Two days after seven Ethiopian armed groups announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival and pledged to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a senior official of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was asked whether the statement amounted to a declaration of war. He hesitated, then answered with a question of his own. He was speaking to Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, who told Al Jazeera that the answer captured what the new rebel alliance had changed.
It has not created a single, coherent military force capable of marching on Addis Ababa. It has brought several of Ethiopia’s separate conflicts into the same political framework and, potentially, into the same military calculation. The question now is how much further that can spread and whether seven movements with different enemies, territorial claims and histories can actually fight as one.
On Tuesday, drones struck two schools in Alamata, in southern Tigray, and the town’s mayor said 14 civilians were killed and 22 wounded. The account could not be independently verified, and the federal government did not immediately comment. By Wednesday, Tigrayan forces had seized Alula Aba Nega International Airport in Mekelle, reported, citing an airport employee and a Western embassy security source.
The airport employee said staff had been told there were no flights. The alliance, whose founding statement Fano commander Zemene Kassie read on Tigrai TV on Sunday, brings together the Amhara Fano National Movement, the TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), along with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement. It promises a transitional administration once Abiy is gone.
Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, told that the members had been collaborating for some time with Eritrean financial backing, an accusation Asmara has repeatedly denied. The TPLF dominated Ethiopia for 27 years, until Abiy took power in 2018 and pushed it to the margins. In November 2020, the federal army, backed by Eritrean troops and Amhara forces, went to war with it.
The conflict became one of the deadliest in Ethiopia’s modern history. African Union mediator Olusegun Obasanjo believes that about 600,000 people died, though estimates of the toll have varied. That war ended in November 2022 with an agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa.
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