Seven Ethiopian armed groups, \u200bincluding longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of a 2020-2022 civil war, said they \u200chave formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.<\/p>\n
The announcement of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival brought together a geographically and ethnically diverse body of groups ranging from Tigray in the north to Somali Region in \u200bthe south. Some remain at loggerheads with other members over territory and other issues.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Abiy \u200band the federal government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last month, after \u2060reports of a possible coalition of armed groups, an adviser to Abiy said any such formation would \u200bseek to wreak havoc but would not be able to overthrow the federal government.<\/p>\n
The new alliance, announced late \u200bon Sunday, includes the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Amhara Fano National Movement. Fano, a coalition of armed groups from the Amhara region, fought in support of the federal government against the TPLF during the 2020-2022 Tigray war, which resulted \u200bin hundreds of thousands of deaths and was marked by ethnically driven atrocities.<\/p>\n
Fano subsequently rose up against \u200bthe federal government in a conflict that has killed thousands in Amhara since 2023.<\/p>\n
Many of the groups have accused the \u200cgovernment \u2060of centralising power and marginalising the regions. The government says it has launched a national dialogue meant to address longstanding political divisions and internal conflicts.<\/p>\n
“We, the peoples’ forces concerned with the survival of Ethiopia’s peoples, bear the historic responsibility of overthrowing this regime,” said the statement read out by Fano leader Zemene Kassie and \u200bbroadcast on Tigrayan television.<\/p>\n
The \u200bannouncement of the alliance, \u2060which also includes groups from the Oromia, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, follows reported skirmishes between federal and Tigrayan forces.<\/p>\n
In May, the TPLF reasserted control over the region’s political \u200badministration in violation of the 2022 peace deal that ended the Tigray war \u200bafter accusing \u2060the federal government of failing to uphold the agreement.<\/p>\n
The Ethiopian military has carried out several drone strikes against Tigrayan forces in recent months, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.<\/p>\n
The federal government has \u2060not commented \u200bon the reported strikes, but the military said last week that \u200bnearly 300 Tigrayan fighters had surrendered to it.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia has also accused its neighbour and historic adversary Eritrea of supporting insurgent groups, including \u200bthe TPLF and Fano. Eritrea has denied this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seven Ethiopian armed groups, \u200bincluding longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of a 2020-2022 civil war, said they \u200chave formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. The announcement of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival brought together a geographically and ethnically diverse body of groups ranging from Tigray in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33,1129],"tags":[114,5474],"class_list":["post-22053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","category-security","tag-ethiopia","tag-ethiopian-peoples-forces-alliance-for-survival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22054,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22053\/revisions\/22054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}