Four years after the Pretoria Peace Agreement supposedly ended the Tigray war, Ethiopia is back at war — and the geometry of the conflict has fundamentally changed. A formal alliance of armed groups including the TPLF, the Oromo Liberation Army, Fano militias, an Ogaden National Liberation Front faction, and smaller groups from Benishangul-Gumuz and Afar have announced a common objective: toppling Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's federal government. The coalition is unprecedented in its breadth, spanning ethnic and regional lines that previously made coordination impossible. The Pretoria deal's failure was structural, not incidental. Three critical actors were excluded from the negotiation table: Eritrea, which had fought alongside Ethiopia against the TPLF and now appears to be supporting the rebel alliance; the Amhara Fano militias, which fought in the war but were shut out of peace talks and then targeted for disarmament; and TPLF hardliners who viewed the agreement as a euphemism for military defeat. The federal government compounded these exclusions by attempting to forcibly disarm Fano instead of addressing their grievances — converting a political problem into a military one. International attention evaporated almost immediately after the 2022 deal. Patricia Rodrigues of Control Risks notes that while some early implementation occurred — the TPLF surrendered heavy weaponry in 2022 and 2023 — both sides quietly rearmed as global focus shifted elsewhere. The agreement functioned as a ceasefire, not a settlement. The United States recently lifted sanctions imposed during the 2020-2022 conflict, a move that analysts say diminished Western leverage precisely when it was most needed. Eritrea's apparent side-switch is the most destabilizing variable. During the Tigray war, Asmara fought alongside Addis Ababa. Now, while not formally a member of the rebel alliance, Eritrea is believed to be providing support to the rebels. This transforms the conflict from an internal Ethiopian matter into a regional proxy dynamic, with external actors motivated by their own interests in destabilizing Abiy's government. The human cost is compounding on an already catastrophic baseline. Internally displaced persons from the 2020-2022 conflict remain in makeshift camps — they never went home. Now fresh displacement is layering on top. Reports of drone strikes on civilian areas, rebel groups deploying military hardware in schools and clinics, severed telecommunications in Tigray and Amhara, power disruptions, and suspended flights to cities including Kombolcha and Lalibela describe a conflict that is systematically degrading civilian infrastructure. Analysts are pessimistic about mediation prospects. UN Secretary-General Guterres has dispatched a special envoy to the Horn of Africa, but both Rodrigues and DW journalist Negash Mohammed agree that negotiations are unlikely to produce results until at least one side concludes that violence cannot deliver its objectives. Rodrigues expects intense but geographically contained fighting to continue, concentrated along the borders between Tigray, Amhara, and Afar, with nationwide spread unlikely given Ethiopia's rough terrain and the fragmentation of opposition groups outside the coalition. The pattern is familiar and grim: a peace deal that excluded essential parties, international attention that evaporated, sanctions that were lifted prematurely, and a federal government that chose coercion over negotiation. Every structural flaw in the Pretoria agreement is now producing the violence it was supposed to prevent.
