DOMINANT ANGLE
Pretoria is measuring the collapse of the peace agreement that bears its name, four years after hosting it, as the TPLF and six other Ethiopian armed groups are joining forces to overthrow Abiy Ahmed.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
TPLF forces took control of three airports (Mekele, Shire, Axum) held until now by the federal police on Wednesday, forcing Ethiopian Airlines to suspend its flights to these cities.
- 02
The TPLF announced on Sunday an alliance with six other Ethiopian armed groups aiming to overthrow Abiy Ahmed's government.
- 03
Getachew Reda, Abiy Ahmed's advisor and former TPLF leader, claims that Tigrayan forces are now fighting alongside a local armed group in Afar and the Fano militia in Amhara.
ANALYSIS
Pretoria, September 24, 2026. Four years after hosting the signing of the peace agreement bearing its name, Pretoria is seeing the resurgence of the war it thought it had helped to close. On Wednesday, forces from the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) took control of three airports in northern Ethiopia — Mekele, Shire, and Axum — previously held by the federal police, forcing Ethiopian Airlines to suspend its flights to these cities, report Daily Maverick, TimesLIVE, and Business Day, citing Reuters.
The two camps blame each other for the fighting. The TPLF-led regional administration claims to have entered a "defensive war" in the face of "the intensification of the invasion carried out by various methods by the autocratic and genocidal regime of Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity against the Tigray people," according to its statement. In contrast, Getachew Reda, advisor to Abiy Ahmed and former TPLF leader, writes that it was the Tigray forces that seized the federal airports and launched a "total offensive" against government positions in the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara.
The escalation follows the announcement, on Sunday, of an alliance between the TPLF and six other Ethiopian armed groups aiming to overthrow the Addis Ababa government. According to four sources — an Ethiopian government official, a diplomatic source, a humanitarian source, and a source close to the TPLF — Tigray forces are now fighting alongside a local armed group in Afar and the Fano militia in Amhara.
The Pretoria agreement, signed in November 2022 after a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, was already unraveling: the TPLF had taken back control of the interim regional administration provided for in the text in May, while the Ethiopian army had stepped up drone strikes against Tigray forces in recent months, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project. Addis Ababa claims that nearly 300 Tigray fighters surrendered last week.
For the South African press, the stakes go beyond regional diplomacy: it is the very credibility of the negotiating process on its soil that is wavering, four years after having brought the hope of lasting peace to the Horn of Africa.
