Ethiopia's Ethnic Federalism Is Arming Its Own People Against Each Other

Four thousand nine hundred people die in Ethiopia's internal fighting every year. That is the average since 2024, and it is the number of human beings who kiss their children goodbye in the morning and never come home. Most of them are not dying in a foreign war. They are dying because the state that was supposed to protect them chose to build itself out of rival armed fiefdoms.

We need to stop pretending this is only a story about tribes, or about a single bad leader. Ethiopia's crisis has a blueprint, and the blueprint is written into the constitution. Since 1995, the country has been organized around ethnic jurisdictions, with a formal right to secede and regional police forces that have grown into militarized special units. Then we act surprised when those units behave like armies. They are armies.

Consider where the killing is concentrated. Roughly 90 percent of those battle deaths are tied to two groups. The Amhara Fano National Movement accounts for about 60 percent, and the Oromo Liberation Army for about 30 percent. Fano alone is estimated to field between 15,000 and 20,000 fighters. The Amhara Region, which was among Ethiopia's most stable areas before the 2020 to 2022 war, now carries some of the highest levels of violence in the country, with around 3,500 battle-related deaths a year. Think about what that means for a farmer in Gondar or a schoolteacher in Oromia. Think about the families who have been displaced across the region, many living in camps where the children have no future to speak of.

Now look at September 2026. The Tigray People's Liberation Front and its allies, operating under the banner of something they called the "Alliance for Survival," launched attacks against the federal government. The TPLF had been reconstituted as a power bloc with its own weapons and its own grievances, and its hardline faction under Debretsion Gebremichael unilaterally restored the pre-2022 regional council in April 2026. It declared war and seized federal assets on September 23. At least 277 people died in the fighting that followed. Federal forces and the Tigray Peace Force, a breakaway armed group formed in 2025 by fighters who refused to be pawns of a party elite, pushed the offensive back. Reports also suggest an undeclared arrangement with Eritrea that included weapons access and Eritrean troop deployments. Those reports must be investigated, and Asmara must answer for them. Eritrea has no business arming Ethiopian factions, just as no Ethiopian faction has any business trading its people for foreign guns.

Let us be precise about the TPLF. This is a party that ran Ethiopia for nearly three decades, then twice took up arms against the federal government. The people of Tigray did not support the reignition of war. Forced conscription by the TPLF was widely evaded, and that evasion was a key reason the offensive collapsed so quickly. The Salsay Weyane Tigray party put it plainly in May 2026: the gun has become the primary rule of Tigrayan politics. That is the verdict of Tigrayans themselves, and it should be the verdict of every Ethiopian who believes in democracy.

But the federal government cannot escape the same indictment. Its 2023 decision to integrate all regional militias into the national army or police was the right destination, but the path was reckless. Dismantling Amhara regional forces without a credible political settlement produced immediate backlash, and the assassination of Amhara Prosperity Party leader Girma Yeshitila soon after that announcement poured fuel on the fire. Disarmament without political space is not peace. It is surrender with no guarantees, and armed men know that.

Then there is Western Tigray, the flashpoint that every Ethiopian politician touches and no one wants to resolve honestly. Tigrayan families were driven out during the last war. Estimates put the number of Tigrayans displaced since 2020 at around 800,000. Amhara communities settled the land afterward. The federal call for a referendum is a sensible instrument in principle, but a referendum held while hundreds of thousands of rightful owners remain in camps is not a referendum. It is a land grab with a ballot box attached. Until those displaced people can return safely and be compensated, every militia in both Tigray and Amhara will keep its rifles, and it will keep pointing to Western Tigray as proof that the state will not protect them.

This is what ethnic federalism does when it is left to rot. It converts identity into a political asset and grievance into a weapon. Ethnic jurisdictions give ambitious elites a ready-made base. Regional security forces give them guns. Territorial disputes give them a cause. Ethiopia's 135 million people are paying the price, and the bill keeps growing.

The wider region is watching, and so are the vultures. Sudan is in the middle of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on earth. Gulf powers have deep pockets and deeper interests in the Horn of Africa. Turkey, China, and Russia all compete for access, contracts, and influence. Every one of them prefers a weak, fragmented Ethiopia that needs their money and their weapons. None of them is asking whether Tigrayan mothers can sleep at night. We have seen this script before. Strong African states are the only real defense against outside manipulation, and fractured states are the easiest to buy.

So what should be done? The answer is not to tear up federalism and bring back centralized repression. That would simply restart the cycle. The answer is to build a federal system that works within the rule of law. Start with a single, unitary chain of command for the armed forces, with real, enforceable disarmament of regional militias, backed by a transparent process for absorbing former fighters into civilian life through training, pensions, and jobs. Pair it with an independent electoral commission that can credibly run the Tigray elections the interim administration has been tasked to hold by April 2027. Ethiopians need a political system that rewards winning votes, not winning battles.

Botswana shows what is possible when a country builds institutions before it builds armies. Since independence, it has held regular elections, kept a professional civil service, and used its mineral wealth to fund public services rather than private militias. Mauritius has built a stable, pluralistic democracy across multiple ethnic and religious communities by guaranteeing equal rights under the law rather than dividing citizens into armed blocs. Ghana demonstrated in 2024 that a peaceful transfer of power is still possible on this continent, and Senegal has shown that even deep political crises can be resolved through courts and ballots. Ethiopia has the talent, the history, and the population to join that list. What it lacks is a settlement that treats every citizen as an equal bearer of rights.

The African Union and IGAD must stop issuing statements and start enforcing the principle that no member state may arm proxies or host foreign troops on its soil without consent. Eritrea must withdraw from every Ethiopian border district it still occupies. The federal government must publish a clear timetable for disarmament and political inclusion, and it must show Tigrayans, Amharas, and Oromos that the state is their protector and not their rival.

Ethiopians, and all Africans who watch this unfold, need to demand three things. Demand a disarmament process that is paired with real political representation, not just a surrender ceremony. Demand that Western Tigray be resolved through a process that secures the return and compensation of displaced people before any vote. Demand elections that are free, credible, and on schedule, because a ballot box is the only weapon a citizen should ever need.

We have been told that ethnic federalism is the price of holding Ethiopia together. That is a lie. The price is 4,900 dead a year, and it keeps rising. The question is whether we will keep paying it, or whether we will finally insist that the people of Ethiopia deserve a state that serves them rather than one that arms them against one another. The choice belongs to us, and the time to make it is now.

Based on reporting by ACSS