Ethiopian Gov’t Army Claims Restraint as Analysts Warn Northern War Could Widen Across Red Sea
Ethiopia’s army chief has said federal forces are answering the renewed northern fighting with “wisdom and restraint” and prefer “strategic calm,” even as analysts warn that the conflict could pull in neighbours and threaten Red Sea shipping routes, according to a September 30, 2026 Soufan Center IntelBrief and reporting relayed the same day by Interaffairs from Al Jazeera.
In his first comments on the latest military developments, Field Marshal Berhanu Jula said the army was responding to what he called provocations from the Tigray front with wisdom and restraint, and he accused Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups inside the “Tsimdo” alliance that aims to weaken Ethiopia. Eritrea denied the accusations. Abiy Ahmed’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum has also criticized Eritrea over alleged financing of some of the groups, and Field Marshal Berhanu Jula has accused Egypt and Sudan of supporting the wider alliance. Sudan and Egypt have rejected those claims in earlier reporting, and Asmara has not answered the newest Afar-front allegations in detail.
The Soufan Center said the November 2022 Pretoria Peace Agreement is now in tatters and cited estimates that the prior 2020-2022 war left about 600,000 people dead, a figure that other assessments have also used while noting that death tolls remain contested. The brief noted that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front joined a seven-group alliance that includes the Oromo Liberation Army and the Amhara Fano National Movement, and that Afar’s governor told Al Jazeera Eritrean forces were taking part in fighting and moving to cut the region’s road link toward Djibouti. About 95 percent of Ethiopia’s imports move through Djibouti, and Soufan warned that if the authorities in Addis Ababa conclude Eritrea’s role is a serious security threat, a strike on Asmara could turn the civil conflict into an interstate war around one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
A September 29 Al Jazeera explainer also described fighting across Tigray, Amhara, and Afar, including claims that Erebti in Afar had fallen to Tigrayan forces and that pressure on the Djibouti corridor was rising. Soufan further cited Reuters reporting that telecom networks in Tigray were disrupted last Friday, with accounts that the TPLF asked companies to take down services as a tactic against government use of Wi-Fi for drones. Army messaging about strategic calm sits beside those widening fronts, and the Soufan Center concludes that the danger now reaches beyond northern Ethiopia into the broader Red Sea region.