As Ethiopia hosted the African Union Summit last month, the government’s attempt to generate a sense of exuberance in the capital city, Addis Ababa, masked the expanding spiral of instability and humanitarian tragedy in the country.
On Jan. 29, in Merawi, a small town in the Amhara region, members of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces murdered dozens of civilians execution style, according to national and international human rights groups and media reports. Although the government denies targeting civilians, the killings were reportedly motivated by revenge, following a bloody state confrontation with so-called Fano fighters—Amhara combatants who have been fighting government forces since August 2023.
The Fano represent an armed manifestation of the longstanding grievances of the Amhara people, rooted in decades-old systemic marginalization, mass killings, and displacement of Amharas in various parts of the country and exacerbated by dashed hopes in the willingness and ability of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government to stem the group’s marginalization. While the movement remains decentralized and there is no formal political manifesto, the militia proclaims to protect Amhara interests by working to transform what it perceives as an anti-Amhara sociopolitical system. It seeks to establish a new order grounded in equality among all groups, respect for individual rights, rule of law, and democracy.
The Fano preceded but rose to prominence during the Tigray War (2020-22), when they fought beside government forces. During the war, they—along with the Ethiopian army, Tigrayan fighters, and Eritrean troops—faced accusations of human rights abuses.
The Amhara conflict coexists with a no-war-no-peace situation in the Tigray region, where famine-like conditions and starvation-induced deaths have been reported, and armed confrontation, kidnappings, and regular travel disruptions in the Oromia region. Ethiopia’s economy is also in a precarious state, with the government defaulting on interest payments for loans with private creditors.
The January Merawi massacre is the most gruesome so far, and regrettably not the first. In September 2023, similar civilian killings were reported in the historic Amhara cities of Lalibela and Majete. The Merawi massacre elicited domestic and international condemnation and calls for transparent investigation from the Ethiopian National Human Rights Commission, the United States, and the European Union.
The series of tragedies underscore a fundamental and concerning shift in the nature of the conflict. As armed confrontation drags on, weary government soldiers inevitably start to consider the broader public complicit in the rebellion and are therefore more willing to engage in collective punishment of Amhara communities, which in turn intensifies animosity and cycles of violence.
Despite some stalled efforts to peacefully end the war in Oromia and the government paying lip service to a possible negotiation in Amhara, political and military leaders continue to deploy the language of force and pursue militarized responses. Indeed, on Feb. 2, the government extended the state of emergency it first imposed in August 2023 in response to the insurgency.
The state of emergency has given government forces carte blanche to engage in the extrajudicial arrest of thousands of people, including prominent Amhara members of parliament, who have been detained for months despite enjoying constitutional immunity from arrest and prosecution.
The large-scale confrontation between Fano fighters and the Ethiopian military was triggered by a secretive government move to demobilize Amhara special forces. The demobilization was framed as part of a broader initiative to dissolve all regional special forces nationwide, which the government deemed unconstitutional. While Amhara elites have historically supported the disbanding of regional special forces, the abruptness and lack of transparency in the decision-making coincided with increasing Amhara distrust of the federal government. The move also came alongside the Abiy government’s failure to implement the October 2022 agreement, brokered in Pretoria, South Africa, that ended the Tigray War. In particular, Tigrayan forces have not disarmed, in a context where Amhara and Tigray remain locked in identity-related boundary disputes.
Amhara mistrust of the Ethiopian government was already growing due to the unabated killing and displacement of Amharas living outside their home region, particularly in Oromia.
Moreover, in recent years, civilians attempting to enter Addis Ababa from the Amhara region have been barred, seemingly because they are perceived as a collective security threat. The situation took a particularly alarming turn in September 2023, when videos circulated on social media depicting people detained in deplorable conditions across various locations in both Addis Ababa and Oromia. The U.S.-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a red flag alert, characterizing the mass abduction and detention of Amharas as potentially indicative of a looming genocide.
The popular Amhara perception has been that there is a deliberate effort to undermine Amharas, inside and outside their region, including increasingly in the allocation of federal subsidies to regions and provision of basic agricultural necessities, such as fertilizer and seeds.
When Abiy promised to upend the narrative of division that had characterized Ethiopian politics for three decades and instead build an Ethiopia founded on respect and equality, Amharas welcomed his vision. Unfortunately, the victimization and anti-Amhara narrative propagated by ethno-nationalist forces—notably the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Oromo Liberation Front depicting Amharas as historical oppressors bent on dominating—continued unabated, and even worsened, following Abiy’s ascendance to power.
The eruption of war with Tigrayan forces temporarily patched the growing disillusionment of Amharas, who joined the fight alongside the federal army, in pursuit of their own claims of self-governance and respect for constitutional rights pertaining to access to land, equal economic opportunities, and mother-tongue education in areas until then administered under Tigray region. Amharas also wished to defeat the TPLF, a group they blame as the architect of the ethnic-based political dispensation established in 1991 that was founded on and intensified anti-Amhara narratives.
It was clear that the Amhara-federal alliance was a marriage of convenience and would collapse once the Tigray War ended. And the manner via which the TPLF deal was pursued and the slow process of implementation deepened Amhara fears.
Alongside this, the Amhara branch of the ruling political party, the Prosperity Party, remains weak and fragmented. While the Amhara regional administration is increasingly voicing concerns, it has done too little, too late. This sentiment is prevalent also within the Amhara branch of the ruling party, which generated intraparty tensions and led to the effective purging of moderate voices from the party.
Today, the Amhara fear fundamentally revolves not only around issues of ethnic federalism and the desire to halt killing and displacement but also, crucially, around the perceived desire of Oromo elites to further marginalize and impoverish Amharas and render them at best permanent junior political partners at the national level.
The conflict is now reaching a tipping point. With the federal army facing regular Fano guerrilla attacks and reports of civilian massacres increasing, the situation is morphing into a widespread popular revolt. While the conflict with the Fano has so far been largely restricted to the Amhara region, as popular anger increases, the chances of expansion of sporadic attacks in Addis Ababa and other regions and, ultimately, a full-blown civil war cannot be excluded.
With the harvest season approaching, the disruption of the transport system and limited supply of seeds and fertilizer will also deepen the already dire humanitarian situation not only in Amhara but also across the country, as the region is one of Ethiopia’s breadbaskets. Together with the war and disruptions caused by the Oromia conflict, continued conflict in Amhara will worsen the threats of famine and generate an exodus of people—within Ethiopia but potentially also across borders.
Halting the fighting requires confidence-building measures from the government, including lifting the state of emergency, availing humanitarian assistance, releasing the thousands of prisoners, fully reinstating internet and telecommunications services, and conducting independent investigations into atrocities and commitment to hold those responsible accountable.
A sense of marginalization is at the core of the conflict—and resolving it requires the formation of a popular and legitimate Amhara government and genuine Amhara representation in federal institutions.
Considering the absence of a centralized and legitimate opposition political force in the Amhara region, setting up an inclusive and legitimate government would require a bottom-up approach where credible representatives would be identified at district levels and collectively form an Amhara council, which would then constitute an interim regional executive.
The interim arrangement should ideally be neither a ruling party nor a Fano government. The interim government should engage with and enable dialogue among parties to narrow political differences, enable reconciliation, and develop a shared understanding and vision for the people and the region, as well as an understanding of their place in a federated Ethiopia. The interim government would ultimately oversee an election in coordination with the relevant federal authorities.
The Amhara branch of the Prosperity Party will naturally be reluctant to accept the formation of an interim government, claiming its ostensible victory in the 2021 elections. Nevertheless, the widespread sense of lack of representation and the virtual collapse of the regional governance system and replacement with an emergency military command represents a loss of any remnants of legitimacy for the party—and an intransigent reliance on force to maintain a bygone status quo would further muddy the party’s reputation.
Fano fighters and other forces in the region should also recognize that, while the regional government has lost legitimacy, they themselves have no legitimate claim to political authority at present. They should therefore support the formation of an autonomous popular government that will engage them.
While the conflicts in Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray (and insecurity in other regions) appear regional, they are ultimately about the emergence of a shared understanding and vision about the structure of the Ethiopian state and establishment of an inclusive, equitable, and democratic national government. Accordingly, any separate peace processes in these three regions (and others) merely provide the conditions for enabling a difficult but much needed nationwide dialogue among elites and the grass roots.
While a National Dialogue Commission has been in existence for more than two years, it has struggled to win the confidence of political groups and the broader public. Notably, key political opposition groups continue to boycott the Commission’s proceedings, as they see it as lacking autonomy and being a tool for government political maneuvering. The Commission’s work has also been disrupted by widespread conflict across the country.
Previous successful dialogue and transition processes, such as those in South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia, and Colombia, demonstrate that initial elite-level negotiations are fundamental to transitions from conflict and authoritarianism to peace and relative democracy. A high-level elite dialogue must therefore precede and complement the ongoing work of the Commission.
Despite hopes that the 2022 Pretoria agreement would herald such elite-level negotiations, the deal instead cemented Abiy’s hegemony over his ruling party and state institutions. This personalization of power has been accompanied by worsening conflict in Amhara and Oromia, a threatening stalemate in Tigray, and a sense of despair throughout the country.
While public consultations are critical to the Commission’s work, they are likely to focus on bread-and-butter issues. They can best be deployed to check and refine, rather than bypass or replace, elite political pacts about institutional arrangements.
Accordingly, stakeholders—including veteran leaders with a record of leading the transition in 2018 (potentially including former Defense Minister Lemma Megersa and former Foreign Affairs Minister Gedu Andargachew, the duo that catapulted Abiy to power and who retain a level of popular confidence and a network that straddles the ruling and opposition forces), civil society organizations, religious leaders, and international actors—should work toward enabling the formation of a broad coalition focused on a genuine dialogue. That coalition must work to agree on an acceptable constitutional framework, secure rule of law, and the organization of credible elections.
Ethiopia’s political, security, and economic dilemmas have expanded and threaten to further undermine the viability of the state and exacerbate the already dire political and security situation in a vitally important Red Sea corridor. The establishment of legitimate governments in Amhara and Oromia and the launching of a genuine elite dialogue are critical to stave off worst-case scenarios, including possible state collapse.
