Issue No. 289

On 26 April 1937, the Spanish town of Guernica was reduced to rubble by German Luftwaffe bombers. Conducted in support of Franco's nationalist troops, the bombing marked a turning point in modern warfare, where civilians were considered no longer collateral damage — they were targets. A few weeks later, Pablo Picasso transformed the event into an enduring visual outcry: Guernica, a monumental black-and-white painting that captured the agony of civilians crushed beneath impersonal, mechanised violence. Nearly a century later, under a different sky — that of northern Ethiopia — the weapons have changed. Drones now replace planes, and the devastation they inflict is quieter, remote-controlled, but no less lethal. Today, the war is waged by algorithms, and yet the bodies are still real. 

From 2020 to 2022, Ethiopia descended into war. The federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military campaign against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). The war began with well-known, even though condemnable, operations, including a major ground offensive coupled with a communications blackout and humanitarian blockade. But by 2021, the conflict had evolved, and facing battlefield reversals, the federal government responded with a newer form of warfare-- armed drones. In late 2021 and throughout 2022, dozens of drones operated in Ethiopian skies, with Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, Wing Loong II drones from China, often flown by Emirati contractors, Iranian Mohajer-6s, and Israeli surveillance drones such as the Aerostar and WanderB were all observed. Ethiopia became a living laboratory for foreign powers, who were eager to test their drones in live combat — with low international risk and even lower accountability.

The human toll was immediate and devastating. Drone strikes hit markets, refugee camps, religious ceremonies, and even schools. The most notorious cases — the Dedebit IDP camp, the Togoga market, a flour mill in Mai Tsebri, and a kindergarten in Mekelle — were well-documented by the United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. Yet no credible international investigation followed. No sanctions were imposed. The world, it seems, had decided to look away. Since then, what began as a tactical choice has become a strategic doctrine. And in August 2023, when the Ethiopian government turned its military attention to Amhara militias known as 'Fano,' drones once again took centre stage. According to local monitors, over 96% of recorded airstrikes during the Amhara ongoing campaign have been carried out by drones. Hundreds have since been killed in the strikes. The Tigray precedent had become national policy.

But this shift wasn't only technological. It was geopolitical. The Tigray war exposed — and accelerated — Ethiopia's entanglement in a web of foreign military partnerships. In particular, the United Arab Emirates initially operated Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones from the Eritrean port of Assab-- now coveted by Addis as it seeks to 'restore' Ethiopian access to the sea. Since then, the UAE has moved toward domestic production. Emirati defence firms, supported by Chinese technology transfers, began manufacturing their own drones — notably the Yabhon United 40, a Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) system with striking similarities to the Wing Loong series. 

What was tested in Tigray helped lay the foundations for a regional drone industry. Today, a range of Gulf-supplied sophisticated drones are playing a central role in the raging conflict in neighbouring Sudan, having intimately shaped the trajectory of the war to date. And this industrial acceleration has been accompanied by a diplomatic realignment. In September 2020, the UAE signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, marking the normalisation of ties — and the discreet deepening of military cooperation. Israeli drone and surveillance systems, developed over decades of asymmetric warfare, became part of a broader regional security ecosystem stretching from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi and, increasingly, to Addis Ababa.

Abiy Ahmed, once a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and reformist hope, is now in a corner. Years of war have left Ethiopia heavily indebted, socially fractured, and geopolitically compromised. In May 2025, Abiy signed another short-lived accord with Iran on intelligence and drone cooperation. But just weeks later, US AFRICOM Commander Gen. Michael Langley landed in Addis Ababa to "clarify" US red lines. Its scale and regional importance have given it a degree of latitude, but it is more than apparent that Ethiopia's attempted geostrategic balancing act cannot be sustained indefinitely. The federal government's simultaneous outreach to China-- particularly for economic investment-- has further complicated its position.

But the drones are just one-- albeit significant-- aspect of a broader militarised architecture being built across the Horn of Africa, as well as the Red Sea. Among others, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi consider the littoral states on both sides of the Red Sea and beyond as extensions of their political-security spheres of interest and are competing in a highly destabilising zero-sum game. It has been framed as a quasi-neo-colonial scramble for natural resources that has lent to the securitisation of Horn countries, with unstable African regimes increasingly beholden to their Gulf patrons. With collapsing control of their peripheries, drones offer such regimes a far cheaper alternative to a conventional army or air force to help subdue insurgencies or rival political movements.

After shuttering their Assab base in 2021, the Emiratis sought new access points in the region. On 1 January 2024, Ethiopia signed a controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland, agreeing to lease a naval area to establish a military base in exchange for sovereign recognition of the latter. A close ally of Hargeisa, some suggested that the UAE could expect to benefit from the MoU, having already established a major commercial port in Berbera through DP World. Here, too, did the Gulf's own internal schisms reflect in the regional fallout from the accord, with Doha and Ankara both offering full-throated support for Somalia's federal government, which angrily protested the Ethiopia-Somaliland deal as a breach of its sovereignty. And though discussion of the implementation of the MoU has since cooled, the UAE and Israel have both maintained an interest in Somaliland in relation to the Iranian-backed Yemen-based Houthi movement that has repeatedly targeted vessels transiting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

While attempting to restore domestic control through drones, Ethiopia's federal government may have eventually subdued the Tigrayan forces in 2022, but insurgencies are still blazing in both Amhara and Oromia despite their deployment. Indeed, many disenchanted young men have joined the Fano insurgency and the Oromo Liberation Army because of the damage wrought by the drones. And such has been the degradation of Addis's control in the country that it continues to cede national sovereignty to whoever comes knocking. Once a regional hegemon that helped project the African Union norms and peacekeeping, Ethiopia has been sucked into the broader intra-Gulf rifts playing out on a grand scale across the Horn. 

The implications are stark. A new model of warfare is emerging — remote, low-cost, high-impact, and largely immune to accountability. A war where civilian deaths are algorithmic 'collateral,' and international law is optional. A war without soldiers, without public debate, and without end. Picasso once painted Guernica to remind the world of what total war looks like when civilians are caught beneath its machinery. Today, there is no equivalent canvas to depict Dedebit or Togoga. But the logic remains the same, and although technology may have evolved, the politics of erasure persists.

Ethiopia has not just been a battlefield. It has become a template. Unless the international community draws red lines — and enforces them — drone warfare will continue to expand into fragile states governed from screens hundreds of kilometres away. And the next Guernica may not come with a painting to remind us.

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Dr. Charlotte Touati is an affiliate researcher with the IRSB, Christian apocryphal literature and early Christianity, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.