Power Struggle in Ethiopia’s Tigray: Averting a Return to War

Power Struggle in Ethiopia’s Tigray: Averting a Return to War

 What is happening?

The dramatic struggle for control of Ethiopia’s Tigray region has taken a sharp and dangerous turn. Over the course of several days, culminating on 5 May, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) elbowed out regional leader Tadesse Werede, who enjoyed the federal government’s backing, and replaced his administration with a new regional council. This body is led by TPLF chair Debretsion Gebremichael, who was the region’s leader during a bloody 2020-2022 war between Tigray and the federal government. A few days after the TPLF pronounced him the new regional president, Debretsion took over Tadesse’s office and convened a cabinet meeting in the presidential building in Mekelle, the regional capital. Soon thereafter, Debretsion ordered that local administrators appointed by Tadesse now answer to the TPLF’s new regional council.

The TPLF power grab has already heightened tensions with Addis Ababa. Tadesse had warned that such a move would annul the 2022 Pretoria agreement, which ended the two-year civil war. As the TPLF installed Debretsion, Tadesse issued a statement from Mekelle saying he refused to resign, adding that those who had seized power by force would be responsible for the consequences. With the 2022 deal hanging by a thread, the risk of renewed conflict in northern Ethiopia is significant.

> TPLF leaders increasingly saw Tadesse as unwilling to push their agenda.

> The TPLF’s attempt to reassert its authority over Tigray is a direct challenge to the federal government under Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who viewed himself as the victor in the 2020-2022 civil war, which took hundreds of thousands of lives and devastated much of Tigray. The roots of the current dispute date back to 8 April, when the federal government unilaterally extended the mandate of Tigray’s interim administration, created under the peace deal, and reappointed Tadesse to another year in office. The TPLF had agreed to Tadesse’s original appointment one year prior, but tensions between him and the wider group grew over the course of his term. TPLF leaders increasingly saw Tadesse as unwilling to push their agenda, which would have seen greater confrontation with Ethiopian central authorities and closer ties to Eritrea, Ethiopia’s longstanding geopolitical rival.

Tadesse’s reappointment brought these tensions to a head. The TPLF said it was not consulted and denounced the reappointment as a violation of the 2022 accord, which states that the interim administration should be formed “through political dialogue between the Parties”. Though Addis Ababa has not explained its reasoning for the unilateral appointment, some close to federal authorities argue that the extension was a technical rollover that did not require new consultations.

The federal government has not yet issued a statement in response to the developments, though it has sent fighter jets buzzing over Mekelle. A substantial troop deployment on Tigray’s borders from earlier in the year also remains in place. Ethiopia is facing a severe fuel shortage as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and is preparing for elections in June – two factors that may have prodded the TPLF, seeing Addis Ababa as vulnerable, to choose this moment to seize power. For its part, the TPLF asserts that its objective is to restore the region’s “sovereign ownership of power” – an allusion to the ideology that formed the basis of Ethiopia’s ethnic nationalist constitution that gives every ethnic region explicit self-determination.

This stance, however, will only reinforce the impression in Addis Ababa that the TPLF is acting treacherously to reverse the outcome of the 2020-2022 war and form a de facto breakaway rogue province. It is unclear how the TPLF plans to govern the vast mountainous area without assistance from Addis Ababa, given that the interim administration was dependent on the federal government for budget subsidies and salaries. But, if that was a concern, it was insufficient to deter the group from a highly escalatory step.

 Why are relations between the federal government and TPLF so fraught?

Abiy’s rise to power in 2018 put his government on a collision course with the TPLF, which had dominated power in Ethiopia since toppling Mengistu Hailemariam’s military dictatorship in 1991. Abiy ascended to the premiership on the back of mass protest movements against the TPLF’s rule, which had overseen a period of economic growth and stability but also fomented antipathy among many Ethiopians who resented the outsized power concentrated in the hands of the minority Tigrayans.

After Abiy’s rise, most of Tigray’s elite decamped from Addis Ababa to their homeland in the country’s north. Tensions between Addis Ababa and Mekelle steadily grew. In September 2020, Tigray – under Debretsion’s leadership – held its own polls in defiance of the federal government. Tigrayan forces then overran a major federal military base, sparking civil war. The federal government, which was allied with militias from the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, as well as Eritrea, fought the Tigrayans for two years and eventually achieved a decisive military advantage in late 2022.

The result was an unsteady peace. With Tigrayan forces in massive retreat on the battlefield, the parties signed a lopsided peace agreement in Pretoria in November 2022. Among other provisions, it required the TPLF to demobilise its forces and gave Abiy a veto over the region’s post-war interim leadership. But though some Tigrayan forces did stand down and disarm, most did not. Other parts of the accord remained contested as well – including the status of territories disputed between Tigray and Amhara, which were taken by Amhara militias during the war and continue to be outside Tigrayan control. Over more than three years, the two parties failed to move forward on implementing the agreement or to agree on how to reintegrate Tigray into Ethiopia’s political federation.

Amid these disagreements, some of the TPLF’s leaders, known as the “old guard”, began to flex their muscles, leading the charge to push back against parts of the Pretoria agreement. Though the TPLF had suffered a major military defeat at the hands of the federal government and its allies, this party that once ruled all Ethiopia remained the dominant political force in the region. The old guard also retained de facto power over the Tigray Defence Forces, which had formed during the 2020-2022 war to fight the federal government, from a combination of Tigrayan elements of the national army and local conscripts.

After Abiy vetoed the TPLF’s nomination of Debretsion to serve as head of the post-war regional administration, the group settled on Getachew Reda, who had led the TPLF’s negotiating team in Pretoria. He assumed the post in March 2023. Party leaders soon soured on Getachew, however, concluding that he had grown too close to Addis Ababa and was failing to advocate for Tigray and the TPLF’s core interests. They also blamed him for the 2022 peace agreement that he had helped negotiate, which they viewed as stacked in favour of the federal government. As a result, they began a political campaign to oust him from power, starting in the countryside and moving slowly toward Mekelle. By March 2025, they had forced Getachew to flee to Addis Ababa.

Though many feared a return to conflict, Abiy and Debretsion compromised on who would assume the mantle of regional leader. They settled on Tadesse, a veteran Ethiopian general and chief of the regional security forces. But relations between the TPLF and Tadesse, whose job required him to maintain a working relationship with Abiy, also disintegrated. Caught between two increasingly antagonistic masters vying for political control of Tigray, Tadesse’s position became untenable.

> Core to the rising tensions between Mekelle and Addis Ababa has been the TPLF’s surprising rapprochement with its neighbour and long-time foe Eritrea.

> Core to the rising tensions between Mekelle and Addis Ababa has been the TPLF’s surprising rapprochement with its neighbour and long-time foe Eritrea, which joined Abiy’s military campaign against Tigray in the 2020-2022 war. (Ties between Ethiopia and Eritrea began to fray right after the Pretoria agreement, as Asmara believed the accord made too many political concessions to the defeated TPLF, which at that time it wanted to see destroyed.) The new alliance angered Abiy, contributing to a rapid deterioration in relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara. At the same time, Abiy started to make public his desire for landlocked Ethiopia to regain control of a sea port – an ambition that many suspected he sought to achieve through annexation of Eritrean territory. Not surprisingly, this declaration pushed Eritrea closer to Tigray. The TPLF’s alliance with Eritrea creates a new power dynamic in Ethiopia’s north by removing the prospect that, in the event of reignited conflict, Addis Ababa could work with Asmara to encircle Tigray. The result is an emboldened TPLF.

Other moves from both sides deepened the crisis. In May 2025, after a dispute between the national electoral commission and the TPLF, the government banned the TPLF as a political party, a move that legally prevented it from holding political power in Tigray. Afterward, Addis Ababa started to restrict government budget subsidies and fuel supplies to Tigray, imposing a kind of economic blockade on the region. The government also appeared to be backing an armed splinter group from the Tigray Defence Forces, known as the Tigray Peace Force, which had started a low-level insurgency against the TPLF in 2025. After clashes between the Tigray Defence Forces and Tigray Peace Force broke out in late 2025, the federal army carried out drone strikes on Tigrayan units it claimed had strayed into the Afar region. The strikes marked the first direct engagement between government and Tigrayan forces since the 2020-2022 war.

The government and TPLF have also clashed over disputed areas that lie along the border of the Tigray and Amhara regions, which have been under the joint control of Amhara militias and federal forces since the Tigray war. The TPLF claims that the government has stalled on finding a solution to the thorny issue of which region can claim these territories. It also says Addis Ababa has obstructed the return of Tigrayans displaced from these areas, most of whom are still living in camps far from their homes. In late January, Tigrayan forces entered the disputed Tselemti area and exchanged fire with army units stationed there. Tadesse claimed the intent was to protect Tigrayan civilians who had returned to the area and were being persecuted by Amhara militias. The government – which believes that Mekelle wishes to reassert control of the disputed areas – responded by conducting drone strikes in Tigray and temporarily halting flights to the region. Tadesse then ordered the Tigrayan forces to withdraw, complaining that Abiy had escalated to “something resembling an all-out war”.

A few weeks later, the government moved a sizeable contingent of troops to Tigray’s borders, raising alarm that it had indeed decided to use military force to regain control of the region. For several weeks the government forces sat in camps strategically located around Tigray’s borders. Some of them were then quietly withdrawn, though it remains unclear why. Whatever the case, the redeployments failed to achieve an enduring de-escalation. The expiry of the interim administration’s mandate in early April was widely viewed as a flashpoint, with speculation rife over whether Abiy would reappoint Tadesse as the body’s leader. At first, the TPLF expressed its opposition to the unilateral decision in a written statement, but after several weeks of internal discussions they decided to go further by reinstating Tigray’s pre-war leadership and ceasing to cooperate with the existing regional administration backed by Addis Ababa.

 How are regional tensions contributing to the Tigray problem?

The war in Sudan and other regional rivalries, including the bitter antagonism between Ethiopia and Eritrea, heighten the risk of a new conflict in Tigray, in part because Addis Ababa worries that the TPLF has become a pawn in an effort by its main regional adversaries (namely Eritrea, but possibly also Egypt and the Sudanese army) to exert pressure on it.

As concerns Sudan, the civil war there has drawn the Sudanese army into a closer relationship with Egypt and Eritrea – an alignment that puts it at odds with Addis Ababa given its long-running disputes with both. Compounding tensions, several thousand Tigrayan troops in a unit known as Army 70, which fled to Sudan during the 2020-2022 war, have fought alongside the Sudanese army in its battle with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Army 70 troops have remained in eastern Sudan, posing (from Addis Ababa’s perspective) a threat to Western Tigray (known as Welkait by the Amhara) – one of the disputed border regions referred to above. Addis Ababa has also accused the Sudanese army of allowing the TPLF and other armed opposition groups, including the Amhara Fano and Oromo Liberation Army, to hold coordination meetings in Sudanese territory.

There are other sources of friction, too. In late 2025, Addis Ababa claimed that it had intercepted Eritrean weapon supplies to the Fano via the Tigray Defence Forces, which it also said had helped Fano groups coordinate attacks on the army in the Amhara region. Ethiopian officials also say they detect the hand of Egypt in these murky proxy engagements. The Ethiopian government believes that Cairo seeks to strengthen its hand in the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which Egypt sees as threatening the downstream flow of the Nile waters on which it heavily depends.

> Ethiopia has sought to push back against Sudan’s involvement with the TPLF by increasing its own engagement with the RSF.

> Ethiopia has sought to push back against Sudan’s involvement with the TPLF by increasing its own engagement with the RSF. While retaining its official neutral stance in the conflict, in late 2025 Addis Ababa appeared to pivot toward the paramilitary, reportedly allowing supplies to the group to transit through Ethiopia and apparently permitting the RSF to assemble in Ethiopian territory for an offensive in Sudan’s Blue Nile state in early 2026. Sudan’s army-led government also accuses Ethiopia of allowing the United Arab Emirates to launch drones into Sudan on behalf of the RSF from its territory, allegations that Ethiopia and the UAE deny.

These dynamics increase the stakes for Addis Ababa in the new showdown over Tigray. Ethiopia believes that allowing the TPLF to regain uncontested control of Tigray would in effect grant its regional foes a dangerous foothold inside Ethiopian territory.

 How serious is the risk of a return to war?

The TPLF’s attempt to wrest back political control of Tigray has heightened tensions between Mekelle and Addis Ababa and increases the risk of a new military confrontation between the TPLF and federal government. After the TPLF’s ouster of Tadesse, the ball now appears to be in the federal government’s court. There are several ways it could respond.

One possibility is that Abiy could decide to refrain from taking the military option, at least for now. The federal government does not presently see Tigray as a major military threat and Abiy may calculate that the status quo is less risky than a new war, which could see him become bogged down against an opponent fighting for its survival. An attack on the TPLF would also risk Ethiopia’s regional opponents, particularly Eritrea and the Sudanese army, siding with Mekelle and further destabilising an already fragile region.

On top of these considerations, Ethiopia’s national elections are scheduled for early June with Abiy and his Prosperity Party all but guaranteed to record a comprehensive victory with very little opposition. Abiy is unlikely to want to disrupt what he will seek to portray as a validation of his government and political project.

Finally, Ethiopia is suffering from an acute fuel shortage due to the disruption of global oil supply caused by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the resultant closure of the Strait of Hormuz. From a purely operational perspective, the shortage makes a major military offensive against Tigray less likely in the short term.

> [Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed] may view the TPLF’s actions as a grave provocation that undercuts Ethiopia’s sovereignty and demands a response.

> But there are no guarantees that Addis Ababa will forebear, even temporarily. Abiy may view the TPLF’s actions as a grave provocation that undercuts Ethiopia’s sovereignty and demands a response. Even if Abiy does not immediately respond militarily, the federal government may conclude that the only long-term solution is through a military operation to remove the TPLF administration from power and replace it with one that is more aligned with Addis Ababa. Another option Abiy may take is to embark on a campaign focused on enforcing a tighter economic blockade, and possibly aerial strikes, rather than a new ground invasion. The possibility that such operations could escalate cannot be discounted.

However the situation develops, unless and until there is a meaningful reduction in tensions, Tigray’s beleaguered population will find themselves facing economic decline and mounting insecurity, forcing a growing number of Tigrayans to leave the region.

 What can be done to reduce tensions?

The TPLF’s move to restore its pre-war government in defiance of Addis Ababa more or less guts the Pretoria agreement, with the important exception of the tenuous cessation of hostilities it established, which is well worth preserving and building upon. If the parties are left to their own devices, it is not clear whether the accord – or the peace it ushered in – will survive. But outside pressure could help.

The states and figures that helped strike a deal in 2022 should engage. A first step could be to urgently reinsert one of the continental leaders involved in the negotiation of the Pretoria agreement, perhaps under the aegis of the African Union (AU), to shuttle between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, open a channel of communication and seek possible areas of common ground. The AU’s appointment of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was involved in the Pretoria negotiations, “to support [its] efforts toward peace and stability in the Horn of Africa” – apparently with a focus on Tigray – is a good start. Kenya’s former president, Uhuru Kenyatta, another Pretoria veteran, is respected by both sides and could also play a useful role in mediation. Other well-placed mediators could also step in. Any regional involvement should receive the backing of major international players, especially the U.S., the EU, China, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, all of which have an interest in the region’s stability, and thus in preventing a new war in Ethiopia’s north.

The U.S., in particular, has been working to strengthen its ties with Ethiopia, including by encouraging U.S. companies to invest in various projects, such as construction of a major new international airport near Addis Ababa. On 11 May, the U.S. announced that it would be relaxing its policy of denying arms exports to Ethiopia. U.S. officials believe there is an understanding in Addis Ababa that its deepening relationship with Washington would be imperilled by the launch of a major new conflict with Eritrea. Whether the same applies to Tigray is not fully clear, but one way or the other, Washington should use the leverage it is working to create to nudge Addis Ababa toward seeking a peaceful route out of the deadlock.

As for the goals of such a process, substantive progress may be difficult to achieve over the short term given the complexity of local and regional dynamics, suggesting that external players should focus on stopping the situation from deteriorating further toward war. Gaining agreement from both sides to engage in talks (either in person or indirectly via mediators) would be an important starting point. Broader regional de-escalation is also desperately needed, particularly between Addis Ababa and the Sudanese army, which are increasingly at loggerheads due to mutual suspicions about support for proxies.

Once the immediate risk of a flare-up has receded, the two sides will need to hash out a follow-on to the Pretoria agreement – one that wrestles with the issues that are now causing the most friction between the parties. The foundation of any such deal would be the painful recognition that neither side can soon rid itself of the other – and the costs of trying to do so through war would be far too immense and dangerous. Also important would be a plan for how Tigray can be reintegrated into the Ethiopian political federation. Absent a hard focus on these issues, Mekelle and Addis Ababa will find themselves repeatedly drawn back to their present collision course.