Tigray People's Liberation Front

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; Tigrinya: ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, romanized: Həzbawi Wäyyanä Ḥarənnät Təgray, lit. 'Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray'), also known as the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist, paramilitary group, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It was classified as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government during the Tigray War until its removal from the list in 2023. In older and less formal texts and speech it is known as Woyane (Tigrinya: ወያነ, lit. 'Revolutionary') or Weyané (Amharic: ወያኔ).

The TPLF was founded on February 18, 1975, in Dedebit, Tigray. Within 16 years, it grew from about a dozen men to become the most powerful armed liberation movement in Ethiopia. Unlike the Eritrean or Somali liberation fronts at the time, the TPLF did not seek independence from the Ethiopian state; instead, it aimed to overthrow the central government and implement its own version of the Ethiopian revolution. From 1989 to 2018, it led a political coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). It fought a 15-year-long war against the Derg regime, which was overthrown on 28 May 1991. The TPLF, with the support of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), overthrew the government of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) on May 28, 1991, and installed a new government that remained in power for decades.

The new ruling EPRDF government, was dominated by the TPLF, who gradually consolidated control over Ethiopia's federal administrations, the ENDF, and key economic resources such as foreign aid, loans, and land leases, amassing billions. The TPLF's restructuring of Ethiopia into an ethnic federal state further fueled civil conflicts in the ensuing decades.

The TPLF lost control of the federal government in 2018. During the Tigray War that began in 2020, the National Election Board of Ethiopia terminated the party's legal status. In 2021, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives formally approved a parliamentary resolution designating the TPLF as a terrorist organization. On 2 November 2022, the African Union brokered a deal in Pretoria, South Africa, between the federal government and the TPLF to end the Tigray War. As per the peace agreement, the TPLF began disarming in January 2023.

Following the Pretoria peace agreement in 2022, the TPLF began experiencing severe internal divisions. This has seen the rise of a hardline faction within the front.