Egypt Won This Round Without Firing a Shot. Now It Should Hand Abiy Its Terms

Start with the capital. Before a single Eritrean soldier crossed the border, Addis Ababa had already been hit by drones. On the night of September 30, three diplomatic sources told Reuters that explosions had been heard in the city, and the rebel alliance said it had carried out several drone strikes there, including on the military’s headquarters. It was the first known drone attack by anti-government forces on the capital.

Then the army. Ethiopia’s forces are exhausted. They were drawn into Sudan’s war, where Ethiopian fighters stood openly beside the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary that Sudan’s army is fighting. Khartoum also says drones have been launched against it from Ethiopian territory; Addis Ababa denies any role. When those forces pulled back from Sudan to fight the Amhara, the Oromo and the Tigrayans, they came home already worn down. No army in that condition can fight on four fronts at once: Sudan, separatist forces spread across several regions, and now Eritrea. The army is also drawn from many ethnic groups, and it is being asked to fight a civil war among those same groups.

Then the money. Compare Saudi Arabia’s long war with the Houthis. The kingdom had its strategic assets struck again and again, and the war dragged on for years, but Riyadh had large alliances and oil to sell, and so it could pay for the war indefinitely. Ethiopia has neither. Its loudest supporters, from Uganda’s offers of troops to a handful of other governments, will not stay the course when the fighting becomes serious.

Israel is the exception, and its role is often misunderstood. On October 6, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar called Gedion Timothewos to show support. But Israel will not step into an Ethiopian civil war to save Abiy, even if drones are falling on his capital. Israel would play a large role if Ethiopia invaded Eritrea and reached the sea, because that is the job it wants Abiy to do: serve as Israel’s instrument on the Red Sea. A proxy that delivers is rewarded. A proxy that fails is left boxed in. Abiy played a game he was not big enough for. Meanwhile Ethiopia has lost much of what it had in Türkiye (Turkey). Ankara still wants good relations with Addis Ababa, but it no longer backs Abiy as it once did.

Last, Abiy is not fighting one neighbour. He is fighting the coalition that sat together at the El Alamein summit on October 4: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi beside Sudan’s Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Somalia’s Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki. For Abiy, taking on that alliance is political suicide.

Everyone asked the same question this week. Eritrea had spent weeks warning that Ethiopia would invade it. Why, then, was it Eritrea that crossed the border?

Because Eritrea had drawn a red line, and Ethiopia stepped over it. Asmara’s message to Addis Ababa was in effect this: fight the Amhara, the Tigrayans and the Oromo as you like, but do not take Mekelle and push toward our border. An Ethiopian army established in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, could build bases there and stage an advance into Eritrea. When federal forces entered Mekelle last weekend and kept moving north, Eritrea did not wait for them to arrive at its frontier. It crossed to build a forward line of defence inside Ethiopia. The signal had probably passed between the two intelligence services beforehand.

ACLED analyst Jalale Getachew Birru told The National that “Eritrean forces entered the war in Tigray to halt the Ethiopian government and allied forces from reaching the border.” Even a commander of the pro-government Tigray Peace Force said Eritrea was deploying so that the fighting would take place in Tigray rather than in Eritrea.

The Ethiopian army also had a second problem behind it. Fano and Oromo fighters now hold towns on the main supply routes that feed federal troops in Tigray. An army stretched deep into Tigray with its supply lines cut is an army that can be slaughtered. That is why it felt the danger and fell back.

Eritrea acted in response. Ethiopia chose to cross the line, knowing it would provoke Asmara.

Could all of this be a setup by Abiy, staged so that he can claim self-defence, invade Eritrea and march to the Red Sea? Nothing can be ruled out. But consider what that plan requires: an army exhausted militarily and financially, made up of rival ethnic groups, fighting a civil war at home and a foreign state backed by a coalition, and then turning all of it around. We find that very unlikely.

Even if Ethiopia could turn the tide, it would take a long time. Nobody should think this war will be settled in a day or two. Assume the Ethiopian army is strong enough to reverse everything, or that this really is a trap. It will still take months. In two or three months the Ethiopian army could be completely spent, nowhere near the sea. The most it could hope for is to stand on Eritrea’s border. Going further would not be possible.

The economy will not survive that either. Ethiopia has announced plans for three more hydropower dams on the Blue Nile on top of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Who will lend to a government fighting a civil war to build them?

That brings us back to Washington’s question. Egypt is bound to Eritrea by a defence commitment, and Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia agreed a framework for strategic cooperation, including Red Sea security, in October 2024. Egyptian naval units were reported moving in the Red Sea this week. But Egypt will not go to war because Eritrean troops are fighting inside Ethiopia. Egypt moves only if the war reaches Eritrea’s own borders.

Think of NATO. Its founding treaty commits members to treat an armed attack against one of them as an attack against all. Suppose Türkiye, a NATO member, sent troops to fight alongside Saudi Arabia, and Turkish soldiers were killed there. Would NATO declare war? No. Türkiye would be fighting on someone else’s land. As long as the war does not reach Turkish borders, NATO has no role. If Turkish sovereignty is attacked, NATO acts.

Apply the same rule to Eritrea. As long as its borders are intact, there is nothing for Egypt to intervene in. The naval moves are preparation for a defensive scenario, in case Eritrea itself comes under attack.

What American analysts like most about Egypt’s position is plain: Egypt has not fired a single bullet, and Abiy is already on the ground.

Abiy did this to himself. He brought his enemies into his own country and turned everyone against him. The civil war now ravaging Ethiopia is the product of his decisions, and he has only just begun a new term. He divided his own people. He sent his army into a foreign war in Sudan. Every state on the Red Sea is now hostile to him; even Djibouti can no longer stand him. When he started the Renaissance Dam, he never imagined that the debt he took on and the dam he built would bring him this kind of ruin.

Egypt did not tell Eritrea to cross the border. Egypt has not armed Ethiopia’s militias, though if it did, those militias would be in Addis Ababa. Cairo has stayed out of it, and Ethiopia is still coming apart. Addis Ababa accuses Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of backing the rebels; all three deny it. What comes out of Addis Ababa is a stream of statements that bear no relation to what is happening on the ground.

Egypt has played this round with real intelligence craft, and President Sisi has shown the instincts of the senior intelligence officer he once was.

This is the moment for Egypt to send Abiy its final offer. The terms are simple. Ethiopia signs a binding agreement on the Renaissance Dam. In return Egypt uses its weight to mediate: with Eritrea, to bring its troops back behind its border, and with the Amhara, the Oromo and the Tigrayans. Instead of a war that drags on for six or seven months, Egypt helps get Abiy out of it.

And he should sign it in Cairo, the city where in June 2018, standing next to Sisi, he repeated in Arabic: “I swear to God, we will never harm you”. Let him come back, sit down and sign before the whole world. Egypt will receive him with every honour: a brass band at the airport of the kind Cairo hires for its weddings, a full wedding procession led by a dancer all the way into the presidential palace, a reception he has never seen before. The choice is his. And if he refuses? Good luck. We will see him in three months, if he is still standing.

Either Abiy sinks into a civil war, or he signs a binding agreement. Egypt does not want ordinary Ethiopians to suffer, and they do not need to.

An offer like this does not land by itself. Cairo has to prepare the ground. It should keep issuing statements on the outcomes of the El Alamein summit and reaffirm the military alliance between Egypt and Eritrea. Egyptian and Eritrean ministers should be visiting each other’s capitals now, not next month. Egypt should show its military strength with serious exercises alongside its friends, and explain openly how it supports them. And its statements should condemn the killing inside Ethiopia, an army killing its own people.