هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
At dawn on 1 August, artillery fire and shelling returned to western Tigray. The fighting began in Shirerina and spread towards Humera, in Ethiopia’s far northwest, where the country’s borders meet those of Sudan and Eritrea. Understanding what happened requires looking at this border junction, rather than Addis Ababa or Mekelle.
The clashes, which sent shrapnel into refugee camps on the Sudanese side of al-Fashaga, were more than a belated resumption of the Tigray war, ostensibly brought to an end in Pretoria in late 2022. They can be seen as the emergence on the battlefield of a new regional front, formed over three years of strategic shifts by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed himself.
The irony is that Addis Ababa now faces an alliance that includes – or is on the verge of including – two parties alongside which it once fought against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front: Asmara and the Amhara Fano fighters. The front, their former enemy, now appears to have backing from both.
The account from Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, was straightforward: federal forces had launched a large-scale infantry assault at dawn from the direction of Shirerina, supported by heavy artillery and drones, in a clear violation of the Pretoria agreement that ended the war less than four years ago.
Addis Ababa gave the opposite account: government forces had clashed with Tigrayan units that crossed from Sudan towards Humera. According to the official Ethiopian account, the attackers were not the region’s regular forces but what Addis Ababa calls Tigray’s “Army 70.”
As often happens on this front, the fighting quickly became a propaganda battle. Accounts close to the Ethiopian government reported hundreds of Tigrayan fighters killed and claimed that Tigrayan forces had used loitering munitions for the first time – assertions no one has been able to verify. Platforms supportive of the Tigray front, meanwhile, reported that more than 1,000 Ethiopian soldiers had been killed in the military operations.
The only undisputed impact was outside Ethiopia, where several shells landed in refugee camps near Greater al-Fashaga, killing and wounding Ethiopian refugees who have lived in Sudan since the previous war. Sudan hosts about 70,000 Ethiopian refugees in Gedaref and Kassala states.
Tesmdo: the word haunting Addis Ababa
In Tigrinya, “Tesmdo” or “Samdo” means the yoke that binds two oxen to a single plough. Since autumn 2025, the word has come to the forefront of Ethiopian security discussions.
It emerged publicly when the Ethiopian foreign minister sent an open letter to the UN secretary-general accusing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean government of organising an alliance under that name, actively preparing to wage war on Ethiopia, and financing, mobilising and directing armed groups such as Fano.
According to the official Ethiopian account, this alleged alliance includes Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, Fano, the Oromo Liberation Army and the Tigray front – in other words, all of Abiy Ahmed’s domestic and foreign adversaries in a single coalition.
The concrete developments so far have been more political than military. In May, a public meeting under this banner took place in Port Sudan, attended by Sudanese army officers, Eritrean officials and several Ethiopian opposition figures. A channel close to Asmara aired footage of the event.
A second round of meetings brought in representatives from Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Ogaden, Gambella and Benishangul, including one of the founders of the Ogaden National Liberation Front. Neither Mekelle nor Asmara has confirmed the existence of a formal alliance, and participants describe the meetings as no more than contacts whose significance has been exaggerated.
But the names and images matter less than the question they raise: how could an Eritrean officer and a Tigrayan leader sit in the same room after a quarter-century of bloody hostility, and less than four years after a war in which Asmara was the deadliest participant for the people of Tigray?
The answer begins with a speech Abiy Ahmed delivered to parliament in autumn 2023. He said Ethiopia’s population would reach 150 million by 2030 and that so many people could not live in a “geographic prison.” He argued that securing maritime access was not a luxury but a matter tied to Ethiopia’s very existence. He later went further, saying that reclaiming Eritrea’s Assab port was “a matter of time.”
Asmara interpreted this as a threat to its sovereignty, rather than an economic ambition. From that moment, the alliance that had won the 2020 war began to unravel.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki already regarded the Pretoria agreement as an excessive concession to his Tigrayan adversary. In his view, he had thrown his full weight behind a war to eliminate the front once and for all, only for it to end in an agreement that preserved the group as an active political force. The Red Sea rhetoric then shifted his concern from excessive compromise to a direct threat. Faced with confronting Ethiopia alone or reaching an understanding with its former enemy on its southern border, Asmara chose the latter.
The rapprochement extended beyond politics. In early August, reports circulated that Eritrean military commanders had entered the Ethiopian town of Zalambessa carrying their national flag, and that Eritrean armour and heavy weapons had been deployed inside Tigray. Months earlier, Addis Ababa had acknowledged for the first time that Eritrean forces had participated in massacres during the previous war. It then explicitly accused Asmara of “military aggression” and demanded its withdrawal. Eritrea said the accusations were fabricated.
How Abiy Ahmed lost Khartoum
Sudan’s role in this three-way relationship is no less paradoxical. Until recently, the Ethiopian-Sudanese dispute was confined to two longstanding issues: the al-Fashaga lands and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Today, it has become a more complex conflict that extends into Sudan’s own war.
While Addis Ababa maintained its declared neutrality, Khartoum increasingly accused it of providing military and logistical support to the Rapid Support Forces through the Benishangul-Gumuz region. Western reports have supported those accusations. In February, Reuters verified the existence of a UAE-funded RSF training camp in the border area and revealed that Asosa airport had been upgraded for drone operations.
The decisive moment came later, when Khartoum accused Addis Ababa of allowing UAE-made drones to be launched from Ethiopian territory – specifically Bahir Dar airport – to strike Khartoum airport and army positions. Both Ethiopia and Abu Dhabi denied the accusations, but relations had already broken down.
These tensions also have a Gulf dimension. Abiy Ahmed is a close ally of the UAE, which backs the Rapid Support Forces, while Eritrea has aligned itself with the Sudanese army and deepened ties with Cairo, Addis Ababa’s foremost rival in the water dispute. These alignments intersect with other closely connected issues, notably the Red Sea, Sudan’s war and Tigray.
Why this differs from the 2020 war
In 2020, Tigray fought while hemmed in on three sides: by the federal army to the south, its Amhara allies to the west and the Eritrean army to the north. Amhara forces and militias controlled the western areas, cutting off the road to Sudan, while the Eritrean presence sealed the northern border. The front was encircled, under a blockade that cut off electricity, communications, banking services and medicine.
Today, the situation has been completely reversed. The north is no longer a hostile front but a political and security rear base. The west is no longer closed and now offers partial access to logistical support from Sudan. Most importantly, the government camp itself has split.
Fano, which had served as Abiy Ahmed’s strike force in the Tigray war, has been in open rebellion in the Amhara region since 2023. A secret Ethiopian federal police document from before the June elections showed that the militia now effectively controls – or completely paralyses – about half the region’s electoral districts, prompting the government to postpone voting in parts of Amhara.
There is also the Oromo Liberation Army’s rebellion in the country’s geographical heartland. The group retains extensive control in western and central Oromia, particularly in Wollega and East and West Shewa.
Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won a comfortable majority in those elections, with Tigray entirely excluded from voting and Amhara partially excluded. But parliamentary numbers say nothing about the position of a man simultaneously facing three internal fronts and external encirclement.
None of this means Tigray is in an unambiguously strong position. The front itself is divided between a wing led by Debretsion Gebremichael – the larger and more influential faction – and another headed by Getachew Reda. Reda led the region’s interim administration after the Pretoria agreement until his rivals ousted him in what amounted to a coup. He then fled to Addis Ababa, became an adviser to Abiy Ahmed and founded a rival party.
After being stripped of its legal status as a political party, the front reinstated its prewar regional council under Gebremichael in May, effectively hollowing out the Pretoria agreement. The agreement’s core provisions – disarming the front and granting Abiy veto power over the region’s leadership – were never implemented in substance. The dispute over western Tigray’s lands was never resolved, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in poor conditions in camps in central Tigray and neighbouring Sudan.
“Mr. Photoshop” and postwar rhetoric
In early August, General Bacha Debele, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya and one of the most prominent military figures of the Tigray war, published an analysis warning that Addis Ababa’s policy of “strategic restraint” had reached its limits and that Ethiopia might be forced to exercise its legitimate right to self-defence.
He went further, saying any escalation could cause severe turmoil inside Eritrea, potentially leading to state collapse. He also accused President Isaias Afwerki of seeking to reshape the political landscape of the Horn of Africa.
Debele acquired the nickname “Mr. Photoshop” following a well-known statement during the Tigray war. In July 2021, Debele – then the coordinator for Ethiopian army-building affairs – appeared to deny the authenticity of videos aired by the New York Times showing thousands of Ethiopian soldiers captured by the Tigray Defense Forces.
In his press statement, Debele claimed the clips had been fabricated: they had originally shown a public race, with military uniforms digitally added to the participants. The statement drew mockery on social media, and opponents dubbed him “Mr. Photoshop” to question the credibility of official military accounts.
Debele’s current remarks carry greater weight: he is an accredited ambassador and a former war commander. When a diplomat in his position discusses the possible collapse of a neighbouring state and the reshaping of the regional order, the logic of regime change has moved from the margins of political debate to its centre.
This rhetoric comes amid fears that the region is heading towards disaster, a UN warning against a return to wider conflict and US visa restrictions on some leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. These pressures have had a largely symbolic effect, while African mediation lacks effective means of influencing events.
Developments along the borders of Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea mark the emergence of a new regional balance that has transformed alliances in the four years since the Pretoria agreement. Asmara, which besieged Tigray from the north in 2020, has become a potential rear base for it. Fano, which once sealed off the west, is now an adversary of Addis Ababa. The once-closed border is now almost open, making it impossible to impose the kind of blockade the region previously endured.
Behind this shift are Abiy Ahmed’s own choices: his rhetoric on access to the Red Sea, which reversed Asmara’s position; his involvement in Sudan’s war, which cost him Khartoum; and his rupture with his Amhara allies, which opened an internal front that remains active.
The real danger lies in the simultaneous political deadlock on every front. The Pretoria agreement is eroding with no alternative in place. Communication between Addis Ababa and Asmara has been cut off, relations between Khartoum and Addis Ababa have been severed, and the question of western Tigray – “Wolqait” – has been deferred with no resolution in sight.
The question facing the capitals concerned remains: what comes next? Each side is openly acting defensively while covertly intending to act pre-emptively, believing that a single calculated strike will shift the balance in its favour. Abiy Ahmed made the same gamble in November 2020, when he promised to complete the “law enforcement operation” within weeks. Instead, it became a two-year war that left hundreds of thousands dead without resolving any of the issues that sparked the conflict – as we anticipated in our report on this platform just days after the war began.
Today, the conflict has widened, more parties are involved, and their calculations are entangled with Sudan’s war and the interests of several regional powers. In this environment, a single misjudged border incident is enough to ignite a confrontation beyond the parties’ capacity to contain.