Seven Ethiopian armed groups — the TPLF, Amhara Fano, Oromo Liberation Army, Ogaden National Liberation Front, and three smaller movements — announced the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival on Sunday, pledging to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and install a transitional administration. Fano commander Zemene Kassie read the founding statement on Tigrai TV. The coalition's significance is not military unity, which does not exist, but the framing: it pulls Ethiopia's fragmented insurgencies into a single political calculation for the first time. The backdrop is a war that never ended. The 2020-2022 Tigray conflict killed roughly 600,000 people according to AU mediator Olusegun Obasanjo. The Pretoria Agreement of November 2022 silenced the guns but excluded Eritrea and Amhara forces, and left Western Tigray — the territory both Amhara and Tigrayan forces claim — unresolved. In May 2025, the TPLF restored its pre-war legislative council and installed Debretsion Gebremichael as regional president, setting up a rival authority. Federal-Tigrayan clashes resumed at Shererina on August 1. Drone strikes followed: two on Mekelle homes on August 20 wounding 13, one destroying a 41-tonne food aid truck near Adi Daero on September 20. On Tuesday, drones struck two schools in Alamata, killing 14 and wounding 22 according to the town's mayor. By Wednesday, Tigrayan forces had seized Mekelle's Alula Aba Nega International Airport. The alliance's internal contradictions are severe. Tigrayans are being mobilized alongside Fano fighters who, in Kjetil Tronvoll's characterization, were 'perpetrating genocide on them' four years ago. The OLA's participation is deeply unpopular among Oromos, who accuse Fano of killing Oromo civilians in Wollega. The OLA itself calls its membership a 'procedural consensus' and demands Fano disown a faction it says the government armed. Oromo politician Jawar Mohammed says he has 'not seen anything as unpopular among the Oromos' as this alliance. Western Tigray — the most combustible territorial dispute — goes unmentioned in the founding statement. Eritrea is the silent variable. Abiy's spokesperson accused the alliance of receiving Eritrean financial backing. Over the past two years, Eritrea reconciled with the TPLF after Abiy began demanding Red Sea access, which Asmara read as a claim on its coast. Tronvoll says Eritrean troops are in Tigray now, though Al Jazeera could not verify this. The International Crisis Group assesses Eritrea's minimum aim as establishing a buffer zone on its southern border. TPLF spokesperson Michael Asgedom denied Eritrean military presence but left the door open. The coalition's dual messaging reveals its real function. Asgedom says the alliance 'was created to bring peace and democracy' and also that it would build a new order 'over the ruins of Abiy Ahmed's system.' Tronvoll calls this constructive ambiguity: one script for diplomats, one for fighters. The alliance's claim to represent seven peoples can delegitimize Abiy internationally and raise the cost of settlement without firing a coordinated shot. It is a political instrument more than a military one. Abiy appears to be pursuing containment rather than negotiation. His Prosperity Party won 438 of 486 contested parliamentary seats in June, though voting did not take place in Tigray and was disrupted in parts of Amhara and Oromia. Magnus Taylor of the International Crisis Group assesses that the TPLF, having lost most heavy weapons in 2022, has come off worse against federal air power. The likelier trajectory is slow deterioration with southern Tigray as the flashpoint, not a march on Addis Ababa. Tronvoll is blunt: 'I don't think he skips lunch because of this.' The human cost is escalating regardless of the alliance's coherence. Tens of thousands of Tigrayans have fled the region to avoid a draft, according to Tronvoll, who reports coercive recruitment by TPLF forces. Drone strikes on schools, homes, and food aid trucks continue with no federal acknowledgment. The Pretoria Agreement's promise of permanent peace has become a framework for managed conflict, and the people asked to fight are the same ones already on their knees from the last war.
