Introduction

Ethiopia has returned to war. Within three days in September 2026, seven armed and opposition movements declared a joint front to remove the federal government, and fighting spread from Tigray into Afar and Amhara. The Pretoria Agreement that ended the 2020–2022 war, a conflict the African Union estimates killed some 600,000 people, has in practice collapsed.

This article sets out how the country reached this point, where the federal government and the new Alliance for Survival stand apart, and how the war could spill across Ethiopia's borders into Eritrea and Sudan. It then considers the scenarios ahead.

My argument is that another military victory by either side will not end Ethiopia's cycle of wars. The only durable exit is an inclusive transitional government and a genuine settlement of the national question: a federation that respects every people's right to self-determination, including, where a people freely chooses it, the right to separate peacefully under Article 39 of the constitution. Such a settlement could reshape Ethiopia, but it could also open the way to a deeper union of the Horn of Africa built on consent rather than conquest.

How Ethiopia got here

The peace of November 2022 was always thin. The Pretoria Agreement silenced the guns in Tigray, but it left the hardest questions unresolved: the status of western Tigray, the return of displaced people, and who would govern Tigray itself. Meanwhile, the war simply moved elsewhere.

In Amhara, the Fano militias that had fought alongside the federal army against Tigray turned against it in 2023, after the government moved to disband regional special forces. In Oromia, the Oromo Liberation Army has fought federal forces since 2018; a breakaway faction signed a limited deal in December 2024, but the main command rejected it. By 2025, much of the country outside Addis Ababa had become unsafe to travel through.

In Tigray, relations between the TPLF and Addis Ababa deteriorated through 2025. Clashes resumed late that year, and in April 2026 the TPLF removed the federally backed interim administration led by Tadesse Werede and reinstated its own leadership. Federal drone strikes on Tigray followed, including on Mekelle in late August 2026, and troops massed on the regional border.

On 20 September 2026, seven movements announced the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival: the Amhara Fano National Movement, the TPLF, the OLA, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar Ugugumo front, the Benishangul People's Liberation Movement and the Gumuz People's Democratic Movement. Two days later, federal drone strikes hit Alamata in southern Tigray, where ACLED sources reported 15 to 17 strikes in a single day, with schools and a hospital among the reported targets.

On 23 September, Tigrayan forces seized the airports of Mekelle, Shire and Axum and opened fronts in Afar and Amhara. In Afar, the Ugugumo front and Tigrayan forces captured Abala and fought in Berahile, Erebti and Dallol; in Amhara, Fano and Tigrayan forces fought federal troops in North Wollo and Wag Hemra, closing Lalibela airport. Each side says the other started it, and much of the reporting cannot yet be verified amid a telecoms blackout in Tigray.

Two visions in collision

The war is fought over territory, but it is driven by opposing answers to one question: what kind of state Ethiopia should be.

IssueFederal government (Prosperity Party)Alliance for Survival
LegitimacyElected government defending constitutional order against armed insurgentsA personalist, authoritarian regime that must be removed
Cause of the warTPLF violations of Pretoria and "forces of destruction" backed from outsideFederal "invasion", drone strikes and cutting of public services
Political end-stateContinuity under the current government, with national dialogue on its termsAn inclusive transitional government under a transitional charter
The federationA more unified, centralised state; ethnic politics seen as divisiveRights of nations and nationalities, self-determination (members differ on how far)
External actorsAccuses Eritrea of financing the AllianceDenies being a proxy; Eritrea denies involvement

The government's case is that it is the lawful authority confronting armed groups that reject the ballot box. President Taye Atske Selassie told the UN General Assembly on 23 September that Ethiopia had shown "immense restraint" against interference by adversarial elements. The Prime Minister's spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, has said the Alliance's members were collaborating with Eritrean financial backing, a claim Asmara denies.

The Alliance's case is that the state itself has become the source of insecurity. Its founding statement commits members to remove the ruling party, establish an inclusive transitional government, and resolve their own differences peacefully and by the will of their peoples.

The Alliance's weakness is that its members do not share one vision of the future. The founding statement defers the hardest questions, including western Tigray, the future of ethnic federalism and the place of Oromo nationalism, to a later constitutional dialogue. Fano and the TPLF fought on opposite sides only four years ago, and they still dispute western Tigray and Raya. Whether this becomes a coordinated military force or remains a political declaration is still an open question.

Spillover: Eritrea, Sudan and the wider Horn

This war will not stay inside Ethiopia's borders. It is being fought on a frontier that already joins two other crises: a cold confrontation with Eritrea and a hot civil war in Sudan.

Eritrea and the Red Sea

The alliance of convenience between Addis Ababa and Asmara that fought the Tigray war has collapsed. Prime Minister Abiy has repeatedly described sea access as existential and called the loss of Assab a "mistake" to be corrected, which Eritrea reads as a threat to its sovereignty. In February 2026, Ethiopia demanded the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from its territory, and Eritrea called the allegations fabricated.

Analysts have long warned that the real danger lies in proxy conflict. The Atlantic Council argued in May that Eritrea's coordination with the TPLF, Fano and the OLA serves to keep the Ethiopian army stretched internally, since an offensive on Assab would leave Amhara and Oromia exposed. If Addis Ababa concludes that Asmara is directing the Alliance, the temptation to strike Eritrea directly, or to seize a corridor to the sea, will grow.

Outside powers raise the stakes further. Egypt, locked in its dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile dam, has reportedly signed deals to upgrade Assab and Djibouti's Doraleh port for its warships, and the United States has moved to lift sanctions on Eritrea. A second Ethiopia–Eritrea war would draw in Gulf states, Egypt and Turkey, and threaten one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Sudan and the western borderlands

Sudan is the second front. In Blue Nile State, which borders Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region, the RSF and SPLM-N have fought the Sudanese army for control of the border crossings. Kurmuk and Geissan have changed hands repeatedly since early 2026, militarising the frontier and opening routes for weapons and fighters. Khartoum accuses Ethiopia of backing the RSF, while the Sudanese army is deepening its military ties with Eritrea.

The risk is less a classic spillover than a convergence of wars. Tigrayan fighters have reportedly appeared in Sudan's conflict, and in August 2026 projectiles from Ethiopian–Tigrayan clashes landed on refugee camps inside Sudan, killing Ethiopian refugees. With the Benishangul and Gumuz movements now inside the Alliance, western Ethiopia and eastern Sudan could become one connected battlefield.

The wider region

Djibouti, which handles most of Ethiopia's trade, faces disruption to the corridor that sustains its economy. Somalia and Somaliland are already entangled in Ethiopia's search for a port, and the ONLF's membership of the Alliance brings the Somali Region into play. Meanwhile, Kenya and South Sudan would absorb refugees from Ethiopia's south and west if the war spreads there.

Scenarios for Ethiopia's future

Four broad paths lie ahead. None is inevitable, and elements of several may unfold at once.

  • Protracted war of attrition. Neither side can win outright. The federal army holds the cities and main roads and relies on drones and air power, while the Alliance holds rural areas and border zones. This is the most likely path in the short term, and the most costly: famine, mass displacement and a slow hollowing-out of the state.
  • Federal military reassertion. The government breaks the Alliance's cohesion, retakes lost ground and offers selective deals to individual members. This would bring a temporary calm without solving anything, as Pretoria did. The grievances would return, as they have every decade since the 1960s.
  • Collapse of the centre. A rapid Alliance advance, a split within the security forces, or an economic crisis brings down the government in Addis Ababa, as happened in 1974 and 1991. Without an agreed framework, this path risks a scramble among victorious movements whose visions clash, and fragmentation by force rather than by consent.
  • Negotiated transition. Military stalemate and regional and international pressure push both sides to the table. An inclusive transitional government is formed, and the national question is settled through dialogue and, where needed, referendums. This is the least likely path today, but the only one that ends the cycle.

The task for Ethiopians and their neighbours is to make the fourth path possible before the first or third become irreversible.

Recommendations: a settlement of consent, not conquest

1. An inclusive transitional government

The first step is a ceasefire and an inclusive transitional government, brokered by the African Union and IGAD with guarantees from key partners. It must include the ruling party, the Alliance's members, unarmed opposition parties and civil society, and not merely a reshuffled version of the current order. Its mandate should be limited and time-bound: restore humanitarian access, demobilise forces, return displaced people, and convene a genuine constitutional dialogue ending in free elections.

2. Keep ethnic federalism, and make it real

Ethnic federalism is often blamed for Ethiopia's wars. The truth is that it has never been honestly applied. Under the EPRDF, and again under the Prosperity Party, a dominant party at the centre controlled the regions, so self-rule existed on paper while power stayed in Addis Ababa. The answer is not to abolish the federation and return to centralism, the system that produced the wars of the imperial and Derg eras, but to make self-government real.

That means regional governments chosen freely by their own people, fair sharing of revenue and resources, protection for minorities living inside every region, and neutral institutions to settle disputed boundaries such as western Tigray, Raya, Metekel and the Afar–Somali border.

3. Honour Article 39: self-determination, including peaceful separation

The Ethiopian constitution already contains the tool for the hardest cases. Article 39 grants every nation, nationality and people an unconditional right to self-determination, up to and including secession. It sets out a clear, peaceful procedure: a two-thirds vote of the people's legislative council, a referendum organised by the federal government within three years, a majority vote, and an orderly transfer of powers and division of assets.

The case for respecting this right rests on history. Ethiopia's modern borders were not the natural frame of an ancient nation. They were largely formed through the southern and western conquests of Emperor Menelik II in the late 19th century, then fixed by treaties he signed with Britain, Italy and France between 1897 and 1908. In this sense, Ethiopia's rulers took part in the colonial partition of the Horn rather than standing outside it. Many of the peoples brought into the empire this way, including Oromo, Somali, Afar, Sidama, Berta and Gumuz, were never asked whether they wished to belong.

A century of grievance cannot be settled by force. Every attempt to hold the country together through the barrel of a gun, from Haile Selassie to Mengistu to the present, has ended in another war. A union that its peoples freely choose would be far stronger than one they are forced to accept. And where a people, after a fair process, chooses to leave, a negotiated and peaceful separation is far better than decades of bloodshed. Eritrea's independence in 1993, after thirty years of war, shows the cost of refusing that choice for too long.

Anticipating objections

This argument will meet serious objections, and they deserve an answer.

"Ethiopia resisted colonialism; Adwa proves it." Adwa was a real defeat for Italy, but it was won with European-made rifles and artillery, and with Russian advisers and volunteers at Menelik's side. It also happened in the middle of his own campaigns of conquest. While European powers secured the strategic coastlines, the Ethiopian emperors subjugated the peoples of the interior. After the victory, Black people across the world hailed Menelik as their champion, but it was a role he rejected. When the Haitian pan-Africanist Benito Sylvain asked him to lead an association for the advancement of the Black race, Menelik reportedly replied that he was not a Negro but a Caucasian, as recorded in John H. Spencer's Ethiopia at Bay (1984). Historian Raymond Jonas, author of The Battle of Adwa (2011), notes the same episode, describing a ruler whose aim was to be emperor of Ethiopia, not anybody's hero. The same outlook persisted at the top of the imperial state. Spencer also records that Emperor Haile Selassie told the Nigerian nationalist H. O. Davies that Ethiopians did not regard themselves as Africans, but as a "mixed Hamito-Semitic people." Adwa protected Menelik's empire; it did not free the peoples he had conquered.

"Article 39 was a TPLF design that divided the country." Whoever introduced it, it was right. In 1991, the Derg had fallen, its army had been dismantled, and Eritrea was on its way to independence. It was the promise of ethnic federalism and Article 39, that no people would again be held in the state by force, that persuaded Ethiopia's nations and nationalities to remain within it. Without that promise, Ethiopia would most likely have ceased to exist in 1991. The problem since then has not been the principle, but the refusal of successive governments to honour it in practice.

"Self-determination will destroy Ethiopia." It may change Ethiopia, but it is the denial of that right that has repeatedly brought the country close to collapse. Guaranteeing the right is often what makes people willing to stay: Scotland and Quebec voted to remain precisely because they were free to leave.

"Ethiopia's peoples are too intermixed to separate." This is the strongest objection. Millions live outside their "home" region, and territories such as western Tigray, Metekel and the Afar–Somali border are claimed by more than one group. Any process under Article 39 must therefore come with binding protections for minorities, internationally supervised referendums, and mediation of disputed boundaries before any vote is held. Without these, secession could repeat the violence it is meant to end.

"The Alliance is no better than the government." Some of its members carry heavy records from past wars, and their own disputes are unresolved. That is exactly why the transition must be inclusive and rules-based, and why no armed movement, whether in government or in opposition, should inherit power by force alone.

"Separation leaves landlocked states and unviable economies." Borders need not become walls. This is why self-determination must be paired with a regional framework for open trade, shared ports and joint infrastructure, the subject of the conclusion.

Conclusion: from dismantling to union

The fear that honouring self-determination could lead to Ethiopia's dismantling is real, and it should not be dismissed. But the choice before the country is not between unity and breakup. It is between a union held together by force, which has failed for a century, and a relationship among peoples built on consent.

If Ethiopia's nations and nationalities are free to choose, many may choose to stay in a genuine federation. Some may choose to leave. Either way, the Horn of Africa's peoples share rivers, pastures, ports, languages and faiths that no border can divide. A settlement based on mutual respect could become the foundation of something larger: a Horn of Africa community with open borders, shared access to the Red Sea, joint development of the Nile and a common market.

Europe's history offers a lesson here. Its nations built a union only after they stopped trying to conquer one another. The Horn of Africa can do the same, but only if its peoples are first allowed to decide their own future. The alternative, another generation of war, is a price the region can no longer afford.

Sources

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