Ethiopia's Amhara Militants Control 12 Towns. Abiy Cannot Retake Them.

Ethiopia's federal forces have lost control of at least 12 towns and rural districts across Amhara state to Fano militias, according to interviews with regional officials, humanitarian organizations operating in the area, and conflict mapping data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). The territory under militia governance now exceeds 18,000 square kilometers—an area larger than the West Bank—and includes critical transit routes connecting Addis Ababa to the northern provinces.

For Alemayehu Tesfaye, a 42-year-old schoolteacher in Debre Birhan, the shift came without ceremony. Federal police withdrew from the town on March 14, 2026, he said in a telephone interview arranged through intermediaries. "The Fano came the next morning. They set up checkpoints. They told us they would keep order. Now they decide who can leave and who stays."

The conflict, which erupted in August 2023 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed attempted to disband regional militias across Ethiopia, has escalated from rural insurgency into a sustained territorial challenge to federal authority. Unlike Tigray—where a peace agreement signed in Pretoria in November 2022 ended a two-year war that killed an estimated 600,000 people—the Amhara conflict shows no diplomatic resolution on the horizon.

How Amhara's Militias Became an Army

Fano began as a loose network of community defense groups with roots in Amhara nationalism dating to the 1990s. During the Tigray war, these militias fought alongside federal forces, playing a critical role in the capture of western Tigray in November 2020. But when Abiy Ahmed signed the Pretoria Agreement and ordered all regional forces to disarm, Amhara leaders saw betrayal.

On April 6, 2023, Abiy issued Directive 22/2023, ordering the integration of all state special forces into federal command structures or demobilization within 90 days. Amhara regional president Yilikal Kefale publicly opposed the order. On August 4, 2023, protests erupted across Amhara cities. Federal forces opened fire in Gondar, Bahir Dar, and Lalibela. ACLED recorded 127 deaths in the first week.

By September 2023, Fano had transformed from protesters into insurgents. Armed with weapons looted from police stations and supplied by sympathetic officers within Amhara regional security forces, the militias began ambushing federal convoys. On January 17, 2024, Fano fighters captured the town of Kobo, holding it for six days before federal artillery forced a retreat. The pattern repeated across North Wollo, South Gondar, and North Shewa zones.

Tronvoll, who has researched Ethiopian conflicts since the 1990s and conducted field interviews in Amhara as recently as February 2026, estimates Fano's active fighting force at between 15,000 and 25,000, with broader community support networks that enable sustained operations. "They control the countryside," he said. "Federal forces hold the cities, barely."

The Human Cost

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 2.1 million people in Amhara require emergency assistance, with 673,000 internally displaced since August 2023. Access for humanitarian organizations has deteriorated sharply. Between January and March 2026, UN agencies reported 47 incidents of access denial by federal forces and 31 by Fano militias.

In Debre Tabor, a town of 72,000 that has changed hands three times since November 2025, the hospital has been without electricity for 11 weeks. Dr. Hiwot Desta, the facility's director, described the situation in a March 28 voice message shared with international NGOs and reviewed by The Editorial. "We have no anesthesia. We have no oxygen. Women are dying in childbirth. We perform amputations with local anesthetic or nothing."

Schools have become military positions. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a government-affiliated but technically independent body, documented 89 schools occupied by armed actors—62 by federal forces, 27 by Fano—between September 2025 and February 2026. In North Wollo zone, 214,000 children have had no formal education for 18 months.

Abiy's Impossible Position

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending Ethiopia's border war with Eritrea, now presides over a fragmenting state. The Tigray war cost an estimated $28 billion in economic damage, according to a 2023 World Bank assessment. Amhara, Ethiopia's second-most populous region with 23 million people, represents 21% of national GDP. Prolonged conflict there threatens the entire federal structure.

Yet Abiy has few options. A military solution appears elusive—federal forces have failed to dislodge Fano from key positions despite artillery and drone strikes supplied by Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. On February 12, 2026, federal airstrikes hit a market in Finote Selam, killing 34 civilians, according to Amnesty International field investigations. The backlash intensified local support for Fano.

Negotiations face structural obstacles. Unlike Tigray, where the Tigray People's Liberation Front provided a clear negotiating partner, Fano has no unified command. Dozens of local commanders operate with varying degrees of coordination. Some seek autonomy within Ethiopia; others advocate Amhara secession; still others frame their fight as national, aimed at replacing Abiy's government entirely.

"Who do you negotiate with?" asked Samrawit Hailu, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, in an April 18 interview. "There is no Fano phone number. No central office. Each commander has his own agenda, his own territory, his own reading of Amhara history."

Regional Implications

Ethiopia's instability reverberates across the Horn of Africa. The country hosts 920,000 refugees, primarily from South Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, according to UNHCR. If state collapse accelerates, those populations could be displaced again. Regional powers are watching. Egypt, locked in a decade-long dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, has quietly increased intelligence contacts with Amhara diaspora groups, according to three diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Eritrea, whose President Isaias Afwerki supported Ethiopia during the Tigray war, has moved three brigades to positions along the Ethiopian border, according to satellite imagery analysis by the European External Action Service published March 31, 2026. The movement suggests Asmara is hedging, preparing for scenarios ranging from refugee flows to territorial opportunities if Ethiopia fractures further.

The African Union, headquartered in Addis Ababa, has remained largely silent. In private briefings to member states reviewed by The Editorial, AU officials describe the Amhara conflict as an "internal matter," a position that reflects both diplomatic convention and the organization's limited enforcement capacity. The AU deployed no observers, offered no mediation, and issued no public statement beyond generic calls for dialogue.

A War of Attrition

Federal forces retain control of Amhara's regional capital, Bahir Dar, and most major highways during daylight hours. But Fano controls the night and the countryside. The stalemate resembles conflicts elsewhere—Afghanistan before 2021, Mali since 2012—where governments hold cities while insurgents govern everything else.

Ethiopian government officials dispute the characterization. Communication Minister Legesse Tulu told a press conference in Addis Ababa on April 22 that "federal authority is intact" and described Fano as "criminal elements" who would be "neutralized." He provided no timeline and took no questions about territorial control.

On the ground, the reality is more complex. Some Fano commanders have begun providing services that resemble governance—mediating land disputes, organizing rudimentary courts, even collecting taxes on commercial transport. In areas where federal authority has been absent for months, communities have adapted. That adaptation, analysts warn, could harden into permanent fragmentation.

What Comes Next

Three scenarios are circulating among diplomats and analysts in Addis Ababa. The first: federal forces eventually retake territory through overwhelming force, as they attempted in Tigray—but the human cost would be catastrophic and success is uncertain. The second: a negotiated settlement similar to Pretoria, but without a unified Fano leadership, negotiations would fracture into dozens of local ceasefires that may not hold. The third: creeping state collapse, where Ethiopia remains nominally unified but effective sovereignty fragments into ethnic regions with weak central authority.

International attention remains minimal. The United States, European Union, and United Nations have issued statements expressing concern but have not appointed special envoys or imposed consequences. Western diplomats privately acknowledge that donor fatigue after Tigray, combined with competing crises in Sudan and Gaza, has left Amhara underreported and under-resourced.

For Alemayehu Tesfaye, the schoolteacher in Debre Birhan, the geopolitical calculations matter little. "We just want this to end," he said. "Federal army or Fano, I do not care anymore. I want my students back in class. I want to walk to market without checkpoints. I want my country to stop eating itself."

Asked whether he believed peace was possible, Tesfaye was silent for several seconds. "I used to think so," he finally said. "Now I teach history. And history says this does not end quickly."