Ethiopia's Army Chief Named Three Foreign Governments as the Rebels' Backers. All Three Said No, and One Accused Ethiopia Right Back.

Abstract: Ethiopia's military leadership widened its account of who is behind the Tigray-led offensive that shattered the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, moving within days from accusing Eritrea alone of funding the rebel alliance to naming Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt together. Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, Chief of the General Staff of the Ethiopian National Defence Force, said on 27 September that the alliance built around the Tigray People's Liberation Front "cannot achieve anything on their own unless they are pushed, supported and supplied by Sudan, Egypt and other forces." Sudan's armed forces called the accusation baseless the same weekend and said the traffic of support ran the other way, asserting that Ethiopian territory was being used to train and equip the Rapid Support Forces battling Sudan's own army and to launch drone strikes against Sudanese positions. An unnamed Egyptian source separately denied any Cairo role on 26 September. Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Meskel, did not deny a role in the war so much as reframe the complaint, writing that Ethiopia's own pursuit of Red Sea access had alarmed both Eritrea and Somalia, and that Addis Ababa's hosting of militia training linked to Sudan's civil war was what had put Ethiopia at odds with its neighbours. None of the three governments' denials has been independently verified, and neither has Ethiopia's original claim. What is independently documented is the battlefield and hospital data surrounding the accusations: federal forces and an allied Tigrayan faction recaptured the strategic town of Alamata on 28 September, a week after Tigray-led forces had advanced through it; Tigrayan fighters seized Erebti in northern Afar over the preceding weekend and were reported advancing toward Afdera; and Médecins Sans Frontières recorded war-wounded arrivals at hospitals in Korem and Alamata rising from roughly 180 to more than 420 between 22 and 25 September, a toll severe enough to force the suspension of Alamata Hospital's outreach work even before the town changed hands again.

From one accused government to three

The shift in Addis Ababa's public accounting of the war is itself notable. FIKIR Institute reported on 28 September that Berhanu Jula, in remarks explaining the federal military's preference for "strategic calm" over a full offensive, had accused Eritrea specifically of funding and supporting the seven-group Alliance for Survival built around the TPLF. Wire reporting on the same set of remarks, carried by the Associated Press and Al Jazeera among others, shows the accusation was broader than that first account captured: Berhanu Jula named Sudan and Egypt alongside Eritrea, arguing that the Tigray front "cannot achieve anything on their own" without being "pushed, supported and supplied" by the three governments and unspecified "other forces." He offered no evidence for any of the three claims in the reporting available. The distinction matters because it moves the war's external dimension from a single, longstanding rivalry, Ethiopia and Eritrea have accused each other of destabilisation since well before the 2020-2022 war, to a claim that two additional governments, each with its own unresolved dispute with Addis Ababa, are coordinating support for an armed alliance seeking to remove Ethiopia's government.

Two denials, differently shaped

Sudan's and Egypt's responses did not simply mirror each other. Sudan's armed forces issued a formal, on-the-record rejection on 27 September, dismissing the accusation as baseless and stating that Khartoum remained committed to international law and non-interference in its neighbours' internal affairs. Sudan did not stop at denial: its statement asserted that Ethiopian territory has instead been used to train and supply the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting Sudan's own army since 2023, and to launch strategic and "kamikaze" drone strikes against Sudanese positions, an allegation that inverts Ethiopia's claim rather than merely rejecting it. Egypt's response was narrower and less formal: an unnamed Egyptian source told Asharq Al-Awsat on 26 September that Cairo rejected allegations linking it to the unrest in Tigray, without the fuller counter-accusation Sudan attached to its own denial and without an on-record government spokesperson putting a name to the statement. Eritrea, notably, did not issue a flat denial through its Information Minister; Yemane Meskel's response, posted to social media, instead reframed the dispute entirely, arguing that Ethiopia's pursuit of Red Sea access had unsettled Eritrea and Somalia and that it was Addis Ababa's own hosting of militia training tied to Sudan's war that had strained the region, an answer that engages with the underlying grievance rather than contesting whether Eritrea is funding the TPLF-led alliance at all.

A claim that touches every open dispute Ethiopia already has

The three governments Berhanu Jula named are not arbitrary. Egypt and Ethiopia have spent years in an unresolved dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a conflict FIKIR Institute has covered in detail, including Egypt's case to the UN Security Council built partly on Ethiopia's own water minister describing the dam as built to "control" the Nile. Sudan and Ethiopia have their own live dispute over the Blue Nile borderlands, where FIKIR Institute has reported satellite evidence tying Rapid Support Forces assaults on Sudanese border towns to an Ethiopian army base, evidence Addis Ababa has denied. And Eritrea's rapprochement with the TPLF, a reversal of the alliance that helped Asmara and Addis Ababa jointly fight Tigray in 2020-2022, is the accusation Ethiopia's military has leaned on hardest to explain the alliance's external backing. Naming all three governments in a single set of remarks does not, on its own, make the underlying claims true or false. It does mean Ethiopia's account of the war's external dimension now maps almost exactly onto the three bilateral disputes already straining its relations with its neighbours, a convenience that argues for treating the claim with the same caution FIKIR Institute has applied to unverified battlefield and diplomatic claims from every side of this war.

The battlefield underneath the accusations

Two territorial changes bracketed the diplomatic exchange. Over the weekend of 26-27 September, Tigrayan forces captured Erebti in northern Afar; an official with the Tigray Peace Force, the breakaway pro-federal faction operating alongside the ENDF in Afar, confirmed the town had fallen but denied that heavy fighting had taken place, while a humanitarian source told Agence France-Presse the assault had involved sustained artillery fire and that Tigrayan forces were pushing on toward Afdera. Then, on 28 September, Ethiopian federal forces and the same allied Tigray Peace Force retook Alamata, the town whose earlier loss FIKIR Institute had flagged as one of the clearest signals of how the war was widening. Video circulated by the Tigray Peace Force showed soldiers marching through Alamata's streets waving Ethiopian flags; the conflict monitor ACLED and two diplomatic sources confirmed the town had changed hands, though a third diplomatic source said pro-government forces had entered the town without yet establishing full control. Alamata sits on Tigray's southern approach to Mekelle, roughly 120 kilometres away, and its recapture, if it holds, would mark the first significant federal reversal of the TPLF-led alliance's opening week of gains, even as the alliance was simultaneously advancing in Afar to the east.

What the hospitals are recording

Médecins Sans Frontières data offers the war's clearest independent metric so far, because it counts patients rather than adjudicating combatant claims. MSF said its teams at hospitals in Korem and Alamata received roughly 180 war-wounded patients as fighting resumed, a figure that rose to more than 420 between 22 and 25 September, a period that predates both Erebti's capture and Alamata's recapture. Separately, MSF-supported Suhul Hospital in Shire, in northwestern Tigray, had received more than 300 war-wounded patients by 25 September. The scale of the surge at Alamata specifically was severe enough that MSF suspended the hospital's outreach activities and redirected staff to support facilities handling the heaviest patient loads, a suspension that took effect before the town's 28 September recapture added a further round of fighting to a facility already operating past capacity. None of these figures distinguish combatant from civilian casualties, and MSF's data, unlike the casualty claims made by the ENDF or the TPLF, is not offered as a battlefield outcome for either side; it is the closest available measure of the war's human cost that does not depend on either combatant's own account of who is winning.

What to watch

Three signals will show whether this week's accusations mark a genuine widening of the war or a rhetorical escalation that outruns the facts. First, whether Ethiopia's government follows Berhanu Jula's remarks with any documentary evidence, intercepted shipments, financial records, captured fighters identified as Sudanese or Egyptian nationals, for claims against Sudan and Egypt specifically, given that the Eritrea accusation alone has so far rested on assertion rather than published evidence. Second, whether Sudan's counter-accusation, that Ethiopian territory hosts RSF training and drone operations, produces any of its own corroborating detail beyond the military's statement, since a war of competing unverified claims between neighbouring militaries makes it harder, not easier, for outside observers to assess either country's culpability in the other's conflict. Third, whether Alamata's recapture holds and is followed by a federal push north toward Mekelle, or whether, as with Erebti days earlier, control proves contested and reverses again, since the town's own history of repeatedly changing hands during the 2020-2022 war makes a single day's claim of capture an unreliable guide to who holds it a week from now.

Policy implications

For Ethiopia's federal government, publicly naming three governments as external backers of an armed alliance seeking its overthrow, without evidence disclosed alongside the accusation, risks the same credibility cost FIKIR Institute has flagged in Addis Ababa's undocumented battlefield claims: a serious allegation repeated without corroboration invites the same scepticism whether it is aimed at a rebel casualty count or at a neighbouring head of state. For Sudan, a counter-accusation that Ethiopian territory hosts RSF training and drone launches, arriving without independent verification of its own, adds a fourth active front, after Egypt over the GERD and Eritrea over Tigray, on which Ethiopia's government is now disputing basic facts with a neighbouring state, at a moment when Sudan's own civil war already strains the wider Horn's stability. For Egypt, a narrower and less formal denial, delivered through an anonymous source rather than an on-record government statement, leaves Cairo's position more ambiguous than Khartoum's, a gap that will matter if Ethiopia's government follows this week's remarks with more specific claims. For international actors already engaged on the GERD dispute, the Sudan civil war, and Tigray's renewed fighting separately, the convergence of all three into a single Ethiopian accusation is a signal that these previously distinct files are now being treated, at least rhetorically, as a single contest by at least one of the parties involved, a framing that could make separate mediation efforts on each dispute harder to sustain independently of the others.