A peace that cost half a million lives to achieve has begun to fracture in northern Ethiopia, where fighting between federal forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front reignited this week into what the rebels themselves call full-blown war. The 2022 agreement — hard-won after two years of violence, famine, and the collapse of entire health systems — now stands at the edge of collapse, its survival uncertain as old grievances and new alliances reshape the battlefield. The world watches from Addis Ababa to New York, aware that the distance between a ceasefire and a catastrophe can be measur
Ethiopia's fragile peace shatters as TPLF fighting resumes, threatening new conflict
The 2020-2022 conflict killed approximately 500,000 people through violence, famine, and health system collapse; renewed fighting threatens similar humanitarian devastation.
The only issue joining them is opposition to Prosperity Party rule
Mark
So the TPLF and the Fano militia are now fighting together against the government. How did two groups that were enemies become allies?
Mimi
They were enemies over land—competing claims in the Amhara region that go back to the last war. But they share something bigger now: they both oppose Abiy's Prosperity Party. That's the glue.
Luke
But that's fragile, right? A shared enemy isn't the same as a shared vision. If they win, what then?
Mimi
Exactly. Tronvoll's point is that this alliance is tactical, not ideological. It could fall apart as quickly as it formed.
Mark
The military says it killed 272 TPLF fighters. Should we believe that number?
Luke
We shouldn't. The military gave those figures, but they couldn't be independently verified. And there's no breakdown—we don't know how many were soldiers versus civilians. That's a huge gap.
Mimi
Right. In the last war, the death toll was 500,000, and much of that came from famine and health system collapse, not just combat. We're already seeing the same pattern—flights suspended, tourism halted, infrastructure disrupted.
Mark
What does the international community want?
Mimi
Deescalation. The AU, the UN, the US—they're all calling for dialogue. The US ambassador said the TPLF made a poor decision to launch this offensive.
Luke
But we should note: the US sanctioned the TPLF earlier this year. So there's already a political dimension to how the international community is framing this.
Mark
What happens if this doesn't stop?
Mimi
If the fighting spreads and the alliance holds, you could see a much larger conflict. The Amhara region is huge. And if the health system collapses again like it did before, the humanitarian toll could be catastrophic.
Luke
The key unknown is whether the 2022 peace agreement can be salvaged or whether it's already dead.
O Pulso
- Fighting erupted in Tigray on Wednesday and escalated so rapidly that by Thursday the TPLF had declared a full-blown war, shattering the relative calm that had held since the 2022 peace deal.
- Ethiopia's military claims 272 TPLF fighters killed in a counter-offensive, but the figures are unverified and offer no accounting of civilian casualties caught in the crossfire.
- The TPLF has forged a tactical alliance with the Amhara Fano militia — former enemies united only by opposition to Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party — spreading the conflict into the Ethiopian highlands and threatening UNESCO heritage sites near Lalibela.
- The African Union, United Nations, and United States have all called for restraint, with the US ambassador in Addis Ababa openly criticizing the TPLF for abandoning dialogue in favor of what he called an unwinnable fight.
- The shadow of the 2020–2022 war — 500,000 dead from violence, starvation, and health system collapse — looms over every diplomatic appeal, raising the stakes of inaction to a scale the international community cannot easily ignore.
A peace that cost half a million lives to achieve has begun to fracture in northern Ethiopia, where fighting between federal forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front reignited this week into what the rebels themselves call full-blown war. The 2022 agreement — hard-won after two years of violence, famine, and the collapse of entire health systems — now stands at the edge of collapse, its survival uncertain as old grievances and new alliances reshape the battlefield. The world watches from Addis Ababa to New York, aware that the distance between a ceasefire and a catastrophe can be measured in days.
Ethiopia's fragile peace collapsed this week when fighting erupted in the Tigray Region on Wednesday and rapidly escalated into what the Tigray People's Liberation Front declared a full-blown war. The Ethiopian military launched a counter-offensive by Thursday, claiming to have killed 272 TPLF fighters and wounded roughly 260 others — figures that could not be independently verified and that offered no distinction between combatants and civilians.
The violence threatens to unravel the 2022 peace agreement that was meant to close one of the world's deadliest recent conflicts. The preceding war, fought from 2020 to 2022, killed approximately 500,000 people through direct violence, famine, and the collapse of health infrastructure. That toll has given the current moment an acute urgency: the African Union, the United Nations, and the United States all called for restraint almost immediately, with the US ambassador in Addis Ababa criticizing the TPLF for abandoning dialogue in pursuit of what he called an unwinnable fight.
The roots of the conflict stretch back to 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed dismantled the TPLF-dominated political order that had governed Ethiopia since 1991, replacing it with his Prosperity Party. Abiy's early diplomacy — including a landmark reconciliation with Eritrea — earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, but his subsequent push for seaport access alienated neighbors and deepened the TPLF's resentment of its lost power. War broke out in 2020, with Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the rebels, before the 2022 agreement brought an uneasy halt.
Now the conflict is expanding geographically and politically. The TPLF has announced an alliance with the Fano militia, an armed Amhara group that has been waging its own insurgency since 2023 — despite the two groups holding competing land claims dating to the previous war. Their coalition is held together by shared opposition to Abiy's government rather than any common vision, making it as volatile as it is significant. Fighting was reported near Lalibela, the UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its ancient rock-hewn churches, and flights to the region were suspended. Whether the 2022 peace agreement can survive — or whether Ethiopia is sliding back toward catastrophe — remains the question that no one in the international community yet knows how to answer.
Ethiopia's fragile peace collapsed this week. On Wednesday, fighting erupted in the Tigray Region in the country's north, and by Thursday the situation had escalated into what the Tigray People's Liberation Front called a full-blown war. The Ethiopian military responded with what it described as a counter-offensive, claiming to have killed 272 TPLF fighters and wounded approximately 260 others—figures that could not be independently verified and that included no breakdown between combatants and civilians.
This resumption of violence threatens to unravel a peace agreement signed in 2022, an agreement that was supposed to end one of the world's deadliest recent conflicts. The previous war, which ran from 2020 to 2022, killed roughly 500,000 people through direct violence, starvation, and the collapse of health infrastructure. The scale of that devastation hangs over the current moment. International observers—the African Union, the United Nations, and various governments—immediately called for restraint. The US ambassador in Addis Ababa, Ervin J. Massinga, expressed disappointment at the TPLF's decision to launch what he called a large-scale offensive, arguing that rejecting dialogue and pursuing an unwinnable fight served no one.
The roots of this conflict run deep into Ethiopia's recent political history. The TPLF dominated the country from 1991 until 2018, governing alongside other ethnic-based parties that critics said were designed as compliant opposition rather than genuine alternatives. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, he dismantled this system in favor of a government organized around his Prosperity Party rather than ethnic lines. Abiy's early moves—particularly his effort to repair relations with Eritrea, Ethiopia's former enemy—earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. But his later push for landlocked Ethiopia to gain access to a seaport was perceived as threatening by both Eritrea and Somalia, and it deepened tensions with the TPLF, which had lost its grip on power.
In 2020, the TPLF launched a rebellion against Abiy's government. Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the rebels, and the war consumed the region for two years. Now, as fighting resumes, the conflict is spreading beyond Tigray. The TPLF has announced an alliance with the Fano militia, an armed group based in the Amhara region in Ethiopia's highlands that has been conducting its own insurgency since 2023. The two groups were once enemies—they have competing land claims that date back to territorial changes made during the previous war—but they share a common opponent: Abiy's Prosperity Party. Fighting was reported around Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site famous for its ancient rock-hewn churches, and flights to the tourist destination were suspended on Thursday.
Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, observed that the TPLF-Fano alliance is held together by opposition to Prosperity Party rule rather than by shared vision or ideology. This fragile coalition, combined with the geographic spread of fighting into the highlands, suggests the conflict could expand in ways that are difficult to contain or predict. Ethiopia's President Taye Atske Selassie Amde, speaking at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, framed the violence as an assault by destructive forces and blamed external interference. But the immediate question facing the international community is whether the 2022 peace agreement can survive, or whether Ethiopia is sliding back into the kind of catastrophic war that killed half a million people just four years ago.
Citações Notáveis
We are in the situation of full-blown war now— TPLF vice president Amanuel Assefa
Rejecting dialogue sponsored by the African Union and engaging in an unwinnable fight does nothing for the people— US Ambassador Ervin J. Massinga
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Leia o original em Deutsche Welle ↗