Ethiopia: Tigrayans accuse the government of having launched an ‘all-out war’

Nairobi – Tensions are rising once again in Tigray, the region in northern Ethiopia that has just emerged from the 2020–2022 war between local forces and the central government in Addis Ababa. The region’s authorities have accused Abiy Ahmed’s government of launching an ‘all-out war’ in western Tigray, fuelling fears of renewed hostilities almost four years on from an agreement that had brought – only formally – an end to a conflict that claimed up to 600,000 lives. Local leaders, spearheaded by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, accuse the government of having ‘intensified’ the ‘total blockade and siege it is waging against the people of Tigray’, in addition to “the attacks carried out by drones and allied armed forces; Prosperity’s dictatorial and genocidal regime has launched an open war”.

The Tigrinya version of *J’accuse* comes two months after Ethiopian elections, which resulted in a widely anticipated victory for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party. The electoral triumph, with the party securing 438 of the 486 available seats, has consolidated Abiy’s power at a time when the country – Africa’s second most populous – is caught between economic recovery and unresolved tensions. Addis Ababa is seeking to get its reform and liberalisation agenda back on track, capitalising on a new era of openness that was also marked by the launch of its stock exchange in January 2025.

This momentum is counterbalanced by separatist impulses and mounting tensions brewing right on Tigray’s northern border, which is now firmly aligned with Eritrea: Ethiopia’s historic rival, which entered the war alongside Addis Ababa following the 2018 ceasefire and was stung by its exclusion from the peace agreements signed in Pretoria in 2022.

The ‘grey area’ between conflict and pacification, as defined by the analyst Gerrit Kurtz, has intensified in recent months amid mutual accusations and tensions along the axis linking Addis Ababa, Asmara and Tigray itself. The violence reported by the Tigrayans raises fears of a wider conflict breaking out, with the risk of a domino effect across various open fronts in Abiy’s foreign policy: from repercussions across the entire Horn of Africa region to fallout on the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, inaugurated by Ethiopia and opposed by Egypt.