Former enemies form alliance to overthrow Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed
The TPLF, Amhara's Fano militias and the Oromo Liberation Army — groups that fought on opposing sides in the Tigray war — said they had been coordinating for more than a year and aimed to install a transitional government.
Forces that once fought against each other in Ethiopia's Tigray war have united in a seven-group military alliance to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government, according to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Both the government and the TPLF have amassed troops along their northern border, raising concerns of a potential resurgence of the conflict that claimed up to 600,000 lives.
The TPLF's Vice President, Amanuel Assefa, announced the formation of the alliance, expressing the group's intention to remove the current regime and establish a transitional administration. The alliance includes Tigrayan forces, Amhara nationalist militias, the Oromo Liberation Army, and four other regional groups. TPLF Vice President Amanuel Assefa indicated confidence in the alliance's success, having discussed it for over a year.
Fano leader Zemene Kasse will preside over the new alliance. Abiy Ahmed, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his role in resolving the Eritrean-Ethiopian war, has faced growing armed opposition since 2023 as the post-war settlement deteriorated. The Tigray war erupted in November 2020 when federal forces targeted the TPLF, which had controlled Ethiopian politics for three decades before Abiy's ascent to power in 2018.
The Pretoria Agreement, signed in November 2022, aimed to end the two-year conflict, but the TPLF failed to disband its forces and reinstated its regional council in May, effectively nullifying the agreement. Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College in Norway, expressed doubts about the alliance's ability to sustain a war against the federal government, which possesses numerous drones.
He suggested that coordinating as a military command might pose a challenge for the government. Ethiopia has witnessed armed conflicts in its two most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara, with federal forces battling the Oromo Liberation Army, designated a terrorist organization by the government, since 2018 in central Oromia. The Amhara militias, known as Fano, began clashing with the government in April 2023 after federal authorities sought to disarm them.
Despite the alliance's announcement, doubts persist regarding the prospects of groups with differing ideologies and past clashes joining forces. Some Amhara nationalists have administered Western Tigray, a disputed territory between Amhara and Tigray, since the end of the war. The TPLF Vice President emphasized the group's intention to resolve their differences peacefully in the future.
Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders reported at least 12 fatalities and dozens of injuries in a separate conflict in western Ethiopia near the border with South Sudan. The violence erupted in the Gambella region, which hosts over 400,000 refugees, primarily South Sudanese fleeing the ongoing civil war in the world's youngest country.
MSF teams in Gambella have been treating an influx of wounded patients following the clashes in Itang Special Woreda on September 18. The medical charity called on all parties to exercise restraint and protect civilians from further violence, noting that they had yet to determine the responsible parties for the clashes.
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