Peace Agreements That Trade Justice For Quiet Always Fail

With hindsight, Pretoria did not answer the only question that mattered: Who owns Ethiopia? Who controls federalism, who owns autonomy, who draws the map, who shares power? When Addis Ababa cannot answer that, Tigray bleeds. Amhara burns. This is not a tribal war. This is a constitutional war.The parties are now locked into a renewed fight. On one hand, Abiy Ahmed's federal Ethiopian government. On the other hand, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) leads a new rebel alliance. It is a classic study of how a peace deal holds on paper and unravels on the ground.

Pretoria Peace Deal, 2 November, 2022

After two years of civil war from 2020-2022 that African Union (AU) mediators estimated hundreds of thousands of people, Addis Ababa and the TPLF signed a deal thin by design. The Pretoria Peace Deal. The Pretoria Agreement, alternatively termed the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, was a peace accord signed on November 2, 2022, in Pretoria, South Africa, to end the civil war.

The federal government of Addis Ababa got disarmament and the restoration of its authority. The TPLF got promises: unhindered aid, restored services, territorial integrity. What was left ambiguous were the two things you cannot leave ambiguous: Western Tigray, occupied by Amhara forces since 2020, and Eritrea, which fought the war but never signed the peace. Both sides signed exhausted, not agreed.

Since then, Western Tigray has never returned. Amhara settlers and militia stayed. More than one million Tigrayans, driven from Western and Southern Tigray, never went home and remain in camps. Eritrean troops never fully withdrew. Disarmament was partial. Aid and reconstruction stalled. By late September 2026, the guns were back at Alula Aba Nega Airport outside Mekelle. On September 22-23, 2026, Tigrayan forces seized the airport and two others. By October 3, 2026, federal forces claimed to have retaken it. Eritrea and Ethiopia severed ties, with mutual expulsions of diplomats, and Ethiopia accusing Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing the rebel alliance. The guarantors, the AU and the US, have no enforcement mechanism.

Pretoria left five questions on the table, and every one of them is still bleeding:

1. Who disarms first?
2. Whose land is it?
3. Whose home is it?
4. Who governs Tigray?
5. Who holds power?

Why is it unravelling?

It was a ceasefire, not a peace deal.

It stopped killing. It left the reasons for killing for later. Western Tigray, Welkait, claimed by both. The agreement said resolve per constitution. It never did. Amhara forces stayed. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans remained displaced. No guarantee of autonomy. No guarantee of security.

There was no justice.

The deal promised accountability. For rape. For starvation. For other human rights violations. There was no court. No reparations. No truth commission. Victims on both sides were told to be quiet for the sake of peace. Hardliners on both sides learned the opposite lesson: if there is no justice, re-arm.

The affected people were not at the table.

Eritrea bled in Tigray but was not at the table. It spoiled from outside. Amhara Fano was not at the table. It kept Western Tigray. Women were not at the table. The displaced were not at the table. It was an elite deal between generals who traded justice for quiet.

Disarmament was one-sided.

The TPLF handed heavy weapons to the Ethiopian National Defense Force within 30 days. Federal forces never withdrew from Tigray. Tigray was left naked.

Promises versus delivery.

Addis promised aid. Then blocked it again in 2023-24. Promised services, banks, telecom, flights. Restored them. Then, as fighting resumed in September 2026, flights to Mekelle, Shire and Axum were suspended and communications disrupted again. Promised return, but the return stalled.

The Exclusion

Then May 2026.The National Election Board banned the TPLF from the June elections for failure to hold a general assembly. For Tigray, that was the last promise dying. The Pretoria promise was that you could fight with ballots. The ban said you cannot. If you cannot compete by ballot, you return to bullets.

Lessons for Africa

1. Ambiguity buys a signature, not peace.

South Sudan in 2018. DRC in 2002. Mozambique in 1992. Every deal that papers over land to get a ceasefire collapses over that same land. Western Tigray is Abyei. If you do not decide, war decides.

2. Leave out a key fighter and you have no deal.

Eritrea was decisive but absent in Pretoria. Same as leaving out the RSF in Sudan, or Rwanda proxies in eastern DRC.

3. Disarmament without a guarantee is surrender.

The TPLF handed in weapons while Amhara and Eritrean forces stayed armed around them. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, blue helmets held the space. In Tigray, a monitoring team could only tell violators to stop. Symbolic.

4. A promise without a budget and without enforcement is a lie.

Restore services meant nothing without transfers. Tigray went two years with most health centers non-functional. The AU got praised for getting a deal quickly, but it has no sanctions, no flight bans, no force. A deal that relies on good faith dies when good faith dies. When peace has no dividend, war re-recruits.

Conclusion

Other continental peace deals endured because they had what the Pretoria peace deal did not have. Mozambique's Rome in 1992 and Liberia in 2003 endured because they had three things:

1. a neutral armed guarantor,
2. a detailed land-return timeline,
3. and money for reintegration upfront.

Pretoria traded justice for quiet.
Quiet never lasts.
Tigray had none of those.

6. Madondo (African Teacher) [email protected]