The United States government, through the State Department, has announced visa restrictions targeting individuals accused of undermining peace efforts in Ethiopia. The measures are focused on hardliners within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and their immediate family members.
In a statement, the State Department said that rising tensions between these TPLF hardliners and the Ethiopian government threaten to reignite conflict in northern Ethiopia and undermine peace and security across the entire Horn of Africa region.
The U.S. cited clashes witnessed earlier this year between forces associated with the TPLF and Ethiopian government forces as a sign of increasing tensions.
In May, Tigray’s main political party announced that it had restored its authority over the region’s political administration, a move that violated a key provision of the agreement that ended the civil war between Tigray and Ethiopia’s federal government.
The TPLF stated that it had reinstated the legislative council that existed before the 2020–2022 civil war, with its chairman, Debretsion Gebremichael, elected as the president of the Tigray region.
The Tigray conflict, which also involved forces from neighbouring Eritrea, is considered one of the deadliest conflicts of this century, with hundreds of thousands of people reported to have died due to direct violence, the collapse of healthcare services, and famine.
