On Sunday, September 20, after several skirmishes and mutual drone strikes with the government, seven armed groups in Ethiopia announced they were banding together under the name the “Ethiopian People’s Forces Alliance for Survival” to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed from power. Shortly after, forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an offensive and reportedly seized three regional airports. This was followed by counterattacks from the federal military—the Ethiopian National Defense Force (EDNF)—as well as allied groups. While more optimistic voices characterized the conflict as being merely a “risk of return to war,” on September 24 Addisalem Balema, a member of the TPLF central committee, told Al Jazeera that the situation had become a “full war.”
Ethiopia may be seen by Americans as the ultimate backwater, but the latest happenings there come at a particularly fraught time for U.S. power in the Horn. The broader Red Sea region is in turmoil due to a dizzying array of local conflicts and the Trump administration’s war against Iran, while the U.S. government just signed a new defense agreement with Ethiopia a month prior and certainly does not want to see Abiy’s government fall.
Ethiopia, which has a population made up of four main ethnic groups as well as many smaller ethnicities, has for many years been facing a variety of regional insurgencies. But the “full-scale” civil war in the northern Tigray Region, one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century with an estimated 600,000 fatalities, had been in an unsteady ceasefire since the Pretoria Agreement was signed in 2022. Though Ethiopian history is complicated, the short story behind that war was that the TPLF—representing an ethnicity that makes up only 5 percent of Ethiopia’s population—dominated Ethiopia after an alliance of regional Liberation Fronts overthrew communism in 1991, but was sidelined after Abiy took power in 2018. (In Ethiopia family names come before Christian names.)
Abiy is by all accounts an unusual leader, as was explained in depth in the book The Abiy Project by Tom Gardner. He has described himself as taking inspiration from Silicon Valley CEOs, and he has turned out to be quite a lot like them: He promised the public freedom, to great international acclaim, but instead delivered tyranny, surveillance, and high-tech warfare. He also has the distinctly Trumpian tendency to make exciting handshake deals, bask in the praise and photo ops, but to not have actually worked out any of the fundamentals.
Thus, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after making peace with Eritrea and ending two decades of conflict. Then relations with Eritrea deteriorated to such an extent that, after allying with the Eritreans against the TPLF, the head of Ethiopia’s army is now accusing Eritrea of supporting the Alliance for Survival. (On September 29 the governor of the Afar regional state told an Al Jazeera correspondent that Eritrea had invaded the state and controlled two thirds of its territory. As of press time this has not been confirmed either independently or by Eritrea’s government.) The same problem occurred with the Pretoria Agreement, where accountability for war crimes was never fully negotiated nor the status of Eritrean troops settled, despite the fact that they were a party to the conflict and remained in Tigray without their own ceasefire. As far as implementation, while the TPLF gave up their heavy weapons, federal forces never withdrew from Tigray as agreed. Further, self-government was never restored to Tigray, it has not been represented in either house of Ethiopia’s Parliament, and it was not allowed to participate in the June 2026 elections, which secured the continuation of Abiy’s rule.
It is into this mess that the U.S. decided this August to sign a deal strengthening military ties with Ethiopia. The aims are fairly boilerplate, with platitudes about training Ethiopian troops in human rights, something no credible person can believe will have much impact given the brutality of Ethiopia’s internal conflicts. It also seems like a scattershot approach, given that the United States also ended sanctions on Eritrea, a notorious, Russia-aligned communist prison state, the very day before the Alliance for Survival was announced. Still, there is much to be said for drawing closer to Ethiopia. It is the second-most populous country in Africa, with almost 140 million people. It has also experienced robust and sustainable economic growth despite extreme internal conflict, so it should not be dismissed as a potentially lucrative and high-volume trade partner.
The strongest argument for Ethiopia’s strategic importance is its sheer desperation to remain relevant in the region. The Iran War has humiliated the U.S., and its allies are left at Iran’s mercy to find an agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz. Somalia’s central government is as weak as ever after 35 years of intense U.S. support. Sudan’s civil war has been such a conflagration of atrocities that it is untenable to work with either side. Saudi-backed forces recently crumbled against an offensive by the Houthis in Yemen, putting the latter in an even better position to block access to the Red Sea. South Sudan, of course, remains without any state capacity whatsoever. On top of all of this, the Emiratis, economically hobbled and militarily vulnerable due to the Iran War, consider Abiy an important client and surely appreciate any help from the U.S. in propping him up.
Really, then, besides trying to make things work with Ethiopia, the only other meaningful option for a safe presence in the entire south Red Sea region—besides the U.S. base at Djibouti, which is inconveniently located right next to a Chinese base—would be recognizing Somaliland, which Trump seems hesitant to do though his administration seemed its best hope thus far in a 35-year quest for international legitimacy. Crucially, though landlocked, Ethiopia potentially gives easy air range over the shipping lanes that we’ve lately been reminded are genuinely crucial to America’s national well-being.
Though seven regional insurgencies that functionally encircle the capital of Addis Ababa unifying against him does not look promising for Abiy, knowledgeable commentators are nowhere near writing him off. For one thing, he still has solid control of Ethiopia’s entire military. Further, Abiy is a political survivalist: The main TPLF offensive during the Tigray War initially went so well that newspapers were already preparing his obituary—yet he managed to rebuff the enemy forces before they reached the capital, chase them back to Tigray, and ultimately conquer their own lands.
He has another important advantage: His enemy groups have their own territorial disputes, were previously in conflict with each other, and may be again soon enough. As Machiavelli teaches, a man who faces many enemies may still win if he survives the first onslaught, because ultimately his unity can defeat their disunity.
At the same time, these groups do not have to fight shoulder-to-shoulder to be effective—they merely have to show basic coordination, ensuring successive waves of attacks emanate from different directions. That makes for a bad situation for the Ethiopian military, which needs to defend a central position. Still, Abiy is one of the wiliest leaders of the modern era, and he has a good chance of wriggling out of this pickle as well. The U.S. foreign policy class should hope he does, because they can ill afford to lose any friends near the Red Sea.
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