CONFLICT TRENDS ANALYSIS / MARCH 2026

Summary

• The November 2022 Pretoria Agreement ended two years of war between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), halting the large-scale fighting that had displaced millions, but it postponed rather than resolved the conflict’s root causes.
• Implementation of core security provisions began in early 2023: The TDF handed over heavy weapons to the ENDF and Eritrean troops largely withdrew from Tigray’s heartland, though they entrenched themselves in contested border areas.
• Amhara forces vacated most of Tigray but refused to relinquish Western Tigray, leaving tens of thousands of Tigrayan IDPs in limbo, a crisis that culminated in starvation deaths at Hitsats camp in late 2025 and remains unresolved.
• An Interim Regional Administration established in March 2023 was quickly undermined by factional competition between IRA President Getachew Reda’s more federally cooperative camp and TPLF hardliners around Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael, resulting in Getachew’s removal in April 2025 and replacement by Lieutenant General Tadesse Werede.
• The national electoral board’s cancellation of TPLF’s registration in May 2025 effectively bars the region’s dominant political force from the June 2026 elections, raising the spectre of a repeat of the 2020 electoral dispute that triggered war.
• A new armed faction, the Tigray Peace Force (TPF), emerged in 2025, composed of fighters dissatisfied with TPLF rule and tacitly backed by federal authorities; its incursions into Tigray from Afar triggered intra-Tigrayan clashes.
• A rapprochement between TPLF and the Eritrean government, dubbed Tsimdo, produced people-to-people reconciliation at border towns from mid-2025 but alarmed Addis Ababa
• These events combined with federal fuel and financial restrictions, drone strikes and military mobilization have brought the peace process to its most acute point of strain since Pretoria.
• The post-CoHA period reveals a structural impasse: Territorial disputes, TPLF’s exclusion from electoral politics, a stalled DDR process, unaddressed transitional justice and deepening mutual mistrust between Mekelle and Addis Ababa mean the conflict is more paused than resolved, and the risk of renewed large-scale hostilities remains real.

THE ETHIOPIA PEACE RESEARCH FACILITY

This conflict trends analysis was produced by the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF). The PRF is an independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian experts with support for conflict sensitive programming in the country. It is managed by the Rift Valley Institute and funded by the UK government.