Powder keg

The powder keg

In February 2026 Reuters confirms that Ethiopia has built a secret RSF training camp in Benishangul-Gumuz to open a second front against the Sudanese army in Blue Nile state. Eritrea has ordered a nationwide mobilisation. Six hundred civilians have died in Tigray skirmishes since January. ENDF convoys move toward Tigray from Amhara and Oromia. Both governments trade insults and threats. All the ingredients are present for what International Crisis Group has been characterising as a “regional mega-war.” The specific ignition is a matter of timing rather than of underlying probability.

Filed February 2026

The first eight weeks of 2026 constituted the operational period at which the Horn of Africa’s accumulating forward risks became visibly comprehensive. The strategic realignments of 2023–2025 (Dispatch 25) had produced the structural conditions. The specific escalations of January and February 2026 produced the operational configuration that International Crisis Group’s February 2026 briefing characterised as a “powder keg.” The specific ignition — the discrete event that would tip the accumulated conditions into open conflict — had not, by the end of February, been identified. The accumulation itself had, by the same point, become undeniable.

The specific escalations of the January–February 2026 period had three principal centres.

The Ethiopia-Eritrea military mobilisation deepened. Ethiopia’s ENDF continued the redeployment of forces toward the northern border and toward Tigray Region that had been underway through the last quarter of 2025. By February 2026, ENDF units originally deployed to Amhara and Oromia counter-insurgency operations had been redeployed toward the northern theatres in substantial numbers. Convoys transporting heavy artillery, tanks, and troops became a daily feature of Ethiopian road network activity, documented extensively on social media and in international-analyst reporting. Ethiopian Air Force units expanded operational bases nearer to the northern border. The ENDF issued a formal mobilisation call for former soldiers to return to service — a mobilisation instrument that had not been operated since the peak of the Tigray war and whose deployment signalled the federal government’s assessment that renewed conflict was operationally probable. [Critical Threats Project, “Ethiopia Prepares For War: Africa File Special Edition,” February 2026, https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/ethiopia-tigray-war-tplf-eritrea-sudan-red-sea-africa-file]

Eritrea, in parallel, had ordered a nationwide mobilisation in February 2025 that had continued in operational effect through 2025 and into 2026. Eritrean units had been deployed along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border in numbers that international analysts characterised as substantially larger than the pre-2020 border deployments. The Eritrean government’s public communications through late 2025 and into 2026 progressively characterised the Ethiopian military posture as constituting the operational preparation for Ethiopian invasion of Eritrean territory to seize Assab or Massawa; the communications were used to justify the continued mobilisation and to prepare the Eritrean population for the possibility of open conflict.

On 22 February 2026, at an ENDF military parade in Addis Ababa, the federal government displayed a banner implying that Ethiopia should annex Assab and assert a naval presence on the Red Sea. Abiy Ahmed, speaking at the parade, stated that the ENDF has the capability to “eliminate threats from the tip of Moyale to the tip of Massawa,” language that international analysts characterised as substantially indicative of Ethiopian preparation for direct military action against Eritrea to seize Eritrean coastal territory. General Berhanu Jula, the ENDF Chief of Staff, spoke at the same parade emphasising ENDF naval training and intention to establish a “naval presence” in the Red Sea. The rhetorical escalation was, by 22 February, at levels that had not been operational since the 1998–2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea war.

Tigray Region entered a condition of accumulating armed skirmishes. Following the March 2025 Debretsion-faction takeover of the Interim Administration (Dispatch 23) and the May 2025 TPLF deregistration (Dispatch 24), armed clashes between Debretsion-aligned TDF formations and federal-aligned formations (the Tigray Peace Forces backed by Simret and federally armed) had progressively escalated. ACLED data through the second half of 2025 documented approximately 45 recorded events per month involving Tigray forces and federal or Eritrean troops — a threefold increase from the late-2023 baseline of 15 events per month. Civilian fatalities from these skirmishes had accumulated to approximately 600 by early 2026, with the pace of casualties increasing through January and February 2026. The clashes were concentrated in the Central and Eastern zones of Tigray where the Debretsion-Tadesse political dispute had been playing out and in the border areas where TDF elements aligned with Debretsion had established operational positions oriented toward Eritrea (in the northern border zones) and toward Sudan (in the western Tigray zones). [Atlas Institute for International Affairs, “Renewed Tension Between Ethiopian Regime and Tigray Forces,” July 2025, https://atlasinstitute.org/renewed-tension-between-ethiopian-regime-and-tigray-forces/]

Ethiopia’s substantive alignment with the Sudanese RSF became publicly documented. The February 10, 2026 Reuters investigation, based on Sudanese military officers, diplomats, and analysts interviewed across November 2025 to January 2026, documented that Ethiopia had constructed a secret camp in Benishangul-Gumuz region to train RSF fighters. The camp’s function, per the Reuters reporting, was to allow RSF forces to open a second front against the Sudanese Armed Forces in Sudan’s Blue Nile state — a strategically significant escalation that would substantially widen the geographic scope of the Sudanese war and that would produce operational costs on the SAF that had been backed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and (through TPLF-aligned Tigrayan Army 70 units) by the Tigrayan opposition to the federal Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian federal government denied the allegations; the Reuters reporting was corroborated by International Crisis Group’s own contemporaneous investigation.

The Sudan situation, by February 2026, had become the operational theatre in which the regional realignment expressed itself with the greatest operational significance. On 21 February 2026, the RSF announced the capture of the strategic border town of Al-Tina — a development that consolidated RSF territorial dominance across much of Darfur and placed RSF forces directly along the Chad-Sudan border. The Ethiopian-supported RSF advance against the SAF constituted, from the SAF’s perspective, an existential threat that would compel SAF’s Egyptian and Eritrean backers to consider expanded operational engagement in support of the SAF. From the Ethiopian federal government’s perspective, the Ethiopian support for RSF was constrained by the operational risk that the SAF’s collapse would eliminate a substantial regional counterweight to the Egyptian-Eritrean axis and would restructure the Horn of Africa’s political-military architecture in ways the federal Ethiopian government could not fully control.

The Amhara conflict continued in parallel and progressively escalated. On 11 February 2026, Fano formations entered the town of Debre Tabor and briefly held it before withdrawing under drone strikes. The pattern of Fano operations — brief seizures of major urban centres followed by withdrawals to encircling positions — continued to demonstrate substantial operational capacity. The Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM), the first joint command structure produced by the unification of the two largest Fano formations (Amhara Fano National Force and Amhara Fano Peace Organisation), had been established on 22 January 2026, providing the Fano insurgency with a more coordinated political-military structure than had existed in the preceding period. The federal government’s counter-insurgency operations in Amhara continued at substantial scale but with visible operational strain from the concurrent redeployments to the northern theatres.

The Oromia conflict, by contrast, had substantially stabilised at a low-intensity level. The OLA insurgency continued but with reduced operational tempo compared to 2022–2023. The Sagni Nagasa peace agreement of December 2024 (Dispatch 22), while not ending the broader insurgency, had reduced the operational capacity of the OLA’s Central Command elements. The Oromia regional government under Shimelis Abdisa continued to operate as the federal-government’s administrative partner in the conflict zones. The Oromia conflict, by early 2026, absorbed substantially less federal-government operational bandwidth than the Amhara or Tigray theatres.

The operational configuration by late February 2026 could be characterised as follows.

Federal Ethiopian government’s strategic position was substantially constrained. The federal government was managing four simultaneous strategic pressures: the potential renewed conflict with Tigray under Debretsion; the potential direct conflict with Eritrea; the ongoing Amhara insurgency; the residual OLA insurgency. Each of these pressures required substantial federal-government operational bandwidth. The cumulative operational demands substantially exceeded the federal-government’s available capacity; forces were being redeployed from one theatre to another in patterns that reduced operational capacity in every theatre simultaneously. The macroeconomic constraints (the July 2024 birr float’s continuing stabilisation programme, the constrained federal budget, the debt-service pressures) further limited the federal-government’s operational latitude.

The opposition coalition was, for the first time in the post-2018 period, substantially coordinated. The TPLF-Fano-OLA meeting on Sudanese territory in November 2025 that Critical Threats Project analysts documented represented the first formal coordination arrangement between the three principal armed opposition formations. The regional-state supporters of these formations — Eritrea (backing TPLF and Fano), Sudan-SAF (backing TPLF and providing logistics for Fano and OLA), Egypt (backing SAF and providing rhetorical support for Ethiopian opposition), Saudi Arabia (backing SAF and Eritrea) — had aligned their broader strategic postures in ways that made continued coordination substantively easier.

The international community had, thus far, failed to produce operational de-escalation. The African Union’s mediation efforts had been limited and had not produced substantive commitments from the parties. The United States, under a new administration that had reduced its diplomatic engagement with Africa, had been operating with reduced operational capacity on Horn of Africa questions. The European Union had issued statements of concern but had not produced substantive incentives for de-escalation. The Turkish mediation that had produced the December 2024 Ankara Declaration on the Somaliland MoU had not been extended to the Ethiopia-Eritrea question. The United Nations, whose ICHREE mandate had ended in October 2023 (Dispatch 17), had no operational mechanism for engaging the accumulating situation.

The specific ignition event had not been identified but was not required for the escalation to continue. International Crisis Group’s February 2026 assessment emphasised that “a cascade of escalatory statements and unexpected events can quickly tip the uneasy equilibrium towards military confrontation.” The accumulated conditions were such that any of multiple potential ignition events — a border incident between ENDF and EDF units, a Fano attack on a major federal position, a TDF advance into the disputed Western Tigray zones, a Sudanese SAF strike against the Ethiopian RSF training camp, an Eritrean intervention in support of Debretsion-TPLF, a federal-Ethiopian attempt to move against Assab — could trigger the operational transition to open conflict.

The retrospective question, at this point in the narrative, is why the federal Ethiopian government had accepted the accumulation of these conditions rather than pursuing the strategic accommodations that could have averted them.

The analytical answer has multiple dimensions.

The federal government’s strategic calculus valued domestic political consolidation over regional stability. The federal government’s political base — the Prosperity Party constituencies, the Oromo and Amhara political leaderships that had accepted federal-government leadership, the broader “pan-Ethiopianist” political constituency — had been increasingly mobilised around the “existential” sea-access narrative and around confrontation with Eritrea. Substantial accommodation with Eritrea, or with the Debretsion-TPLF, or with the Sudanese SAF, would have been substantively unpopular with these constituencies. The federal government’s June 2026 election prospects (Dispatch 28) depended on maintaining this political base. The strategic-choice pattern that had produced the accumulated conditions was, in significant part, the operational expression of the federal-government’s domestic-political calculus.

The federal government’s leadership had, by 2026, been operating from a substantially different assessment of Ethiopian regional strategic capacity than the operational record supported. Abiy Ahmed’s public communications through 2024, 2025, and into 2026 had progressively characterised Ethiopia as a regional great power with substantial military and economic capacity to enforce its strategic preferences. The operational evidence — the failed Somaliland MoU, the constrained Amhara counter-insurgency, the compromised Tigrayan Interim Administration, the emerging regional opposition coalition — indicated substantially more limited operational capacity than the rhetorical framing suggested. The gap between rhetorical framing and operational capacity had, through 2024 and into 2026, become the structural pattern within which federal-government strategic choices had been made. The pattern’s continuation into 2026 suggested that the federal government’s own assessment of its capacity had not been substantially adjusted by the accumulating operational evidence.

The federal government’s alternative strategic path — comprehensive regional-diplomatic accommodation combined with substantive domestic political reform — would have required political costs that the federal government’s leadership had not been willing to bear. Accommodation with Eritrea would have required formal renunciation of the Assab ambitions; accommodation with the Debretsion-TPLF would have required substantive Pretoria implementation; accommodation with the Sudanese SAF would have required withdrawal of RSF support; accommodation with the Egypt-Saudi axis would have required diplomatic concessions on the Nile dam and on broader regional questions. Each of these accommodations would have required political costs; the cumulative pattern would have required a substantial restructuring of the federal-government’s political-strategic posture. The federal government had, at multiple decision points, chosen not to bear these costs.

By late February 2026, the operational assessment across international analytical bodies converged on the characterisation that the Horn of Africa was operating at conditions of substantial forward war risk. The IISS, the International Crisis Group, the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, Chatham House, the Atlantic Council, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and the Wilson Center had all, by the end of February 2026, published assessments emphasising the accumulated risks and the operational probability of some form of regional-crisis expression within a defined near-term horizon.

The federal Ethiopian government’s response to these assessments, through the March–April 2026 period preceding the June 2026 federal election, was characterised by continued rhetorical escalation, continued military redeployments, and continued unwillingness to pursue substantive accommodations. The June 2026 election campaign, then in full operation, emphasised the external-threat framings; the federal government’s political communications characterised Ethiopian sovereignty as under attack by the Eritrean-Egyptian-Sudanese coalition and emphasised the need for federal-government-led resistance to that coalition; the election’s expected outcome (Prosperity Party consolidation, further reduction of political space for opposition) would provide the federal government with continued domestic political mandate for the strategic-choice pattern that had produced the accumulating conditions.

The powder keg, at the end of February 2026, had been comprehensively assembled. The ignition remained to be identified. The specific timing of the ignition — whether within days, weeks, months, or extended into the following year — could not be reliably predicted. The structural conditions of the accumulation could be reliably characterised. The Horn of Africa was, by early spring 2026, operating in the most dangerous strategic configuration of the post-2018 period. The federal Ethiopian government’s continued pattern of strategic choices was progressively contributing to the accumulation rather than to its de-escalation.

The next stage of the crisis was, by February 2026, no longer whether it would arrive. The next stage was when the specific ignition would occur, and what form the operational expression of the accumulated conditions would take. The federal government’s continuing strategic choices, on the operational record, were not oriented toward preventing that expression.

By early 2026, honest analytical observation had converged on the assessment that Ethiopia and its regional neighbours had substantively lost the capacity to manage their accumulating disputes through diplomatic mechanisms. The mechanisms had been available. The willingness to use them, on multiple sides but principally on the federal Ethiopian side, had not been present. The consequences of that unwillingness were, by February 2026, the substantive definition of the operational strategic environment.

The powder keg was assembled. The match remained to be struck. The federal government’s continuing choices were not being made to prevent the striking.

Whether the match would be struck by federal-government choice, by opposition-coalition initiative, by regional-state intervention, or by accident of circumstance was, in February 2026, undetermined. The striking itself had, by the same point, become substantively expected.

The next dispatch will document the operational events that, through the two months following February 2026, expressed the accumulated conditions in their first substantive form: the TPLF’s April 2026 announcement of the restoration of its pre-war regional council, and the May 5, 2026 institutional installation of Debretsion Gebremichael as Tigray Regional President in a substantive rejection of the Pretoria Agreement’s institutional framework. The May 5 development was not the full ignition; it was the operational opening of the phase of accumulating consequences whose fuller expression, in the months that follow, has not yet arrived at the point of this filing.

The powder keg. The match. The waiting. The February 2026 configuration.

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Sources for Article 26

1. Critical Threats Project (AEI), “Ethiopia Prepares For War: Africa File Special Edition,” February 2026 — https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/ethiopia-tigray-war-tplf-eritrea-sudan-red-sea-africa-file
2. International Crisis Group, “Ethiopia, Eritrea and Tigray: A Powder Keg in the Horn of Africa,” 18 February 2026 — https://www.crisisgroup.org/brf/africa/ethiopia-eritrea/b210-ethiopia-eritrea-and-tigray-powder-keg-horn-africa
3. Reuters, “Ethiopia builds secret camp to train Sudan RSF fighters, sources say,” 10 February 2026
4. Atlas Institute for International Affairs, “Renewed Tension Between Ethiopian Regime and Tigray Forces,” July 2025 — https://atlasinstitute.org/renewed-tension-between-ethiopian-regime-and-tigray-forces/
5. The Soufan Center, “Renewed Tensions in Tigray Risk Escalating into a Broader Conflict,” 20 March 2025 — https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-march-20/
6. The New Humanitarian, “Regional mega-war? How renewed conflict in Ethiopia could pull in Sudan,” 23 March 2026 — https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2026/03/23/regional-mega-war-renewed-conflict-ethiopia-sudan
7. Wikipedia, “Amhara offensive,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_offensive
8. Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs letter to UN Secretary-General, 2 October 2025
9. Ethiopian National Defence Force communications, February 2026
10. ACLED data on Ethiopia conflict events, 2023–2026
11. Africa Intelligence reporting on regional developments, 2025–2026

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End of expanded article for Dispatch 26. One article, approximately 2,850 words.