Ethiopia: How to Resolve Tigray’s Dangerous Demobilisation Deadlock

Mekelle, Ethiopia — Disillusionment is reflected in mounting rates of desertion, irregular migration, and involvement in criminal activity.

Over the last few weeks, more than 12,000 Tigrayan ex-combatants have demobilised and transitioned to the next phase of their lives – but they are the lucky ones. Some 250,000 former fighters have been left behind, their futures on hold, despite the war in Ethiopia’s northern region coming to an end more than two years ago.

These delays and setbacks to the demobilisation programme represent a serious security risk. The socio-economic toll of keeping a large, productive force idle has yet to be fully assessed, but disillusionment is reflected in mounting rates of desertion, irregular migration, and involvement in criminal activity.

Those who have been demobilised have received only limited support to help their return to society. The package consists of $800 in cash assistance, a few days of psychosocial orientation, and a mattress and bedsheets.

Last December, when the process was briefly restarted and then halted again after only a few weeks, wounded former fighters marched through the regional capital, Mekelle, and other towns seeking assurance of their continued medical treatment.

As women and the wounded make up a fifth of the ex-combatants – and two thirds have no prior employment history – the reintegration support should include skills development, psychosocial care, sexual violence services, and disability support, in addition to a land grant promised by the regional authorities.

But that is very much dependent on funding, and donors have only agreed to support Ethiopia’s multi-year National Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme in principle. Actual financing has only been secured for the current phase, which is expected to demobilise an additional 60,000 ex-combatants in Tigray by mid-2025, followed by another 200,000 in the subsequent three phases.

Funding is not the only challenge.

The process has also stalled due to political infighting within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – a dispute that has involved the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF), the paramilitary army that came into existence during the 2020-2022 war in response to atrocities committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean armies and Amhara militia.

TDF’s leadership comprises veterans of the federal army who were TPLF combatants during the two-decade-long insurgency against the Derg regime that ended in 1991, while three quarters of its fighters are under the age of 32.

Distrust and deadlock

The November 2022 peace deal signed in Pretoria, South Africa, between the federal government and the TPLF silenced the guns and outlined a framework for political normalisation, including a DDR (disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration) process.

A federal agency tasked with managing DDR was promptly established, and both sides gave the impression that disarmament had been completed, highlighted by a ceremony in which heavy weapons – including tanks, rockets, and anti-aircraft guns – were handed over, followed by medium and light weapons by mid-2023.

However, it soon became clear that the arms inventory lacked clarity, and the sluggish demobilisation process fuelled speculation that weapons stockpiles were being hidden. In a climate of distrust, the federal government has accused the TPLF of clandestine remobilisation, while the TPLF claims implementing the demobilisation would leave Tigray defenceless.

Under the terms of the peace agreement, and running concurrently with DDR, the federal government should have overseen the removal of all Amhara and Eritrean troops. Instead, Amhara forces continue to occupy and operate with impunity in western Tigray, while Eritrean troops remain present in Tigray’s border regions.

An internal power struggle in Tigray has become the latest cause for demobilisation delays. Last December, TPLF hardliners, led by chairperson Debretsion Gebremichael, accused the then-head of the regional interim administration, Getachew Reda, of pushing for an “expedited disbandment of TDF under the guise of DDR”.

Echoing these accusations – and framing them as treason – TDF officers took over administrative offices in several towns of the region, prompting Getachew’s flight to the federal capital, Addis Ababa, and the collapse of his administration.

The new head of the regional interim government, Lt. General Tadesse Worede, has pledged to “swiftly finalise” the DDR programme. But this week he was quoted as saying that “the implementation of the next phase of demobilisation” was contingent on the “restoration of Tigray’s constitutional territory and the full return of IDPs” – issues that still remain outstanding under the peace agreement.

Yet that alone does not fully explain the delays in the current phase of DDR.

Beyond its use as a tool for political point-scoring, the TDF was openly positioned — and actively deployed — as a vehicle for securing political power by TPLF hardliners, who saw Getachew’s reformist rhetoric as a threat to the party’s monopoly.

TDF officers apparently subscribe to that political line, but they are also driven by a desire to preserve the political influence, economic assets, personal security, and social status tied to their current roles.

A wider problem

The destruction of the TPLF and Tigray was widely assumed to have been the wartime goal of Eritrean and Amharan forces. The peace deal was interpreted by hardliners as a betrayal by the federal government of that strategy.

The wartime alliance, however, was inherently unstable. Eritrea’s ambition is to become a power-broker in the Horn of Africa, to be achieved by keeping Ethiopia off balance. Evidence of this is its reported support to the Amhara Fano insurgency, which has left swathes of Ethiopia’s second biggest region highly insecure.

The latest flare-up between the federal government and the TPLF came last March, when the federal army accused a senior TDF commander of aiding Fano rebels.

The Fano insurgency was triggered by Addis Ababa’s post-war decision to downsize the country’s regional security forces – a move that was poorly received in Amhara, where it was seen as undermining the region’s national stature.

But now, a nascent tactical alliance, driven by shifting calculations, is reportedly taking shape behind closed doors.

TPLF hardliners see a shared objective in unseating Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed – by aligning with certain Fano factions and the Eritrean regime, which has been alarmed by Ethiopia’s push to acquire a coastline on the Red Sea.

A squandered opportunity

Trapped in this political quagmire are thousands of youth, drawn into conflict early and now yearning for a normal life. The unusual opportunity for smoother reintegration, derived from the TDF’s wartime grassroots legitimacy, is being squandered by the delays and shifting post-war dynamics – which is affecting the discipline of fighters still in uniform as DDR becomes a political football.

With Tigray’s economy comatose, and jobs scarce, an illicit “gold rush” is underway in the northwestern region – which has led to violence between rival gangs.

By drawing in and empowering a mix of actors — politicians, military officers, business figures, and foreign interests — illegal gold mining has undermined governance structures and diverted public revenues, while fuelling shady networks, parallel power structures, environmental degradation, and violent clashes.

A few concrete steps could restore momentum to the peace process. A mutually agreed halt to provocative rhetoric between the federal government and Tigray leaders would help. That should be followed by progress on implementing the core provisions of the peace deal, including the restoration of Tigray’s pre-war boundaries, political dialogue, and representation in federal institutions.

That could weaken the rationale for maintaining the TDF as leverage against the federal government, and speed up the return of war-displaced people to their home regions. The federal government’s proposal of temporarily keeping western Tigray under its control, while lacking constitutionally and practicality, has been undermined by its failure to implement its pledge to “dismantle illegal administrations” and rein in the misconduct of Amhara forces in the area.

A negotiated framework for integrating TDF officers and combatants into federal security organs – alongside personal guarantees against political retribution for Tigrayan leaders and military figures – is crucial to rebuilding trust.

The federal government must also reach a security understanding with the broader Tigrayan polity, given the federal security organs’ complicity in the identity-based persecution during the war and the lingering threat from the oversized Amhara regional forces and quasi-official militias.

For now, the DDR process has resumed, and a total of 20,000 former fighters have been sent home, reviving the hopes of thousands of ex-combatants stranded between war and peace – their lives frozen in transition.

Yet patience has its limits: Every day, more vanish into the unknown, choosing the peril of irregular migration over the torment of waiting. Without urgent, concrete action to sustain this process, the DDR initiative risks becoming another broken promise in an already battered peace process.