An opinion piece built on published reporting from the ground. Where a claim is an allegation rather than a verified fact, we say so.
The Pretoria Agreement was signed in November 2022 and treated, in most capitals, as the end of Ethiopia’s northern war. It was not an end. It was a pause, and last week the pause broke. Anyone who called that deal a settlement was reading a ceasefire as a cure.
What is actually happening
Fighting erupted across northern Ethiopia when Tigrayan rebel forces launched a major offensive, seizing three airports in Tigray and pushing into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. The TPLF says it is fighting a “defensive war” and accuses federal forces of using drones and heavy artillery.
Government forces and their allies counterattacked. On Monday, 29 September, the Tigray Peace Force, an armed group of Tigrayan fighters aligned with the federal government, said it had captured Alamata with the national army. Two diplomatic sources told Reuters the town had fallen. Alamata matters because it sits about 120km south of Mekelle, near the Amhara border, and serves as a supply hub for troops, fuel and food. Its capture opens a path north towards the regional capital. A military source told Al Jazeera government forces were already advancing towards or surrounding Mekelle.
On the other side, TPLF forces seized Erebti, a key town in Afar, over the weekend. That offensive is the one to watch. Afar carries the supply routes from Djibouti through which most Ethiopian imports, fuel included, move. Cutting or threatening that corridor is a different order of escalation from a battle over a border town.
The neighbours are already in the room
The Afar regional governor told Al Jazeera that Eritrean forces were taking part in the fighting and controlled more than two-thirds of the region. That is an allegation, and the Eritrean government has not responded to it. Ethiopia’s army chief, Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, has accused Eritrea of backing the opposition and alleged Sudan and Egypt are also involved. All three deny it. Egypt said its policy rests on “full respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of states”; Sudan called the accusations “baseless and unfounded.”
Denials matter. So does the fact that a war that began as an internal dispute is now being described in terms of three neighbouring states. When a conflict’s newspapers start arguing about who is supplying whom, the conflict has already outgrown its borders.
A coalition of old enemies
Days before the offensive, the TPLF joined six other armed groups to form the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which says it wants to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and set up a transitional administration. The bloc includes the Oromo Liberation Army and the Amhara Fano National Movement. Read that sentence again: these are groups that have fought one another. A coalition held together by a single shared enemy is fragile, but it is also, right now, real.
The human cost is already climbing
Doctors Without Borders said patients at the Korem and Alamata hospitals rose from about 180 to more than 420 in 48 hours. Around 300 wounded arrived at Suhul Hospital last week. Internet and phone networks have been disrupted in Tigray. Valerie Browning, co-founder of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association, told the Associated Press that about 150,000 people have been displaced since the latest fighting began. The previous war, from 2020 to 2022, killed an estimated 600,000 people, per the African Union’s own mediator Olusegun Obasanjo, and displaced millions. Nobody who watched that should be relaxed about this week.
Why this matters far beyond Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa and the seat of the African Union. Its stability is not a national matter. A war in the Horn drags on the Djibouti trade corridor, on regional security, and on the AU’s already thin credibility as a peacemaker. The 2022 deal was mediated under heavy outside pressure and then largely left unenforced. That is the lesson worth carrying: a peace agreement nobody is willing to guarantee is a document, not a peace.
For the rest of the continent, including small economies with no army in this fight, the warning is simpler. Fragile settlements do not fail quietly. They fail all at once, and they take the region’s assumptions down with them.
Sources
- Al Jazeera, “Fighting in Ethiopia intensifies: What’s the latest?”, 29 September 2026 (Alamata capture, Erebti, Afar/Djibouti corridor, Eritrea allegation, the seven-group alliance, MSF casualty figures, 150,000 displaced via AP and Valerie Browning, Obasanjo’s 600,000 estimate) — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/29/fighting-in-ethiopia-intensifies-whats-the-latest
- Egypt’s foreign ministry response via Reuters; Sudan’s statement on X, as reported by Al Jazeera, 29 September 2026.
Leave a Reply