Amhara Towns Under Siege: Ethiopia's Second War Begins

By the time this correspondent reached Debre Tabor in March, the checkpoint was being run by seventeen-year-olds with Kalashnikovs. The federal troops had pulled back to the main road three weeks earlier. The boys belonged to Fano, the Amhara militia that now controls much of rural Amhara region. They wore tracksuits and Chinese-made ammunition vests. One had a broken ankle held together with medical tape and a splint made from a mop handle. He was still on duty. "We have no choice," he said. "The government is trying to eliminate us."

What began in April 2023 as protests over regional autonomy has become Ethiopia's second civil war in five years. The Tigray conflict ended in November 2022 with at least 600,000 dead. The Amhara war is now fourteen months old. Two million people have been displaced. Mass killings have been documented in at least six towns. The Ethiopian National Defense Force has deployed helicopter gunships against civilian areas. Fano controls roads, tax collection, and informal courts across North Gondar, North Wollo, and parts of North Shewa. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government has imposed a state of emergency that shows no sign of ending. This is not a protest movement. It is an insurgency.

The international community, exhausted by Tigray and distracted by wars elsewhere, has barely noticed. But Ethiopia is a country of 126 million people, the second most populous in Africa. What happens in Amhara will determine whether the Ethiopian state survives in its current form.

How It Started

The proximate cause was a government decision announced on April 6, 2023, to disband regional special forces across Ethiopia and integrate them into federal command structures or local police. The Amhara regional government refused. The Amhara had armed these units during the Tigray war, when Tigrayan forces pushed deep into Amhara territory in 2021 and federal troops retreated. Amhara civilians formed militias — Fano — to defend their towns. They were not disbanded when the Tigray war ended. By 2023, Amhara had perhaps 250,000 armed men outside federal control.

Abiy's government saw this as an existential threat. The Amhara are Ethiopia's second-largest ethnic group, about 27 percent of the population, historically dominant in imperial and military structures. Amhara nationalism has always been linked to the idea of a unitary Ethiopian state — the opposite of the ethnic federalism that Abiy claims to defend but has systematically undermined. When protests erupted in April 2023, federal forces opened fire. In Gondar, at least 26 people were killed in two days. The government declared a state of emergency on August 4, 2023. It has been renewed four times. Fano went from protest to insurgency.

What This Correspondent Saw

In the town of Woldiya, a woman named Tigist Alemayehu lived in a one-room shelter made from plastic sheeting and eucalyptus poles. She had walked 40 kilometers with her four children after federal forces shelled her village in North Wollo in September 2025. Her husband stayed behind. She does not know if he is alive. She showed this correspondent a list of 18 names — relatives and neighbors killed in the shelling. She had written it on the back of a sugar packet because she had no paper.

The camp holds 14,000 people. There is one clinic. There are six latrines. The World Food Programme delivers rations twice a month when roads are open. When roads are closed, people eat once a day. Children die of respiratory infections and diarrhea. No one is counting.

Tigist had nothing. She still has nothing.

The Military Reality

The Ethiopian National Defense Force cannot win this war. Federal troops control Bahir Dar, the regional capital, and the main roads between cities. Fano controls everything else. The ENDF has aircraft and artillery. Fano has terrain, local knowledge, and popular support in rural areas. The ENDF has deployed an estimated 40,000 troops to Amhara. Fano has no uniforms, no payroll, no logistics chain — and no shortage of recruits. Every government attack creates new Fano fighters.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project documented 412 violent events in Amhara between April 2023 and March 2026. At least 3,800 people have been killed in fighting, airstrikes, and reprisal attacks. The actual number is certainly higher. Human Rights Watch documented mass killings in Merawi in January 2024, where federal forces executed at least 45 men suspected of supporting Fano. Amnesty International confirmed drone strikes on a market in Finote Selam in August 2025 that killed 28 civilians. The government denied both incidents.

The Official Version

The government calls Fano a terrorist organization. On state television, officials describe Fano as bandits, ethnic extremists, and enemies of the constitutional order. Prime Minister Abiy has said little publicly about Amhara since August 2023. His spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, told reporters in January 2026 that "law enforcement operations" were ongoing and that displaced persons were receiving assistance. She did not provide casualty figures or explain why the state of emergency had been extended into its eighteenth month.

The government's position is that Fano emerged from Amhara ethno-nationalism and seeks to destabilize Ethiopia's federal system. There is some truth to this. Fano includes hardliners who want to restore Amhara political dominance and reject ethnic federalism entirely. But the movement also includes farmers who fought Tigray's advance in 2021 and believe the government abandoned them. It includes students, teachers, and demobilized soldiers. It is not ideologically coherent. It is a popular uprising that became an insurgency because the government chose violence over negotiation.

What the Numbers Show

Ethiopia now has 6.73 million internally displaced persons, the highest figure in Africa and the third-highest globally after Syria and Sudan. The International Organization for Migration's Displacement Tracking Matrix recorded 2.03 million displaced from Amhara between April 2023 and February 2026. Another 1.2 million have fled fighting in Oromia, where a separate insurgency by the Oromo Liberation Army continues. The Tigray war displaced 2.8 million; most have not returned home.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated in March 2026 that 21.9 million Ethiopians need humanitarian assistance. That is nearly one in five people. Food insecurity is severe across Amhara and Tigray. Malnutrition rates among children under five exceed emergency thresholds in 14 woredas — districts — in North Wollo and North Gondar. The government has restricted humanitarian access to conflict zones. Aid convoys require military escorts that are often denied.

How Abiy Lost Control

Abiy Ahmed came to power in April 2018 promising reform and reconciliation. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending the border war with Eritrea. By 2020 he had launched a war in Tigray that killed hundreds of thousands. By 2023 he was fighting in Amhara. By 2026 he presides over a fragmenting state held together by force.

The Amhara war is the logical consequence of decisions Abiy made in 2020. He chose to destroy the Tigray People's Liberation Front rather than negotiate with it. He used Amhara militia and Eritrean troops to do so. When the war ended, he had no plan for disarmament and no strategy for political reconciliation. The Amhara fighters who helped him win the Tigray war expected rewards. Instead, they were ordered to disband. They refused. Abiy sent in the army. Now he has two insurgencies — Tigray simmering under an unimplemented peace deal, Amhara exploding into open war.

Ethiopia is the cornerstone of security architecture in the Horn of Africa. It contributes more than 6,000 troops to the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, the primary force fighting Al-Shabaab. It hosts African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. It borders Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti. If Ethiopia collapses into sustained civil war, the consequences will radiate across East Africa.

What the World Is Not Doing

The African Union has said nothing substantive about Amhara. The AU mediated the Tigray ceasefire in November 2022, led by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. That process has stalled. The Pretoria Agreement, signed on November 2, 2022, promised disarmament, humanitarian access, and transitional justice. None of it has happened. Tigrayan forces have not disarmed. Eritrean troops remain in Tigray. The government has not restored services or communications. Obasanjo has not returned to Addis Ababa since June 2024.

The United Nations Security Council has not passed a resolution on Ethiopia since the Tigray war began. The United States suspended Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act in January 2022 over atrocities in Tigray; trade preferences were restored in January 2024. There have been no sanctions on Ethiopian officials. The European Union has provided humanitarian aid but no political pressure.

The reason is simple: Ethiopia is too strategically important. It hosts U.S. drone bases used for counterterrorism operations in Somalia. It receives $1 billion annually in American aid. It is a key partner in China's Belt and Road Initiative, with $13.7 billion in Chinese infrastructure loans since 2000. The West wants stability. China wants access. Abiy offers both, as long as the international community accepts the violence required to maintain them.

What Comes Next

There are three possible futures. In the first, the government and Fano negotiate. This requires Abiy to lift the state of emergency, recognize Fano as a legitimate political actor, and accept some form of regional autonomy for Amhara. It would mean amnesty for fighters on both sides and international mediation. There is no sign Abiy is willing to do this. He does not negotiate with insurgents. He destroys them.

In the second future, the war continues indefinitely. Fano cannot take Addis Ababa. The government cannot pacify rural Amhara. Ethiopia becomes a permanently fragmented state — federal authority in cities, insurgent control in the countryside, permanent emergency rule, permanent displacement, permanent emergency. This is the current trajectory.

In the third future, Ethiopia breaks apart. Not quickly, like Yugoslavia. Slowly, like Sudan — zones of control, ethnic militias, warlord economies, collapsing infrastructure, mass starvation. The Amhara insurgency spreads. Tigray restarts. Oromia intensifies. The army fractures along ethnic lines. Regional states declare autonomy. The African Union watches. The world moves on.

This correspondent has covered enough wars to know which future is most likely. The camps will keep growing. The checkpoints will stay manned by teenagers. Tigist Alemayehu will spend another year in a plastic shelter, writing names on scraps of paper, waiting for a peace that is not coming.

They had nothing. They still have nothing.