Former battlefield enemies put their names on one alliance this week. Late on Sunday, seven Ethiopian armed and opposition groups announced the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, which they also call the Alliance for Survival, and they said their first job is to remove Abiy Ahmed’s regime and install an inclusive transitional government guided by a charter. Al Jazeera and Reuters both carried the announcement on Monday, and a full text circulated through Oromo opposition channels that listed every signatory.
The lineup is wide and awkward on purpose. It includes the Amhara Fano National Movement, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Army, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front known as Ugugumo, the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement, and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement. Zemene Kassie of Fano read the founding statement on TPLF-linked Tigrai TV. Jaal Marroo of the OLA had already said earlier this month that the sides met several times before the public announcement. A source close to Fano told Al Jazeera the talks ran about a year, and Zemene had floated that deals were in place in a Le Temps interview in August.
That history is why the letterhead matters more than the slogans. Fano fought with federal forces against Tigray fighters in the 2020 to 2022 war that killed hundreds of thousands. Amhara and Tigray still both claim Western Tigray, which Amhara nationalists have administered since that war ended. The TPLF declared the 2022 Pretoria deal effectively dead in mid-July, and recent fighting along the Tekeze corridor and drone strikes tracked by conflict monitors have already pushed northern Ethiopia back toward open war talk. Putting Fano and the TPLF on the same alliance statement does not erase those disputes. It only says both sides now treat Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party government as the nearer survival threat.
The founding text itself is blunt. It calls the current system personalist and dictatorial, says war and mass displacement have become defining features of the state, and claims the regime is pushing Ethiopia toward break-up. The stated immediate objective after removing the government is an inclusive transitional authority under a Transitional Charter, followed by what the groups call a genuine and participatory popular constitutional dialogue. They also say they will settle their own differences peacefully on the basis of the freely expressed will of their peoples. That last promise is the part that will be tested first, because Western Tigray, federal structure, and disarmament are not small differences that dissolve because seven logos share a page.
Addis Ababa’s first public reaction arrived through Abiy Ahmed’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum, who told Reuters that members of the alliance had been collaborating for a while with financial backing from Eritrea. Asmara has repeatedly denied similar accusations, and Eritrea’s information minister did not immediately reply to Reuters. The Ethiopian Media Authority also said news outlets were prohibited from using Tigrai TV as a source after the statement aired there. That bureaucratic ban does not erase the clip. It only shows how fast the regime in Addis Ababa moves to police who may repeat an opposition broadcast.
International Crisis Group analyst Magnus Taylor told Reuters the alliance will concern the federal government, but he also warned that weak capacity in several groups, long geographic distances, and political differences may hamper joint work. That caution is fair. It does not make the announcement empty. Countrywide, fighting has gripped parts of Oromia since 2018 and Amhara since 2023, and the government’s National Dialogue messaging has run beside prisoner releases, media restrictions, and multi-zone wars that English-language coverage still underweights.
Amhara readers should keep the war map open while they read the alliance text. Zegabi and the Amhara Association of America have spent September documenting battle events across eight Amhara zones, civilian harm, schoolyard drone strikes, contested Fano capture claims in North Wollo, and IDP communities in Harbu, Chagni, Jawi, and Qalu who say food aid has gone silent for months. Those reports sit beside Abiy Ahmed’s holiday speeches about forgiveness and restored peace. An alliance that names Amhara Fano as a founding partner answers a different ledger: rural Amhara is still a war zone, not a pacified hinterland waiting for palace dialogue to finish.
The OLA’s own earlier language also deserves a careful look. On 17 September, OLA channels described the emerging understanding among opposition armed groups as a procedural consensus and stressed that it did not amount to an agreement on every substantive political question or give any one group authority to decide Ethiopia’s future. That hedge does not cancel Monday’s joint announcement. It does remind readers that coordination against Abiy Ahmed is not the same thing as a finished political settlement among the seven.
So the practical questions are concrete. If the Alliance for Survival holds for a week, who speaks for Western Tigray before any transitional talk starts? If federal forces keep flying drones over Amhara and Tigray while the palace sells National Dialogue, how does Addis Ababa treat a charter written by the people still holding guns? And if neighboring states and donors keep treating Ethiopia’s wars as separate files, what happens when Fano, the TPLF, and the OLA insist they are one survival problem under one government?
None of those questions need invented drama. Reuters, Al Jazeera, the circulated alliance statement, and Amhara monitoring from Zegabi already put the facts on the table. Seven groups that do not trust each other have chosen to name Abiy Ahmed’s regime as the shared threat. The wars in Amhara, Oromia, and the north will decide whether that choice becomes a real front or another press-cycle coalition that dies on the first territorial argument.
Sources:
Al Jazeera Reuters Alliance for Survival statement via Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoo Zegabi (AAA eight-zone Amhara update) Zegabi (Amhara IDPs and food aid) @zegabimedia on X