Ethiopia's Unfinished Peace

Nearly four years after Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front signed the African Union-brokered Pretoria Agreement, renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia combined with the formation of a seven-group Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival is testing whether the settlement can survive. This paper examines the September 2026 seizure of the Mekelle, Axum, and Shire airports by Tigrayan forces against the backdrop of incomplete disarmament, unreturned displaced populations, and the reassertion of Debretsion Gebremichael's faction within the Tigray People's Liberation Front, developments that had already eroded Pretoria's political framework before the latest militarization. It analyzes the unusual cooperation between the Tigray People's Liberation Front and the Amhara Fano National Movement, former wartime enemies now joined with the Oromo Liberation Army and regional groups from Afar, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz areas, and argues that the coalition's significance lies less in its internal cohesion than in its capacity to stretch federal manpower, financing, and political attention across simultaneous fronts. The paper also weighs contested allegations of Eritrean financing against the absence of confirmed evidence, and situates the crisis within a combustible regional environment that includes war in Sudan and strained Ethiopian-Egyptian relations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. It concludes that the central question is no longer whether Pretoria can be fully implemented, but whether diplomacy can restore its authority before Ethiopia's separate conflicts converge into a broader multi-front challenge to federal authority.