For a long time, it was still possible to describe the problem mainly as one of implementation. Displaced Tigrayans had not returned home. Territorial questions remained unresolved. Disarmament was contested. Relations between Mekelle and Addis Ababa deteriorated steadily. The TPLF itself lost the political status under which it had signed the agreement. These were serious failures, but they still belonged to the world of Pretoria. An agreement had been signed, major provisions remained unfinished, and the argument was about whether they would ever be carried out.

I am no longer sure that is the right way to describe where we are.

Federal drones continue to strike Tigray. Recent reporting has documented repeated attacks inside the region, including multiple strikes around Hintalo in September. ACLED’s monitoring of Ethiopia places renewed federal-Tigray tensions alongside continued conflict in Amhara and Oromia. Whatever justification Addis Ababa gives for individual strikes, calling the situation simply a “military confrontation” hides something important. The federal government has the aircraft and the ability to strike from a distance. The strikes are taking place inside Tigray.

That would already be serious enough. But the military escalation is unfolding while the political environment around Tigray is being rearranged. When Pretoria was signed in November 2022, Tigray had emerged from a war in which the Ethiopian federal government, Eritrean forces and Amhara forces had all fought on the same side against it. Today Ethiopia and Eritrea are bitterly estranged. Fano forces that fought Tigray are now fighting the federal government. Armed conflict continues in Oromia. None of this means that the balance has simply reversed or that Tigray is suddenly secure. Addis Ababa still enjoys enormous advantages, particularly in the air, and it retains all the diplomatic advantages that come with internationally recognized state authority. But the isolation that defined Tigray’s position in 2022 is no longer the same.

That is why TSimdo deserves more attention than it has received.

When I first wrote about TSimdo and the Changing Politics of the Horn, I treated it mainly as an emerging alignment among forces that had once been enemies but increasingly saw Abiy Ahmed’s government as a common threat. Since then, the language has become more explicit. Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael has described the alliance as irreversible and increasingly institutionalized, with its own leadership, plans and agreements. At the same time, he has said that the alliance itself should not determine Ethiopia’s future political order. That, in my view, may be more important than the military cooperation.

The Oromo Liberation Army, while saying that it is not itself part of TSimdo, has spoken in similar terms about a wider opposition convergence. In a September 17 statement, it called the emerging arrangement a “procedural consensus” and spoke of a “broad-based transitional political opening.”

Those phrases matter because the groups involved are not pretending that they have solved Ethiopia’s political problems among themselves. They have not agreed on federalism, territorial disputes, self-determination, the future structure of the state or even necessarily on what Ethiopia should ultimately look like. Some of them have fought bitterly against one another. Their claim, at least publicly, is much narrower: none of them should have the right to settle those questions alone.

I would not romanticize this. Armed coalitions often sound democratic while they have a common enemy and become much less generous once power is available. TSimdo contains actors with painful histories and unresolved grievances. Its promises will have to be tested against conduct. But the idea being put forward is still important. It is an attempt to create coalition politics before fragmentation hardens into something much worse.

That is what makes the contrast with Abiy Ahmed’s recently concluded National Dialogue so striking. The official process was presented as national, yet important political and armed forces involved in Ethiopia’s actual conflicts remained outside it. One of the most consequential proposals to emerge was a stronger executive presidency, a development DW examined in detail, including concern that the change could concentrate still more authority in one individual.

The constitutional change has not yet happened, but the contrast is hard to miss. The government organizes a National Dialogue from which some of its principal adversaries are absent and emerges with a proposal that could strengthen the executive center. Forces outside the state, meanwhile, are discussing a transitional arrangement in which no single opposition organization would have the right to determine Ethiopia’s future. One process has the official title. The other has some of the actors with the actual capacity to make war.

That does not automatically make the opposition process more legitimate. But it does raise a basic question: what does “national dialogue” mean if the forces at the center of the country’s wars are not part of the political bargain?

This question matters because Western policy toward Abiy increasingly seems to rest on a fear that Ethiopia could fragment if the federal center weakens. The concern is understandable. Ethiopia is one of Africa’s largest countries and sits at the center of an already unstable region. The instinct is therefore to preserve Addis Ababa as the organizing center of the state and hope that the rest of the country can eventually be brought back under a common political framework.

The problem is that preserving a center is not necessarily the same thing as preserving a country.

Abiy’s government has repeatedly confronted organized political forces that resist its project of centralization. It faces prolonged conflict with Fano formations in Amhara, continued armed resistance in Oromia, renewed confrontation with Tigray, and a dangerous rupture with Eritrea. If every serious disagreement with the center becomes a question of submission, the groups on the receiving end have strong incentives to make themselves harder to defeat. They build armed structures, find sources of revenue, secure supply routes, develop local administrations and look for outside allies. If they survive long enough, what was supposed to be temporary resistance can start turning into an alternative political order.

That is how an attempt to prevent fragmentation can end up producing it.

The comparison with Sudan is useful, but only partly. Sudan’s war is dominated by two major military poles, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, although many other militias and local forces operate around them. The war has nevertheless produced catastrophic territorial fragmentation and extensive foreign involvement. A recent documented the role of foreign weapons, drones and other forms of outside support in sustaining that conflict.

Ethiopia’s political-military landscape is already more multipolar. There is the federal government and the ENDF. There are Tigrayan forces. There are multiple Fano formations. There is the OLA and other Oromo armed actors. There are regional forces and local militias. Eritrea, once aligned with Addis Ababa during the Tigray war, now occupies a completely different position. Each of these actors has its own constituency, history, grievances and political objectives.

That creates a different kind of danger. In a war dominated by two main actors, however destructive, the principal negotiating poles are at least identifiable. In a multipolar conflict, one agreement may end one front while several others continue. One movement may accept a settlement while another rejects it. Each actor has an incentive to acquire more leverage before negotiations begin, and every additional year of war gives armed organizations more time to become embedded in the territories and communities around them.

Warlord politics does not begin with someone announcing that he intends to become a warlord. It develops gradually. Someone starts controlling a road. Another actor begins taxing commerce. Another provides security where the state cannot. Armed organizations establish relations with traders, local officials and foreign patrons. The flag may remain the same and the embassy may remain in Addis Ababa, but actual authority becomes dispersed.

The political map changes before the lines on the map do.

Foreign governments are perfectly capable of adapting to such arrangements. The UAE is especially relevant because its regional behavior has shown a willingness to work not only with recognized governments but with powerful sub-state actors when they are strategically useful. In Sudan, Abu Dhabi denies supporting the RSF, while accusations of Emirati assistance continue. The larger point is not that Ethiopia will simply become Sudan or Libya. It is that once armed authorities become durable enough, outside powers begin treating them as facts.

Imagine a prolonged Ethiopian conflict in which Tigrayan, Amhara and Oromo armed structures consolidate separately while the federal government retains Addis Ababa and other parts of the country. Add Eritrean interests, Sudan’s instability, Gulf involvement and other outside powers. Ethiopia would not need to formally partition. Several political orders could begin operating inside the same internationally recognized state.

This is why I think TSimdo’s political significance may eventually prove larger than its military significance. The question is not only whether it can confront Abiy. It is whether it can prevent opposition to Abiy from breaking into several mutually hostile armed sovereignties.

The proposition being discussed is fairly simple, even if implementing it would be enormously difficult. Groups that disagree fundamentally about Ethiopia stop fighting one another, cooperate where they have immediate common interests, and postpone the larger constitutional questions to a transitional political process involving wider participation. The OLA’s phrase “procedural consensus” captures this better than almost anything else I have heard. They do not have to agree on what Ethiopia should become. They have to agree that none of them can decide it alone.

This is almost the reverse of the political trajectory Ethiopia has followed under Abiy. When he came to power in 2018, demands for political transition were already widespread. His answer, in substance, was that the existing government could carry out that transition itself. Eight years later, many of the fundamental disputes remain unresolved, while several constituencies that might once have negotiated them politically are represented by armed organizations fighting the federal government.

There is an irony here that should not be ignored. The official center speaks of dialogue while preserving the primacy of the center. The opposition coalition speaks of dialogue because it recognizes that there may no longer be one center capable of deciding Ethiopia’s future alone. Neither deserves automatic trust. TSimdo could fracture tomorrow. Territorial disputes could return. Movements that speak of public participation today could become considerably less democratic once the balance of power changes. But bringing actors capable of making war into some common political framework before each becomes a permanent armed authority is not an absurd idea. It may become unavoidable.

And this brings us back to Pretoria.

Pretoria was designed to stop one particular war under one particular configuration of power. It did something enormously important. It stopped mass warfare in Tigray. Its unfinished obligations still matter. Displaced people have not lost their rights because alliances have changed. Territorial disputes have not disappeared, and peace agreements should not be discarded simply because the political environment around them has become more complicated.

But Pretoria is not a permanent map of Ethiopian politics.

The Ethiopia to which it must now be applied contains a developing opposition coalition, a prolonged Fano conflict, continued armed resistance in Oromia, renewed federal-Tigray confrontation, a deep Ethiopia-Eritrea rupture and a federal government dealing with several centers of armed opposition at once. Yet international diplomacy continues to return to almost exactly the same vocabulary.

On August 26, the European Union and several partner governments again endorsed AU-led mediation under Olusegun Obasanjo. Tigray subsequently rejected Obasanjo as mediator while saying that it remained committed to peaceful dialogue. Two days later, European governments again declared that they “fully support” the AU-led mediation process.

Pretoria, Obasanjo, dialogue and restraint remain the familiar words. The problem is that the political terrain underneath them is moving.

There is no reason to believe Western governments want Ethiopia to fragment. Quite the opposite. Their attachment to the existing federal center appears driven in large part by fear of precisely that possibility. But this creates a question they have not seriously confronted: what if the center itself is helping create the fragmentation they fear?

Abiy Ahmed’s determination to confront or subordinate nearly every organized political rival may eventually produce the warlord politics that outside powers hope to prevent by supporting him. The danger is not simply another war between Addis Ababa and Tigray. It is a prolonged multipolar conflict in which nobody can win, no single agreement can settle the country, and each armed organization concludes that its safest option is to become more autonomous.

At that point Ethiopia would not need to formally disintegrate for the state to fragment. Foreign governments could deal separately with whichever authorities control territories useful to them. Communities could become increasingly dependent on armed organizations for administration and protection. What began as a struggle over who should govern Ethiopia could slowly turn into a struggle among several authorities over which parts of Ethiopia each actually governs.

Western governments are trying to prevent that outcome. The bitter irony is that their continued reliance on Abiy as the indispensable guarantor of Ethiopian order could help bring it about if his government continues to confront rather than politically accommodate the country’s multiple organized centers of opposition.

TSimdo may fail. Its coalition could collapse under the weight of old grievances. Nothing about armed cooperation guarantees democratic transition. But the attempt to move disagreements among armed groups into a transitional political bargain is at least addressing a problem that Pretoria cannot solve by itself.

The question now is larger than Pretoria and larger than Obasanjo. It is whether Ethiopia can move from increasingly multipolar armed competition toward negotiated transitional politics before its competing centers of power become permanent.

The map of the Horn may be changing, and not necessarily because anyone formally redraws a border. The more immediate question is whether politics can catch up with that change before war decides the outcome.

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