April 16-19, 2026, the TPLF Central Committee and its paramilitary wing met in Axum and, in a decision whose consequences Tigray will live with for years, effectively dismantled the political architecture of the Pretoria Agreement. This essay identifies who is responsible, confronts the accountability the war of genocide demands, and proposes the only framework that can prevent what comes next.
There is a specific form of treachery that operates under the guise of the very individuals it devastates. The TPLF Central Committee’s April 19th decision to reject the federal government’s extension of Tadesse Werede’s (Lt. Gen.) mandate and to announce the restoration of the pre-2020 illegal regional council, whose democratic legitimacy is roughly equivalent to that of the Derg’s final parliament, exemplifies such betrayal. It is dressed up in the language of constitutional principle. In essence, a faction says that its own survival is more important than Tigray’s.
Getachew Reda, who was the president of the Tigray Interim Administration and one of the main architects of the Pretoria Agreement, said the decision was part of a “well-established pattern” in which the TPLF’s “political imagination begins and ends with the preservation of its parochial interests.”
He’s right. But Getachew’s accuracy shouldn’t lead us into the easy trap of thinking this is just a story about one person. Many people and factors led to the end of the Pretoria Agreement, and it will take more honesty from more people than anyone has been willing to give so far to fix it.
The agreement, which was critically ill and ceased on April 19, was never a comprehensive peace accord. It was an intentionally incomplete framework, strategically vague on its most controversial parts, and it relied on the continued political will of the parties that signed it, driven by military exhaustion rather than genuine political agreement. Its disarmament and the return of federal services were well organized and followed. It had no rules about Western Tigray, transitional justice, or the long-term political future of Tigrayan governance.
Every peace deal does this: it leaves the hardest questions open and gets people to sign off on the easier ones. The trade only works if both sides use the time they bought with the agreement to build trust and address what was put off. They did not do this in this case.
The group this analysis calls the Sebhat Nega dynasty is most directly responsible for that failure. It comprises figures such as Getachew Assefa and Alem Gebrewahid and is backed by the military groups that call themselves “Core and Above.”
This is not a description made from a safe distance. It is a conclusion demanded by a documented record of 10 discrete acts of sabotage: preemptive opposition to the agreement at the moment of its signing; a four-month delay in forming the Interim Administration, calibrated to ensure a factional rather than a societal composition; systematic obstruction of the DDR process required by the accord’s implementation; a venomous internal smear campaign that branded pragmatic Tigrayan leaders as traitors and CIA agents; the military units’ decisive support for the hardliner coup of April 2025; the calculated installation of a TIA president whose mandate extension could later be weaponized as a constitutional pretext; an illicit alliance with the Eritrean regime, whose forces committed genocide against Tigrayans; the acceptance of Eritrean intelligence direction to eliminate from Tigrayan political life precisely the leaders least susceptible to Asmara’s manipulation; and documented plots to physically neutralize prominent political and military figures, including Tsadkan Gebretensae (Gen.).
Since the power grab in April 2025, the “Core and Above” formations that supported this faction have ceased to function as recognizable military units. They are now criminal organizations that run illegal gold mining and smuggling operations across porous borders; run networks that traffic people and prey on Tigrayans desperate enough to pay high fees to escape the conditions these same units have helped create; rob banks in the region; and, in the most morally abhorrent of their operations, use systematic sexual violence against Tigrayan teenage girls to control factions.
The reasoning is the same as that of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army: sexual violence as punishment, to scare people, and to show power over a civilian population kept in line by fear. It is not surprising that forces claiming to act in Tigray’s name are doing this to Tigrayan civilians. It is the end of a politics that was always about power for its own sake.
But being honest with your mind means assigning blame fairly, rather than simply going after the easiest target. The Ethiopian federal government does not have the records it claims to have. PM Abiy Ahmed’s government has formally pledged to the Pretoria framework, yet it has consistently failed to meet the most pressing humanitarian needs.
The agreement requires that Western Tigray remain under Amhara control until it is returned to Tigrayan administration, a condition for IDP repatriation. But Addis Ababa lacks the political will to enforce the agreement’s territorial provisions and the willingness to face Amhara constituencies that regard Western Tigray as a non-negotiable nationalist demand. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayan IDPs are still living in tents, and there have been documented deaths from starvation.
This is a daily reminder of the federal government’s failure to fulfill its obligations under the Pretoria framework.
The April 2026 mandate extension was a unilateral administrative decision, not a political process that involved all of Tigrayan civil society. This gave the hardliner faction the constitutional language it needed to commit a highly irresponsible act. The result is the same, whether it was careless or planned.
President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, on the other hand, never accepted that Tigrayan political power would survive the war. He said after the signing in Pretoria that “our mission has been thwarted.” This was not a diplomatic mistake. It reflected Asmara’s strategic assessment.
The Eritrean government wanted not just to defeat Tigray but to destroy it as a political society. Pretoria, despite its flaws, maintained the conditions necessary for the continuation of Tigrayan political life. The Tsimdo rapprochement, in which TPLF hardliners joined forces with those who committed the worst documented atrocities during the genocide war, shows that the dynasty was willing to put Eritrean strategic interests ahead of Tigrayan political independence. It is not just a rumor that Asmara’s intelligence services led the purge of Tigray’s best leaders; it is a conclusion based on a documented pattern.
This leads us to the question that the Pretoria Agreement was meant to answer, and any new process must be held accountable. The Tigray war was not a typical armed conflict, and the atrocities that occurred could not be seen as unfortunate byproducts of military operations.
The coming together of federal Ethiopian forces, Eritrean National Defense Forces, and Amhara regional militias led to a pattern of mass atrocities. These included the systematic killing of civilians in Axum, Mai Kadra, and Dengelat; the use of sexual violence as a weapon on a scale that multiple international investigators have called a deliberate tool of ethnic terror; the creation of famine conditions by blocking food and medical access for millions of people; and the targeting of Tigrayan civilians, as shown by the language used by perpetrators and the patterns of victim selection that meet the legal definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute and that a growing body of expert legal and historical analysis has called genocide.
For Tigray to achieve lasting peace, those who committed these crimes must be held accountable, and that accountability must include everyone involved. This includes Eritrean military leaders whose troops have been caught committing mass killings and systematic rape. It includes leaders of the Amhara militia who took part in these acts in Western Tigray. It includes Ethiopian federal officials. It also includes TPLF leaders who were involved in killing civilians in Amhara and Afar during the southern phases of the conflict, as well as those in charge of the “Core and Above” criminal and sexual violence operations today.
A tribunal that examines some of these issues and not others is not a way to bring about transitional justice; it is a political tool that looks like a legal one. The international community’s repeated failure to impose existing Magnitsky framework sanctions on documented offenders from all parties is not a matter of diplomatic caution. Impunity is what keeps this pattern going, and it is the oxygen of impunity.
A subsequent peace process must earnestly address a critical issue that proponents across all factions have sought to evade: the genuine and perceived security concerns of Amhara civilians in Western and Southern Tigray.
This analysis fully supports the legitimate claim to Tigrayan territorial sovereignty, grounded in both the historical record and the terms of the Pretoria Agreement. It does not eliminate the protective responsibilities owed to civilian inhabitants, whose apprehensions, though exacerbated by political figures, are grounded in substantiated TDF atrocities in Amhara and Afar. These fears cannot be dismissed as fabrications; doing so only helps those who have used civilian presence to justify permanent occupation.
Western and Southern Tigray need a governance framework under Tigrayan authority that includes clear, enforceable constitutional protections for the safety, property rights, and political representation of Amhara residents.
There should also be independent international monitoring during the transition and structured community reconciliation processes led by neutral third parties. This is not giving in to the occupation. It shows what real sovereignty is about. A Tigray whose government protects the rights of everyone in its territory, including those from historically rival communities, demonstrates the political vision that distinguishes statehood from factional control.
The Sebhat Nega dynasty will not protect anyone in Tigray, whether Tigrayan or not. Guarantees of minority rights do not weaken the case for Tigrayan territorial integrity; they strengthen it.
The window for effective intervention is narrowing in real time. The African Union and the United Nations don’t need another framework agreement focused on the same groups, whose track record of following through is now clear. It is a wide-ranging consultation of Tigrayan society that includes genuine groups not affiliated with the TPLF, youth movements, women’s groups, religious leaders, civil society, intellectuals, the diaspora, and reformist political figures. It separates the issue of who owns guns from the issue of who truly represents Tigrayan society.
The hardliner faction should be given a clear choice: either take part in a process based on real accountability and civilian-oriented governance or be excluded from any transitional governing role because their documented actions, such as criminal enterprises, sexual violence, assassination plots, and following Eritrean orders, make them unfit for any position of public trust.
A group that put its own survival ahead of the well-being of the people it claimed to represent killed the Pretoria Agreement from the inside.
There is no doubt this is true; the evidence is too strong and specific to allow for reasonable disagreement. The question is whether the international community and the broader Ethiopian political system have the moral clarity to call it what it is, the institutional ability to act on that naming, and the political will to build what will take the place of the agreement that was killed.
History will determine whether the response is sufficient to the necessity. Today, the need is urgent in Tigray.
Hailai Weldeslassie Abera is an independent researcher in development, peace, and security, affiliated with the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He can be reached at [email protected]
Contributed by Hailai Weldeslassie Abera
