The US is pulling visa privileges for Tigray hardliners it says are threatening to drag northern Ethiopia back into conflict.

The US State Department has announced visa restrictions targeting people it says are undermining peace in Ethiopia. The move, announced on Thursday, focuses on hardliners in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and their immediate family members.

“Rising tensions between Tigray People’s Liberation Front hardliners and the Ethiopian government have threatened to reignite the conflict in northern Ethiopia and undermine peace and security across the entire region,” the State Department said in a statement.

Washington pointed to clashes between TPLF forces and Ethiopian government forces earlier this year as part of the problem.

“This visa restriction policy targets individuals who are responsible for, or complicit in, undermining resolution to the crisis in the Tigray region,” it added.

The pressure comes after Tigray’s main political party reasserted control over the region’s political administration in May. The TPLF said it had restored the legislative council that existed before the 2020 to 2022 civil war and elected TPLF chair Debretsion Gebremichael as regional president. That move broke a key provision of the peace deal that ended the war with the federal government.

The Tigray conflict was brutal. It drew in forces from neighbouring Eritrea and became one of the century’s deadliest wars. Researchers say hundreds of thousands of people died through direct violence, the collapse of healthcare, and famine.

The US is now making it clear that anyone seen as pushing the region back toward war could lose access to American visas.

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