Author: An Ethiopian analyst

The renewed fighting between federal forces and the Alliance for Survival, a coalition of seven insurgent movements, has grown into a full-scale war. The conflict is now most intense along Tigray’s borders with Amhara and Afar, where the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF), the TPLF’s armed wing, are confronting the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) while operating alongside allied Fano and Afar forces.

The battlefield has already expanded well beyond Tigray. On the North Wello front, fighting has centred on Waja-Kobo and, farther west, around Lasta and Seqota. TDF units have faced fortified ENDF positions while Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) forces have sought to coordinate with TDF manoeuvres, particularly by threatening the federal army’s rear and supply routes around Weldia and towards South Gondar.

The first encounters exposed both the possibilities and the limits of the new TDF-Fano alignment. Around Seqota, TDF and Agaw insurgents put ENDF formations under near-semircircular encirclement, forcing federal forces to abandon the town. A large relief force was then mobilised from South Gondar. Fano attacks and ambushes along the route slowed the advance, but the federal force eventually broke through the bottlenecks and relieved the isolated troops.

Around Kobo and Weldia, repeated TDF attacks and counterattacks at times threatened to cut the ENDF’s rear. Had the federal positions been severed from behind, Kobo could have become untenable. But the ENDF lines held and the TDF attacks were eventually repulsed, allowing federal forces to regain momentum.

The subsequent federal advance changed the balance in the south. Air power and heavy artillery, including sustained bombardment of Alamata, helped force the TDF to retreat. The loss of Waja pushed TDF units towards the Gra Kahsu mountains, a formidable natural defensive belt above southern Tigray.

The terrain has military significance beyond its geography. During the 2020–22 war, the surrounding highlands helped the Tigrayan forces absorb the federal advance before the ENDF and Eritrean forces eventually broke through from different directions, including Zalambessa to the north and the Tekeze-Tselemti axes farther west and southwest.

This time, however, the geography is being approached differently.

A federal force advancing from the Seqota direction has moved through Freweyni and established positions around Samre, creating a more direct threat to Maichew. This axis may ultimately matter more to Mekelle than the Waja-Alamata road. The danger is not simply the loss of another southern town. A sustained advance through Samre would put federal forces on the approaches to central Tigray while forcing the TDF to divide its defensive concentration.

A second major front has opened in the northwest around Tselimoy. Large ENDF formations have been attempting to break through TDF positions in a manoeuvre reminiscent of a conventional breakthrough operation rather than the fragmented fighting characteristic of much of Ethiopia’s recent insurgencies.

The offensive has so far failed to produce a decisive penetration. But that may never have been its principal purpose.

The Tselimoy assault can serve as a fixing operation, tying down TDF forces in the northwest while the principal federal thrust develops elsewhere. The objective is not necessarily Tselimoy itself. It is to force the TDF to distribute its limited defensive resources across multiple axes until one of them gives way.

This is where the disparity in conventional capabilities becomes important. Eritrean intelligence sources have put the ENDF deployment at as many as 400,000 troops and claimed that roughly 80% of its heavy artillery has been committed to the campaign. Even allowing for the uncertainty inherent in intelligence estimates, the broad military picture is clear: the federal government possesses substantially greater access to conventional artillery, drones, air power and air defence than the TDF.

The TPLF command would therefore have had little reason to expect its forward defensive lines to hold indefinitely against a concentrated federal offensive conducted across several axes. Withdrawal does not necessarily mean collapse. It can be a way of changing the war.

The TDF’s calculation appears to be to absorb the federal advance into the Tigrayan highlands, where the ENDF’s numerical and technological advantages become harder to convert into decisive territorial gains. The farther the federal army advances, the longer its supply lines become and the harder it becomes to maintain a concentrated force. A force that loses concentration becomes vulnerable to counterattack.

This is the logic behind a deeper TDF withdrawal: give ground where necessary, preserve the army, stretch the attacker and wait for the terrain to begin doing the work.

The most consequential unknown is Eritrea.

Eritrean forces have so far not entered the war openly on the TDF’s side. But the strategic implications of Mekelle falling would be difficult for Asmara to ignore. An ENDF occupation of the Tigrayan capital would put federal forces in control of the northern highlands and potentially free substantial formations for deployment towards the Eritrean frontier. Eritrea, having lost much of its strategic depth in the event of a Tigrayan collapse, would face a much more direct military threat.

That makes an eventual Eritrean role conceivable even if Asmara has no intention of fighting the current war openly.

The more plausible form of involvement would initially be intelligence, targeting information and artillery assistance rather than a conspicuous deployment of Eritrean ground forces. If the TDF begins counterattacking from the deeper mountain belts of central Tigray, Eritrean intelligence and fire support could materially alter the balance.

The Afar front presents the opposite problem.

There, TDF and Ugugumo forces have achieved considerably faster gains. They have pushed the Tigray Peace Forces — Tigrayan fighters aligned with the federal government — out of Abala and penetrated deep into Afar, with reports placing the advance as far as Dalol. Afdera has also come under imminent threat.

The advance has alarmed the Afar regional government, which has accused Eritrea of involvement and declared a state of emergency. Ugugumo commanders have threatened to sever the Addis Ababa-Djibouti corridor, Ethiopia’s principal commercial lifeline to the outside world.

But there is a considerable distance between the Tigrayan advance and the Djibouti corridor.

Even if TDF-Ugugumo forces capture Afdera, the more consequential objective would be Serdo. That is where the geography becomes considerably less forgiving. Serdo is farther away, exposed and difficult to sustain from the Tigrayan highlands. An ENDF command that perceives the Djibouti corridor as an existential logistical artery would concentrate substantial forces on its eastern flank.

The TDF has encountered this problem before. In 2021, its advance through Afar towards the Mille corridor was stopped by a combination of ENDF and Afar resistance, difficult lowland terrain and the effective use of drones. The TDF eventually withdrew from Afar after failing to break through towards Mille.

The present campaign is therefore likely to encounter a familiar geographical limit. The TDF and Ugugumo may be able to take Afar towns, but pushing deep enough to sever the Addis-Djibouti corridor is a different military proposition.

The same principle applies in reverse.

The ENDF may be able to penetrate southern Tigray, but penetrating Tigray is not the same as defeating the TDF. Once federal forces move beyond the southern lowlands and into the mountainous interior, the military advantages that enabled the initial advance become less decisive. The TDF can trade territory for concentration, concealment and shorter supply lines.

This is why neither the fall of Mekelle nor the severing of the Addis-Djibouti road should be treated as the natural endpoint of the campaign. Neither is impossible. Both require a depth of penetration that would expose the attacking force to precisely the vulnerabilities that have repeatedly shaped Ethiopia’s wars.

The more plausible outcome is a dynamic stalemate.

That does not mean a static frontline. It means a war in which each side can penetrate the other’s territory, seize towns and inflict serious losses without possessing the combination of military superiority, logistics and political control required to convert those gains into a decisive victory. The frontlines will move. Towns may change hands repeatedly. Neither side may be able to finish the war.

Paradoxically, that may be the strategic outcome most favourable to Eritrea.

A prolonged war keeps Ethiopia militarily preoccupied, prevents the federal government from concentrating overwhelming force against Eritrea and deepens the strategic importance of Asmara without requiring it to enter the war openly. It also gives Eritrea time and space to shape the conflict from the margins.

But the costs to Addis Ababa will accumulate.

The ENDF can absorb battlefield losses more readily than a regional militia can, but it cannot indefinitely sustain a large conventional campaign across multiple fronts while also fighting insurgencies elsewhere. The political problem is even more serious. A prolonged war fought simultaneously in Tigray and Amhara risks transforming the federal army from an instrument of national security into the common enemy of two populations that only a few years ago were fighting one another.

That is perhaps the Alliance for Survival’s most consequential achievement so far.

Its military coordination is still embryonic and its members remain divided by history, territory and political ambition. Yet the political fact of the alliance is already significant: Tigrayan and Amhara forces that fought one another in the 2020–22 war are now coordinating against Addis Ababa.

The alliance’s formation has turned what once appeared politically inconceivable into an operational reality.

This does not mean the alliance has erased the contradictions between its members. It has not. But battlefield cooperation has already changed the strategic map.

If the ENDF becomes exhausted, fails to make a decisive penetration into Tigray and eventually has to withdraw from parts of Northern Wello as well, the consequences could extend far beyond the northern war. The federal government could find itself compelled to reposition substantial forces towards Oromia and other theatres, effectively transforming the present northern conflict into a broader war between a central state and an increasingly interconnected set of armed peripheries.

That possibility is no longer remote enough to dismiss.

The battlefield is moving too quickly for confident predictions. Mekelle falling is no longer unthinkable, but the more immediate military logic points towards a prolonged struggle in the Tigrayan highlands. The TDF-Ugugumo advance towards the Djibouti corridor has likewise exposed a vulnerability in Ethiopia’s eastern flank, but the distance and terrain make Serdo a much harder objective than Afdera.

The central question is whether either side can turn territorial movement into a decisive military advantage.

So far, the war points in the opposite direction. The ENDF can penetrate Tigray, but its advance risks stretching its forces into increasingly difficult terrain. The TDF and its allies can penetrate Afar, but the deeper they move towards the Djibouti corridor, the more exposed their forces become.

That is the logic of a dynamic stalemate: frontlines move, towns fall, armies penetrate each other’s territory, yet neither side can convert those gains into strategic victory.

And that may be the defining feature of this war. The longer it continues without a decisive breakthrough, the more Ethiopia’s military crisis becomes a political one. The alliance between Tigrayan and Amhara forces, once almost inconceivable, is already reshaping the northern balance.

If the ENDF emerges exhausted rather than victorious, the consequences will reach well beyond Tigray. A federal army forced to withdraw from Tigray and parts of Northern Wello would have to choose where to concentrate its remaining strength — and a repositioning towards Oromia could turn a northern war into something much larger.

The war may ultimately be decided less by who captures Mekelle or reaches Serdo than by which side exhausts the other first.