Gebru, 27, was held with other young men at a local administration office in Tigray, where the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) administration is conscripting soldiers, until his parents paid 20,000 birr, about US$123, for his release. Families in Oromia pay ransoms to kidnappers, families of migrants pay traffickers holding their children in Libya, and businesses in Amhara pay Fano militias at road checkpoints. The Ethiopian government buys drones from Turkey, China, Iran and Russia with a budget backed by IMF lending and Emirati credit. TPLF commanders control gold mines whose output is smuggled to Dubai.

Seven armed groups, the TPLF among them, announced an alliance on 21 September to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government. Fighting spread from Tigray into the Afar and Amhara regions from 22 September. The 2020 to 2022 war between the same government and the TPLF killed about 600,000 people, according to African Union estimates.

The federal government's money

Ethiopia's parliament approved a budget of 1.93 trillion birr for 2025/26, the largest in the country's history. The International Monetary Fund approved a four-year Extended Credit Facility of SDR 2.556 billion, about US$3.4 billion, on 29 July 2024 and released about US$1 billion immediately. The fund completed its fifth review on 1 July 2026 and released a further US$464 million. The European Union pledged €650 million for 2024 to 2027, conditional on an IMF agreement and political reforms.

Official gold exports rose from US$408.6 million in 2023/24 to about US$3.46 billion in 2024/25, nearly 39 tonnes, and to US$5.65 billion in 2025/26. "Gold exports generated 5.65 billion US dollars during the 2025/26 fiscal year, lifting total mining export earnings above 5.7 billion US dollars," Habtamu Tegegne, the mines minister, said on 6 August. The National Bank of Ethiopia buys gold from miners at a 15 per cent premium over world prices, a policy the IMF says has caused the bank significant losses. The bank has agreed with the fund to prepare a plan to leave the gold market by the end of December 2026. Most of the gold it exports goes to Switzerland for refining.

Gulf money

Mohammed bin Zayed, then crown prince of Abu Dhabi and now president of the United Arab Emirates, pledged US$3 billion in aid and investment to Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on 15 June 2018, including a US$1 billion deposit at the National Bank of Ethiopia. The two countries' central banks signed a currency swap on 16 July 2024 worth up to 3 billion dirhams, or 46 billion birr. Mamo Mihretu, governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, called it "an important funding opportunity for Ethiopia." Mohammed bin Zayed and Abiy spoke by telephone on 13 March 2026 about "cooperation and regional developments", the UAE president's office said.

Ethiopia received Calidus MCAV-20 armoured vehicles, made in the UAE, in July 2024, and a further batch was moved from Djibouti in March 2026. Open-source flight trackers recorded 90 suspicious UAE cargo flights to Ethiopia by November 2021, at the height of the last war, and 33 between 27 October and 12 November 2023, among them UAE Air Force C-17 transports landing at Harar Meda, the Ethiopian Air Force's main base.

An Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft, registration UR-ZYD, made three round trips between Bahrain's Sheikh Isa air base and Israel's Ovda air base from 28 to 31 December 2025, then flew between Abu Dhabi and Harar Meda on 3, 12, 15 and 17 January 2026, according to flight-tracking data. The aircraft is operated by Maximus Air, part of the Abu Dhabi Aviation group. ADQ Aviation, part of ADQ, the Abu Dhabi state holding company chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and brother of the president, offered in 2022 to take 59.44 per cent of Abu Dhabi Aviation, and the merger was completed in 2024. A UN panel had linked the aircraft in 2021 to weapons deliveries in Libya. What it carried to Ethiopia is not known. "Evidence that an An-124 has been making repeated sorties between Abu Dhabi and this airfield should be of global concern," said Nathaniel Raymond of Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab. The UAE foreign ministry, Ethiopia's foreign ministry and Maximus Air did not respond to requests for comment.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received Eritrea's president, Isaias Afwerki, in Riyadh on 10 December 2025; no financing was announced. Egypt has pressed Saudi Arabia to deepen security ties with Eritrea, according to two Arab officials, and the Saudi government has been reluctant to commit. "The Eritreans need new equipment. They are very worried about the Ethiopian drones," said Martin Plaut, a Horn of Africa researcher. No Saudi or Qatari loan to Ethiopia or Eritrea since 2024 has been made public.

Drone suppliers

Turkey signed a defence agreement with Ethiopia in August 2021 built around deliveries of Bayraktar TB2 drones, made by Baykar and priced at about US$5 million each, according to research by Zecharias Zelalem for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Turkish exports to Ethiopia reached US$60 million by the end of 2021, from almost nothing the year before. Ethiopia later bought Baykar's larger Akinci drone, which its air force displayed in January 2024. Baykar is owned by the Bayraktar family; its chief technology officer, Selçuk Bayraktar, married Sümeyye Erdoğan, daughter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in May 2016. Abiy's government gave Baykar's chief executive, Haluk Bayraktar, a national honour in December 2023.

Chinese Wing Loong drones, priced at US$1 million to US$2 million each, appeared at Ethiopian airfields from early 2021, delivered largely through Emirati distributors, Zelalem found. Open-source trackers recorded six suspicious cargo flights from Iran to Ethiopia in September and October 2021, and the US State Department accused Iran of breaching UN Security Council Resolution 2231 by supplying Mohajer drones.

Russia refurbished and supplied Su-30K fighter jets, the first two displayed in January 2024, and delivered at least six Yak-130 jet trainers, shown at the air force's 90th anniversary on 23 January 2026. Ethiopia also displayed an Orion-E drone made by Russia's Kronstadt Group. "Several contracts with foreign customers for the Orion-E MALE UAV have been signed and are being executed," said Alexander Mikheev, director general of the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport.

Ethiopia opened a drone factory, SkyWin Aeronautics Industries, in Addis Ababa in March 2025, and a second maker, Aeroabay, began producing small armed drones costing US$5,000 to US$10,000 each in late 2025, according to the drone researcher Wim Zwijnenburg. Pieter Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said: "My assessment would be that a substantial part of all that is imported."

Federal forces carried out 102 drone strikes in Amhara from April 2023 and at least 14 in Tigray in 2026 before the latest fighting. Government drone strikes killed more than 300 civilians in Tigray in 2021, 108 in two weeks of January 2022 according to the UN, at least 150 in Oromia in September and October 2022 and 449 in Amhara from August 2023, according to figures Zelalem compiled. "Drones were made for war! We purchased them for battle, not to parade them in the media," Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, the army chief of staff, said in late 2023.

The Trump administration

The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls ended its policy of denying arms export licences for Ethiopia on 11 May 2026, a restriction in place since November 2021; licences are now reviewed case by case. On 18 September the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that the national emergency declared under Executive Order 14046 in September 2021 over the Ethiopian war had expired, and removed six designations: Eritrea's ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice, the Eritrean Defence Forces, the party-owned Red Sea Trading Corporation, registered in Asmara and Dubai, the Hidri Trust and two Eritrean officials, Hagos Ghebrehiwet W Kidan and Abraha Kassa Nemariam. The office gave no reason beyond the expiry.

Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump's senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, said in August: "Claims that we are negotiating or considering any secret deal involving Eritrea against another regional partner are categorically false." Boulos met Eritrea's foreign minister in Cairo in September, and Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, described the talks as "initial discussions to lay the groundwork for broader talks at appropriate levels on comprehensive bilateral cooperation, with a focus on investment and trade."

Trump wrote to Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on 16 January 2026 about Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam on the Nile: "The United States affirms that no state in this region should unilaterally control the precious resources of the Nile, and disadvantage its neighbors in the process." Egypt regards the dam as a threat to its water supply and backs Eritrea and the Sudanese army.

Representatives of Sheikh Tahnoon signed an agreement to buy 49 per cent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's cryptocurrency company, for US$500 million four days before Trump's inauguration in January 2025, with US$187 million paid up front, the Wall Street Journal reported on 1 February 2026. MGX, an Abu Dhabi investment fund Tahnoon chairs, settled a US$2 billion investment in the exchange Binance in May 2025 using USD1, World Liberty's stablecoin. On 27 August 2026 the Journal reported that Tahnoon and co-investors hold 49 per cent of WLTC Holdings, World Liberty's banking venture, through a company called StringZ Holding. "President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public," said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson. No public document links Tahnoon personally to the Ethiopian flights or to US policy on Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Israel

Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia, on 26 December 2025. "I am signing now as we speak Israel's official recognition of the Somaliland," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Ethiopia signed a memorandum with Somaliland on 1 January 2024 seeking sea access and a naval base there. Abiy said after an exchange with Netanyahu in February 2026 that they had discussed "ways to improve collaboration in areas of mutual interest."

Ethiopia installed Spyder air defence missiles made by the Israeli company Rafael at the Grand Renaissance Dam, a defence trade publication reported in May 2020. Ethiopian intelligence used spyware from Cyberbit, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, against Oromo activists in about 20 countries, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab found in 2017.

Eritrea's foreign minister, Osman Saleh, said in September that his government had turned Israel away: "We decided we didn't want their embassy here." He said "the UAE and Israel have already converged on Somaliland."

Russia

Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company, signed an action plan with Ethiopian Electric Power in September 2025 and a non-disclosure agreement in Moscow on 19 December 2025. "The parties discussed a comprehensive range of issues related to the construction of a large-scale nuclear power plant in Ethiopia featuring Russian design," Rosatom said. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said of Eritrea in January 2024: "The airport of Massawa looks interesting from the point of view of its transit possibilities. Our partners are interested in the study, and we are ready to help them." The Russian government had made no public statement on the fighting by 25 September. Moscow hosts the third Russia-Africa summit on 28 and 29 October.

Tigrayan gold

About 36,600 kilograms of gold worth an estimated US$2.5 billion may have been smuggled out of Tigray in the first 10 months of the 2024/25 fiscal year, against 12,210 kilograms sold legally to the central bank, the Ethiopian reporters Kaleab Girma and Ashenafi Endale calculated in an investigation funded by Transparency International and published in July 2025. Getachew Reda, then head of Tigray's interim administration, said "the amount of gold smuggled is three to four times what the region legally sells." Tigray's annual regional budget is about US$100 million.

Former fighters told Kaleab and Ashenafi that senior Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) commanders took the richest mining areas, among them Rahwa, Hitsats, Meli and Mato Bula. "Top TDF generals have seized control of the most gold-rich areas. They employ armed ex-combatants to protect holdings," said Kelali, a former combatant who mines by hand. "The top gold-bearing land is being operated by the generals. Foot soldiers received the least promising areas to mine," said Tedros Kahsay, another former fighter. Fisaha Miresa of the Tigray mining bureau said: "The extent of illegal mining has surpassed the regional government's capacity to manage or contain it."

The International Crisis Group wrote that "Tigray's gold sector is largely controlled by key TPLF leaders and their business associates" and that gold exported through Eritrea has strengthened ties between the TPLF and the Eritrean government since the war ended. Eritrean officers also carry gold into Tigray to avoid surrendering it to their own government, according to reporting compiled by Martin Plaut. The Ethiopian army accused Brigadier General Migbey Haile in March 2025 of smuggling gold through Eritrea.

Chatham House researchers Abel Abate Demissie and Ahmed Soliman traced smuggled Ethiopian gold through Sudan, Eritrea, Somaliland, Kenya and Uganda to the UAE. They estimated illicit exports at about six tonnes a year in September 2024, about a sixth of the later calculation for Tigray alone; neither figure can be independently checked. Smuggled gold enters the Dubai market recorded as scrap metal, Birr Metrics reported. About 2,569 tonnes of undeclared African gold worth US$115 billion entered the UAE between 2012 and 2022, the Swiss development organisation SwissAid found, and nearly all the gold Switzerland imports from the UAE goes to the Valcambi refinery. UAE rules allow travellers to carry gold worth up to 60,000 dirhams, about US$16,335, without declaring it. No refinery or trader has been publicly identified as a buyer of Tigrayan, Amhara or Benishangul conflict gold.

Human Rights Watch documented Tigrayan authorities rounding up men for military service at gold-mining sites, including dozens detained at one mine in Kola Tembien on 25 May 2026. "All of us opposed the decision … they had their guns, and began pushing everyone onto trucks," a miner told the group.

The federal government froze its budget transfers to Tigray in late 2025 and restored them in December, according to the Crisis Group. Bank accounts in Tigray have been blocked since the afternoon of 25 September, and mobile networks there have been down since 24 and 25 September, EEPA reported.

Billionaires

Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, the Ethiopian-Saudi businessman, owns MIDROC, which operated the Lega Dembi gold mine in Oromia until the government suspended its licence after protests in May 2018. Abiy raised Al Amoudi's detention in Saudi Arabia with Mohammed bin Salman in 2018, and he was released in January 2019. The government reopened Lega Dembi in 2021 without public announcement and has kept its agreement with MIDROC confidential, Human Rights Watch said in January 2026. MIDROC is spending about 26 billion birr, some US$200 million, on a gold plant in the Metekel zone of Benishangul-Gumuz, a region where the Gumuz Peoples' Democratic Movement and the Benishangul Peoples' Liberation Movement, both members of the new alliance, operate.

Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest person, signed an agreement on 28 August 2025 to build a US$2.5 billion urea fertiliser plant at Gode in Ethiopia's Somali region, 60 per cent owned by his group and 40 per cent by the state fund Ethiopian Investment Holdings. The Ogaden National Liberation Front, another alliance member, draws its support from the Somali region. Twenty employees of Dangote Cement were kidnapped in Oromia on 30 December 2022 and released by 30 January 2023 after families paid 50,000 to 100,000 birr each.

Neither Al Amoudi nor Dangote has been linked in any public record to financing an armed group.

Eritrea and Sudan

Billene Seyoum, Abiy's spokesperson, said on 23 September that members of the new alliance had been collaborating "for a while with the financial backing" of Eritrea. Getachew, now an adviser to Abiy, accused Eritrea and Egypt of backing the TPLF, Fano and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, the army chief of staff, said on 28 September that the alliance forces were "backed, supported and supplied by Sudan, Egypt and other external powers", with Eritrea acting as an intermediary; Sudan's military called the accusation "baseless" and Egypt also rejected it. Awol Arba, chief administrator of the Afar region, said on 29 September that Eritrean troops had seized a large area of the region, and the regional government said they held more than two-thirds of the area affected by fighting; the claim has not been independently confirmed. Eritrea has repeatedly denied supporting armed groups in Ethiopia. "Let alone Eritrea, the TPLF and Sudan, even if others were added, we do not have an iota of fear," Abiy said. Eritrea's government relies on taxes on farmers, mining revenue and a levy on Eritreans abroad. "Supporting Eritrea makes sense from Egypt's regional security perspective, but it has financial constraints," said Michael Woldemariam of the University of Maryland.

Tens of thousands of Tigrayan fighters known as Army 70, formed from soldiers who crossed into Sudan during the last war, fight for the Sudanese Armed Forces in eastern Sudan, according to Mahder Nesibu of the research group Horn Review. The TPLF provides "political and material support" to the Sudanese army, and Eritrean troops fought alongside Army 70 when the army retook the town of al-Kurmuk on 8 July 2026, Mahder wrote. A drone strike on 10 July killed several Army 70 commanders there. The UAE backs the Sudanese army's enemy, the Rapid Support Forces.

Amhara and Oromia

Ethio360, a diaspora media outlet, raised more than US$1 million for Fano militias in a single live YouTube broadcast, and diaspora organisations have raised millions more online, the Rift Valley Institute reported in February 2024. Fano units also collect informal taxes at road checkpoints, often by coercion, with businesses paying the most. The institute found only unconfirmed reports of Eritrean funding, weapons or training for Fano. ACLED, the conflict monitor, reported that Eritrean forces fought alongside Fano against federal troops in September 2025.

Kidnapping for ransom has spread through conflict areas of Oromia. The government blames the OLA; Odaa Tarbii, the group's spokesperson, has denied involvement. Kidnappers seized the businessman Tola Tesfaye and the truck driver Abebe Merga near Shambu in May 2023 and released them after their families paid 1.3 million birr. Governor Bekele Kacha of Iluu district was abducted in June 2023 with a demand of 10 million birr and found dead two days later. Chinese workers from the East Cement factory in North Shoa were abducted on 19 October 2023.

Ports and the Epstein files

DP World, the Dubai port operator, holds a 30-year concession signed in 2016 for Berbera in Somaliland. Ethiopia took a 19 per cent stake in the port in March 2018 and lost it in 2022 for failing to meet the conditions, Somaliland officials said. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, DP World's chairman, appears in the Epstein files released by the US Justice Department in years of friendly emails with Jeffrey Epstein, including messages referencing pornography, massages and escorts. "The emails do not appear to implicate Sulayem in Epstein's alleged crimes," NBC News reported. DP World replaced him on 13 February 2026 with Essa Kazim as chairman. The reported files tie bin Sulayem to Kenya and Senegal and do not mention Ethiopia, Eritrea or Somaliland.

Osman Saleh, Eritrea's foreign minister, said in September: "We didn't want DP World." No released Epstein document reported to date names Abiy, Isaias, Tahnoon, the TPLF, Fano or the OLA.

Mining companies

East Africa Metals, a Canadian company, holds licences through its subsidiary Tigray Resources Incorporated for the Da Tambuk and Mato Bula gold sites. "Our company holds mining licenses for Da Tambuk and Mato Bula sites. However, we have been unable to access them," Teketsel Tsige, the subsidiary's general manager, said in 2025. The company raised funds in a private placement in January 2025. Mato Bula is one of the sites former fighters say TDF commanders control. The Tigray administration asked for the revocation of 27 of about 90 mining licences issued in the region before the war.

Smuggling people

About 168,400 people left Ethiopia by the eastern route across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula between January and September 2025, and 31 per cent of them came from Tigray. Youth unemployment in Tigray is 81 per cent. Jonas Kidanu, a Tigrayan migrant, was imprisoned in Libya by traffickers who demanded 1.5 million birr, about US$9,600, from his family, which could send 150,000. Merhawit Zerya was held in a Libyan detention centre for more than a year. "They used to make us listen to her crying by beating her," she said.

Ethiopian police arrested Yitbarek Dawit and nine accomplices, accused of operating a smuggling ring since 2018 that moved more than 3,000 young people from Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia through Libyan detention centres, where they were tortured to extract ransoms from their families. Investigators linked the network to more than 100 deaths and at least 50 sexual assaults, and identified more than 70 further suspects.