ADDIS ABABA, Sept 21 (Reuters) – Seven Ethiopian armed groups, including longstanding enemies who fought on opposite sides of a 2020-2022 civil war, said they have formed an alliance aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
The announcement of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival brought together am ethnically diverse body of groups based across the country, from Tigray in the north to Somali Region in the south. Some remain at loggerheads with other members over territory and other issues.
Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, said members of the alliance had been collaborating for a while with the financial backing of Ethiopia’s neighbour and historic adversary Eritrea.
“The recent announcement is only attesting (to) what the Ethiopian government has been alleging time and again,” she wrote in a text message on Monday.
Eritrea’s information minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Asmara has repeatedly denied similar accusations.
ALLIANCE INCLUDES FORMER FOES
The new alliance, announced late on 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 in hundreds of thousands of deaths and was marked by ethnically driven atrocities.
Fano subsequently rose up against the federal government in a conflict that has killed thousands in Amhara since 2023.
Many of the groups have accused the government of centralising power and marginalising the regions. The government says it has launched a national dialogue meant to address longstanding political divisions and internal conflicts.
“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 broadcast on the TPLF-controlled Tigrai TV. The statement was also published on several of the groups’ social media feeds.
On Monday, the country’s media regulator said in a statement that it was strictly prohibited for news outlets to use Tigrai TV as a source of information.
The Ethiopian Media Authority’s director general did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
ARMED GROUPS’ EFFORTS ‘MAY BE HAMSTRUNG’
The announcement of the alliance, which also includes groups from the Oromia, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, follows reported skirmishes between federal and Tigrayan forces.
In May, the TPLF reasserted control over the region’s political administration in violation of a 2022 peace deal that ended the Tigray war. It accused the federal government of failing to uphold that agreement.
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.
The federal government has not commented on the reported strikes, but the military said last week that nearly 300 Tigrayan fighters had surrendered to it.
Magnus Taylor, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said the new alliance would concern the federal government but it was not yet clear whether the groups would collaborate effectively.
“Attempts for its members to work together may be hamstrung by the weak nature of several of the groups, the geographical distances between them and political differences,” he told Reuters.
(Writing by Aaron Ross in Nairobi; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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