European diplomacy toward Ethiopia increasingly sounds as if the country has been frozen in November 2022. The same words keep returning: Pretoria, mediation, restraint, dialogue. None of them is objectionable. The Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement ended a catastrophic war between Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigrayan forces, and that achievement matters.

But Ethiopia in 2026 is not Ethiopia in 2022.

For readers who do not closely follow the Horn of Africa, Pretoria was signed after two years of devastating war in Tigray. The federal government fought alongside Eritrean and Amhara forces. Tigray was isolated, surrounded and cut off from much of the outside world. The agreement stopped the large-scale fighting, but many of its promises remain incomplete, including the return of large numbers of displaced Tigrayans.

Relations between Addis Ababa and Tigray have since deteriorated again, and federal drones are once more striking inside Tigray. Yet the international response still often sounds as if the main task is simply to push everyone back into the political framework that existed four years ago.

The clearest example is the dispute over former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who helped mediate the Pretoria agreement for the African Union. In August, the European Union and several other governments reaffirmed their support for AU-led mediation under Obasanjo. Tigray later rejected him as mediator while continuing to say it wanted negotiations.

That distinction matters. Tigray has not rejected mediation. It has rejected a mediator it no longer considers credible.

Obasanjo disputes the criticism of his neutrality, and there is no need to claim that he acts on instructions from Addis Ababa. The problem is simpler. Mediation depends on trust. A mediator cannot be made effective by repeated endorsements from Brussels or the African Union if one of the central parties has lost confidence in him.

The situation becomes more difficult when the same outside governments ask “all sides” to exercise restraint while federal drones are striking Tigray. That language gives the impression of two roughly equal forces escalating against each other. They are not equal. Addis Ababa possesses the aircraft, the federal military and the diplomatic advantages of recognized state power.

Tigray is therefore being asked to trust an agreement whose important promises remain unfulfilled, accept a mediator it no longer trusts and exercise restraint while military pressure comes from the federal government. That is not much of a strategy.

The politics that produced Pretoria have disappeared

The deeper problem is that the entire political alignment surrounding Tigray has changed.

During the 2020–2022 war, the Ethiopian federal government, Eritrea and Amhara forces were on the same side. Tigray faced enemies on several fronts and was politically isolated. Pretoria was negotiated under those conditions.

That world no longer exists. Ethiopia and Eritrea, allies during the Tigray war, have become bitter adversaries. Fano forces in Amhara, which fought against Tigray, are now fighting Abiy Ahmed’s government. Armed resistance continues in Oromia. Sudan’s war is increasingly entangled with the politics of the wider Horn.

Most important, Tigray is no longer as isolated as it was in 2020.

This is the significance of TSimdo, a Tigrinya word referring to two oxen yoked together. It has become shorthand for a developing alignment among political and armed forces that were once enemies but increasingly see Abiy’s government as a common threat. I recently wrote about this in TSimdo and the Changing Politics of the Horn.

Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael has since described TSimdo as irreversible and institutionalized, with leadership, plans and signed agreements already in place. Whether one welcomes or fears this development is beside the point. It changes the balance of power that existed when Pretoria was signed.

Diplomacy cannot pretend otherwise.

Pretoria still matters. Agreements should be honored, especially after a war of such destruction. But an agreement is not a permanent map of politics. It cannot require all the actors around it to remain in the same relationships forever.

There is another reason Tigrayan distrust has deepened. Obasanjo has praised Ethiopia’s recently concluded National Dialogue, even though important opposition forces and armed movements were not part of it. ACLED had already warned that government dominance and the absence of major political actors raised questions about how inclusive the process could be.

The outcome made those concerns harder to dismiss. One recommendation was to replace Ethiopia’s current division between a prime minister and a largely ceremonial president with a powerful executive presidency. Africanews reported fears that this could consolidate Abiy’s power further, while DW highlighted both the absence of important opposition forces and the implications of concentrating executive authority.

The constitutional change has not happened. But after eight years of increasingly personalized rule, a national process that ends by recommending a stronger presidency for the man already in power looks less like reconciliation than constitutional coronation.

Obasanjo did not create that process. But praising it while asking Tigrayans to accept him as a neutral intermediary does not help his credibility.

Europe’s larger problem is that Pretoria has become a substitute for fresh thinking. It offers a familiar agreement, a familiar mediator and a familiar vocabulary. Governments can call for implementation and restraint without confronting how radically the political landscape has changed.

But the harder questions cannot be avoided indefinitely. Why are so many displaced Tigrayans still unable to return? What does the rupture between Ethiopia and Eritrea mean for the settlement reached in 2022? How should TSimdo be understood now that former enemies are cooperating? What does meaningful mediation look like when one side has rejected the mediator? And what should outsiders say when federal drones are again striking Tigray?

Repeating “Pretoria” answers none of these questions.

The European Union may genuinely want to prevent another war, and that is important. But wanting peace and understanding the conflict are not the same thing. Pretoria ended one terrible war. It should not become an excuse for ignoring everything that has happened since.

The challenge now is not to abandon Pretoria. It is to preserve what the agreement achieved while recognizing that the political world in which it was negotiated has disappeared. Any serious diplomacy has to begin with Ethiopia as it exists in 2026, not with the Ethiopia diplomats remember from November 2022.

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