DOMINANT ANGLE
Rome views the Ethiopian crisis as a direct challenge to the power of Abiy Ahmed, driven by a coalition of seven armed groups seeking to overthrow his government four years after the Pretoria agreement.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
Seven opposition groups and armed movements announced on September 20 the formation of a coalition aimed at overthrowing Abiy Ahmed's government and installing an inclusive transitional executive (Internazionale, citing Addis Standard).
- 02
Tigray rebels have taken control of the airports in Macallé, Axoum, and Shire, prompting the cancellation of all Ethiopian Airlines flights to the region (La Repubblica).
- 03
On September 23, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF mutually accused each other of resuming hostilities, with fighting reported in the neighboring Afar region (Internazionale, citing AFP).
ANALYSIS
Rome, September 24, 2026. For the Italian press, what is happening in Ethiopia is not just a resurgence of fighting in Tigray: it's a direct challenge to the power of Abiy Ahmed. The weekly Internazionale titles straightforwardly "Una sfida al potere di Abiy" and places the origin of the shift on September 20, the day when seven opposition groups and armed movements announced the formation of an alliance, the Coalizione delle forze popolari etiopi per la sopravvivenza. According to Addis Standard, cited by the weekly, this coalition brings together the Mouvement national amhara Fano, the Armée de libération oromo (OLA), and the Front populaire de libération du Tigré (TPLF), with a declared objective: to overthrow the government of the Parti de la prospérité and install an inclusive transitional executive. The coalition describes Abiy's power as a "regime dittatoriale, personalistico e genocida" — a regime it deems dictatorial, personalistic, and genocidal —, an accusation that, for Internazionale, measures the extent of the rupture between Addis-Abeba and part of its regional peripheries.
It's in this climate that on September 23, the government and the TPLF mutually accused each other of having resumed hostilities. La Repubblica details the military sequence: a dawn assault on the Macallé airport, followed by similar actions on the Axoum and Shire airports. In a few hours, the Tigray rebels took control of three crucial air nodes in northern Ethiopia. Immediate consequence, reported by the Roman daily: Ethiopian Airlines cancelled all its flights to the region, fearing that these takeovers might be the spark for an escalation. Internazionale confirms, via AFP, that the Tigrayan forces took control of the Mekele airport and clashed with the government army in the neighboring region of Afar, raising fears of a return to war.
For the Italian press, the stakes go beyond the military map: it's the very survival of the Abiy government that is at issue, four years after the Pretoria peace agreement supposed to close a conflict that had ravaged a country of 139 million inhabitants. The formation of a seven-member coalition, mixing Amhara, Oromo, and Tigrayan movements, is read in Rome as a sign of a challenge that goes beyond Tigray alone and directly targets the top of the Ethiopian state.
