Informative · Ethiopia

Ethiopia just united its rebel armies against Abiy Ahmed and war could return

21 September 2026 · 21 September 2026Share

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at the African Union headquarters in 2018. — Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaking at the African Union headquarters in 2018. File photo. Office of the Prime Minister - Ethiopia · Public domain

Seven armed groups in Ethiopia just teamed up to take down the government.

And here's the wild part. Three of them fought on opposite sides of a war that killed around 600,000 people.

So this happened a day ago. The groups announced a new alliance. They're calling it the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival.

The goal? Remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Set up a transitional government instead.

The big three are the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the Amhara Fano National Movement, and the Oromo Liberation Army. Four smaller groups joined too. The Ogaden National Liberation Front. The Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front. The Benishangul Peoples' Liberation Movement. And the Gumuz Peoples' Democratic Movement.

Between them, these seven groups cover most of Ethiopia's conflict zones.

Amanuel Assefa is the Tigray People's Liberation Front's Vice President. He told AFP exactly what they're going for. He says quote "our objectives are to remove the regime".

He says the groups have been talking for over a year. And Zemene Kassie, who leads Fano, will chair the whole alliance.

Now here's the twist.

Fano fought alongside Ethiopia's federal forces, and Eritrean forces, against Tigrayan fighters in the 2020 to 2022 war. Now Fano is standing with those same Tigray forces. Against the government it used to fight for.

That war killed around 600,000 people. It ended with the 2022 Pretoria peace deal between the federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front. But that deal never settled who disarms, or what legal status the Tigray People's Liberation Front actually has. And in mid-July this year, the group said the deal was effectively dead.

Since then, both the government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front have moved troops toward the Tigray border, according to the African Union. There have also been clashes in Tigray in recent weeks, the worst breach of the 2022 deal so far. Fears of a full-scale war were already rising before this alliance even showed up.

The other two founders have their own fights going too. Federal forces have been battling the Oromo Liberation Army in Oromia since 2018. Fano only picked up weapons in 2023, after the government tried to disarm Amhara's regional militia.

The rest of this story is for Silver and Gold members.

Map of Ethiopia showing its administrative regions. File photo. Peter Fitzgerald · CC BY-SA 3.0

So this isn't three friendly groups linking arms. It's three movements that each fought the government separately. Two of them fought each other directly. And now they're standing together against the same enemy.

And the alliance hasn't even settled its own disputes.

Amhara and Tigray both still claim Western Tigray. Amhara nationalists have run it since the war ended. Fano and the Oromo Liberation Army both claim land in Wollega, in Oromia. Neither argument is resolved.

The Oromo Liberation Army's own leadership is being more careful than the announcement makes it sound. Days before the launch, its high command called the cooperation a procedural consensus, not a unified military command. It said the bigger political questions need Ethiopians themselves at the table.

So what would a real military alliance mean? Kjetil Tronvoll studies the region at Oslo New University College. He told AFP the number that matters here. He says quote "it is a potential four to five fronts".

That's huge. Ethiopia's military has fought these groups one at a time for years. Fighting all of them at once, on coordinated fronts, is a completely different war.

But Tronvoll isn't convinced the rebels can pull it off. He points to the government's huge fleet of drones. And he told AFP he's not sure the alliance can sustain a war on that scale.

He also asked the question nobody in the alliance has answered. What happens after Abiy Ahmed, when these groups see Ethiopia's future so differently?

Eyob Tilahun, an Ethiopian academic, gave Al Jazeera the alliance's own logic. He says the groups believe they all face a survival threat from the government. That's literally where the name comes from.

Ethiopia's federal government has said nothing so far. AFP asked for comment. No answer yet.

So what's still unclear? Whether this is a real military command or just a political statement. The Oromo Liberation Army's own caution suggests it might be more the second one. Whether the territorial disputes get sorted out. What the coordination actually looks like on the ground. And how the government responds.

For now, here's what we've got. Three armed movements that spent the last war fighting each other, or fighting on opposite sides of it, have agreed on one thing.

Removing the man who has run Ethiopia since 2018.

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Ethiopia just united its rebel armies against Abiy Ahmed and war could return

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