Top officials assessed that Eritrea is directly supporting the rebels in battle and that they’re all being backed by Egypt, whose proxies aim to sever landlocked Ethiopia’s vital trade corridor to Djibouti as part of a plot to change its borders by force, which confirms the existential stakes of this conflict.
Ethiopia’s latest Northern Conflict has escalated after Chief of the General Staff Field Marshal Birhanu Jula declared that “We are fighting forces that are organised and allied to serve the interests of external forces. Neither Shabia (Eritrea) nor the TPLF can achieve anything alone, even if they are allied, unless they are backed, supported and supplied by Sudan, Egypt and other external powers.” The governor of Ethiopia’s Afar Region separately shared some startling insight into the conflict’s strategic dynamics.
Haji Awol Arba told Al Jazeera that “The Eritrean army is seeking to cut off the road between Ethiopia and Djibouti and prevent our access to Djiboutian ports. The current war exceeds the capabilities of the region’s forces and we are facing the army of an entire state. What we are facing is an attempt to change the borders by force and we demand intervention by the African Union.” The last part about Eritrea seeking to change Ethiopia’s borders by force deserves some elaboration.
Even though US Ambassador to Ethiopia Ervin J. Massinga assessed that the radical TPLF faction that reinitiated the conflict is “engaging in an unwinnable fight”, that was likely with respect to regime change, not what might be its Eritrean-backed ulterior goal. Awol’s insight suggests that Eritrea plans to either annex the ethno-culturally similar Tigray Region and the northern part of the Afar one or have them function as proxy states for creating a buffer with Ethiopia. Here are three background briefings:
* 23 September: “Ethiopia’s New Rebel Alliance Is Eritrea’s Most Dangerous Egyptian-Backed Power Play Yet”
* 24 September: “Five Thoughts About Ethiopia’s Latest Northern Conflict”
* 26 September: “The TPLF’s Communications Cut-Off In Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Is A Cynical Strategy”
The new Eritrean-controlled rebel alliance (“Tsimdo”) that the radical TPLF faction leads is Egypt’s Hybrid War weapon for “Balkanizing” its historical Ethiopian rival via what might become a Ukrainian-like “war of attrition” fueled by arms flooding into the country from Egyptian-allied Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. Tsimdo’s immediate goal is to cut off Ethiopia’s main road to Djibouti, which runs across the Afar Region and carries over 90% of its international trade, in order to spark a national economic crisis.
If successful, then Tsimdo will either aim for regime change (whether by invading the capital or exploiting the crisis to engineer a Color Revolution) or settle for a ceasefire that would sever the occupied territories from the federal government, the latter scenario of which would leave Ethiopia’s vital corridor to Djibouti under de facto Eritrean control with all that entails for its functional sovereignty. It’s therefore imperative that the armed forces thwart this plot without spreading themselves too thin.
So long as they can defend their country’s corridor to Djibouti, ideally in parallel with pioneering an alternative one via Somaliland that would likely require formal recognition of its 1991 redeclaration of independence, then Ethiopia would be able to survive the “war of attrition” that might then follow. If not, then it risks “Balkanization” given the newly confirmed existential stakes of its latest Northern Conflict, the outcome of which would destabilize the broader region and reverberate even further afield.
If Egypt, Somalia, and/or other "Islamic NATO"-adjacent states are involved, then almost certainly they are acting at the behest of the U.S. vis-à-vis Türkiye or Pakistan (the KSA is a bit preoccupied with Iran's "Axis"). If so, then Trump 2.0 is clearly acting against the Israeli–Emirati alliance, showing how Israel does *not* fully control U.S. policy regionally.