Addis Ababa, August 13, 2026 (FMC) — There are alliances born of conviction, and there are alliances born of desperation. Tsimdo belongs to the latter. It is the unlikely convergence of forces that once stood on opposite sides of bitter conflicts but have now discovered a common cause in their hostility toward Ethiopia’s unity, sovereignty and rise.
The spectacle is striking. The banned TPLF and the regime in Asmara, once locked in a devastating confrontation, have found a new language of convenience. Around them orbit other armed and extremist actors and external interests whose calculations intersect at one point: keeping Ethiopia divided, distracted and vulnerable. Their ideological contradictions have not disappeared; they have simply been pushed aside by a more immediate calculation—weakening Ethiopia.
Tsimdo therefore tells a story far larger than the formation of another political alliance. It exposes the desperation of forces that have struggled to advance their agendas through conventional political means and are now searching for strength in one another. What they lack in shared vision, they attempt to compensate for through shared hostility.
The tragedy is that the consequences of this game are not borne by those who design it.
They are borne by ordinary people.
The people of the Tigray region have already paid an intolerably heavy price for cycles of confrontation. Families have lost loved ones, livelihoods have been shattered, communities displaced and development interrupted. Yet the same political culture that repeatedly turned young people into instruments of conflict is again pushing toward militarization while presenting its ambitions in the language of political struggle.
A young person who should be building a career is instead exposed to the machinery of war. A mother who should be watching her child walk to school is forced to worry about whether that child will return. A farmer who needs peace to cultivate the land is once again made vulnerable to political calculations far beyond his control.
This is the cruelest contradiction of the politics surrounding Tsimdo: those claiming to speak for the people continue to gamble with the very lives and futures of those people.
And behind this domestic turbulence stands a wider regional calculation.
For years, the regime in Asmara has treated Ethiopia less as a neighbor with which prosperity could be shared than as a rival whose progress must be constrained. The opportunity for economic integration between two neighboring countries with deep historical and geographic ties has repeatedly been overshadowed by confrontation and geopolitical suspicion.
The contrast today is impossible to ignore.
Ethiopia is expanding its infrastructure, digital economy, industrial capacity, agricultural productivity and urban development. Its growing market and economic transformation could offer enormous opportunities to the wider Horn of Africa. Yet Eritrea remains burdened by prolonged isolation, economic stagnation and the steady departure of its young people.
The tragedy is not simply that Eritrea has fallen behind. It is that the region could have been moving forward together.
Instead of embracing the economic possibilities created by Ethiopia’s expanding market, the regime in Asmara has repeatedly chosen the politics of containment. Instead of seeing Ethiopia’s growth as an opportunity for regional prosperity, it has treated Ethiopian weakness as a strategic prize.
Tsimdo is an extension of that mindset.
Its very composition exposes its emptiness. Forces separated by history, ideology and political ambition suddenly discover unity because they believe Ethiopia can be weakened by their combined pressure. Yesterday’s enemies become today’s companions, not because their political contradictions have vanished, but because their hostility toward Ethiopia has temporarily eclipsed them.
That is not a durable political vision. It is an alliance of convenience forged in the shadow of desperation.
The involvement of external actors makes the calculation even more troubling. Ethiopia’s internal political divisions have long attracted outside interests seeking leverage over the country’s strategic direction. Cairo’s longstanding calculations surrounding the Nile and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam add another dimension to this wider contest. The interests of such external actors cannot simply be equated with the interests of Ethiopian citizens.
The Abay is central to Ethiopia’s development aspirations. The country’s determination to harness its natural resources and expand its economic potential is not a bargaining chip to be surrendered because foreign powers or domestic political actors find Ethiopia’s growing strength inconvenient.
This is why the emergence of Tsimdo deserves to be seen for what it represents: an attempt to revive an old regional script under a new name.
The script is familiar. Keep Ethiopia fighting itself. Feed political divisions. Empower armed actors. Draw external powers into the equation. Turn internal grievances into permanent conflict. Then hope that a weakened Ethiopia can be prevented from becoming the stronger, more integrated and more influential country its geography and potential allow it to become.
But the script is colliding with a different Ethiopia.
The country is not standing still.
Its development trajectory, expanding state capacity, infrastructure investments and growing economic ambitions are changing the strategic landscape of the Horn. The forces that once depended on Ethiopia’s vulnerability are confronting a country increasingly capable of defending its national interests and pursuing its own path.
That is precisely why the old politics of proxy confrontation is resurfacing with renewed urgency.
The Pretoria peace process offered something fundamentally different: a way out of the cycle. It demonstrated that even after devastating conflict, political settlements can create space for reconstruction and recovery. Ethiopia’s continued commitment to peace and dialogue has kept that possibility alive.
But peace cannot flourish when political actors repeatedly prepare the ground for another war.
The people of the Tigray region do not need another battlefield. They need schools reopened, livelihoods restored, farms cultivated, businesses revived and children allowed to imagine futures larger than the next conflict.
The people of Eritrea do not need another proxy struggle fought beyond their borders. They need an economy capable of retaining their young people and a regional environment in which their country can trade, connect and prosper.
And Ethiopia does not need to be dragged backward by forces whose political imagination remains imprisoned in the conflicts of yesterday.
Tsimdo may bring yesterday’s enemies together. It cannot manufacture a common future from their shared hostility.
For all its grand ambitions, its greatest weakness is embedded in its very foundation: it is united by what it opposes, not by what it seeks to build.
And a coalition built on the desire to weaken Ethiopia will ultimately confront the hardest reality of all—the Ethiopia of today is no longer willing to surrender its future to the politics of yesterday.