Metemma falls. The ENDF crosses into Sudan and surrenders.

Metemma and Gondar

Fano takes the border town with Sudan on the first day of September, forcing federal soldiers to retreat across the border and surrender their weapons to the Sudanese army. Sixteen days later Fano enters Gondar — Ethiopia’s second-most historic city — and briefly controls the southern half. The federal-government’s “law enforcement” framing for the Amhara insurgency, applied for sixteen months, completes its operational refutation.

Filed October 2024

The Fano insurgency that had begun in April 2023 entered its most consequential operational phase in July, August, and September 2024. Through the first six months of 2024, Fano formations across Amhara Region had been operating in a pattern that the federal government characterised as “criminal disruption” and that international analysts characterised as a developing low-intensity insurgency: ambushes against federal convoys, brief seizures of small rural towns followed by withdrawals when ENDF reinforcements arrived, sustained attacks on B30 and B31 highway corridors that progressively restricted federal mobility across northern Amhara. By July 2024, the operational pattern had shifted: Fano formations began coordinating offensive operations across multiple zones simultaneously, the federal-allied capacity to respond was visibly stretched, and the September 2024 actions at Metemma and Gondar produced the most consequential operational moments of the insurgency’s eighteen-month history. [Wikipedia, “Amhara offensive,” accessed June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_offensive]

The Metemma operation of 1 September 2024 was the first.

Metemma is a town of approximately 5,500 inhabitants on the Ethiopian side of the Ethiopia-Sudan border in the North Gondar Zone. Across the border is the Sudanese village of Gallabat, with a long-established commercial relationship dating to the eighteenth century. Through the post-2018 period, Metemma has been the principal Ethiopian crossing point for commercial goods entering and leaving via Sudan; through the post-April 2023 Sudanese war, Metemma has additionally been the principal crossing point for Sudanese refugees fleeing the RSF-SAF conflict, with several hundred thousand Sudanese refugees having entered Ethiopia through Metemma by mid-2024. The town’s commercial significance to the Ethiopian economy had increased substantially through 2023 and 2024 as the Djibouti corridor became more congested and as fuel and food imports from Sudan became more important to maintaining supply chains in northern Ethiopia.

Fano formations operating in North Gondar — particularly the Gondar Fano under Habte Wolde of the North Gondar Command and the Amhara Fano People’s Organisation under Eskinder Nega in the broader Gondar zone — had been positioning operationally near Metemma through August 2024. On the morning of 1 September 2024, the formations launched a coordinated attack on the federal-government and Amhara regional administrative positions in the town. The fighting was intense and brief. ENDF garrison units, by Fano accounts and by subsequent reporting, were caught in a tactically untenable position: outflanked, outnumbered, with limited supply lines back into the Ethiopian interior, and with Sudanese territory immediately at their backs. After several hours of combat, the surviving ENDF personnel were forced to retreat across the border into Sudan. The Sudanese Armed Forces, controlling the Gallabat side of the border under the operational conditions of their own war against the Rapid Support Forces, disarmed the retreating Ethiopian soldiers as a condition of permitting them to enter Sudanese territory. The Sudanese authorities subsequently closed the Gallabat-Metemma border crossing entirely. [Wikipedia, “Metemma,” accessed June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metemma]

The operational and political consequences of the Metemma fall were immediate and substantial.

The federal-government had lost control of its principal commercial border crossing with Sudan. The fuel and food supply routes that had been operating through Metemma — including the supplies that had been keeping the northern Ethiopian commercial economy operating during the post-Pretoria reconstruction period — were closed. The Sudanese refugee crossing point was closed. The federal-government had lost an ENDF garrison whose soldiers had been forced to surrender their weapons to a foreign army on foreign soil — a substantial blow to ENDF morale and an embarrassing factual record that the federal-government’s public communications could not effectively address. The Sudanese federal government, which had been operating in tactical alignment with the Egyptian-led security axis against Ethiopia following the January 2024 Somaliland MoU, had been positioned to extract diplomatic value from the Metemma development without any direct Sudanese military action against Ethiopia. The federal Ethiopian government’s regional diplomatic position, already weakened by the Somaliland MoU’s fallout, was further degraded by the Metemma development.

The substantive significance of the Metemma fall was the demonstration that Fano formations could conduct operationally-effective coordinated attacks against established federal-government positions. The federal-government framing of the Fano insurgency through the preceding sixteen months had characterised the formations as scattered criminal groups operating without coordinated military capacity. The Metemma operation refuted that framing. The Fano formations that took Metemma had operated with coordination across multiple zones, with effective intelligence regarding the federal defensive positions, with sufficient organisational discipline to conduct combined-arms operations against a regular military formation, and with strategic awareness sufficient to recognise the political value of the target. The federal-government communications about the Metemma development, characterising the Fano action as “terrorist criminality,” did not effectively engage with the operational reality the development had demonstrated.

The Gondar operation of 16–17 September 2024 was the second consequential development.

Gondar is a city of approximately 350,000 inhabitants in the Central Gondar Zone of Amhara Region. It was the capital of the Ethiopian Empire from approximately 1636 to 1855, and its medieval and early-modern Gondarine architectural complex — the Royal Enclosure (Fasil Ghebbi), the Debre Berhan Selassie church, the Empress Mentewab’s complex at Qusquam — is one of the most internationally recognised heritage sites in Africa. The city’s symbolic significance to Amhara political-historical identity is substantial; the city’s commercial significance to northern Ethiopia is also substantial; the city’s strategic significance, as a node on the A3 (Addis-Bahir Dar-Gondar-Aksum-Mekelle), B30 (Gondar-Metemma to Sudan), and C35 highways, is central to federal-government control of northern Amhara.

On 16 September 2024, Fano formations — operating in coordination from the Amhara Fano People’s Organisation’s North Gondar command and from elements of the Gondar Fano coalition — launched an offensive against Gondar from positions outside the city. Through the morning and afternoon of 16 September, Fano units entered the city from multiple directions, encountered ENDF and Amhara regional police resistance in various neighbourhoods, and progressively established control over the southern districts of the city. Federal forces deployed tanks and heavy weapons in densely populated urban neighbourhoods; footage circulated of ENDF tanks shooting into residential areas. By the evening of 16 September, Fano formations controlled what their public communications characterised as “most of the southern part of Gondar”; federal accounts disputed the extent of Fano control but acknowledged “violent clashes” in multiple neighbourhoods. By 17 September, urban warfare continued; civilian casualties accumulated; the federal-government’s communications shifted to characterise the situation as “an ongoing security operation against terrorist elements.” [Critical Threats Project, “Africa File, September 26, 2024: Fano Offensive In Ethiopia’s Amhara,” 26 September 2024, https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/africa-file-september-26-2024-fano-offensive-in-ethiopias-amhara-egypt-arms-somalia-rebel-drones-in-mali-burkina-thwarts-another-coup]

The Fano operation in Gondar did not seek sustained territorial control. By Fano public communications, the objective was to demonstrate operational capacity, to free Fano fighters being held in Gondar’s police stations and detention facilities, and to inflict political costs on the federal government. By 18–19 September, Fano formations had progressively withdrawn from Gondar’s central districts to defensive positions in the rural areas around the city, encircling the city rather than holding it. The encirclement pattern, as Critical Threats Project analysis characterised it, was the operational pattern of an insurgent force seeking to isolate federal positions in major urban centres rather than to engage in sustained urban combat where federal-government firepower advantages would prevail. The pattern would, through October 2024 and into the following months, be applied to other major urban centres in Amhara — Bahir Dar, Dessie, Debre Berhan, Lalibela — with comparable operational effects.

The civilian casualties from the Gondar fighting were substantial and undercount-prone. The federal-government’s initial figures, by 19 September, were nine dead and over 30 injured; the Fano figures and the Amhara Association of America’s documentation by 22 September were substantially higher; the actual civilian casualty figure has not been independently established. The federal-government’s deployment of tanks in densely populated neighbourhoods, footage of which circulated through Ethiopian and international social media, was widely characterised in subsequent international human-rights commentary as conduct that would, under any rigorous IHL analysis, constitute indiscriminate attacks against civilians. The operational pattern — heavy weapons employed in urban civilian zones, mass arbitrary detentions of suspected Fano sympathisers, restrictions on civilian movement, drone strikes against rural targets in subsequent weeks — was substantively continuous with the operational pattern of the Tigray war that the ICHREE had documented and characterised as war crimes.

The federal-government and ENDF response to the September 2024 Fano operations through October 2024 was the launch of what the federal-government communications characterised as “intensified security operations” — a euphemistic framing comparable to the November 2020 “law enforcement operation” framing for the Tigray war. The federal-government deployed approximately 30,000 additional ENDF troops to Amhara through October 2024 in support of operations across multiple zones. The Ethiopian Air Force conducted sustained airstrike operations against Fano positions through October and into the following months; drone strikes from the same Turkish-Iranian-Chinese-Emirati fleet that had defeated the TDF in late 2021 became a routine feature of operations against Fano formations. A drone strike in North Gojjam on 26 October 2024 killed over 50 people; multiple drone strikes in subsequent weeks produced comparable casualty figures; the operational pattern of mass civilian casualties from federal-government drone operations in Amhara through late 2024 and into 2025 became one of the central documented atrocity patterns of the post-Pretoria period.

The political consequences of the September 2024 operations have, by mid-2026, been substantial across multiple dimensions.

The federal-government’s “law enforcement” framing for the Amhara conflict became operationally unsustainable. The framing had depended on the characterisation of Fano as a criminal organisation that the federal government was conducting policing operations against. The Metemma and Gondar operations refuted that characterisation: a criminal organisation does not take a border town from a regular army or briefly control a city of 350,000. The framing’s substantive collapse did not produce any modification in the federal-government’s public communications, which continued to use the “terrorist criminality” framing through 2024 and into 2025; but the framing’s persuasive value, for international observers and for the Ethiopian population generally, had been undermined by the operational record.

The federal-government’s strategic position in the Horn of Africa was further degraded. The Metemma development closed the Sudan supply corridor. The Egyptian-Eritrean-Somali security axis aligned against Ethiopia gained new political-rhetorical material from the federal-government’s demonstrated inability to maintain control of its northern territories. The IMF and World Bank programmes, which had been negotiated through 2023 and 2024 and which would produce the July 2024 birr float, operated through autumn 2024 in a political environment of additional federal-government distress from the Amhara military situation.

The Amhara political constituency’s relationship with the federal government continued to deteriorate. The Fano operations had been conducted not by a marginal armed faction but by formations operating with substantial political support across northern Amhara. The federal-government’s response — heavy military operations producing substantial civilian casualties — further alienated the Amhara constituency from the federal-government’s centralising project. The structural political dynamic that the Fano insurgency had been operating within — the Amhara constituency’s grievances about the dissolved Special Forces, the contested-territories question, the federal-government’s perceived tilt toward post-Pretoria Tigray — continued to deepen rather than to be addressed.

The federal-government’s reliance on drone-based operations expanded substantially. The drone fleet that had been decisive in the November 2021 Tigray war became, through autumn 2024 and into 2025, the principal instrument of federal-government counter-insurgency operations in Amhara. The pattern of mass civilian casualties from these operations — the Merawi strike of January 2024, the East Gojjam school strike of April 2025, the Birakat strike of March 2025, the multiple drone strikes between September 2024 and June 2026 with documented civilian casualty figures in the dozens or hundreds — has constituted the principal atrocity pattern of the post-Pretoria conflicts. The ICHREE’s October 2023 mandate non-renewal had removed the principal international monitoring mechanism that might have documented and constrained this pattern; the consequences of that non-renewal have been substantially borne by the Amhara civilian populations whose drone-strike casualty figures have, in 2024 and 2025, been documented at a fraction of the rate at which Tigrayan civilian casualties were documented during the 2020–2022 war.

Fano’s operational position improved while its political coherence remained limited. The September 2024 operations demonstrated Fano’s military capacity but did not produce the political unification that would translate military capacity into political settlement. The four principal Fano formations — Gondar Fano, Gojjam Fano, Wollo Fano, Shewa Fano — continued to operate with separate command structures. The Amhara Fano People’s Organisation under Eskinder Nega remained one factional centre; the broader Amhara Fano coalition under various commanders remained another. Through 2025, multiple attempts to unify Fano under a single command structure — the May 2025 Amhara Fano National Force initiative under a 13-member Central Command, the January 2026 Amhara Fano National Movement initiative — produced partial unifications but did not establish a single Fano interlocutor with whom the federal government could negotiate even if it had wanted to. The political consequence of the operational fragmentation has been that Fano’s military strength has not translated into political pressure for settlement on terms the federal government would have to engage with.

By mid-2026, the Amhara conflict has settled into a sustained low-intensity insurgency. The federal-government maintains nominal control of the major urban centres — Bahir Dar, Gondar, Dessie, Debre Berhan — but loses tactical control of these cities to brief Fano operations on a recurring basis (Fano entered Debre Tabor on 11 February 2026 and held it for 24 hours before withdrawing under drone strikes). Most of rural Amhara operates under Fano administrative influence rather than federal-government control. The federal-government’s drone campaign continues to produce civilian casualties. The political settlement that would address the underlying Amhara grievances has not been pursued; the military defeat of Fano that would render political settlement unnecessary has not been achieved. The structural condition is one of sustained armed conflict whose political settlement is not on the federal-government’s policy agenda.

The September 2024 operations at Metemma and Gondar were, in this retrospective frame, the operational moment at which the federal-government’s strategic position in Amhara became visibly weaker than its strategic position in Tigray had been at any comparable point in the 2020–2022 war. The federal-government had lost a border town to insurgent forces. The federal-government had lost temporary control of a major historical city. The federal-government had been forced to deploy substantial additional military resources to a region that had been its principal political ally in the previous war. The pattern of strategic exhaustion that the post-2018 federal-government project had been progressively producing — the alienation of TPLF in 2018–2020, the alienation of Amhara in 2022–2024 — had reached the operational stage at which the federal-government’s strategic position in northern Ethiopia depended on military operations against the constituency that had, four years earlier, been the federal-government’s principal regional ally.

Metemma and Gondar were, in this longer historical view, the operational refutation of the federal-government’s law-enforcement framing for the Amhara conflict and the structural confirmation of the strategic exhaustion that had been the underlying political dynamic of post-Pretoria Ethiopia. The federal-government’s capacity to suppress the Amhara constituency by military means has, by mid-2026, been demonstrated to be limited. The federal-government’s willingness to accommodate the Amhara constituency by political means has, by mid-2026, not been demonstrated at all. The space between these two limits is the space in which the Amhara conflict continues, the civilian casualties accumulate, and the political settlement that would end the conflict is not pursued.

The federal-government took Gondar back, through the operational deployment of ENDF reinforcements and drone strikes, within days of the Fano withdrawal. The federal-government recaptured Metemma in early October 2024 and reopened the border crossing on 21 October. The operational losses were, by November 2024, substantially reversed in territorial terms. The political losses — the demonstration of Fano operational capacity, the further alienation of Amhara, the additional damage to the federal-government’s regional diplomatic position — were not reversed and have not, in mid-2026, been reversed. The September 2024 operations remain, in retrospective frame, the moment at which the trajectory of post-Pretoria federal-government strategy in northern Ethiopia became visibly unsustainable.

The arithmetic of military force can be made to balance, on a federal-government’s accounting, when sufficient drones and sufficient soldiers are committed. The political arithmetic cannot be made to balance when the underlying grievances of the constituency the military operations are conducted against remain unaddressed. The federal-government has, on the post-Pretoria record, demonstrated substantial capacity for the former and demonstrated negligible capacity for the latter. The consequences of this asymmetry — for the federal-government, for the Amhara constituency, for the broader Ethiopian federation — are, in mid-2026, the operational reality of post-Pretoria Ethiopian politics.

Metemma and Gondar were the moment at which the asymmetry became, for any honest observer, undeniable. The federal-government’s continued denial of the asymmetry has not produced its operational resolution. The denial has, however, produced the conditions under which the next phase of the Amhara conflict will be conducted.

The next phase has not yet been formally entered. Its onset is, by mid-2026, visible.

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Sources for Article 21

1. Wikipedia, “Amhara offensive,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_offensive
2. Wikipedia, “Fano insurgency” (War in Amhara), accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Amhara
3. Wikipedia, “Metemma,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metemma
4. Wikipedia, “Fano (militia),” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fano_(militia)
5. Critical Threats Project, “Africa File, September 26, 2024: Fano Offensive In Ethiopia’s Amhara,” 26 September 2024 — https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/africa-file-september-26-2024-fano-offensive-in-ethiopias-amhara-egypt-arms-somalia-rebel-drones-in-mali-burkina-thwarts-another-coup
6. The New Humanitarian, “Who is Fano? Inside Ethiopia’s Amhara rebellion,” 12 November 2024 — https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2024/11/12/who-fano-inside-ethiopia-amhara-rebellion
7. Africa Defense Forum, “Amhara Insurgency Threatens to Consume Ethiopia,” 22 October 2024 — https://adf-magazine.com/2024/10/amhara-insurgency-threatens-to-consume-ethiopia/
8. Future Center for Advanced Research and Studies, “Analyzing Why Ethiopia Launched a New Military Operation in the Amhara Region,” 2024 — https://futureuae.com/en-US/Mainpage/Item/9780/fano-militia-analyzing-why-ethiopia-launched-a-new-military-operation-in-the-amhara-region
9. Amhara War Updates, “War updates from Amhara Region, Ethiopia – September 16th to 22nd, 2024,” 25 September 2024 — https://www.amharaamerica.org/post/war-updates-from-amhara-region-ethiopia-september-16th-to-22nd-2024
10. Africa Defense Forum, “Fano Attacks Threaten Return to War in Ethiopia,” October 2023 — https://adf-magazine.com/2023/10/fano-attacks-threaten-return-to-war-in-ethiopia/
11. Human Rights Watch coverage of Ethiopia Amhara region, 2024
12. ACLED data on Amhara Region conflict, 2024

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End of expanded article for Dispatch 21. One article, approximately 2,800 words.