The Tigray People’s Liberation Front has announced plans to restore the regional parliament elected in 2020, a move that has heightened fears that northern Ethiopia could slide back into conflict less than four years after one of Africa’s deadliest wars formally ended. Reuters reported on April 20 that the TPLF said it was taking back control of Tigray’s government and effectively undoing the interim arrangement created under the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement.
The decision is highly symbolic and politically explosive. The 2020 regional election, held by Tigray authorities in defiance of Addis Ababa after Ethiopia postponed national polls during the COVID-19 pandemic, was one of the immediate triggers of the war that erupted in November that year. That conflict pitted Ethiopia’s federal military, allied regional militias and Eritrean troops against TPLF forces, and became one of the bloodiest wars of the century. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, but widely cited assessments have put it in the hundreds of thousands.
By seeking to revive the pre-war regional legislature, the TPLF risks breaching the spirit, if not the structure, of the Pretoria Agreement, which ended major hostilities in November 2022 and paved the way for an interim administration in Tigray pending new elections and broader political normalization. Reuters noted that the TPLF justified its move by accusing Ethiopia’s federal government of violating the peace deal, including by withholding funds for civil servants and extending the mandate of the interim administration without proper consensus. Former interim president Getachew Reda, however, condemned the decision as a rejection of the agreement and appealed for international intervention to prevent renewed violence.
The development has also revived concerns that any fresh fighting in Tigray could spill across borders and draw in Eritrea. Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have sharply deteriorated since the war ended, amid tensions over Ethiopia’s push for Red Sea access and accusations surrounding Eritrea’s conduct during the conflict. The Council on Foreign Relations warned in February that rising tensions in Tigray could destabilize the wider Horn of Africa, while the Associated Press reported that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently accused Eritrean forces of carrying out mass killings during the war, deepening the diplomatic rupture.
For observers, the danger is not only the return of open war between Addis Ababa and Tigrayan forces, but the collapse of a fragile post-war order that never fully addressed the underlying political, military and regional rivalries. With mistrust deepening, rival armed actors still present, and Eritrea looming in the background, Tigray’s latest political rupture has become far more than a constitutional dispute; it is now a serious test of whether the Pretoria peace can hold.
