Ethiopia (II): The drums of war resound
- Pablo Díaz Gayoso
- Mar 25
- 4 min read
The world is becoming more and more unstable and with each passing year armed conflicts are becoming more frequent and more and more bloody. The civil war in Myanmar (2021-present) and in Sudan (2023-present), the war in Ukraine (2022-present), the war in Gaza (2023-present), the conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the M23, proxy of Rwanda (2022-present) or the civil war in Ethiopia (2020-2022) are some of the most prominent conflicts that have broken out in the last 5 years. Of this long list, the estimated death toll exceeds two million and more than two tens of millions of people have been displaced. Of these conflicts, the one that started the decade is the one that is most likely to re-emerge.
As we have seen in the first part, Ethiopia (I): The Ethnic Federalism Failure, relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and also within Ethiopia itself, have been marked more by conflict than by cooperation. Following border disputes with the Ethiopian region of Tigray, a war broke out between 1998 and 2000 against the Ethiopian government led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF. The conflict between the two states dragged on beyond that war due, first, to the unsatisfactory establishment of the Eritrean-Tigrean borders and, second, to Ethiopia's difficulties in gaining access to the Red Sea. Eritrea's independence caused Ethiopia to have problems trading with the outside world. In this context, the government in Addis Ababa has been seeking regional alliances with Djibouti and Somaliland to achieve that longed-for stable outlet to the sea.
Ethiopia civil war summary (2020-2022)
The war in Ethiopia that began in 2020 was fought mainly between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The casus belli was the repeated delay of federal elections due to the coronavirus pandemic and the consequent extension of Ahmed's term at the helm of the executive. These events exacerbated ethnic tensions, especially with the TPLF, a party/militia representing the Tigray region, which ruled the country from 1991 to 2018. The TPLF's response to the federal order to postpone elections was to call local elections in Tigray. The result of these was the consolidation of the TPLF as the hegemonic party in the region in September 2020. Later, in November, Ahmed accused Tigrayan troops of attacking Ethiopian federal army positions at a base in Mekele (capital of Tigray), which he used as a justification to intervene militarily in the region and start the civil war.
During the two years that the conflict lasted, the war escalated to the regional level when Ahmed agreed to the military involvement of Eritrea, historical enemy of the TPLF, in the conflict. This collaboration was officially denied by the federal government for several months. The internationalization of the conflict and its brutality drew the attention of human rights and genocide prevention NGOs to signs of ethnic cleansing in early 2021.
In the summer of 2021, the highly controversial federal elections were held and this time it was the TPLF that boycotted them. Ahmed won by a landslide majority amid accusations of electoral opacity. Meanwhile, the war spread to the regions of Amhara (traditional enemies of the Tigrins) and Afar, almost reaching the gates of Addis Ababa in November 2021. This surprising lightning advance by the Tigrinya side was facilitated by its alliance with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and its military branch, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) (the Oromo, the poorest and most numerous ethnic group in the country). The OLF-OLA had been in a ceasefire situation with the federal government since 2018 but took up arms again in the face of the power vacuum left by the conflict in the north and ended up allying with Tigray's forces.
Finally, after several attempts to establish a ceasefire, a cessation of hostilities was negotiated in Pretoria, South Africa in November 2022. This conflict, which has been condensed into just three paragraphs, has been one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes so far this century. More than five million internally displaced persons, hundreds of thousands of dead and the shortages typical of warlike conflicts, such as hunger, lack of basic services, etc.
The echo of the drums
The signing in Pretoria did not fully pacify the country as the conflict has continued at a lower intensity since then. Foci of conflict broke out in the Amhara region when Amhara members attacked Oromo members in revenge for OLF-OLA's involvement in the earlier conflict. Inter-ethnic violence between Amhara and Oromo occupied much of 2023.
Regarding the tense peace in Tigray, on March 11, 2025 forces linked to the TPLF launched attacks against the Tigray Interim Administration or TIA. The TIA, headed by Getachew Reda, former deputy head of the TPLF, was appointed by Prime Minister Ahmed in the heat of the Pretoria agreements to temporarily manage the Tigray region in May 2023. Since its constitution, the TIA and the TPLF have been fighting for legitimacy to govern the region. On one side the TPLF accuses Reda of being a corrupt puppet of Ahmed while the TIA fears a coup by the militia. Tensions rose considerably when Ethiopia's electoral board denied the TPLF's request to be fully reinstated as a political party in August 2024. In January 2025 more than 200 TIA officers defected to the TPLF while calling for the end of the interim government. Ahmed's response to this situation has been to extend the TIA's mandate while promising a reshuffling of the TIA in an attempt to defuse tensions.
This situation, which is in the midst of escalating tensions, may be exploited by Eritrea in an attempt to destabilize its historical rival internally. In turn, as we shall see in Etiopía (III): La prisión geográfica de una potencia insatisfecha Ethiopia would also not look unfavorably on a possible armed conflict with Eritrea with a view to gaining its long-awaited access to the Red Sea.
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