Fears over Ethiopia peace deal as TPLF restores Tigray government

Announcement from Tigray’s main political party has sparked concern over the potential resumption of a deadly conflict in northern Ethiopia.

Tigray’s main political party has announced that it is taking back control of the region’s government, effectively ending a peace deal between Ethiopia’s federal government and the northern region.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) made the announcement in a Facebook post on Sunday, sparking fears of a resumption of the deadly conflict that raged between the government and regional forces between 2020 and 2022.

The TPLF said its central committee “has decided to reinstate the Tigray Government Assembly (parliament), which had been suspended in the name of peace”.

The statement accused the federal government of violating the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended the war, and of provoking armed conflict within the Tigray region. It also accused the government of withholding funds to pay local civil servants.

Getachew Reda, the party’s former spokesman and an adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, said the TPLF’s statement constituted “a clear repudiation” of the post-war structure created by the Pretoria Agreement.

The conflict stemmed from a breakdown in relations between the TPLF, a rebel-movement-turned-political party that dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades, and Abiy, whose appointment as prime minister in 2018 ended the TPLF’s dominance.

The war, in which at least 600,000 people were killed and some 5 million displaced, pitted federal forces, supported by the Eritrean army, against TPLF rebels.

The conflict ceased in late 2022 as the African Union mediated the Pretoria Agreement, which called for an interim administration to replace Tigray’s elected bodies until new elections could be organised.

Clashes

Despite progress in implementing the deal, it has come under strain in recent months.

In January, clashes erupted in Tigray, and one person was also killed in drone strikes in the northern region.

The Tigray province is also suffering the effects of United States President Donald Trump’s funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development last year, which was once Ethiopia’s largest source of humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian organisations say that up to 80 percent of the population needs emergency support, and funding shortfalls are placing a strain on the health system.