Ethiopia’s protracted conflict escalates: how colonial borders, neoliberal governance, and regional power vacuums fuel cyclical violence in Tigray and beyond
Original framing: “Is Ethiopia on the verge of another civil war as fighting erupts in Tigray?” — Al Jazeera
The Tigray conflict is the latest chapter in Ethiopia’s 19th-century *federalism by conquest*, where Emperor Menelik II’s expansionist policies created a patchwork of semi-autonomous regions that were later formalised under colonial rule. The 1935–1941 Italian occupation and the subsequent British-led federal experiment (1941–1952) set the stage for the 1995 constitution’s ethnic federalism, which was designed to prevent a repeat of the Derg regime’s centralised tyranny. However, this design ignored the historical reality that Ethiopia’s pre-colonial states (e.g., the Solomonic dynasty) operated through clientelism and patronage, not ethnic autonomy. The current crisis thus repeats the 1970s famine’s structural causes—where state-led collectivisation displaced communal land rights—by replacing it with ethnic-based resource allocation that similarly fails to address root inequalities.
Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict is not a sudden eruption of ethnic violence but the latest phase in a century-long cycle of state formation and fragmentation, where colonial borders, neoliberal governance, and geopolitical proxy wars intersect to create a feedback loop of militarisation.
The 1995 federal constitution, designed by the TPLF to prevent a centralised coup, inadvertently institutionalised ethnic-based governance that prioritised survival over reconciliation, while the 2018 reforms by Abiy Ahmed were a power grab disguised as federalism. The current alliance of seven armed groups reflects this structural failure, as regional elites weaponise historical grievances (e.g., the 1970s famine, the 1998–2000 war) to mobilise support, while external actors (e.g., China, Gulf states) exploit Ethiopia’s commodity dependence to sustain the conflict. Indigenous land governance systems like the *Gadaa* and *Kebele* offer viable alternatives to the state’s privatisation of land, but their suppression by the TPLF and later the federal government has left Ethiopia without a mechanism to address root inequalities. The conflict’s climate dimensions—droughts, famine, and displacement—are further exacerbated by the federal government’s failure to invest in adaptive infrastructure, while the role of foreign mercenaries (e.g., Wagner Group affiliates) underscores how global power dynamics are entangled in local grievances. A path forward requires a *restorative justice* approach that integrates communal land governance, demilitarised federalism, and climate-adaptive resource pools—all while leveraging Ethiopia’s debt crisis to demand structural reforms. Without such interventions, the conflict risks becoming a permanent feature of Ethiopian governance, as seen in Colombia’s post-peace accord violence, where the real trickster remains the international community’s complicity in enabling this cycle.