NAIROBI — Explosions sounded this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, a city rarely under direct attack. Though exactly what happened remains murky, the apparent drone strikes were a sign of just how far and fast renewed fighting in the country has spread. Clashes between government troops and rebel groups have killed scores of civilians in the north in recent days, spilling south toward the pilgrimage site of Lalibela.
The conflict, in many ways, has picked up where a grueling civil war, which left hundreds of thousands of people dead, ended with a tenuous peace agreement in 2022. Amid shifting alliances, rebels in northern Ethiopia have once again picked up arms against the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as the United Nations warns ofhumanitarian disaster.
But this time, the fighting comes amid a wider sprawl of compounding conflicts in the Horn of Africa and beyond. The risks have only grown that full-blown war in Ethiopia could erupt and become intertwined with instability beyond the country’s borders, as tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea reach a breaking point; Sudan fights a civil war of its own that has sparked the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis; and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen gain ground along the Red Sea — a strategic waterway at the heart of geopolitical rivalries spanning Africa and the Middle East.
This time, Tigrayan rebels from the north have joined forces with an alliance of six other rebel groups across the country. And Ethiopia has accused neighboring Eritrea — which in the previous war fought on the side of Ethiopia’s government — of backing the rebels.
As the potential for conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea looms, a dizzying array of countries and armed groups are lining up behind the respective sides, introducing further prospects for escalation.
“That last war was almost in slow motion, with battles moving from town to town,” said Cameron Hudson, an East Africa specialist and former CIA analyst. “This one is accelerated, and it is happening throughout the country.”
The U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, Ervin J. Massinga, has put out a statement condemning the Tigray People’s Liberation Front for launching an “unwinnable” offensive.
“Other armed groups would be wise to avoid this,” he cautioned.
Most of the Trump administration’s activities related to Ethiopia, which is home to 139 million people and one of Africa’s biggest economies, has focused on commercial deals rather than traditional diplomacy, analysts said.
Hudson noted that the reported explosions around Addis Ababa overnight Thursday, apparent drone strikes,have the potential to “change the entire character of the war.”
“Last time, the crimes felt distant and removed from the capital,” as the war unfolded primarily hundreds of miles off, in Tigray, Hudson said. He noted that Addis Ababa is home to many thousand foreign residents and an economic capital in East Africa. Rebels marched on the city in 2021 before being stopped as Ethiopian allies, namely Turkey, rushed to supply Abiy’s government with drones.
This time, Hudson said, the rebels and their allies succeeded in accomplishing “in a matter of weeks what took them two years last time.”
But despite its initial moves, the anti-government coalition could be less cohesive than its public messaging suggests, said Lesley Anne Warner, a visiting scholar with the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former U.S. government official.
“During the previous conflict, Tigray had more internal cohesion and collectively perceived the struggle as existential,” she said.
But recently, she said, tensions between hard-liners and more moderate figures in the movement have been “elevated” over the implementation of the peace agreement.
And while Abiy has created animosity outside of Tigray, which helped drive rebel groups into the coalition, Warner said, “unresolved disputes over territory as well as differences of opinion over Ethiopia’s political future ultimately threaten the durability of this partnership in the long term.”
A fragile peace
Abiy, who has led Africa’s second most populous country since 2018, was once heralded for pursuing democratic reforms and brokering peace deals in the region. In 2019, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for securing an accord with Eritrea that ended a 20-year military standoff between the neighboring nations.
But after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front held its own elections in 2020, Abiy accused renegade local officials of attacking a military base. The military campaign turned into one of the worst disasters of the 21st century: More than 500,000 people were killed and human rights atrocities were committed on all sides, including widespread sexual violence.
Those atrocities have been “absolutely ignored” by Ethiopia’s government and the international community, said Haimanot Ashenafi, a researcher on the Horn of Africa at London-based rights group Amnesty International.
”Survivors of the previous conflict are horrified about what will come right now,” she said.
The new round of conflict broke out last month in Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia, which is home to about 7 million people, when rebels seized three major airports in Tigray and launched an offensive against government forces in neighboring Amhara and Afar. Government forces have since made inroads with counterattacks.
Tigray’s government accused Ethiopia of an “invasion” and said its battle was defensive.
The exact trigger was unclear, analysts said, but potential war had been in the making for months, as Abiy’s forces launched quiet drone strikes in the north and limited supplies reaching Tigray, creating siege-like conditions that laid the groundwork for their revolt.
The government has also been clashing with militias in neighboring Amhara and Afar, which are now allied with the rebels. Analysts said that it is unclear what exact role Eritrea — a repressive nation of about 4 million that is Ethiopia’s neighbor, and which has more than 1,000 miles of coastline — is playing.
In the last war, Eritrea backed Ethiopia’s government. But since that war ended, tensions haven risen, in part because Abiy has pushed for access to the Red Sea, saying that it is “inevitable and existential” that Ethiopia gain it. Ethiopia lost its port when Eritrea gained its de facto independence in 1991. Fighting in Yemen under the shadow of the Iran war has further inflamed tensions around the Red Sea.
In a sign of Abiy’s focus on the issue, Ethiopia in 2024 signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland for access to its Berbera port, in exchange for recognizing Somaliland’s independence from Somalia.
Wider dangers
Ahmed Hussein, the deputy governor of Ethiopia’s Afar region, said that Eritrea was directly involved in the recent fighting. Eritrea has publicly denied its involvement, and a government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Ethiopia also accused Sudan and Egypt, as well as Eritrea, of backing the armed groups fighting the federal government. Sudan and Egypt also rejected those claims.
Sudan, meanwhile, has accused Abiy of assisting the Rapid Support Forces, one of the factions fighting in the ongoing civil war in Sudan, including using Ethiopian bases to train RSF soldiers and fire drones into Sudan.
Ethiopia’s government has also received support from the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, whose drones proved game changers for Abiy in the last war, along with support from China.
In recent days, government forces have seized control of strategic towns in Tigray, even as anti-government forces make progress in seizing territory further south, in Amhara and Afar, said Jalale Getachew Birru, East Africa senior analyst with Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a U.S.-based monitoring group.
Flights to the town of Lalibela, a UNESCO site popular with tourists, were suspended last week because of fighting.
Widespread internet blackouts, she said, make access to information difficult and total figures of deaths and injuries hard to come by. Doctors Without Borders has reported hundreds of war wounded seeking treatment in hospitals in Tigray in recent weeks.
This week, service disruptions in Tigray left locals unable to communicate. Most banks were closed and food prices soared, according to residents who spoke with The Washington Post. Residents told The Post that they feared a return to the famine-like conditions that had characterized the first war.
Tsegaye, a 28-year-old Tigrayan writer living in Addis Ababa whom The Post is identifying only by first name because of concern for his safety, said that he was able to reach his sister in Tigray briefly by phone.
“She told me things were getting worse,” Tsegaye said. “She said they were not sure how many were injured from the attacks, but she is very scared.”
Chason reported from Dakar, Senegal.
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