Seven Ethiopian armed groups, including former enemies from the 2020-2022 Tigray war, said late Sunday they have formed a joint front aimed at removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government and installing an inclusive transitional administration. The Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival, known as the Alliance for Survival, brings the Tigray People's Liberation Front and Amhara Fano fighters into the same pact years after they fought on opposite sides.

Zemene Kassie, chairman of the Amhara Fano National Movement and the alliance's designated chair, read the statement, which was broadcast on Tigrayan television and circulated Monday. The groups said they would coordinate to remove what they called Prosperity's "personalist, dictatorial and genocidal regime." Spokespeople for Abiy and the federal government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The announcement lands amid rising tension in Tigray, weeks after clashes there deepened fears of a return to full-scale war, and after the TPLF said in mid-July that the 2022 Pretoria peace deal with the federal government was "effectively dead."

Who is in the alliance

The seven members named in the statement are the Amhara Fano National Movement; the Oromo Liberation Army, also styled OLF-OLA; the Tigray People's Liberation Front; the Ogaden National Liberation Front; the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, known as Ugugumo; the Benishangul Peoples' Liberation Movement; and the Gumuz Peoples' Democratic Movement.

Members come from half of Ethiopia's 12 regional states, spanning Tigray, Amhara, Afar, Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, and the Somali Region. Fano factions have fought federal forces in Amhara since 2023. The OLA has fought federal forces in Oromia since 2018. The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in 2018.

Talks to form the alliance had been under way for about a year, according to a source close to Fano; TPLF vice president Amanuel Assefa put it at more than a year. OLA military leader Jaal Marroo said earlier this month that the sides had met several times before settling on a final announcement. Zemene first publicly indicated that deals had been reached in an August interview.

Former battlefield enemies and unfinished disputes

During the Tigray war of 2020 to 2022, Fano fighters backed federal forces against Tigrayan troops in a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and left deep ethnic wounds across northern Ethiopia. Less than a year later, Fano refused government orders to disarm and rose against the federal government in Amhara, opening a conflict that has killed thousands since 2023. Amhara and Tigray also both claim Western Tigray, which Amhara nationalists have administered since the Tigray war ended. Those territorial disputes, and other frictions among members, remain unresolved even as the groups pledge to settle differences peacefully on the basis of their peoples' freely expressed will.

What the alliance says it wants

In their joint statement, the groups accuse Abiy's Prosperity Party government of presiding over "war, genocide, mass slaughter and absolute poverty," collapsing law and order, and pushing Ethiopia beyond state failure toward the "danger of disintegration." They say their first objective is to remove the regime, guarantee the survival and security of Ethiopia's peoples, and bring about an inclusive transitional government guided by a transitional charter. That transitional period, they say, would stop all wars, protect human and democratic rights, stabilize social and economic crisis, improve relations with neighboring countries, and open a fully inclusive national dialogue on decisive questions facing the country.

Amanuel said Sunday: "We just formed an alliance; we are collaborating with several groups and our objectives are to remove the regime and facilitate a transitional government."

Pretoria, alleged Eritrea ties, and Abiy's answer

The 2022 Pretoria agreement ended open war between Addis Ababa and Tigrayan forces but left disarmament and the TPLF's legal status unsettled. The TPLF's mid-July declaration that the deal was effectively dead, followed by reported skirmishes between federal and Tigrayan forces, forms the backdrop for Sunday's announcement. Fighting continues in parts of Oromia and Amhara as the new coalition seeks partners among Ethiopian civic groups and, in its statement, among elements of the federal armed forces.

The alliance announcement also follows months of reporting about an alleged TPLF alignment with Eritrea that had already drawn attention across the Horn. In July, speaking to the House of Peoples' Representatives during its 30th regular session, Abiy addressed that alleged collaboration. "Let alone Shabia (Eritrea), Weyane (TPLF), and Sudan — even if others were added, there is not a single grain of threat to Ethiopia's sovereignty," he told lawmakers.