Seven armed groups have declared what they call the “Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival” against the government of Abiy Ahmed.

In the Tigray war that raged from 2020-2022 the Tigray Defense Forces and Oromo Liberation Army were at points allied against the government, government aligned militias and Eritrea.

However, this broader coalition (in addition to various minor groups) brings in most notably the powerful Fano rebels. The Fano rebels are Amhara nationalists who fought on the government’s side in the Tigray War, helping to conquer and garrison Western Tigray and meanwhile taking advantage of the opportunity to ethnically cleanse Tigray people from the region in favor of Amhara people. They have also clashed with Oromo armed groups. And the other way there have also been ex. massacres of hundreds of Amhara villagers at a time by the TDF. So the initial reaction is that this is quite the surprising leap for these groups which have such heavy bad blood standing in between them to form a partnership against the government.

Fano had become alienated from the government (as did some other then-allied forces like Eritrea) at the conclusion of the Tigray war when the government abruptly obtained peace in one-on-one negotiations with the TDF. This was done without involving negotiators from other allied parties that were left feeling betrayed for having bled heavily and carrying the government forces only to be excluded from shaping the peace. This suspicion heightened as the government of Ethiopia said vaguely that disputes over areas like Western Tigray would be “resolved constitutionally” rather than in that case explicitly gifting it to Amhara, and as the government began trying to disarm and reintegrate the various friendly militias which Fano viewed as making themselves defenseless when militias they had fought like OLA and TDF remained armed. Fano launched an insurgency and has vast sway in the Amhara countryside and briefly took the city of Debre Tabor before being chased away by drones. They were previously disorganized but have become increasingly unified.

Adding to the rebel issues, Ethiopia has problems with a lot of its neighbors. One of the big things that Abiy Ahmed wants is a port where landlocked Ethiopia does not have to pay as much money as it does at Djibouti, which is under Chinese protection. Abiy Ahmed has made a speech to parliament that this will be done by any means necessary. The two major candidates for this were Somalia (which has had terrible relations with Ethiopia for a long time) and Eritrea with which relations had now re-soured. Ethiopia tried to recognize Somaliland (which is attempting to separate from Somalia but is overwhelmingly unrecognized and has Somalia unionists controlling the eastern third of its territory in the North Eastern State/SSC-Khaatumo) in exchange for a port deal which was received with heavy international hostility so Ethiopia backed off (leaving the first and so far only country to recognize Somaliland as Israel in 2025). The Ethiopian government has also been sabre-rattling with Eritrea and claiming Eritrea has not vacated from area occupied in the Tigray War, that Eritrea has been arming Ethiopian rebels and re-publicizing Eritrean war crimes in the Tigray War that they previously had suppresssed. In addition to those, Ethiopia has waded into Sudan’s civil war on the side of the anti-government RSF, in alignment with the wealthy UAE which is aligned with Ethiopia on wishing to dismember Somalia and which has quite a lot of money to fling around to aligned parties. Ethiopia hosted much of the UAE gear that got kicked out of Yemen and Somalia, harbored a full blown training camp for the RSF and even had allegedly launched/allowed drones to be launched from its airports that rocked the Sudanese capital.

Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea are not really considered to be in a list of states that have their act together but the recognized governments of these places have backers in more prominent countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. In particular Egypt is very wary of Ethiopia due to their concern that a powerful Ethiopia could use its status as the source of the bulk of the Nile River (which the overwhelming majority of Egypt’s huge population lives along and depends on) to twist Egypt’s hand and bend them to kneel on whatever issue they might desire, particularly if aligned with Sudan.

That’s all to say, the government of Ethiopia seems to have made quite a large number of enemies, though it’s not without friends either. Ex. relations have been steadily improving with the strategic partners of the UAE, Israel and India, and also are good with neighboring Kenya and South Sudan. But the Ethiopian military did not exactly cover itself in glory in the Tigray War and had rebels come pretty close to the capital at a point even despite the help from allies like Fano and Eritrea that now are aligned against Ethiopia. One wonders how war would go if sparked again, as seems increasingly likely.