Abiy Ahmed must answer for Ethiopia’s return to war

Abiy Ahmed’s government should be judged by whether it can deliver a durable peace. We believe the renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia represents a profound failure of political leadership. The prime minister owes the country more than an explanation of who his enemies are. He owes it a credible way out of war.

That is why we are criticizing the government directly. A government’s first claim to legitimacy should be its ability to keep people alive, not its willingness to ask them for another sacrifice. Military capability cannot substitute for a political settlement that people can live with.

Our criticism concerns Abiy’s political responsibility and his government’s decisions. It is not a finding that he personally ordered every reported attack, or that one account settles who initiated each clash. Those questions require evidence. But uncertainty about a battlefield incident must not become an excuse to avoid questioning a government’s strategy.

We see a failure to treat civilian protection as the measure of success. The federal government should explain how renewed military action is supposed to secure a peace that negotiations cannot, what limits it places on that action, and how the public can independently examine the consequences. “Trust the leadership” is not an adequate answer when lives are at stake.

We reject the idea that opposition to Abiy requires defending every decision of the TPLF or any other armed movement. Civilians should not have to earn protection by supporting the correct faction. The government’s opponents must answer for their conduct too. That does not relieve the prime minister of responsibility for the choices made by his own administration.

Our position is straightforward: economic ambition cannot justify pursuing a port through force. Access to trade should be negotiated through workable agreements, not made into a test of national pride that ordinary Ethiopians and Eritreans might be asked to pay for with their lives.

The danger we see is that the conflict in Tigray and hostility across the Eritrean border could reinforce each other, making restraint harder and drawing more people into the fighting. This is our assessment of the risk, not a claim that a wider regional war is inevitable. Abiy should make the peaceful limits of his government’s policy explicit and act consistently with them. Eritrea’s leadership should be held to the same standard of restraint.

The government should pursue an immediate, verifiable halt to escalation and return to direct negotiations. It should publish clear commitments on humanitarian access, allow independent scrutiny of alleged abuses, and give the public a concrete account of the steps it is taking toward peace. Political opponents should be able to challenge those choices without being treated as enemies of the country.

We want an Ethiopia in which political leadership is measured by the lives it protects and the disagreements it resolves. Abiy Ahmed’s government must be challenged when it falls short of that standard. Preventing another devastating war, and stopping the renewed fighting from spreading, should take precedence over the survival, prestige or ambitions of any leader.