After Pretoria peace deal, old enemies in Ethiopia’s Tigray find new ground

Nearly four years after Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front signed the Pretoria Agreement, the war has ended but the disputes that fuelled it remain unsettled.

The agreement called for a permanent cessation of hostilities, the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of Tigrayan forces, political dialogue and the return of displaced people. It also barred the TPLF from conscripting, training, deploying or mobilising forces, or preparing for renewed conflict.

Since 2024, however, the TPLF has repositioned itself politically and organisationally while retaining military leverage and developing new relationships. The sequence described in the article includes reported contacts with Eritrean officials, a renewed struggle over political control in Tigray, reports of recruitment and mobilisation, new clashes involving Tigrayan forces and the emergence of Tsimdo, a loose convergence of groups opposed to the federal government.

The developments raise questions about whether Pretoria represented a completed transition to peace or instead gave the TPLF time to regroup. There is no evidence that the movement entered the agreement with a predetermined plan to use it as a tactical pause, but events since 2024 suggest that its organisational and security role has not disappeared.

Tigrayan forces handed over heavy weapons after the agreement, and thousands of former combatants entered demobilisation programmes. Yet the process did not fully dismantle the region’s military structures. Reports in 2026 of renewed recruitment and forced mobilisation, if confirmed, would challenge both the incomplete disarmament process and the agreement’s ban on mobilisation. A civilian source in Tigray told Al Jazeera, “The people of Tigray want peace; we don’t want a second war.”

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The people of Tigray want peace; we don’t want a second war.