I engaged young people across Africa, including Ethiopians, so that youth could play a role in stabilizing the Ethiopian conflict. I watched the war unfold. I saw the frustration of Ethiopian youth leaders, and how peace was taken away from Ethiopian communities. Although I was there to represent Somali youth at the African Union, I was also engaged in issues affecting African countries and African people.
I set out the alliance, the collapse of the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement and the drone war in African Arguments on 25 September. This piece covers what that analysis did not.
Who started it? Each side says the other
The government and Getachew Reda, an adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, say the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized three airports and launched an all-out offensive on 23 September. The Tigray regional government says federal forces invaded and that it entered a defensive war. CNN notes it is unclear what led to the fighting.
Tigrayans are fighting Tigrayans
The pro-government Tigray Peace Forces are former Tigray Defence Forces fighters and TPLF commanders who broke with the party. Getachew Reda, the political figure linked to them, was expelled from the TPLF in 2024 and removed as Tigray’s interim president in 2025. He is now an adviser to Abiy, CNN reports. The TPLF-led side has reportedly aligned itself with Eritrea.
Young people are fleeing, or being moved out
Young men are leaving Tigray for Addis Ababa to avoid forced recruitment, Al Jazeera reported on 25 September. Human Rights Watch has reported forced recruitment of civilians in Tigray since at least April, including children as young as 15. The TPLF disputes the allegations and says young people are joining voluntarily. Separately, the federal education ministry halted new student placements at four Tigray universities on 9 September and announced on 14 September that enrolled students would be temporarily reassigned to campuses elsewhere. The airports were seized nine days later.
Forced recruitment has been reported on the government side too. In late 2024, Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission found that Oromia regional authorities and security forces allied with the federal government detained many people, including children, to push them into the army, VOA reported. The army says recruitment follows Defense Ministry rules. Human Rights Watch has called on Tigray’s authorities to withdraw the law behind their conscription drive.
Fleeing does not guarantee safety. A European monitoring group reported on 24 September that 21 air strikes on Alamata had killed 14 civilians, and the EU said Ethiopian drone strikes had worsened the humanitarian situation. We have not found a government response to the Alamata report. In the last war, the UN, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch documented mass detentions of ethnic Tigrayans in Addis Ababa. The government said those arrested were suspected of supporting the TPLF. The same group reported on 1 October that ethnic Tigrayan and Amhara workers at the Bishoftu air force base were being arrested after strikes there. We have not been able to verify that report.
It is deeply sad that Tigrayan youth are fleeing, leaving their families and businesses behind to avoid being taken to fight. And fleeing does not make their families safe. Their families are being bombarded by the Ethiopian government, so none of them is safe. Even if a young man leaves the country, he risks losing his life or being captured or abducted by the Ethiopian government. So it is a double-edged sadness. I would say the Tigray movement should reconsider this approach. I know it is not only Tigrayans doing this. I am sure the Ethiopian government is doing the same thing. What I am saying is that this is unfortunate, and it needs to stop immediately.
What the statements do not say
Egypt fears the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will cut its share of Nile water, and the river supplies almost all of Egypt’s freshwater, Al Jazeera has reported. Ethiopia says the dam will not affect Egypt’s share. Today Sudan’s army accuses Ethiopia of letting the Rapid Support Forces launch drones from its territory, and Ethiopia calls the accusation baseless. Sudan’s deputy head of state, Malik Agar, said on 16 September that Sudan does not want a war with Ethiopia.
At African Union headquarters, you will always see in the corridors that the press statements have nothing to do with what is really going on inside the building. One day, I was minding my own business when I saw a Sudanese envoy talking to an Egyptian diplomat. This was back when Ethiopia was building the GERD.
You could see from his face that the Egyptian was not happy. He was making sounds with his fingers, and you could see his fury at the tension the dam was creating. He said to the Sudanese, “For you it is regional diplomacy, but for us it is life and death.”
The Sudanese envoy just looked tired. He was not arguing. He was only listening.
That shows that the statements governments put out have nothing to do with the reality inside the building. It was a corridor, so there were a lot of people around. I could also see an Eritrean envoy or diplomat. I do not know which he was, but he was watching, from close range, the intense conversation taking place in front of him, as I was. I was amazed to see how different things are outside the official statements.
Washington eased pressure on Eritrea days before the fighting
The 2021 US national emergency over Ethiopia expired on 18 September, and sanctions on Eritrea’s military and ruling party lapsed with it. The State Department said the move was meant to advance US regional interests in the Red Sea. The fighting escalated four to five days later. Nothing we found links the two.
Somalia is already inside this story
Ethiopian troops serving under the African Union mission have a command headquarters in Baidoa and operate across Gedo, Bay, Bakool and Hiiraan. Djiboutian troops took over security in Beledweyne in March. Somalia already hosts 23,645 Ethiopian refugees and asylum seekers, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and tens of thousands more pass through each year on the route to Yemen. In the 1977 to 1978 Ogaden war, about 800,000 people crossed into Somalia. Al-Shabaab, for its part, still has a real presence in the border regions of Gedo and Bakool and pressures Hiiraan, and it recruits from displacement camps. Villa Somalia, which appears below, is the presidential palace in Mogadishu.
If Ethiopia falls into full civil war, civilians will flee, and they will flee to the closest border. Somalia is one of those borders, and the two countries share a long frontier. They will flee into Somalia, and the first places they reach will be close to Al-Shabaab-controlled territory. So Al-Shabaab may recruit these people. It could gain a big force from people fleeing the war in Ethiopia. This is a big challenge for the Somali government and the Somali people. Somalia has to play a key role in stabilizing Ethiopia. Somalia is already in chaos. The government controls some parts of the country, Al-Shabaab controls others, and some regions do not align with Villa Somalia’s policy. This is also bad for Somaliland, because it also shares a border with Ethiopia. So it is not a good thing for this conflict to continue. Or is it a good thing for it to go further?
What to watch: why Hassan Sheikh went to Addis Ababa
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud met Abiy in Addis Ababa on 29 September, went on to Djibouti, and reached Egypt on 2 October, where a closed meeting with Egypt’s Sisi, Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki and Sudan’s Burhan was expected. It had not been confirmed that it took place. No official source has said why he made the trip. A senior diplomatic source told Dawan, in an editorial, that the meeting with Abiy was Abiy’s idea and that its agenda was limited to the security situation in the two countries. The editorial also suggested Hassan Sheikh may seek Ethiopian backing in South West State and Gedo. Ethiopia accuses Eritrea, Sudan’s army and Egypt of backing the alliance, and all three deny it.
Hassan Sheikh’s trip to Ethiopia could mean several things. It could mean he was telling Abiy: “Whatever is planned to be discussed in Egypt, as president of Somalia I am a middleman. I will not support any topic that is critical to Ethiopia’s security. I am not on anyone’s side. I just want to keep the peace.” Or he went to Ethiopia to make a trade: “I have issues in Beledweyne, in the Hiiraan region, and in Jubaland, a federal member state, so your army in Gedo can help deal with the Jubaland leader, Ahmed Madobe.” Then he went to Djibouti, because Djibouti has an army in Hiiraan. There he may have been saying: “I do not want the elections held on 30 September to lead to opposition. I want Hiiraan in the hands of Villa Somalia.” If Hassan Sheikh goes to Egypt, everyone meeting there will worry Ethiopia, which already has a conflict at home and blames Eritrea, Egypt and Sudan for supporting Tigray. I think he went to meet Abiy to say: “Relax, we will not make the war worse, we will just talk about these things.” After Hassan Sheikh is done with Galmudug and Hirshabelle, he may put his full focus on Jubaland.
For context on Jubaland: Ethiopia has long backed Jubaland’s president, Ahmed Madobe. Last year Ethiopian officials warned Mogadishu that a rival administration in Gedo would threaten Ethiopia’s security, Somali Guardian reported.
For the day-by-day record, with every claim labelled, see our live tracker.
