Prolonged communal resource conflicts have undermined development and exacerbated poverty in North Wollo Amhara and neighboring Afar communities in Ethiopia for over two decades. Finding a permanent solution appears to elude all stakeholders mainly because of the inadequate understand of the underlying and proximate causes of these communal resource conflicts. To unpack the causes, the study employed in-depth interviews with three focus groups, 43 key informants and randomly selected 354 household heads. The findings revealed that multi-factors explain the conflicts, such as loosely defined property rights which came weakly defined resource and regional boundaries, environmental security and weak conflict resolution institutions. Political elite competition due to the current ethnic politics in the country, implementation of small-scale development project without public consultation in the contested land, violence culture, illegal small arms circulation are additional factors. The research recommends well defined resource and regional boundaries of the two people, creating strong conflict resolution institutions, and applying conflict transformation to the area.