Seven Ethiopian political organizations, several of them with armed wings, announced this Sunday the creation of an alliance called Coalition for the Survival of Ethiopian Popular Forces (CSFPE). Its declared purpose is to remove the Prosperity Party, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, from power and replace it with a broad transitional executive.
The announcement was made by the president of the Amhara National Movement Fano, Zemene Kassie, during an intervention on Tigrai TV. Along with this formation, the coalition includes the Oromo Liberation Army, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar National Unity Front, the Benishangul Popular Liberation Movement, and the Gumuz Popular Democratic Movement.
In recent months, coordination among these opposition forces and various armed groups had intensified, as they have been smoothing out their territorial and ethnic differences despite a history of violent clashes and confrontations between them.
In August, Zemene himself indicated that understandings had been reached with other Ethiopian militias to establish a common platform aimed at the "overthrow of Abiy Ahmed." Now that project materializes with a concrete name and a broader political program.
The Coalition for Survival holds the Executive responsible for inaction in the face of insecurity, armed violence, the mass displacement of civilians, the worsening of poverty, and the deterioration of democratic freedoms and human rights. It directly points to a "personalist and genocidal dictatorial regime" of Abiy Ahmed for having brought to the country "war, genocide, and destruction" to the point of risking the "total disintegration" of the State.
"The historical mission and the main objective of the popular forces is to defend themselves from the devastating war that has been declared against us, to eliminate the personalist dictatorship system of Prosperity that threatens the survival of our peoples and the security of the nation," it has explained.
As an immediate goal, the coalition proposes that, after the "expulsion" of the current Government, an interim and inclusive transitional Executive be formed, guided by a Transitional Charter aimed at "ending armed conflicts and addressing the security, humanitarian, social, and economic crises" that Ethiopia is going through.
The platform also promises "popular participation" in political life and a shift in foreign policy to strengthen ties with neighboring countries and recover the "regional and international status" of Ethiopia.
In this context, the CSFPE calls on the political forces and civic movements of the country to support these objectives and join the "path of struggle" of the Coalition. At the same time, it urges the Armed Forces to step away from power and join the cause to "save your people and your country before it is too late." It also demands the support of the international community in defense of "the peoples, justice, and democracy."
The Ethiopian Executive declared the peace agreement signed in 2022 in Pretoria with the TPLF broken in July, which led to the resumption of a war that, in just two years (2020-2022), caused between 100,000 and 600,000 deaths, according to various estimates.
After the Pretoria pact, Tigray was under a provisional administration accepted by the federal authorities until the return of the TPLF to the regional government in early May. Since then, the TPLF has repeatedly accused the central Government of violating the commitments of Pretoria and keeping the region in a state of total marginalization.
The federal Government, for its part, refuses to recognize the administration restored by the TPLF and maintains that the only legitimate authority in Tigray remains the Provisional Regional Administration of Tigray, created under the Pretoria Agreement and now displaced by the TPLF.