Just four years after one of Africa’s bloodiest wars was brought to a halt, guns are firing again in northern Ethiopia. The danger is no longer confined to Tigray: an anti-government alliance, tensions with Eritrea and the struggle for access to the Red Sea could turn another Ethiopian war into a crisis stretching towards the Middle East.
By the Editorial Team of TLF
For a region already moving from one crisis to the next, another warning light has begun flashing.
Ethiopia may be sliding back towards war.
The peace that stopped the devastating conflict in Tigray in 2022 was always fragile. Now, after months of political fractures, accusations and military manoeuvring, fighting has returned — and this time the confrontation is developing against an even more dangerous regional backdrop.
On Wednesday, September 23, Tigrayan forces seized three airports as clashes with federal troops were reported at several locations, according to Reuters. Tigray's authorities said their forces had been pushed into a “defensive war.”
Addis Ababa tells a very different story.
Getachew Reda, an adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and himself a former senior Tigrayan official, accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking government positions in Afar and Amhara.
Al Jazeera reported fighting extending beyond Tigray, while Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to the region.
Even the basic question of who fired first is therefore disputed. But that increasingly risks becoming secondary to the much larger question: can the fighting still be contained?
The Peace That Never Quite Became Peace
The 2022 Pretoria agreement stopped a catastrophic two-year war between Ethiopia's federal government and the TPLF.
It did not resolve everything that caused it.
The conflict of 2020–22 killed hundreds of thousands of people and produced hunger, displacement and allegations of atrocities by several sides. Pretoria silenced the guns, but some of the most difficult political and territorial disputes survived the agreement.
Those unresolved problems have gradually returned to the surface.
Tigray itself fractured politically. Rival factions fought for control of the TPLF and the regional administration. The return of a harder-line faction to power further weakened an already uneasy relationship with Addis Ababa.
For months, the warning signs accumulated.
Now the guns have returned.
An Alliance Against Abiy
There is another reason why this week's fighting is particularly worrying.
Only days before the clashes, the TPLF joined six other armed movements in announcing an alliance aimed at removing Abiy Ahmed's government, Reuters reported.
Among them are the Fano movement from Amhara and the Oromo Liberation Army.
That is a remarkable combination. Some of these forces stood on opposing sides during Ethiopia's last war. Whether they can actually coordinate politically or militarily is another matter.
But Addis Ababa now faces the possibility — or at least the fear — that unrest in Tigray could become part of a much broader challenge spreading across several parts of the country.
Ethiopia's problem is therefore no longer simply whether another Tigray war has begun.
It is whether several of the country's unresolved conflicts are beginning to converge.
Why The Levant Should Be Watching
On a map, Tigray may appear far removed from the Levant.
Strategically, it is much closer.
Ethiopia sits immediately behind the African shore of the Red Sea system — the maritime corridor running from the Indian Ocean through Bab el-Mandeb, past Yemen and towards the Suez Canal and eastern Mediterranean.
What happens there does not necessarily stay there.
And looming over the latest Ethiopian crisis is Eritrea.
The extraordinary wartime partnership between Addis Ababa and Asmara during the previous Tigray conflict has deteriorated badly. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of supporting armed groups, something Asmara denies, while another dispute has become increasingly difficult to ignore: Ethiopia wants reliable access to the sea.
For landlocked Ethiopia, the issue is economic, strategic and increasingly political. The port of Assab in Eritrea inevitably sits in the background of that debate.
This makes another war in northern Ethiopia especially dangerous.
A renewed conflict does not mean Eritrea will automatically intervene. Nor does fighting in Tigray mean ships passing through the Red Sea suddenly face another direct threat.
The danger is cumulative.
Another Fire Around The Red Sea
Look at the wider map.
Yemen remains unstable. Sudan's war has devastated another state on the Red Sea. Somalia continues to struggle with insecurity and regional rivalries. Gulf powers have developed deep political, commercial and security interests along the African coastline.
Now Ethiopia — with more than 100 million people and enormous political weight in Africa — is again confronting the possibility of major internal war.
That matters far beyond Addis Ababa.
Every additional crisis around the Red Sea complicates an already crowded contest involving ports, military access, shipping routes, regional alliances and outside powers. Bab el-Mandeb is not simply a narrow strip of water between Yemen and Djibouti. It is one of the arteries connecting Asia and the Gulf with Suez, the Mediterranean and Europe.
The Horn of Africa and the Levant are therefore not separate strategic theatres. Increasingly, they are parts of the same troubled neighbourhood.
Ethiopia At The Edge Again
There is still reason for caution.
The competing sides offer contradictory accounts of the latest fighting. It is too early to know whether Ethiopia is returning to a war on the scale of 2020–22, and the new opposition alliance has yet to demonstrate that it can operate as a coherent military force.
But something fundamental has already changed.
The assumption that Pretoria had permanently removed the possibility of another Tigray war can no longer be taken for granted.
Airports have been seized. Federal and Tigrayan forces are fighting again. Armed groups elsewhere in Ethiopia are attempting to build a common front against Abiy's government. And behind the internal struggle sits an increasingly tense relationship with Eritrea and the unresolved question of Ethiopia's route to the Red Sea.
For the Levant, that is the part worth watching closely.
The region does not need another war.
Yet from the eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf, from Yemen across the Red Sea to Sudan and now towards Ethiopia, instability is increasingly forming a connected arc.
Another fire may be starting at its southern edge.
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