When a war destroys government institutions, the damage is not limited to ministries and municipal offices. Police stations can stop functioning, courts can close, civil servants can go unpaid, banks can become inaccessible, communications can disappear, and ordinary disputes that would normally be handled by public institutions can become matters of survival, force or informal authority. Tigray during Ethiopia’s 2020–2022 war provides a particularly stark case study: fighting repeatedly changed who controlled territory, while the institutions needed to govern civilians were damaged, displaced or disconnected from the rest of the country.
The important lesson is that institutional collapse is different from simply changing governments. A city can have armed forces controlling its streets while still lacking functioning civilian governance. Restoring a police station does not automatically restore the rule of law; reopening a court does not immediately rebuild public trust; and restoring electricity or banking does not by itself recreate a functioning social contract. Tigray’s experience shows why ending fighting and rebuilding government are separate stages of recovery—and why the second can remain fragile even after the first has formally ended.
What does it mean for government to disappear?
Government is often imagined as the visible political leadership of a country or region.
In daily life, however, most people encounter government through much smaller institutions.
A police officer responds to a theft.
A court resolves a dispute.
A civil servant issues a document.
A hospital treats a patient.
A bank processes a salary.
A municipality maintains roads and water systems.
A school employs teachers and records students.
A communications network allows people to contact relatives and emergency services.
When these systems stop functioning simultaneously, people experience something more profound than administrative inconvenience.
The predictable mechanisms for resolving ordinary problems begin to disappear.
That is the institutional dimension of war.
Tigray provides a difficult case study
The war that began in November 2020 involved the Ethiopian federal government and forces associated with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, as well as Eritrean and other regional forces.
Control over Tigray changed during the conflict.
Federal and allied forces captured Mekelle in November 2020 and established a provisional administration. Tigrayan forces retook Mekelle and much of central and eastern Tigray in June 2021. Fighting continued, followed by another major escalation in 2022 before the November 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.
That changing territorial control created an unusual governance problem.
Different authorities claimed legitimacy at different stages, while civilians had to navigate whichever forces and institutions were actually present.
The result was not simply the replacement of one administration with another.
It was repeated disruption of the machinery through which civilians normally interacted with the state.
The first thing to disappear is often connectivity
A modern government cannot function effectively without communications and financial infrastructure.
During the Tigray conflict, electricity, internet and telecommunications were repeatedly cut, while banking services were also suspended.
The International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia documented how these disruptions isolated the region and affected access to money, public services and humanitarian assistance. It also reported that federal authorities stopped paying salaries to Tigrayan civil servants during the prolonged period of disruption.
The significance is easy to underestimate.
A telecommunications shutdown means more than people losing social media.
It can prevent:
- hospitals from communicating with suppliers;
- families from locating relatives;
- businesses from coordinating deliveries;
- government offices from exchanging information;
- journalists from reporting events;
- emergency services from receiving calls;
- humanitarian organizations from coordinating operations.
A banking shutdown creates another layer of institutional paralysis.
If people cannot withdraw money, receive salaries or transfer funds, the formal economy begins to contract even if markets remain physically open.
Police can exist without functioning law enforcement
A police force is not simply a collection of armed personnel.
Effective policing requires a chain of institutions.
Police need laws to enforce, prosecutors to receive cases, courts to hear them, prisons to hold suspects lawfully, records to establish evidence and civilian authorities to provide oversight.
Remove enough pieces and policing becomes much less predictable.
This distinction mattered in Tigray.
The joint investigation by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and UN human-rights office found that the judicial system was almost non-functional across Tigray during the period it examined. Courts had been looted or burned, while qualified personnel had fled or been displaced.
That creates a fundamental problem:
A police officer can arrest someone, but what happens next if there is no functioning court system?
Courts are more important than they look
Courts perform several functions beyond deciding guilt or innocence.
They establish legal procedures.
They resolve property disputes.
They review detention.
They process criminal cases.
They enforce contracts.
They provide remedies for abuse.
They create records.
They give citizens a peaceful alternative to retaliation.
When courts disappear, people do not stop having disputes.
They simply lose a formal mechanism for resolving them.
Land remains contested.
Debts remain unpaid.
Families continue to disagree over property.
Criminal accusations continue.
People continue to be detained.
The difference is that the institutional pathway for resolving those problems becomes weaker.
This is one reason post-conflict justice is so difficult.
The state is expected to investigate crimes and resolve disputes using institutions that the war itself may have destroyed.
A justice system cannot be rebuilt with buildings alone
Reconstructing a courthouse is relatively straightforward compared with reconstructing judicial capacity.
A functioning court requires judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, clerks, police investigators, records and legal procedures.
It also requires people to believe that decisions will be respected.
The Tigray experience demonstrates why institutional recovery takes time.
The physical destruction of courts was only one part of the problem.
Personnel had been displaced.
Records could be lost.
Cases could become difficult to investigate.
Witnesses could disappear.
Evidence could be destroyed.
And different authorities might have exercised jurisdiction at different times.
A functioning post-war justice system therefore has to reconstruct both capacity and legitimacy.
What happens when civil servants disappear?
Civil servants are easy to overlook during discussions of war because they are rarely the protagonists.
But they keep a city functioning.
They register births and deaths.
They maintain public records.
They administer schools.
They process salaries.
They operate health systems.
They collect taxes.
They maintain infrastructure.
They manage local government.
When civil servants flee, stop being paid or lose access to their offices, the state loses institutional memory.
This matters even after fighting stops.
A government cannot simply declare that public administration has resumed.
It needs people who know how the system works.
The problem of competing authorities
Tigray’s war created another difficulty: the question of who had legitimate authority.
At different stages, federal authorities, provisional administrations, TPLF-aligned authorities and military forces exercised varying degrees of control over different areas.
That distinction between legal authority and effective control is crucial.
A government can claim jurisdiction over an area without being able to provide services there.
An armed group can control a town without possessing the institutions necessary to govern it.
A local administration can exist on paper while lacking money, personnel or security.
For civilians, however, the practical question is usually simpler:
Who can solve this problem today?
That is the point at which institutional breakdown becomes visible.
Why military control is not civilian governance
An army can secure a road.
It can establish checkpoints.
It can occupy government buildings.
It can impose a curfew.
None of these actions automatically creates civilian government.
Civilian administration requires predictable rules and institutions that operate beyond immediate military necessity.
That distinction was visible during the Tigray war.
After federal forces took Mekelle in November 2020, a provisional administration was installed, while movement restrictions, checkpoints and a curfew affected civilian access to services. The UN’s international commission later documented how such restrictions affected access to emergency medical treatment.
The presence of an authority therefore did not mean that ordinary government had been restored.
The city becomes dependent on informal systems
When formal institutions weaken, people adapt.
Families rely more heavily on relatives.
Communities use religious and traditional leaders.
Local elders may mediate disputes.
Neighbors share information.
Businesses develop informal credit.
Humanitarian organizations fill gaps normally handled by government.
These mechanisms can be essential.
They can keep communities functioning when formal institutions fail.
But they also have limits.
Informal dispute resolution may not provide the same legal protections as a court.
Traditional mechanisms may treat women, minorities or vulnerable groups differently from formal rights-based systems.
Community leaders may lack the authority to enforce decisions.
Humanitarian agencies cannot permanently replace a government.
The result can be a hybrid system in which formal, informal and humanitarian institutions operate simultaneously.
Humanitarian organizations become temporary public infrastructure
During institutional collapse, humanitarian agencies often perform functions that governments would normally handle.
They deliver food.
They restore water systems.
They support health facilities.
They provide emergency shelter.
They transport supplies.
They repair infrastructure.
But humanitarian action has a fundamentally different purpose from government.
Humanitarian agencies are designed to meet urgent needs according to principles such as humanity, impartiality and neutrality.
They are not a substitute for taxation, courts, policing or democratic accountability.
This distinction became particularly important in Tigray because humanitarian access itself was repeatedly restricted.
The UN reported that electricity, telecommunications and banking services were disrupted and that humanitarian access was severely constrained during the conflict.
A humanitarian organization cannot rebuild a public institution if it cannot safely reach the population.
The vicious cycle of institutional collapse
Institutional breakdown tends to reinforce itself.
The process can look like this:
Conflict → displacement → loss of personnel → institutional closure → reduced services → economic disruption → declining public trust → greater reliance on armed or informal actors → harder institutional recovery.
Each stage makes the next more difficult.
A court cannot reopen without staff.
Staff cannot return without security.
Security is harder to maintain without functioning police.
Police need funding.
Funding depends partly on functioning government finances.
And government finances depend on an economy that war may have severely damaged.
This is why post-conflict reconstruction is not simply a construction project.
It is a systems problem.
The economic side of disappearing government
Institutional collapse also changes the economy.
Businesses depend on predictable rules.
They need functioning banks.
They need transport.
They need communications.
They need contracts that can be enforced.
They need property rights.
When those systems disappear, economic activity becomes more expensive and risky.
During the Tigray war, banking services were shut down and national bank branches in Tigray were closed, according to the international commission’s findings. The commission reported that thousands of people lost access to money, including some outside Tigray whose accounts had been opened there.
The effect goes beyond individual hardship.
An economy cannot easily recover when its payment infrastructure and legal infrastructure have both been damaged.
Public services reveal the depth of institutional damage
Health and education are particularly useful indicators of whether government is actually returning.
A ministry can announce that services have resumed.
But the more revealing questions are:
Are schools open?
Are teachers paid?
Are clinics staffed?
Can hospitals obtain medicines?
Is water infrastructure operating?
Can patients travel safely?
Are local officials present?
Are records being maintained?
Tigray’s reconstruction has therefore involved much more than political negotiations.
Projects supported by the Ethiopian government, World Bank and UN agencies have rebuilt health centers, schools and water and sanitation facilities. In 2024, one such program reported reconstruction of 14 health centers, 11 primary schools and 33 water, sanitation and hygiene facilities serving about 365,000 people in five woredas.
Further reconstruction continued in 2025, including health and education facilities in Asgede Woreda.
These projects illustrate an important point.
Institutional recovery becomes visible through ordinary things: a functioning clinic, a teacher returning to work, a police station reopening, or a court being able to hear cases.
The return of the police station
Police infrastructure has symbolic importance because it represents the state’s ability to provide security through institutions rather than through competing armed groups.
But reopening a police station is only the beginning.
A functioning police service requires:
- trained personnel;
- salaries;
- communications;
- vehicles;
- investigative capacity;
- evidence procedures;
- civilian oversight;
- functioning prosecutors and courts.
The UN’s 2024–2025 results report said that UN-supported programs helped rehabilitate government offices and justice facilities in conflict-affected parts of Ethiopia, including seven police stations in Tigray. The program described the restoration of local administrative functions and state presence as part of rebuilding public trust.
That language—state presence—captures the larger challenge.
People need to experience government as something predictable and accessible, not merely as a building or flag.
The difficult return of displaced people
Institutional recovery is also connected to displacement.
A displaced person returning home needs more than a house.
They may need:
- security;
- identity documents;
- property records;
- schools for children;
- health services;
- employment;
- water;
- electricity;
- functioning courts;
- protection from retaliation.
If those institutions are absent, return can remain precarious.
Property disputes are particularly difficult.
Someone may return to find another family occupying their former home.
A local authority may have records.
Those records may be incomplete.
A court may not be functioning.
The police may not have the capacity to enforce a ruling.
A dispute that would ordinarily be resolved administratively can therefore become a source of renewed tension.
Transitional justice has an institutional dimension
The post-war debate in Ethiopia has included accountability, truth-seeking, reparations, reconciliation and guarantees of non-recurrence.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and OHCHR emphasized these elements in their 2022 advisory work on transitional justice, based on consultations with conflict-affected communities.
But transitional justice cannot function independently of ordinary institutions.
Investigations need investigators.
Trials need courts.
Victims need mechanisms for filing complaints.
Witnesses need protection.
Records need to be preserved.
Reparations need administrative systems.
That is why rebuilding institutions is itself part of justice.
A society cannot meaningfully investigate wartime abuses if its justice system remains too damaged to process ordinary criminal cases.
Why accountability becomes harder after war
War destroys evidence.
Witnesses move.
Officials leave.
Buildings are destroyed.
Records disappear.
Suspects cross administrative boundaries.
Institutions change.
Political loyalties shift.
The longer accountability is delayed, the more difficult some investigations can become.
But accountability also has to operate within a functioning legal framework.
Rapid justice that ignores due process can create new grievances.
Slow justice can create perceptions of impunity.
The challenge is therefore not simply to punish as many people as possible.
It is to build credible institutions capable of investigating serious violations fairly and consistently.
The post-war government is never starting from zero
A common mistake is to imagine post-conflict reconstruction as building a government from nothing.
Usually, fragments survive.
Former officials may return.
Local leaders may retain authority.
Traditional institutions may continue operating.
Civil society organizations may remain active.
Hospitals may reopen.
Schools may resume.
Businesses may rebuild.
The challenge is to reconnect those fragments into a coherent system.
Tigray’s experience demonstrates this clearly.
The region did not lose every institution during the war.
Rather, institutions became fragmented, damaged, inaccessible or politically contested.
Recovery therefore involves reconnecting systems that had been separated by violence.
Why the 2022 peace agreement mattered
The November 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement created the framework for moving away from wartime governance.
Its provisions included humanitarian access, restoration of basic services and the withdrawal of forces, alongside political and security arrangements.
The agreement was therefore about more than stopping battlefield operations.
It recognized that peace required civilian life to become possible again.
That is a crucial distinction.
A ceasefire can stop people from being shot.
A functioning government must then allow them to live normal lives.
But ending the war does not automatically restore government
The post-2022 period showed how difficult that transition could be.
An Interim Regional Administration was established in 2023, with Getachew Reda initially serving as its head. In April 2025, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed Tadesse Worede to replace him amid growing political divisions within the TPLF and Tigray’s administration.
Those political changes matter because post-war governance depends on more than simply having an administration.
Questions remain about political representation, displaced populations, territorial disputes, security arrangements and the relationship between regional and federal authorities.
In 2026, those unresolved political tensions were followed by renewed fighting, demonstrating how fragile institutional recovery can become when the underlying political settlement remains contested.
That development changes the meaning of the earlier reconstruction effort.
Institutions can be rebuilt physically while remaining politically vulnerable.
What happens when fighting returns?
Renewed violence can reverse years of institutional recovery very quickly.
Schools may close again.
Health workers may leave.
Police may withdraw.
Banks may stop operating.
Businesses may close.
Humanitarian agencies may suspend operations.
Officials may flee.
Transport routes may become unsafe.
The result is not simply a second military crisis.
It is the reactivation of the institutional vulnerabilities created by the first war.
Recent reports of renewed fighting in Tigray in 2026, including clashes around Mekelle, illustrate the danger. Reuters reported that banks and shops in Mekelle had closed amid the renewed violence, while fighting threatened to disrupt an already fragile post-war recovery.
The deeper lesson: institutions are infrastructure
Roads and bridges are normally described as infrastructure.
So are power grids and water systems.
But courts, police departments, registries, banks and local government offices are also infrastructure.
They are institutional infrastructure.
Destroying a courthouse damages the physical building.
Destroying the ability to resolve disputes damages something less visible but equally important.
The same applies to a police service.
If citizens cannot rely on predictable law enforcement, they adapt their behavior around uncertainty.
That can encourage private security, community enforcement, armed groups or retaliation.
Once those alternatives become normalized, rebuilding formal institutions becomes harder.
What successful institutional recovery requires
Tigray’s experience suggests that post-war recovery has several layers.
Security: Civilians and officials need sufficient safety to return.
Administration: Local government must have personnel, authority and financing.
Justice: Police, prosecutors, courts and legal-aid systems must operate together.
Services: Health, education, water, electricity and communications need to function.
Economy: Banks, markets, transport and property systems must reconnect.
Legitimacy: Citizens must believe institutions are accessible and reasonably impartial.
Accountability: Serious abuses need credible mechanisms for investigation and redress.
None of these can substitute for the others.
A functioning hospital cannot compensate for an absent court.
A repaired courthouse cannot compensate for insecurity.
A police station cannot substitute for legitimate civilian administration.
The hardest part is rebuilding trust
Physical reconstruction is measurable.
Trust is harder.
A government can report the number of buildings repaired.
It is more difficult to measure whether residents believe police will protect them, whether courts will treat them fairly or whether officials will provide services without political discrimination.
That is why institutional legitimacy can lag far behind reconstruction.
People who have lived through prolonged conflict may reasonably be cautious about institutions associated with former armed actors.
Some may have experienced government as coercion rather than service.
Others may distrust institutions because they failed to protect them.
Restoring confidence therefore requires consistent behavior over time.
The danger of rebuilding only the visible state
A government can reopen offices without resolving the deeper problems.
It can appoint officials without establishing accountability.
It can repair police stations without rebuilding investigative capacity.
It can reopen courts without restoring records.
It can restore electricity without fixing the institutions responsible for maintaining the grid.
This creates the appearance of recovery without necessarily creating resilient government.
The real test is whether institutions continue functioning when political tensions rise.
That is especially important in Tigray, where political divisions remained unresolved even after the 2022 peace agreement.
The unresolved question is whether institutions can outlast the conflict
Tigray shows why post-war peace cannot be measured only by the absence of major battles.
A society needs institutions capable of absorbing political disagreement without turning every dispute into a security crisis.
That means courts that can resolve disputes.
Police accountable to civilian authorities.
Local administrations capable of delivering services.
Political institutions capable of representing competing interests.
And national institutions capable of negotiating with regional authorities without repeatedly returning to force.
The deepest challenge after a war is therefore not simply putting government back where it was. It is rebuilding a system that civilians can rely on when the next political dispute arrives. Tigray’s experience demonstrates the difference between the presence of authority and the presence of functioning civilian governance: an armed force can control a city in a matter of hours, but rebuilding courts, police, public services, records, trust and legitimate administration can take years. The durability of peace ultimately depends on whether those institutions become strong enough that the next crisis is handled through them rather than through another war.