War / Africa
Ethiopian Civil War
Pretoria is dead, Abiy holds a supermajority, and three simultaneous insurgencies now face an Eritrea-Egypt external axis.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year border war from 1998 to 2000 over the town of Badme, killing as many as 100,000 soldiers before the Algiers Agreement froze the fight in place.
An international boundary commission awarded Badme to Eritrea in 2002. Ethiopia refused to withdraw, and the border hardened for sixteen years. A 2018 peace deal between Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki won Abiy a Nobel Prize and changed almost nothing on the ground. By 2023, Eritrea was again arming insurgents inside Ethiopia, this time in Amhara, while Egypt cultivated Asmara as the northern anchor of its encirclement of Addis Ababa.
The Horn's most dangerous rivalry is dormant, not resolved.
Ethiopia has crossed from a fragile post-war settlement into a multi-front armed crisis, with the Pretoria Agreement ceasefire now approaching functional collapse.
Federal drone strikes near Sheraro, the TPLF's restoration of prewar governance under Debretsion Gebremichael, and Obasanjo's emergency return to Mekelle are the clearest phase-change signals.
Abiy's June 2026 supermajority removes legislative checks but deepens the legitimacy deficit driving insurgencies in Amhara and Oromia.
The TPLF-Eritrea-Fano realignment is the most structurally significant development since Pretoria: former adversaries now share operational alignment against the federal government.
Abiy's June 2026 supermajority removes legislative checks but does not restore coercive reach; the unaccountable mandate is likely to harden insurgencies in Amhara and Oromia rather than suppress them.
TPLF under Debretsion Gebremichael has restored prewar governance and its legislative council.
Amhara Fano militias, excluded from federal peace negotiations, have converged operationally with TPLF and Eritrean elements.
OLA (Oromo Liberation Army) sustains a third insurgent front in Oromia, stretching federal forces across simultaneous theaters.
Eritrea coordinates across the TPLF, Fano, and OLA to keep Ethiopian federal forces overstretched and foreclose an Ethiopian offensive on Assab.
Sudan's SAF serves as a geographic and logistical corridor within the Egypt-Eritrea strategic axis, enabling materiel and personnel movement across the Horn.
UAE has courted both; Gulf states have competing interests in the Red Sea littoral
War / Africa
Pretoria is dead, Abiy holds a supermajority, and three simultaneous insurgencies now face an Eritrea-Egypt external axis.
War / Africa
RSF masses on El Obeid as the US warns of imminent massacre and the RSF's parallel state consolidates across western.