All Silent Dossier reporting and analysis on Tigray, newest first.
Eritrean troops crossed into Tigray this week while Ethiopia’s army bled on every front. Egypt will fight only if Eritrea itself is attacked. Until then it is winning without firing a shot, and this is the moment to offer Abiy Ahmed one last deal: a binding Nile dam agreement, signed in Cairo.
Ethiopia’s capture of Mekelle was no victory. After Abiy Ahmed vowed to reach the Red Sea, Eritrean troops crossed into Tigray and Egypt’s navy moved south. Abiy’s war is turning against him, and his rule is nearing its end.
Drones are reaching Addis Ababa, Eritrea has cut ties and Abiy Ahmed’s answer is to blame Egypt without evidence. Cairo’s same-night expulsion of an Ethiopian counsellor was a warning: the next step is ambassadors.
Egypt kept the region’s largest army out of Gaza, the Iran war and the Houthi crisis, and that restraint was a strategy, not weakness. All three wars are still burning, though, and Ethiopia’s renewed fighting in Tigray and its feud with Eritrea could pull Egypt into a fourth.
Ethiopia’s army chief accuses Egypt and Sudan of arming the rebels closing in on Abiy Ahmed, but offers no evidence. The accusation hides a military in trouble, and the collapse it points to is the real threat to the Nile.
