# Tigray War Fought from **4 November 2020** to the Pretoria agreement of **2 November 2022**, between the Ethiopian federal government under [[Abiy Ahmed]] — with Eritrean forces and Amhara regional forces and militia — and the [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]]. By several credible estimates it is among the deadliest wars of the twenty-first century. It was covered in the American press at a fraction of the intensity given to conflicts an order of magnitude smaller. ## Course Abiy ordered the offensive after accusing the TPLF of attacking federal Northern Command bases, and framed it as a "law enforcement operation" rather than a war. The political trigger was the **September 2020 Tigray regional election**, held in defiance of a federal postponement and declared illegal. Eritrean participation — see [[Eritrea]] — was denied and then admitted. **Amnesty International** documented the Axum massacre by Eritrean forces on **26 February 2021**, warning it may amount to a crime against humanity; Abiy publicly admitted Eritrean troops were in Tigray on **23 March 2021**; Eritrea confirmed it on 17 April. The United States sanctioned the Eritrean military in September 2021. A government ceasefire followed the Tigrayan recapture of Mekelle in June 2021; a humanitarian truce held from March 2022; fighting resumed **24 August 2022** and ended with the Pretoria talks. > [!warning] The death toll: four estimates that are not measuring the same thing > | Estimate | Source and method | > |---|---| > | **102,000+ excess deaths** to mid-2022 | Peer-reviewed University of London study; 72% from direct violence | > | **100,000+ battle deaths in 2022 alone** | Uppsala Conflict Data Program; battle-death coding, mostly combatants | > | **385,000–600,000** (revised from 162,000–378,000) | Ghent University, Jan Nyssen; population-based, including famine and healthcare deprivation | > | **311,000 low / 518,000 average / 808,000 high** civilian deaths, Nov 2020–Dec 2022 | Nyssen 2024. In the average case: ~10% direct killings, ~30% healthcare collapse, **~60% famine** | > | **~600,000** | Olusegun Obasanjo, AU lead mediator; methodology not published | > > **Do not present these as competing measurements of one quantity.** Battle-death counts and population-level excess-mortality estimates answer different questions, and the gap between 102,000 and 600,000 is mostly the difference between counting people shot and counting people starved. Nyssen's gendered finding is worth carrying: men were predominantly killed directly, women predominantly by starvation, sexual violence, looting and infrastructure destruction. No authoritative figure exists, because both belligerents imposed information blackouts and refused cooperation. ## Documented atrocities - **HRW and Amnesty**, joint report, **6 April 2022** — *"We Will Erase You from This Land"* — found **crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing** by Amhara regional forces and officials in Western Tigray. HRW found the ethnic cleansing **persisting under the truce** in June 2023. - **UN ICHREE**, the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, established December 2021, reported violations by **all parties** and in September 2023 warned of ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, with an annex on the "Acute Risk of Further Atrocity Crimes." **Its mandate was not renewed and it ended in October 2023** — a decision Amnesty and the Global Centre for R2P called an obstruction of justice. - **Famine and siege.** In July 2021 the UN told the Security Council that **400,000 people had "crossed the threshold into famine"** with 1.8 million more on the brink, 1.7 million displaced, and **over 1,200 reported incidents** of serious sexual and gender-based violence, acknowledged as an undercount. - The United States determined in **March 2023** that all sides committed war crimes. In **March 2025** eight survivors filed a criminal complaint in Germany against twelve Ethiopian and Eritrean officials. ## The Pretoria agreement, and its failure Signed **2 November 2022** in Pretoria under African Union mediation (Obasanjo, Kenyatta, Mlambo-Ngcuka), effective the following day. Terms: TPLF disarmament within 30 days; federal deployment to international borders; federal control of airspace, airports and highways; an inclusive interim regional administration; restoration of services and unfettered humanitarian access. **Eritrea was not a party to it**, and its withdrawal was addressed only obliquely. > [!important] ⭐ A ceasefire that excludes an occupying army is a pause, not a settlement > Three years on: Eritrean forces remain entrenched at **Badme, Zalambessa, Irob and Shiraro**. Western Tigray is still held by Amhara forces — a frozen conflict with **over a million displaced Tigrayans unable to return**, and starvation deaths reported at the Hitsats camp in December 2025. Disarmament launched in November 2024 targeting 75,000 ex-combatants had processed about **6,650** by that December before stalling. The TPLF was deregistered as a party in May 2025 and split into rival factions. The Rift Valley Institute's assessment of **26 March 2026** is that the deal is "more paused than resolved" and at "its most acute point of strain since Pretoria." > > In **mid-July 2026** the TPLF declared the agreement effectively dead. Fighting broke out in western Tigray on **1 August 2026**; the specialist Kjetil Tronvoll called it the most serious incident since the deal was signed. Casualty figures for the 2026 clashes are not yet established. ## Why it matters here **The attention gap is the finding.** A war that killed somewhere between a hundred thousand and six hundred thousand people, with documented ethnic cleansing and siege famine, ran for two years and produced a fraction of the Western coverage, congressional attention and civil-society mobilisation that far smaller conflicts generate. The mechanism is not mysterious — a total communications blackout, expelled journalists, no diaspora constituency with purchase on US media, and no great-power stake — but **the effect is that atrocity documentation and political salience have almost no relationship to each other**, which is a general finding the vault should carry into every argument about which crises "the world" responds to. Compare the equivalent gap on [[First Congo War]] and [[Congolese History Hub]]. ## See also [[Ethiopian History Hub]] · [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]] · [[Abiy Ahmed]] · [[Ethnic Cleansing]] · [[Genocide]] · [[Human Rights Watch]]