Renewed Fighting in Tigray Exposes Fragility of Mediation Agreement: Military Means Remain Parties' First Choice, Political Disputes Unresolved

According to Africanews, as fighting has reignited in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, analysts have pointed out that the biggest obstacle preventing the conflict from coming to an end may not be the absence of diplomatic initiatives, but rather the fact that both warring sides still believe military victory remains an attainable goal.

On the latest edition of the Africanews Debates programme, Dr. Jalale Getachew Birru, an East Africa specialist at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), stated bluntly: "The issue is not only the lack of diplomatic initiatives, but whether there is an environment in which all parties can accept those initiatives." He noted that both sides currently still believe they can achieve their objectives through military means, making a breakthrough at the negotiating table extremely difficult in the short term.

This assessment poses a severe challenge to regional mediators — if both sides to the conflict believe that continued fighting can improve their position, calls for restraint alone are unlikely to be enough to draw them back to the negotiating table.

The Pretoria Agreement signed in November 2022 had brought the previous round of war between the federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) to an end. Yet the renewed fighting has clearly exposed the agreement's limitations. Birru argues that core political contradictions were shelved in the agreement, and that its implementation also failed to resolve the deeper tensions between the two sides.

The situation of civilians further underscores the vast gulf between the agreement's promises and reality. Mulat Haregot, a representative of the British Tigrayan community, noted that civilians continue to be displaced, and the "normalisation" envisaged by the agreement remains far from being achieved. He stressed: "Judging a reconciliation settlement cannot be based only on whether the gunfire has stopped; the conditions that allow people to return home and rebuild their lives are equally critical."

All of this poses a thorny question for any new peace initiative: will yet another agreement actually change the underlying incentives driving the conflict, or merely bring a temporary halt to the fighting?