Renewed Tigray Fighting Raises Fears for Ethiopia’s Pretoria Peace Deal

Fighting between Ethiopia’s federal army and forces from the northern Tigray region has intensified, raising concerns that the country could return to the devastating conflict that ended with the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement.

The escalation follows the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival by seven armed movements. The coalition says it seeks to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

Clashes have been reported in southern Tigray and have spread into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. The two sides have offered conflicting accounts of how the latest major fighting began. Tigrayan forces say they responded to a federal offensive involving ground troops and drones, while the government side has accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking first.

Airports seized as fighting spreads

Tigrayan forces took control of airports in Mekelle, Axum and Shire, disrupting civilian flights. The African Union said the seizures were inconsistent with the Pretoria agreement and called for an immediate end to the escalation.

The continental body also urged the parties to resume talks under the agreement and asked former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to engage them urgently. IGAD separately called on neighbouring countries to avoid actions that could worsen the crisis.

Al Jazeera reporter Catherine Soi reported overnight fighting in the border town of Abala, in northern Afar near Tigray. Reports differed over which side controlled the town.

Ethiopia’s army said it had killed more than 270 rebel fighters in Amhara. That figure could not be independently verified.

Unresolved disputes fuel tensions

The TPLF faction led by Debretsion Gebremichael retook control of Tigray’s administration earlier in the year, displacing an interim administration established under the peace agreement.

The federal government says Tigrayan forces have retained weapons they were expected to surrender. Tigrayan leaders, in turn, say the government failed to secure the withdrawal of other forces and did not enable displaced people to return, particularly to western Tigray.

Amhara fighters took control of western Tigray during the 2020-2022 war, in which hundreds of thousands of people were reportedly killed and millions displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans were also driven from their homes in the area. About three-quarters of a million people remained displaced within Tigray before the latest escalation.

The conflict began in November 2020 between federal forces and Tigrayan forces and lasted two years. The Pretoria agreement, signed in November 2022, ended the full-scale war but left several political and territorial disputes unresolved.

Broader alliance against Abiy

The new alliance brings together groups that previously fought on different sides. The TPLF and the Amhara Fano National Movement were opposing forces during the earlier war but are now part of the same coalition. The Oromo Liberation Army, which has fought federal forces in Oromia since 2018, has also joined, as has a faction of the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

The ONLF leadership inside Ethiopia’s Somali region has said it is not part of the coalition.

Ethiopia’s government has accused Eritrea of supporting armed groups inside the country and backing the new alliance. Eritrea has denied supporting them. Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have deteriorated since the previous war, including over Abiy’s push for access to Red Sea ports.

Analysts say the conflict has not yet become a full-scale civil war, although the risk of wider escalation remains. Jervin Naidoo, a senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa, said violations of the Pretoria agreement had continued on both sides since the war ended.

The TPLF began as an armed movement against Ethiopia’s military government in the 1970s and later became the dominant force in the coalition that governed the country for nearly three decades. Abiy became prime minister in 2018 and formed the Prosperity Party, reducing the TPLF’s influence at the centre of government.