Ethiopia and the African Horn: A Slow March to Pandemonium

For over a year, Ethiopia has teetered on the edge of catastrophe without quite falling over. As Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared to threaten imperial expansion for sea access, as rebellion consumed the vast Amhara region, and as the International Monetary Fund arrived to stabilize a faltering economy, observers repeatedly braced for the moment when local problems would explode into all-out war. Yet each time, the predicted disaster failed to materialize.

Ethiopian federal troops have not invaded Somalia. Conflict with Eritrea hasn’t reignited. Government attempts to attract new businesses might even suggest internal revolts have been suppressed.

But this apparent calm is deceptive. The drumbeat of dread hasn’t faded—it continues in the background, a persistent reminder that something is profoundly wrong in the Horn of Africa, and that internal and external pressures continue pushing this nation toward potential disaster while the world’s attention lies elsewhere.

The Hidden War in Amhara Region

The crisis in Ethiopia’s Amhara region resembles severe governance failure on paper, but the reality is far more complex. The New Humanitarian reports that four million people out of a total population of twenty million face food insecurity. Diseases like measles and cholera spread unchecked. Along the western border, tens of thousands of refugees from war-torn Sudan shelter in makeshift camps.

Violence has become woefully commonplace across this land roughly the size of Georgia—kidnappings, murders, rapes, and even massacres occur regularly.

Yet poor governance isn’t driving this collapse, nor is it gang violence comparable to Ecuador’s crisis. At the root of Amhara region’s crisis lies an undeclared civil war fought primarily in the countryside but occasionally exploding into local cities with bloody results. This war fundamentally pits an ethnic army against federal forces and stands today as perhaps the clearest symbol of Ethiopia’s internal crisis.

Although officially beginning in summer 2023, the Amhara insurgency has much deeper roots in the Tigray War. Taking place between 2020 and 2022 in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, that conflict pitted ethnic Tigrayan forces under the TPLF against the federal government, which was backed by neighboring Eritrea and ethnic Amhara militias known as Fano. Killing somewhere in the region of 600,000, the conflict proved nightmarish for all involved. In Tigray region, a government blockade starved countless civilians to death.

In Amhara region, an invading Tigrayan force massacred civilians. The federal government came shockingly close to seeing the capital Addis Ababa fall to a combined force of Tigrayans and ethnic Oromo fighters.

Yet for all the war’s horrors, it’s arguably the peace that created current instability. When the peace agreement was signed in Pretoria in 2022, no one was invited to represent the interests of the Amhara who had fought and died alongside federal forces in Fano militias. The Critical Threats project at the American Enterprise Institute explains that Fano had several issues with the Pretoria peace agreement.

Fano was concerned the federal government planned to force it to return control of disputed areas captured during the civil war. Amharas also believed the peace deal failed to achieve accountability and justice for TPLF abuses against Amhara civilians.

Those disputed areas include Western Tigray, which was occupied and ethnically cleansed by Amhara forces—an act Fano leadership viewed not as a war crime but as the rightful return of land that had once been theirs. Retaining Western Tigray post-conflict was the bare minimum price the Amhara were prepared to pay for siding with federal forces. Yet the peace agreement seemed to suggest it should be handed back to Tigray. Today, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed favors a referendum to settle the issue—a stance seen as akin to spitting in the face of his erstwhile Amhara allies.

This alone may not have been enough to spark the current conflict in Amhara region. But in spring 2023, the Ethiopian prime minister did something extremely provocative: he called for the disarming of all regional forces. To understand why this proved so inflammatory requires understanding Ethiopia’s unique structure. Rather than a homogenous state, Ethiopia is a collection of two chartered cities and thirteen regions—most of which correspond to an ethnic group like the Amhara, Tigrayans, or Oromo.

A rough comparison point might be Yugoslavia, which consisted of separate regions for Serbs, Croats, and others in the years before it collapsed into ethnic bloodletting. But Ethiopia’s ethnolinguistic regions come with a crucial difference: the constitution allows them to raise their own private armies. Technically, the constitution says each region may establish and administer a state police force to maintain public order and peace within the state. However, most regions have interpreted this in the broadest possible sense, allowing them to operate militias with more men and better weapons than some actual militaries.

From most regions’ perspective, this is a necessary insurance policy. The hatreds and divides in Ethiopia are even deeper and more twisted than they were in Yugoslavia. Amhara civilians living in Oromia have been subjected to years of ethnic cleansing. In 2021 alone, some 3,300 were killed by Oromo militias.

The Tigrayans blame the Amhara for the great famine in the 1980s that struck their homeland hard. The Oromo see them both as oppressors who have conspired to keep their ethnicity down. In a nation where kinfolk are literally murdered for their ethnicity, a local paramilitary force made up of one’s own people feels vital for security.

This is why Abiy Ahmed’s call to disarm all regional forces and integrate them into the federal army was received so poorly in Amhara region. Rather than comply, many former paramilitaries melted away into the countryside, taking their skills and weapons with them. There, they joined the armed Fano groups. But what happened in summer 2023 provided the final catalyst.

Following months of protests and escalating clashes with federal forces, the Fano went on the offensive. In early August, their soldiers swept across the region, taking over airports, government buildings, and even entire cities. While the army eventually chased them back into the countryside, they didn’t defeat them. As the New Humanitarian bluntly stated, fighting has continued ever since.

In the nearly fifteen months since, the Amhara conflict has become one of the key spreaders of instability within Ethiopia. Partially, this has been due to criminal gangs using the conflict as cover to engage in illegal activities from kidnapping to extortion. But it’s also due to the iron-fisted reaction the government is attempting to implement.

According to Amnesty International, federal forces in September unleashed a wave of mass arrests against ethnic Amhara. Hundreds of people, including academics, have been unconstitutionally rounded up and held in unlawful detention. Human Rights Watch documents multiple instances of federal forces attacking and ransacking hospitals in raids that have killed both healthcare workers and patients.

Local rights groups report instances where government drone strikes have hit crowded markets and even schools, killing civilians. Fano militias, meanwhile, have attacked cities and launched deadly raids into neighboring Oromia.

In short, Amhara region has become effectively ungovernable. While the war in Tigray was far from the capital, the current unrest takes place in a region that at its closest point is a mere 30 kilometers from downtown Addis Ababa. It’s also affecting far more people. While Tigrayans pre-war accounted for a mere six percent of Ethiopia’s population, Amhara make up roughly a quarter.

The Oromia Crisis: Another Meltdown

Recently, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED) attempted to assess how many people living in Amhara region had experienced conflict. Their results showed an estimated seven million had been exposed to what ACLED calls organized political violence events since April 2023. That’s a staggering number demonstrating just how extreme conditions have become in Amhara region. But perhaps the real revelation came at the end of their article: only Oromia region records a similar civilian conflict exposure level during the same period.

A vast swathe of land surrounding Addis Ababa, Oromia is the most populous of Ethiopia’s states. Thirty-seven million people call the area home. Yet closeness to the capital hasn’t encouraged stability. Oromia was where the mass protest movement began in the mid-2010s that brought Abiy Ahmed to power and ultimately led to the Tigrayan faction that had long dominated politics being pushed into the background.

Yet the arrival of the ethnically Oromo Abiy Ahmed didn’t calm the volatile region down. If anything, it may have made things worse.

Since 2018, federal forces have been waging a low-intensity war against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA)—itself an offshoot of a different group Addis Ababa made peace with. Although the Oromo, as one of Ethiopia’s most marginalized groups, have legitimate grievances, the OLA’s approach to warfare has been far more ethnically targeted. The Council on Foreign Relations records how in 2021, the group began a campaign of massacres targeting Amhara living in the region. In one particularly gruesome example from 2022, over two hundred Amhara were slaughtered.

Partially, this was a side effect of the Tigray War, where Oromo militias and the Fano fought on different sides. But it was also partially a desire among the OLA to cleanse their lands of other ethnicities, much as the Fano had attempted to do in parts of Tigray. This killing of Amhara civilians is one of the things that has made the Oromo conflict so destabilizing.

Across both the Tigray War and their own local conflict, Amhara militias have repeatedly crossed the border between their two regions to either fight the OLA or carry out revenge attacks on civilians. Crisis Group reports a serious border incursion as recently as mid-September.

At the same time as the Fano and OLA try to slaughter one another, federal forces are also doing battle with the Oromo paramilitaries. While Amhara partisans like to paint Abiy as being the OLA’s puppet master, the truth is more complicated. Although a member of the Oromo, Abiy has deployed repressive tactics against ordinary civilians living in Oromia. At the same time, he’s directed federal forces to try and destroy the OLA.

Although far less bloody than either the Tigray or Amhara conflicts, ACLED reports that the fighting in Oromia has still led to nearly 6,000 fatalities in the last five years.

More worrying, perhaps, is the potential for instability that begins in Oromia to quickly spread to other regions. Take kidnappings. Once mostly associated with militias operating in Oromia, they’ve recently become a grim fact of Ethiopian life. The Economist reports that what began as isolated incidents confined to the remote parts of Oromia, where the state has always been weak, has spread across the country.

Targets were once chosen for their political significance. Now almost anyone is at risk outside Addis Ababa.

There’s evidence too that the prolonged conflict in Oromia is adding to a normalization of violence across Ethiopia as a whole. In the same article, an anonymous Western diplomat explained that as violence entrenches in the Oromo and Amhara conflicts, it seems to be affecting other regions too. As the source told the periodical, it’s metastasizing and quite terrifying.

But perhaps the key reason why the conflict in Oromia is destabilizing for Ethiopia is due to location. If the Amhara war is close to the capital, then the Oromo conflict is practically in the suburbs. As risk advisory group London Politica writes, the Oromia region surrounds Addis Ababa, making stability in this region essential for the whole country.

These are the two internal conflicts that seem most dangerous for Ethiopia’s future stability. This doesn’t even account for the situation in Tigray, where the defeated TPLF still has over 200,000 restless soldiers under arms, and where Eritrean troops still occupy parts of the borderlands they snatched during the war.

Egypt’s Strategic Intervention in Somalia

Alongside its myriad problems at home, the Abiy Ahmed government has increasingly faced trouble from abroad—and the most pressing trouble comes by way of the 1,600-kilometer border it shares with Somalia. Landlocked Ethiopia has intensified its push for sea access over the past year, and in January 2024, the nation reached an agreement to use a port on the Somali coastline. But the trouble then and now is that the port Ethiopia agreed to use was not under the practical control of the Somali government.

Instead, it was land under the control of the autonomous self-governing region of Somaliland. With Ethiopia going over Mogadishu’s head to deal with its rogue province, it was only a matter of time before things came to a boiling point.

But if Ethiopia was serving the role of a more powerful foreign backer for Somaliland, then the federal Somali government in Mogadishu had a foreign backer of its own: Egypt. Over the last month, Egypt has stepped up its involvement in this brewing conflict in a major way. During that time, the Egyptian military has delivered at least two substantial weapons caches to Somalia: one that came by way of several loaded planes in August, and another more major one delivered by warship in late September.

Aboard that warship were anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces, items that the Somali military technically possessed in its arsenal in limited numbers already but may have been in a state of disrepair. Blocking off nearby roads, Somalia took possession of its new weapons and sent them straight to military bases and defense buildings, while Egypt openly acknowledged its ongoing central role in supporting Somali efforts.

Egypt’s recent work in Somalia goes a good deal past just sending weaponry. In August, Cairo and Mogadishu signed a security pact vowing to send five thousand Egyptian troops to Somalia as part of a new peacekeeping mission by the end of 2024. Those troops would replace some ten thousand Ethiopian troops in the country, who Somalia has threatened to expel by year’s end if Ethiopia doesn’t disengage from its agreement with breakaway Somaliland.

All the while, Ethiopian and Egyptian tensions have frayed for other reasons, largely relating to the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which has now filled its reservoir at an Ethiopian section of the Blue Nile tributary. The Blue Nile and the larger Nile River that it flows into are indispensable sources of water for Egypt, with 85 percent of all water in the Nile coming by way of this particular tributary. If used for the nearly completed dam, the water can provide hydroelectric power to the sixty percent of Ethiopians who live today without electricity and even provide power for export to neighbor nations. But in doing so, it can throttle Egypt’s population, whose water comes almost entirely from the Nile.

Ethiopia has already shown a willingness to cause problems for Egypt downstream. For example, when Ethiopia’s new reservoir was filling, the country ignored Egypt’s calls for a slow filling process across anywhere from twelve to twenty-one years. Instead, Ethiopia diverted enough water to fill it in three years.

After the dam controversy, tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia have only risen further. Egypt has insisted that its share of water from the Nile is a red line, something it will not tolerate Ethiopia pushing boundaries on, and it’s been clear that it treats its water share as a matter of national security. Egypt takes the same national security approach when dealing with the idea of Ethiopian port access to the Red Sea, potentially causing major problems for Egypt in a second spot.

Egypt gains tremendous value from the passage of trade ships through the Suez Canal, connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean via an artificial waterway. While Ethiopia wouldn’t be parking a port directly at the Suez Canal, it can still cause major problems. Ethiopia revived its Navy in 2018 and has since signed accords with France to aid in building a new naval arm, although it now works with neighboring Djibouti to base its operations there since it’s still landlocked.

An Ethiopia with both a potential fleet of ships in a decade or two’s time that can blockade the Suez Canal and simultaneously exert nearly full control of the Nile River is a major threat to Egypt’s future, at a time when the country is both among the most populous and fastest-growing nations in the world. Add to that the not-unlikely prospect of Abiy Ahmed himself still being in power in a decade or two—at age forty-eight now and showing all the signs he’s unlikely to let himself be pushed out.

For Egypt, it’s easy to see a strengthening Ethiopia as an existential threat—and Ethiopia’s rhetoric has shifted to match, with Abiy Ahmed issuing grave warnings against any offensive action that Egypt or any other nation might consider taking against him. But now, with Somalia and its internal breakaway region Somaliland caught in the middle, the table is set for the start of a proxy conflict. With Ethiopia and Somaliland already firmly aligned in their priorities, Egypt’s decision to send weapons to the Somali government already speaks volumes. But add to that a turn of events where Egyptian troops take the place of Ethiopian ones, and it’s a different ball game.

Such a move would place Egyptian assets not just within striking range of Somaliland but of Ethiopia itself, particularly if the projected five thousand Egyptian troops are just the start. Like the overlapping diplomatic conflict around Ethiopia’s dam, these two countries are in the early stages of a fight with the potential to last for decades. Over the span of a decade, as a hypothetical Ethiopian port is first built then expanded and militarized on Somaliland’s coastline, it’s not at all difficult to envision a simultaneous buildup of Egyptian troops as a counterweight.

Factor in border disputes, troop encounters, diplomatic and military mishaps, and more, and the start of a true proxy conflict is just inches away. Factor in competition over natural resources like water and a potential cycle of military escalation as Ethiopia builds a navy and Egypt tries to be a counterweight against it, and now we’re in the realm of a small-scale but very real cold war.

Ethiopia’s Alleged Arms Shipments to Puntland

If the prospect of an Egyptian-Ethiopian proxy conflict seemed far-fetched, more signs and signals emerge each day that such a conflict is imminently on the horizon. In late September, Somalia launched a new set of accusations against Ethiopia, claiming that its more powerful neighbor had sent a shipment of arms to Somalia’s other breakaway region, Puntland. Although Somalia didn’t specify what the weapons in question were or when they were shipped, Puntland stands accused of receiving two lorries’ worth of weapons transported from Ethiopia with no clearance or approval by the Somali government. Locals in Puntland’s capital, Garowe, confirmed that they had witnessed a convoy arrive under escort by Puntland’s own security and heard talk of a coming shipment from Ethiopia.

If the allegations are true, then that would mean Ethiopia has secured cooperation with not just one but both of Somalia’s major breakaway regions. Although Somaliland and Puntland have their own bitter rivalries, they together comprise well over a third of Somali territory, with about ten and a half million residents between them and a shared history of armed resistance to the Somali government. If such powerful rivals were to ally together with Ethiopia’s support, then Somalia would only grow more desperate for Egyptian backing—and the cycle just continues from there.

The Asmara Axis: A Coalition Against Addis Ababa

As Egypt and Ethiopia continue to maneuver around Somalia, subtlety has increasingly fallen by the wayside. In early October, the leaders of both Egypt and Somalia, along with the leader of Eritrea, convened a meeting in Eritrea’s capital city, Asmara. The gathering itself was significant, bringing together three nations with varying degrees of antagonism toward Ethiopia into a single room. But it was the closing statements issued to the press that revealed the true nature of this diplomatic convergence.

The joint statement included overt references to respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries in the region. On its surface, such language appears standard for diplomatic communiqués—the sort of boilerplate rhetoric that fills countless international declarations. Yet when Egypt, Somalia, and Eritrea go out of their way to make such a unified statement, there’s only one likely target: the nation caught in the middle.

International experts didn’t mince words about the true meaning of the three nations coming together. Hassan Khannenje, an African Horn expert speaking to the BBC, stated bluntly that this is an axis against Addis Ababa. The characterization is apt. Each of the three nations has distinct grievances with Ethiopia, and their convergence represents a diplomatic encirclement that adds yet another layer of pressure on Abiy Ahmed’s government.

For Egypt, the motivations are clear: the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam threatens its water security, while Ethiopia’s naval ambitions and pursuit of Red Sea access pose strategic challenges to Egyptian interests in the region. For Somalia, the issue is Ethiopia’s agreement with Somaliland and alleged arms shipments to both Somaliland and Puntland, which undermine Mogadishu’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. For Eritrea, the calculation is more complex but no less significant.

Eritrea and Ethiopia share a long and troubled history. The two nations fought a devastating border war from 1998 to 2000 that killed an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people. Relations remained frozen for nearly two decades until Abiy Ahmed came to power and signed a peace agreement with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in 2018—a move that earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize. Eritrea subsequently became Ethiopia’s closest ally during the Tigray War, with Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian federal forces and occupying parts of Tigray that they continue to hold today.

Yet despite this recent alliance, Eritrea’s participation in the Asmara meeting suggests that the relationship between Asmara and Addis Ababa may be cooling, or at minimum that Eritrea is hedging its bets. Eritrea’s motivations for joining this anti-Ethiopia axis likely stem from concerns about Ethiopia’s long-term ambitions in the region, particularly regarding port access. Eritrea itself controls significant Red Sea coastline, and an Ethiopia that secures permanent port facilities in Somaliland could eventually reduce its dependence on Eritrean cooperation.

The formation of this axis represents a significant diplomatic defeat for Ethiopia. It demonstrates that Ethiopia’s actions over the past year—from the Somaliland port deal to the continued filling of the Renaissance Dam—have succeeded in uniting disparate regional actors against it. More concerning still, this diplomatic coalition has the potential to translate into more concrete forms of cooperation, whether through coordinated military exercises, intelligence sharing, or joint support for Ethiopian opposition groups.

The Asmara meeting also highlights how regional dynamics in the Horn of Africa have shifted dramatically. Where once Ethiopia was the dominant regional power, able to project influence across its neighbors, it now finds itself increasingly isolated and facing a coordinated response from multiple directions simultaneously. This diplomatic encirclement compounds the internal pressures Ethiopia already faces from the Amhara and Oromia conflicts, creating a situation where the government in Addis Ababa must defend against threats from both within and without.

The Sudan Dimension: Another Border Aflame

Finally, there’s the separate issue of Sudan—site of one of the world’s worst ongoing wars. The conflict in Sudan represents yet another external pressure point on Ethiopia, one that threatens to draw the country into a regional conflagration even as it struggles with internal rebellions.

The outlines of Sudan’s collapse are stark. A battle for political control between two warlords—one representing the Sudanese army, and one a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces—exploded into actual combat in April 2023. The nation has since suffered a full-scale collapse that has seen the capital of Khartoum reduced to rubble, genocide unfold in Darfur, and as many as 150,000 people killed. Millions more have been displaced, with refugees streaming across Sudan’s borders into neighboring countries.

What receives less attention, however, is the Ethiopian dimension of this catastrophe. As the fighting has spread from Khartoum, it has come right up against the border separating Sudan from Amhara region and Western Tigray—an event that has coincided with Fano militias taking control of border crossings at Metema. This convergence of Sudan’s civil war with Ethiopia’s internal conflicts creates dangerous possibilities for spillover and entanglement.

The Critical Threats project has described the worries this border situation has generated in stark terms: Fano could use its presence along the Sudanese border to establish ties with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. On the face of it, such a threat might seem ridiculous. After all, the RSF are heavily backed by the United Arab Emirates, a country which also bankrolls much of Abiy Ahmed’s plans. It was even UAE drones that arguably helped the Ethiopian government win the Tigray War.

Why, then, would the Fano want to ally with a group even remotely connected to federal forces in Addis Ababa?

The answer lies in a familiar principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Fano hates the Sudanese army almost as much as the RSF does. After all, the Sudanese armed forces used the cover of the Tigray War to annex the disputed al-Fashaga zone the Amhara claimed as their own. This border region, which lies along the Sudan-Ethiopia frontier, has long been contested territory.

When Ethiopian federal forces were preoccupied with fighting in Tigray, Sudanese troops moved in and occupied al-Fashaga, seizing farmland that Amhara communities considered theirs. For the Fano, this represents yet another grievance against both the Sudanese government and the Ethiopian federal government that failed to prevent the annexation.

There are signs, too, that the RSF is trying to exploit these antagonisms. Propaganda has been reported flying around suggesting that Tigrayan fighters—another Amhara enemy—have joined forces with the Sudanese army. As far as can be determined, the claim is false, but it certainly seems designed to push Fano buttons. If the RSF can convince Fano militias that their enemies are aligned with Sudan’s military, it creates a rationale for Fano-RSF cooperation against a common foe.

The implications of such an alliance would be profound. The RSF, despite being a paramilitary force, controls significant territory in Sudan and has access to substantial weapons stockpiles and external funding from the UAE. If Fano militias were to establish supply lines through RSF-controlled territory, they could potentially access weapons and resources that would significantly enhance their capabilities against Ethiopian federal forces. Such an arrangement would also give the RSF a foothold for influence inside Ethiopia, potentially allowing them to use Ethiopian territory as a rear base or supply route.

Moreover, the presence of tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in camps along the western border of Amhara region creates additional complications. These refugee populations exist in areas where Ethiopian government control is already tenuous due to the Fano insurgency. The camps themselves could become recruitment grounds, sources of instability, or targets for violence as the conflicts on both sides of the border intersect.

Although the chances of the Sudanese War spilling over into Ethiopia are currently slim, the fact that these chances exist at all should be concerning. The border between the two countries is long and porous, with ethnic groups that span both sides. The Sudanese conflict has already demonstrated a capacity to spread beyond its initial epicenter in Khartoum, engulfing Darfur in genocide and drawing in external actors from across the region and beyond. A similar pattern of expansion into Ethiopian territory, particularly into an Amhara region already wracked by insurgency, would add yet another dimension to Ethiopia’s crisis.

The Sudan situation also highlights how Ethiopia’s internal conflicts make it vulnerable to external manipulation. A stable, unified Ethiopia might be able to manage its border with Sudan, prevent arms smuggling, and avoid entanglement in its neighbor’s civil war. But an Ethiopia divided against itself, with rebel militias controlling border crossings and federal forces stretched thin across multiple internal fronts, lacks the capacity to seal its frontiers or prevent opportunistic actors from exploiting its weakness.

Especially when combined with everything else—the Amhara insurgency, the Oromia conflict, the tensions with Egypt over the Renaissance Dam and Somalia, the diplomatic isolation represented by the Asmara axis—the Sudan dimension represents one more pressure point on a system already straining under immense stress. Each individual crisis might be manageable in isolation, but their cumulative effect creates a situation where Ethiopia faces threats from every direction simultaneously, with limited resources and diminishing options for response.

The Precipice: Why the World Should Pay Attention

And that’s where things currently stand with Ethiopia. A country that has teetered on the edge of the precipice for some time now, without ever quite falling over. But also, a nation facing so many internal and external pressures that it feels like something—eventually—will have to give.

The cumulative picture that emerges from examining Ethiopia’s multiple crises is one of a state under siege from all directions. Internally, two of its most populous regions—Amhara and Oromia—are consumed by conflicts that have exposed an estimated seven million people in each region to organized political violence. The Tigray region, site of a devastating war that killed 600,000 people, remains unstable with over 200,000 TPLF soldiers still under arms and Eritrean troops occupying border areas. Externally, Ethiopia faces an emerging coalition of Egypt, Somalia, and Eritrea aligned against its interests, a potential proxy conflict over Somali territory and Red Sea access, existential tensions with Egypt over water rights and the Renaissance Dam, and the risk of spillover from Sudan’s civil war along its western border.

Each of these crises feeds into the others, creating a web of interconnected threats that compound and amplify one another. The Amhara insurgency weakens federal control, which enables criminal activity and kidnapping to spread, which destabilizes other regions, which stretches federal forces thinner, which makes it harder to suppress the insurgencies, which encourages external actors to exploit Ethiopia’s weakness. The Somaliland port deal antagonizes Somalia, which drives Somalia into Egypt’s arms, which threatens Ethiopia’s security, which makes Ethiopia more aggressive in pursuing its interests, which further antagonizes its neighbors, which strengthens the coalition against it.

The question that hangs over all of this is whether Ethiopia can sustain this level of pressure indefinitely, or whether at some point the accumulated stress will cause a catastrophic failure. Whether that will happen soon is hard to say. After all, geopolitics is full of surprises. And, just as a war can erupt with little warning, so too can a predicted crisis fail to materialize.

Ethiopia has, after all, defied predictions of imminent collapse for over a year now. The federal government has not invaded Somalia. Conflict with Eritrea hasn’t reignited despite Eritrea’s participation in the Asmara meeting. The economy, while troubled, has not completely imploded.

Addis Ababa has not fallen to rebel forces.

Yet the persistence of these crises, their expansion rather than contraction, and the addition of new pressure points like the Asmara axis and the Sudan border situation suggest that Ethiopia’s apparent stability is more fragile than it appears. The country is not managing these crises so much as enduring them, absorbing blow after blow without addressing the underlying causes or finding sustainable solutions. This is not resilience but rather a slow-motion deterioration, a gradual erosion of state capacity and legitimacy that may not produce a single dramatic moment of collapse but rather a steady slide into deeper dysfunction.

The implications of Ethiopia’s potential failure extend far beyond its borders. With a population of over 120 million people, Ethiopia is the second-most populous nation in Africa. Its location in the Horn of Africa makes it a crucial player in regional stability, sitting at the intersection of multiple conflict zones and trade routes. The country hosts major international organizations and serves as a hub for African Union operations.

Ethiopian troops have historically been major contributors to peacekeeping missions across the continent.

An Ethiopia that descends into full-scale civil war or state collapse would send shockwaves across the entire region. Refugee flows would dwarf the current crisis, potentially destabilizing neighboring Kenya, Djibouti, and South Sudan in addition to the already-collapsed Somalia and Sudan. The humanitarian catastrophe would be immense, potentially exceeding even the horrors of the Tigray War. Regional powers would likely intervene to protect their interests, risking a wider interstate conflict.

Terrorist groups and criminal networks would exploit the chaos. The entire architecture of regional security and cooperation could unravel.

Yet despite these stakes, Ethiopia’s multiple crises receive relatively little international attention compared to conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, or other global hotspots. The complexity of Ethiopia’s ethnic politics, the remoteness of conflict zones like rural Amhara and Oromia, and the difficulty of accessing reliable information from areas under government restriction all contribute to a lack of sustained media coverage and public awareness. The international community’s attention span is limited, and Ethiopia’s slow-motion crisis lacks the dramatic moments that capture headlines and drive policy responses.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from Ethiopia’s current predicament, it is that the world should be paying attention to this vast and complex nation. Because it’s here, in Ethiopia, that the fate of the whole Horn of Africa could yet be decided. The country’s internal conflicts, its disputes with neighbors over water and territory, its role in regional security, and its sheer demographic weight make it a pivotal actor whose stability or instability will shape the region for decades to come.

The drumbeat of dread that has accompanied Ethiopia’s crises for over a year has not faded. If anything, it has grown louder as new threats emerge and existing conflicts deepen. Whether Ethiopia will ultimately fall over the precipice it has been teetering on remains uncertain. But the direction of travel is clear, and the potential consequences of continued deterioration are severe enough that the international community cannot afford to look away.

The slow march to pandemonium continues, and the world would be wise to take notice before it’s too late.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What caused the Amhara insurgency in Ethiopia?

The Amhara insurgency has roots in the Tigray War (2020–2022), where Amhara Fano militias fought alongside federal forces. The 2022 Pretoria peace agreement excluded Amhara representation and seemed to require returning Western Tigray—territory the Amhara considered rightfully theirs. The final catalyst came in spring 2023 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called for disarming all regional forces, prompting former paramilitaries to join Fano groups, which launched a major offensive in August 2023.

What is the conflict in Oromia about, and why does it matter for Ethiopia’s stability?

Since 2018, federal forces have waged a low-intensity war against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which has conducted ethnically targeted massacres against Amhara civilians. This triggered cross-border revenge attacks by Amhara militias, creating a cycle of violence with nearly 6,000 fatalities in five years and exposing seven million people to organized political violence. Crucially, Oromia surrounds Addis Ababa, meaning instability there directly threatens the entire country.

Why is Egypt intervening in Somalia and what does it have to do with Ethiopia?

Egypt’s intervention is driven by its fears of Ethiopia. The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam controls 85% of Nile water flow, threatening Egypt’s water security. Ethiopia’s pursuit of Red Sea port access through Somaliland and its revival of a navy also pose strategic challenges near the Suez Canal. By delivering weapons and pledging 5,000 troops to Somalia, Egypt is countering Ethiopia’s influence and using Somalia as a geopolitical counterweight.

What is the ‘Asmara Axis’ and why does it matter?

In early October, the leaders of Egypt, Somalia, and Eritrea met in Eritrea’s capital Asmara and issued a joint statement emphasizing respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the region. African Horn expert Hassan Khannenje described it as an axis against Addis Ababa. The meeting represents a significant diplomatic encirclement of Ethiopia, potentially translating into coordinated military, intelligence, or political cooperation against it.

How does Sudan’s civil war create additional risk for Ethiopia?

Sudan’s civil war has spread to the border with Ethiopia’s Amhara region and Western Tigray, where Fano militias control the crossing at Metema. The Critical Threats project warns that Fano could establish ties with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, as both share a common enemy in the Sudanese army, which annexed the disputed al-Fashaga zone during the Tigray War. Tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in border camps add further instability to an area already consumed by insurgency.

Sources

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