold a constitutional dialogue and move to elections,” he added, saying “the alliance is in consensus on this.”

“For now it seems like it will work, but when the deeper issues need to be resolved it will test their different constituencies, who have different expectations,” Mohamed Kheir Omer, a researcher focused on the Horn of Africa, told Al Jazeera.

“But right now it isn’t the urgent issue.”

Beyond northern Ethiopia

The alliance also draws in the Oromo Liberation Army and a faction of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, movements rooted in older demands for autonomy and self-determination among Ethiopia’s Oromo and Somali populations.

Both had fought the TPLF-dominated government that preceded Abiy and are now allied with the TPLF. Taking office in 2018, promising a break with the old order, Abiy sought to bring both into civilian politics.

The Oromo Liberation Front returned from exile, but disagreements over disarmament left part of its armed wing outside the settlement.

Those fighters continued their armed conflict as the Oromo Liberation Army, and subsequent peace talks with the government failed.

Though the OLA ultimately signed the new alliance agreement, its leader, Jaal Marroo, had described it in the preceding days as a “procedural consensus” rather than a substantive settlement on Ethiopia’s political future.

The ONLF stayed out of armed conflict after its own 2018 peace deal, but later fractured. An overseas faction accuses the government of failing to implement the agreement and eroding Somali autonomy, while the leadership inside Ethiopia’s Somali region denies joining the new alliance.

Abdulkadir Hassan Hirmoge, a spokesperson for the faction that joined, told Al Jazeera that it now regards the 2018 agreement as void.

He said joining the alliance did not mean restarting an armed struggle, but backing its programme of removing Abiy and establishing a transitional government.

Regional dimension

Ethiopia’s domestic conflicts are becoming harder to separate from wider rivalries in the Horn, particularly Sudan’s civil war and Addis Ababa’s deteriorating relationship with Eritrea.

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has visited Asmara twice since July for talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, while Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the commander of Sudan’s rival Rapid Support Forces, reportedly visited Addis Ababa in late August.

Reuters reported in February that thousands of RSF fighters were being trained at a camp in western Ethiopia, while Sudan has accused Ethiopia, and its ally the United Arab Emirates, which also reportedly backs the RSF, of allowing drones to be launched from its territory into Sudan.

The emerging Ethiopian opposition alignment has touched the same regional network.

Several figures associated with groups now in the alliance attended a meeting in Port Sudan in May, publicly presented as a “people-to-people” initiative.

In July, Abiy told lawmakers: “Let alone Eritrea, the TPLF and Sudan, even if others were added, we do not have an iota of fear regarding Ethiopia’s sovereignty.”

Balema, the senior TPLF official, denied that the alliance was receiving military or logistical support from either Eritrea or Sudan, saying its relationships abroad amounted to political contacts rather than foreign backing.

“We didn’t create the current problem with Eritrea; Abiy did with his demands on its ports, and the same with Somalia,” he said.

“In Sudan, he is now supporting the Rapid Support Forces. He has created his own enemies across the region and we are just picking up the pieces.”

Sudan has recently sought to ease tensions with Addis Ababa. Malik Agar, the second in command of its military-aligned government, said last week that “we do not want to get involved in a war with Ethiopia.”

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo opposition politician, warned that Ethiopia could nevertheless become an “incongruent battlefield” in which wider regional contests increasingly play out.

“These things are impossible to control,” he said.

Two days after seven Ethiopian armed groups announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival and pledged to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a senior official of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was asked whether the statement amounted to a declaration of war.

He hesitated, then answered with a question of his own.

“We are at war now, aren’t we?”

He was speaking to Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, who told Al Jazeera that the answer captured what the new rebel alliance had changed.

It has not created a single, coherent military force capable of marching on Addis Ababa. It has brought several of Ethiopia’s separate conflicts into the same political framework and, potentially, into the same military calculation.

The question now is how much further that can spread and whether seven movements with different enemies, territorial claims and histories can actually fight as one.

On Tuesday, drones struck two schools in Alamata, in southern Tigray, and the town’s mayor said 14 civilians were killed and 22 wounded. The account could not be independently verified, and the federal government did not immediately comment.

By Wednesday, Tigrayan forces had seized Alula Aba Nega International Airport in Mekelle, AFP reported, citing an airport employee and a Western embassy security source. The airport employee said staff had been told there were no flights.

The alliance, whose founding statement Fano commander Zemene Kassie read on Tigrai TV on Sunday, brings together the Amhara Fano National Movement, the TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), along with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement.

It promises a transitional administration once Abiy is gone.

Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, told Reuters that the members had been collaborating for some time with Eritrean financial backing, an accusation Asmara has repeatedly denied.

The war that never really ended

The TPLF dominated Ethiopia for 27 years, until Abiy took power in 2018 and pushed it to the margins.

In November 2020, the federal army, backed by Eritrean troops and Amhara forces, went to war with it. The conflict became one of the deadliest in Ethiopia’s modern history. African Union mediator Olusegun Obasanjo believes that about 600,000 people died, though estimates of the toll have varied.

That war ended in November 2022 with an agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa.

It was a permanent cessation of hostilities. It silenced the guns and set terms for Tigray’s disarmament, but left critical questions for later, above all Western Tigray, the fertile territory claimed by both sides and administered by Amhara forces since the war.

Only Addis Ababa and the TPLF signed. Neither Eritrea nor the Amhara forces had a seat.

Jawar Mohammed, the Oromo politician who was once an ally of Abiy and later spent time in prison, told Al Jazeera that shutting them out gave them every reason to wreck the deal.

The new alliance brings together forces that were excluded from the Pretoria negotiations with one of the agreement’s signatories.

The quiet it created ended in May, when the TPLF restored the legislative council that existed before the war and installed its chairman, Debretsion Gebremichael, as regional president, effectively setting up a rival political authority to the interim administration established under the Pretoria agreement. The TPLF accused the federal government of failing to honour its side of the deal.

Federal and Tigrayan forces then clashed at Shererina, near the Sudanese border, on August 1. Heavy artillery and drones were used in the fighting, and hundreds of Tigrayans, including wounded fighters, fled into Sudan.

Then came the drones.

On August 20, two drones struck homes in Mekelle, wounding 13 people, according to the TPLF. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the account.

On September 20, a drone destroyed a truck carrying 41 tonnes of food aid near Adi Daero, according to the TPLF. Addis Ababa has acknowledged none of the reported strikes.

“We signed the Pretoria Agreement, but the regime used the agreement to kill the people of Tigray systematically,” the TPLF’s spokesperson, Michael Asgedom, told Al Jazeera.

Two scripts

Asgedom tells it two ways.

The alliance “was created to bring peace and democracy to Ethiopia”, he said.

He also said it would build a new order “over the ruins of Abiy Ahmed’s system” and that this was “the right time to eradicate the regime”.

If war comes, he said, “it will be for survival.”

One script is for diplomats, the other for fighters.

Tronvoll calls it constructive ambiguity, a phrase that fits the alliance.

That the alliance claims to speak for seven peoples can delegitimise Abiy abroad and raise the price of any settlement, whether or not it fires a shot.

The first test is Eritrea, the neighbour whose name appears nowhere in the founding statement.

Over the past two years, Eritrea has reconciled with the TPLF, the enemy its troops helped to crush in 2020, as Abiy began demanding access to the Red Sea, which Asmara interpreted as a claim on its coast.

Jawar argues that Eritrea’s minimum aim is to keep any conflict on the Ethiopian side of the border.

The International Crisis Group has similarly assessed that Eritrea wants to establish a buffer zone on its southern border.

Asgedom has denied any Eritrean military presence in Tigray, but left the door ajar.

“If Eritrea can take action because of a potential danger to its survival, it is the Eritreans who should answer that question.”

Tronvoll says Eritrean troops are in Tigray now, a claim Al Jazeera could not independently verify. Magnus Taylor, deputy director of the International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa project, told Al Jazeera that he was more cautious.

“This is substantially a domestic Ethiopian phenomenon,” he said.

Seven commands, one war?

The second test is whether seven commands can fight as one.

Zemene chairs the alliance, but the founding statement names no commander for a joint campaign.

If the line ever advances on Addis Ababa, Tronvoll asks, whose soldiers go first?

“If it is a Tigrayan general commanding Amharas to be sacrificed first to save the Tigrayan soldiers, that will split it immediately.”

Western Tigray is not mentioned in the statement either.

Taylor says the Fano are themselves divided over it: Commanders in Gojjam and Wollo can contemplate an alliance with Tigray, while those nearer the disputed land cannot.

“All these groups have their own different beef with the federal government,” Taylor said, and much of it dates from Abiy’s first year.

In 2018, Abiy invited exiled rebels home, and the OLA and the ONLF returned from Asmara.

But the OLA broke away to keep fighting, and talks with it in Tanzania collapsed in 2023.

The ONLF then split in 2025 after its then-chairman called for a return to armed struggle amid a dispute over a Chinese natural-gas concession in the Somali region.

The Amharan Fano rebelled against the government in 2023 after Abiy ordered the regional special forces to be folded into the federal army, a move many Amhara believed was tantamount to disarmament.

In June, Abiy’s Prosperity Party won 438 of 486 contested parliamentary seats. Voting did not take place in Tigray and was disrupted by insecurity in parts of Amhara and Oromia.

But their grievances are not only with Abiy’s government.

Referring to the news of the alliance, Jawar said he had “not seen anything as unpopular among the Oromos”, after years of accusations that Fano fighters have killed Oromo civilians in Wollega.

The OLA calls its participation a “procedural consensus” and has demanded that Fano disown a faction in Wollega that it says the government armed.

“There is no shared political objective,” Jawar said. “They don’t even have a shared tactical objective.”

And Tronvoll goes further: “If the members ever reached the palace, immediately a new war will start between them.”

The people being asked to fight

Then, there are the people being asked to fight.

Tigrayans are being mobilised alongside forces they remember from four years ago, when, in Tronvoll’s characterisation, “both the Eritreans and the Fano Amharas were perpetrating genocide on them.”

Friends in Tigray have told Tronvoll of coercive recruitment. He estimates that tens of thousands have left the region in advance of a possible war and the draft.

“People are voting with their feet,” he said. “They are on their knees already. So what are the alternatives for them than to fight?”

Beyond the border

Abiy, for now, appears unmoved.

“As long as they don’t threaten the palace at Arat Kilo, he can live with that,” Tronvoll said. “I don’t think he skips lunch because of this.”

Taylor struggles for a word.

“Is it a headache? Is it an irritant? Is it a blow? It’s a combination of those things.”

In his assessment, the TPLF, which lost most of its heavy weapons in 2022, has come off worse in recent clashes against federal air power. The likelier course, he says, is a slow deterioration, with southern Tigray the flashpoint.

Jawar views Abiy’s approach as containment: Keep flights into Tigray running so that those who want to leave can do so, and let a war that few want sour public opinion.

With Tigrayan forces having seized Mekelle’s airport, that exit has closed.

Tom Gardner, author of The Abiy Project, said, “For months Abiy’s strategy has been to maintain a low-level conflict largely conducted via drones, proxies, and siege tactics. This could be the moment that strategy breaks down and a full-scale war erupts.”

The regional dimension is becoming harder to separate from the conflict inside Ethiopia.

The International Crisis Group says several thousand Tigrayans, mostly from Western Tigray/Welkait, have fought alongside the Sudanese army against the Rapid Support Forces.

Khartoum has also accused Addis Ababa of allowing drones to strike Sudan from Ethiopian soil, which Ethiopia denies.

Eritrea has aligned itself with Sudan’s army and established ties with Egypt, an opponent of Addis Ababa in the dispute surrounding Nile water resources.

The International Crisis Group has described Egypt as a close wartime ally of the Sudanese army.

Those alignments do not necessarily make the new Ethiopian alliance a regional military bloc. But they make it harder to treat Ethiopia’s conflicts as entirely domestic.

In Mekelle, the calculation is narrower.

“It is better to live than to die,” Asgedom said, “and the regime doesn’t allow us to live.”

A journalist in Mekelle, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said people had lived for months in a state of no-war-no-peace, and many now wanted it decided either way.

The alliance offers a path to war without making clear what that war would cost.

“We need peace,” residents told the journalist in Mekelle, after months without salaries or medicine.

In the city, there is an old belief that an unexpectedly windy and sunny day foretells fighting. Tuesday was both.

Despite decades of peace deals and ceasefires, armed groups in Ethiopia have continued to battle each other, as well as the military. Now, some of these former rivals have formed an alliance to push out the government in Addis Ababa.

They warn Ethiopia is on the brink of disintegration, and blame Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Abiy says the country can defend itself, but Ethiopians fear they could be on the verge of another civil war.

So, could these former rivals, with deep political and ideological divides, achieve their common objective?

Presenter:

Rob Matheson

Guests:

Samuel Getachew – Political commentator who specialises in Ethiopian affairs

Ngala Chome – Horn of Africa analyst

Kjetil Tronvoll – Professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College

Former adversaries say they will settle differences as fears grow of expanding war in Ethiopia.

Seven Ethiopian armed groups have formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The groups announced the alliance on Sunday, saying that they would work together to set up an inclusive transitional government.

“We have established a joint alliance called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, known in short as the Alliance for Survival,” the groups said in a joint statement.

The alliance includes the Amhara Fano National Movement, a coalition of Fano factions that has fought federal forces in the Amhara region since 2023; the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before Abiy took office; and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which has fought federal forces in Oromia since 2018.

Four smaller groups – the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (Ugugumo), the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement – make up the rest.

The groups’ leaders had been talking to form the alliance for about a year, a source close to Fano told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

The announcement comes weeks after clashes in the northern region of Tigray, one of the most serious breaches yet of a 2022 peace deal, deepened fears of a return to full-scale war.

Fighting has gripped parts of Oromia since 2018 and Amhara since 2023.

Abiy came to power in 2018 promising sweeping reforms. He freed journalists, activists and other political prisoners and revoked bans on many political parties after taking power.

But his opponents and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing those gains in recent years.

In the statement, the alliance accuses the government of imposing “dictatorial rule” that has pushed the country towards break-up.

It also says a transitional government guided by a charter would work to end the wars, protect rights and open a national dialogue.

Jaal Marroo, the OLA’s military leader, told a local broadcaster earlier this month that they had met several times before settling on the final announcement.

Zemene Kassie, the Fano leader, first publicly indicated that deals had been reached in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, published on August 16.

The government has not publicly commented on Sunday’s announcement.

Fano fought alongside federal forces against Tigray’s fighters in the Tigray war of 2020 to 2022, which killed hundreds of thousands.

Amhara and Tigray also both claim Western Tigray, which Amhara nationalists have administered since the war ended.

Ethiopian academic Eyob Tilahun told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the competing groups had agreed to have a dialogue and form an alliance “in the best interests of the public”.

“Those allied forces believe that they all face a survival threat from the government,” Eyob said.

The 2022 peace agreement, signed in Pretoria, South Africa, ended the war between the federal government and Tigray’s forces but left disputes over disarmament and the TPLF’s legal status unresolved.

In mid-July, the TPLF declared the 2022 Pretoria peace deal “effectively dead”.

Italy’s defence minister warns of severe economic fallout if Bab al-Mandeb becomes impassable, bypassing EU delays.

Italy will deploy warships to ensure safe passage for its commercial vessels through the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said, adding that Rome would not wait for a joint decision from the European Union.

“We have the capabilities to protect the passage,” Crosetto said, warning that if the waterway became impassable, the economic consequences would be severe.

The Italian defence minister said that Rome “must not allow bureaucratic delays in decision-making to exacerbate an already complex situation”.

Bab al-Mandeb links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, forming one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors between Europe and Asia and a critical route for oil, gas and container traffic heading to and from the Suez Canal.

Roughly 12 to 15 percent of global trade has historically passed through the narrow waterway, which separates Yemen from Djibouti and Eritrea on the African side and is only about 30km (19 miles) wide at its narrowest point.

The strait’s importance has grown sharply since Iran effectively seized control of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year amid its war with the United States and Israel, choking off the world’s most important oil chokepoint and pushing much of the Gulf’s crude exports towards alternative routes.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, has increasingly relied on pipelines and Red Sea shipping to bypass Hormuz altogether, making the Bab al-Mandeb strait one of the last major arteries still open to Gulf oil reaching global markets.

Control of the strait has been contested for years, as Yemen’s government, Houthi rebels and, at times, forces in the region have held stretches of its coastline at different points since the war in Yemen began in 2015.

The significance of the strait has been hit dramatically in the past few weeks, when the Iran-backed Houthi movement launched a rapid offensive that brought the entirety of Yemen’s western Red Sea coast under its control, including several strategically located islands.

The advance has given the Houthis effectively unrestricted access to the waterway, a development seen as a major setback for international shipping, given the group’s history of attacking vessels it associates with the US or its allies in the region.

The US and the European Union have already carried out military operations aimed at better protecting merchant ships from Houthi attacks in the area, though those efforts have struggled to fully secure the route as fighting in Yemen has escalated.