By: Samuel Admassu
03 June 2025, London
The Amhara region of Ethiopia faces a severe and escalating crisis, marked by widespread violence and profound human suffering. Reports from the ground indicate that the conflict is tearing apart the very fabric of society, with some drawing chilling parallels to precursors of genocides. Amidst this crisis, civil society groups and a unified Amhara resistance are appealing for international intervention, alleging a “genocidal war” and systematic ethnic cleansing targeting the Amhara people.
Military actions by the Abiy Ahmed-led government, including pervasive reliance on drone warfare, are detailed in reports. These alleged aerial assaults have reportedly killed thousands of civilians across the Amhara Region and surrounding areas, while systematically devastating critical civilian infrastructure such as schools, health centers, marketplaces, religious sites, and residential areas. Conservative estimates, based on available ACLED data, cite at least 449 civilian deaths in the Amhara region from August 2023 onwards, though figures are believed to be significantly understated given data collection challenges. This conflict has tragically claimed countless lives, destroyed property, and shattered families.
The humanitarian situation is dire, characterized by a profound collapse of essential services. Education has crumbled, with 4,678 schools closed due to armed conflicts and insecurity, leaving over 4.5 million children out of school (UNOCHA). An additional 362 schools have been damaged, and 350 rendered non-functional, with over 1.5 million children urgently needing school feeding services. Healthcare access is similarly shattered; critical facilities are reportedly being ransacked and repurposed as military sites. This destruction, coupled with a nationwide strike by Ethiopian health workers protesting severe disparities and government repression, including the arbitrary arrest of over 121 medical professionals, has left hospitals operating at minimal capacity (Amnesty International). Doctors from various hospitals have reportedly been taken to undisclosed locations, and many health workers forced into hiding.
The government’s handling of the conflict faces scathing critiques. Many believe its apparent negligence in ending the fighting stems from “interests of those in power who benefit from the ongoing war and its destruction.” Despite the determination of the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) to fight, the government has focused primarily on controlling major cities and key highways, neglecting rural districts. Critics argue this displays a “tacit approval for the region and its people to remain in a state of vulnerability.” While the government showcases large-scale development projects, these are perceived as failing to address fundamental unrest. Senior federal officials, including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, have made divisive speeches, further deepening conflicts. Even amidst immense hardship, the government appears to believe the conflict can only be resolved through war, a stance reinforced by state media narratives portraying the country as indivisible. Within Amhara society, a perceived leadership vacuum exists, with political leaders often seen as disconnected, facilitating federal manipulation through weak appointments.
Confronted with what they perceive as an existential threat, a significant portion of the Amhara people feel compelled to defend themselves. This sentiment is intensified by the perception that national security institutions primarily serve Oromo politicians. In response, over 85 percent of Amhara Fano armed groups unified to form the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) on May 1, 2025. This new force states its primary mission is to coordinate a “struggle for existence” and a “popular revolution” rooted in Amhara nationalism, aiming to overthrow the “Abiy Ahmed led Prosperity Party regime” and establish a transitional government. The AFNF demands formal recognition of the decades-long Amhara Genocide, including war crimes, and recognition of contested border demarcations in Amhara-majority districts annexed to neighboring regions, along with repatriation of displaced communities. Civil society organizations explicitly allege an “armed group organized and supported by the Oromia regional government top leaders and local authorities is carrying out the ongoing Amhara genocide in the country.” The AFNF has also accused the regime of coordinating drone strikes with the United Arab Emirates.
The Amhara region has suffered greatly, experiencing mass displacement, civilian casualties, and widespread human rights violations. Critical analyses suggest Ethiopia is on a trajectory towards significant regional destabilization, attributed to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s “poor management style.” Concerns are growing over a predicted alliance between the TPLF and the Eritrean army, anticipated to wage a renewed war against the federal government, largely expected to unfold on Amhara land. This prolonged conflict, some argue, may inadvertently benefit the Oromuma government by facilitating the eradication of the Amhara people from their ancestral lands. Civil society organizations assert that “thousands of innocent Amhara civilians have been victims of gross human rights violations and ethnic cleansing” since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power.
Amidst these dire circumstances, civil society organizations and various pro-Amhara groups dedicated to the fate of the Amhara people have issued a fervent plea for immediate international intervention. They demand that the international community “denounce and stop this senseless ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Amhara community,” establish an independent body to investigate atrocities, provide urgent humanitarian access, and bring all perpetrators to justice. As a lasting solution, these groups argue that justice, law, and order must prevail in Ethiopia before international support for dialogue, peace, and constitutional revisions to abolish ethnic federalism. The consolidation of the AFNF, combined with escalating violence and alleged widespread atrocities, represents a critical phase demanding immediate and decisive international attention to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe.
Martin Plaut 
First I want to say just thank you for trying to reveal what is happening to the Amhara people. But if some body wants to write the reality; I personaly can say there are no words enough to describe what is early going on.
The Amhara people have been betrayed and suffered for more than 50 years. The ethnic cleansing was initially hidden, and was targed on the elite Amharas like arresting them for decades, hiding them in unknwon prisons, torchering and abusing them. Some of them died in prison. Some sustained physical disability i.e their limbs being amputated. Some developed psychological trauma and psychosis. By doing this the dictators avoided true Amhara people representatives for the federal government.
But since the recent dictator came to power in 2010 in E.C, the Amhara people are
slaughtered and burried in masses by motor grader, murdered, chopped, burnt, crushed, thrown in to cliffs, hanged, raped, kidnapped in masses from public bus transports, displaced and sustained social unrest. This was happened in every corner of the country but was initially worse in those people out of their region and the Amharas initially tried to move to their region i.e Amhara region…artificially given by the government which uses ethnic based division of the states. This is one of the key strategies used by the federal goverment (serving and suporting one region which represents one specific ethnic group and oppressing the others) as one of its long term plans so as to do systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Now the Amhara people are being bombed both in the air by drones and in the ground by the dictator soldiers, killed in masses in their own villages. If you ask me to mention a single form of harm, crime not done to the Amhara people, my answer will be nothing. Every form of crime happened to them. Don’t think about education, health service and other infrastructures and services. Most of them are destroyed and changed in to ashes.
Please be voice to the voiceless Amhara people.
Now the people are mianly praying to God. No single organization is seen to trying to reveal the reality to the world and defend the Amharas except their sons and daughters……FANO.
No single country from world is seen to condemn what the federal government is doing.
Thank you!
Since July 2021, systematic, undeclared but multifaceted measures that violate international law have been taking place in the Amhara region as part of the ongoing war. Under the political leadership of Abiy Ahmed and the Oromo Prosperity Party (OPP), a silent but very dangerous war is also being waged against unarmed Amhara population groups in the Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions.
Organizations such as Shenee, Kore Negenga, Aba Torbe, and others appear to be opposition groups. In reality, however, they operate under the protection of armed state forces and commit massacres, looting, and kidnappings that are deliberately directed against the Amhara population, as has been extensively documented.
Hardly a day goes by without the Amhara being affected by acts of violence: kidnappings, mass expulsions, the burning down of entire villages, and brutal murders have become a daily reality. The brutality with which people are slaughtered is more reminiscent of organized extermination than a military conflict.
It is alarming that this violence is being perpetrated or tolerated by a government legitimized by the state—and that both the international community and regional decision-makers and political opposition parties remain largely silent. The Amhara population appears to have become victims of a system that not only allows violence, but structurally promotes it.
Against this backdrop, a fundamental question arises:
How can it be legitimate for a leading politician to allow or organize ethnically motivated violence against his own people with the aim of creating a new state entity called “Oromia”?