Ethiopia Expels an Egyptian Diplomat to Hide a War It Is Losing

Ethiopia’s foreign ministry announced on the evening of October 1, Cairo time, that an Egyptian diplomat in Addis Ababa, Ahmed Moharam Ahmed Soliman, was persona non grata and had 48 hours to leave the country. It cited the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and gave no reason. Egypt’s foreign ministry did not wait for morning. Within hours it declared a counsellor at the Ethiopian embassy in Cairo persona non grata and gave him the same 48 hours, The National reported.

A senior Egyptian official told the state news agency MENA that Ethiopia’s move was “unfortunate” and “unjustified”, and that Egypt “firmly rejects interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” according to Ethiopia Observer.

On a news bulletin this is one sentence: Ethiopia expelled an Egyptian, Egypt expelled an Ethiopian. Behind it sits a military, diplomatic and economic crisis, and the expulsion is not its last chapter.

Ethiopia expelled a junior Egyptian diplomat with no stated reason and no evidence because it cannot explain why rebel drones are hitting its own capital.

Egypt replied the same night by expelling a more senior Ethiopian, the embassy’s counsellor. The message is that every further step will cost Addis Ababa more than it costs Cairo.

The African Union, headquartered in Addis Ababa, refused to repeat Ethiopia’s accusation. That is a diplomatic failure for Abiy Ahmed.

Abiy is losing control at home and manufacturing foreign enemies to cover it. Win or lose against the rebels, the road leads to more escalation with Eritrea and Egypt.

The expulsion only makes sense against what is happening inside Ethiopia. On September 23 a coalition of seven armed groups, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and including Fano militias from Amhara and groups from Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, launched an offensive aimed at removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. It calls itself the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival.

The war has reached the capital. On September 27 a drone struck the Debre Zeit (Harar Meda) air base in Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, while Abiy was at the compound for a holiday celebration. On September 30 the national intelligence service banned all drone flights over Addis Ababa. Hours later, in the early morning of October 1, explosions were heard in the capital as suicide drones targeted the military command headquarters in the Tor Hailoch area and the 24th Infantry Division’s base in Kirkos district. Another drone came down in the 4 Kilo area, home to diplomatic premises. It was not the first night of strikes on the city. A source in the rebel alliance told Reuters it had carried out several drone strikes on Addis Ababa, including on the military’s headquarters.

The target says a great deal. Satellite images of the defence headquarters show a compound that looks more like a football stadium than a Pentagon, and a drone that crossed hundreds of kilometres of government-held territory still reached it.

When rebels can strike the defence headquarters in the capital, the government has lost control. Investors stop coming to a country that already defaulted on its foreign debt in 2023. Embassies and the African Union, which has its headquarters in Addis Ababa, start counting the risk to their staff. Ethiopian Airlines, which sells itself as Africa’s best airline, has to explain how its hub is safe from drones that can reach an army headquarters. If this is happening in the capital, imagine the rest of the country.

The foreign governments are already moving. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, worked with Ethiopian officials to get stranded Israelis out of the north, and about 45 Israelis trapped in Lalibela were flown out by helicopter over several days. The rest of the Israeli presence will follow, and other countries will draw the same conclusion.

The army is stretched too. Ethiopia is pulling more than 3,000 troops out of Somalia, out of a force of roughly 5,000 to 7,000, to fight the rebels at home, Bloomberg reported. Government forces say they are advancing on Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, and pro-government footage shows a march to “liberate” Tigray. That is a show. The Tigrayan forces have not collapsed in a few hours, and the proof is that the capital is under fire. Fano fighters have captured Ethiopian colonels and their units in North Wollo. An army that is winning does not lose officers by the column.

Instead of fixing its own problems, Addis Ababa looked abroad. Abiy turned his army outward, toward Sudan’s war, where a Yale research lab found an Ethiopian base in Asosa supporting the Rapid Support Forces, and neglected the home front until the rebels rose against him. Rather than admit that, his government blames Eritrea.

On October 1 Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara over what it called Eritrea’s “direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence,” and ordered 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave within 48 hours. Eritrea answered that it had “no option but to reciprocate in kind and sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia,” Al-Monitor reported.

The dangerous part is that Ethiopia did not stop at Eritrea. Days earlier its army chief, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, had named Sudan and Egypt among Ethiopia’s “historical and contemporary adversaries,” casting Eritrea as the go-between and arguing that the TPLF and Eritrea could not threaten Ethiopia without outside backing. The logic is plain: the rebels are hundreds of kilometres from Addis Ababa, Eritrea does not have drones that reach the capital, so someone must be paying. Ethiopia wants that someone to be Egypt. Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesman replied that Egyptian policy rests on “noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries,” and Sudan’s army called the accusation baseless.

Then the accusation became an act. Ethiopia is no longer only talking about Egypt; it has moved against Egypt’s diplomatic mission.

Cairo has been clear. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said at the end of September that Egypt will give diplomacy the widest possible space, but not “at the expense of Egypt’s existence and its people,” Egyptian Streets reported. Giving diplomacy the widest space means Egypt is capable of military action and is choosing patience.

Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty went further. Egypt will not accept a single drop of its water share being affected by one country’s will. Any additional dams or unilateral actions will not be accepted or allowed, he said, a position he called consistent with the international law governing transboundary rivers. Water security, in his words, is “a matter of life or death.”

Do not expect the escalation to stop at counsellors. Egypt and Ethiopia are on a dangerous path, and the next step on it is ambassadors. Egypt has avoided three wars in the region by choice. Ethiopia’s collapse is the one most likely to test that restraint.