Prominent Democratic members of the US Senate pressured Secretary of State Marco Rubio to intervene to stop the escalation in Ethiopia, warning that the peace agreement that ended the Tigray war in 2022 was beginning to disintegrate, amid fears of the return of the civil war and its expansion to the countries of the Horn of Africa.
On Monday, the Semafor website revealed that a group of senators led by Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, is pressuring Rubio to act with renewed fighting in the Tigray region. The group includes all Democrats who are members of the Subcommittee on African Affairs.
Lawmakers warned that the “Pretoria Agreement,” which was brokered by the African Union with American support and ended the 2020-2022 war, was collapsing. Senators criticized both sides of the conflict. They condemned a drone strike that targeted a truck carrying American-funded food aid for displaced people in northwestern Tigray, with suspicions about the involvement of the Ethiopian army in it. In return, they accused Tigray forces of undermining the transitional government in the region, failing to disarm, and forcibly recruiting civilians. They also criticized the Trump administration for allowing the broader sanctions program linked to the Ethiopian crisis to expire days before renewed fighting.
The confrontations escalated sharply over the past week, after Tigray forces launched a massive attack that ended the ceasefire agreement that lasted for nearly four years, and imposed their control on sites and airports, and the fighting extended to the Afar and Amhara regions. The Tigray People's Liberation Front also joined a coalition of seven armed groups targeting the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
A report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) described the conflict situation in Ethiopia as deteriorating. The report said that the return of the confrontation between the federal government and the Tigray forces, and the latter’s alliance with other armed groups, greatly threatens the peace arrangements established by the “Pretoria Agreement,” and warned of the dangers of dragging the Horn of Africa into a broader conflict.
The report said that the seriousness of the developments carries the possibility of interfering with the escalating tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea, explaining that relations between the two countries have witnessed a deterioration against the backdrop of Abiy Ahmed’s quest to obtain access to the Red Sea, while Addis Ababa and Asmara exchange accusations of supporting armed groups opposed to the other party.
The escalation puts the Trump administration to a test regarding its policy towards Ethiopia. In June, Washington imposed sanctions on officials in the Tigray People's Liberation Front, accusing them of undermining peace, but this month it allowed the expiration of the executive order issued in 2021 that formed the basis of the broader sanctions program related to the Ethiopian crisis. This came in parallel with American efforts to improve the relationship with Eritrea, which sparked criticism from Democrats who believe that Washington has reduced one of the tools of pressure on the peripheries of the region at a moment when the post-war arrangements began to crumble.
American concerns extend beyond the borders of Ethiopia, as the previous war left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced, and the new crisis also comes in a region already suffering from the Sudan war, instability in Somalia and Yemen, and the proximity of the Red Sea, which gained greater strategic importance for the United States during the war with Iran and anxiety about securing international navigation.
The Council on Foreign Relations report places the Egyptian-Ethiopian dispute over the “Renaissance Dam” within a network of regional crises that could be affected by further destabilization of Ethiopian stability.
An armed group loyal to the Ethiopian government said today (Monday) that the Ethiopian army and allied militants were able to control the strategic town of Alamata, south of the capital of Tigray, in a shift in the balance of power after an attack launched by the opposition from the region last week, according to Reuters news agency.
A video clip posted by the pro-government “Tigray Peace Force” on its Facebook page showed soldiers walking in the streets and waving Ethiopian flags. Reuters has not yet been able to verify the authenticity of the clip.
Two diplomatic sources reported that the town had been taken control, while a third source said that pro-government forces had entered the town, but it was not yet clear whether they had completely controlled it.
Neither spokesmen for the Ethiopian army nor the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which is leading the armed resistance against the federal government, have yet responded to requests for comment.
Controlling Alamata would constitute a major advance for federal forces as they advance towards Mekele, the capital of the region, which is about 120 kilometers to the north. Alamata is an important center for supplying food and fuel to troops near Tigray's southern border with the neighboring Amhara region.
Accusations of neighboring countries of supporting the opposition
The ongoing fighting since last Wednesday in Tigray and the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions has led to the collapse of the Pretoria peace agreement concluded four years ago and ended fighting that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
A civil war broke out that lasted from 2020 to 2022 due to the collapse of relations between the Tigray People's Liberation Front, an armed movement that turned into a political party that dominated the Ethiopian political scene for about three decades, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, whose assumption of office in 2018 ended the Front's dominance.
Over the past few months, the Tigray People's Liberation Front and the federal government have exchanged accusations of violating the November 2022 agreement. Three days before launching its attack, the Front announced the formation of a new alliance with six other armed groups across Ethiopia aimed at overthrowing Abiy's government.
The outbreak of this conflict again exacerbates the unrest in the Horn of Africa region, which is already suffering from the brunt of the civil war in Sudan, tensions related to crossing the Red Sea, and the repercussions of conflicts in the Middle East.
In statements broadcast by government media yesterday (Sunday), Berhanu Jula, the commander of the Ethiopian army, repeated previous accusations that Eritrea, a neighbor and historical rival of Ethiopia, supports the opposition forces, along with the Sudanese Armed Forces and Egypt.
Eritrea and the Sudanese army denied these accusations. Egypt has not yet responded to a request for comment.
A prominent opposition party in Nigeria called for revealing the whereabouts of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is 74 years old, nearly a month after he was out of sight and outside the country, amid rumors about his health condition.
The African Democratic Congress asked the Nigerian presidency to break its silence and disclose the whereabouts of the president, six days after the end of the date that the presidency had set for his return from a three-week vacation in Europe.
The opposition party’s director of media and publishing, Kola Ologbondiyan, said in a statement on Sunday that “the presidency owes Nigerians a clear and transparent clarification,” adding that the president’s continued absence without information about his whereabouts or the reasons for extending his stay abroad “raised questions and concern among public opinion.”
The statement stressed that “the office of the president is a public secretariat,” and that Nigerians have the right to know the whereabouts of their president, and most importantly, “who exercises the powers of the president” during his absence, especially in light of what the party said were “serious economic pressures, living hardship, and ongoing security challenges.”
Absence of a month
Tinubu left Nigeria on August 30, heading to London, on what the presidency described as a three-week “working vacation” as part of his annual vacation, before moving to Paris about a week later, where he met with French President Emmanuel Macron and businessman Vincent Bolloré.
Tinubu was supposed to return on September 20, but the presidency announced that the leave would be extended by “a few days” without specifying the exact number, with the return occurring “during the weekend.” By last Sunday, Tinubu had not yet returned, in a second extension that put the date of his expected return on Tuesday, September 29, according to subsequent statements by the Presidential Adviser on Media and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.
The presidency repeatedly confirmed that the president remained in contact with officials at home and continued to direct governance affairs remotely during his absence, denying that his presence abroad had affected the course of government work.
Constitutional controversy
The president's absence caused a constitutional controversy, as opposition politician Bolaji Abdullahi asked whether Tinubu had transmitted an official written announcement to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives regarding the transfer of his constitutional powers, after his absence exceeded the maximum deadline of 21 days specified under Article 145 of the Nigerian Constitution? Bolaji believed that the mere fact that the Vice President or the Secretary of the Federal Government represents him in some official events “does not give them the constitutional authority” to exercise the powers of the presidency.
The controversy was heightened by the fact that Vice President Kashim Shettima had also left the capital, Abuja, on September 20, heading to New York to represent Tinubu at the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly. Which made the opposition describe the simultaneous absence of the president and his deputy as a “very dangerous precedent.”
The African Democratic Congress also saw Tinubu remaining in Paris at a time when Macron himself was in New York to attend the General Assembly, as an “irony that is not without national embarrassment,” according to a previous party statement.
Legal experts entered the controversy; Constitutional lawyer Enebehi Effiong believed that “the constitution is completely clear,” and that the president cannot “run the country via the WhatsApp and Zoom applications from Europe” on open leave without an official authorization for his deputy, while a group of parliamentary representatives under the name “Save Democracy Group” called for the suspension of Parliament’s annual recess and the resumption of its sessions to decide the extent of the presidency’s commitment to the constitutional deadline, to which Senate President Godswill Akpabio responded by affirming that “there is no vacancy” in the presidential position, and that the absence Tinubu does not mean transfer of power.
Doubts about the president's health
This is not the first time that Tinubu has been absent from his country for extended periods since he assumed power in May 2023. According to a tracking prepared by the Nigerian news platform ICIR, the president had previously spent more than 50 separate days in France alone during his rule, which included a private trip that lasted 14 days in January 2024, and a two-week working visit to Britain in October of the same year that extended to France as well, in addition to To another working visit in April 2025, the duration of which ranged between 14 and 19 days.
Some of these trips were previously linked to speculation about the president's health condition, speculation that the presidency has consistently denied. Last March, Nigerian press reports raised concerns about Tinubu’s health, after his absence from high-ranking official events and the readiness of his medical team, according to those reports, to transfer him abroad to receive treatment, which the presidency described at the time as mere “rumours.”
His health was also a source of concern before the 2023 elections, when it was reported that he spent more than four months moving between hospitals in France, the United States, and Britain to undergo surgeries between 2020 and 2022, including knee surgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the US state of Maryland.
This latest wave of controversy surrounding the president's absence comes in light of the escalation of political activity in preparation for the general elections scheduled for 2027, which gives the file of his absence an additional political dimension that goes beyond the purely constitutional debate to the arena of early electoral competition between the opposition and the ruling party.
