Sudan rejects Ethiopia allegations

Updated: September 27, 2026

Ethiopian National Defense Force soldiers during a training exercise; Sudan's army has rejected Ethiopian army chief Birhanu Jula's claim that Khartoum backs armed opposition groups in Ethiopia
Photo: OffTopic11 / Wikimedia Commons (public domain) — Ethiopian National Defense Force soldiers during a training exercise.

KHARTOUM, Sudan — The Sudan army rejects Ethiopia allegations that Khartoum is arming opposition groups fighting the Ethiopian government, calling the claim baseless and counter-accusing Addis Ababa of giving the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) training, supplies and territory for drone operations. The formal exchange, carried by Sudan's state news agency SUNA on Sunday, escalates a war of accusations that has been building for months between the two neighbours — and it links Sudan's civil war directly to Ethiopia's renewed Tigray crisis.

Why this matters

Two wars are starting to talk to each other, and that is dangerous. Sudan has been in civil war since April 2023, and Ethiopia is sliding back toward conflict in Tigray after its 2022 peace agreement frayed. When each side's army formally accuses the other's territory of harbouring its enemy's war machine, battlefield suspicions become state positions — and state positions demand responses. A diplomatic row over who is arming whom can become the justification for the next cross-border operation.

It also reframes both wars for outside mediators. The U.S.-backed Quad (the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and UN envoy Pekka Haavisto are trying to coax Sudan's warring camps toward talks, while Ethiopia's crisis draws its own regional attention. Mutual accusations of cross-border meddling give every mediator one more layer of mistrust to peel through — and give both governments a ready excuse if diplomacy fails.

What each side says

The row began with Ethiopia's army chief. Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, chief of staff of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, alleged — in remarks carried by the military's media platform and reported by The Sudan Times — that foreign actors were equipping and supporting a newly formed alliance of armed and political opposition groups, and he named Egypt and Sudan among them. He argued that the Tigray People's Liberation Front and Eritrea could not pose a significant threat to the federal government on their own, and that outside support had made the opposition's new alignment possible. The report provided no independently verified evidence for the allegations, and neither Cairo nor Khartoum had responded when it was published.

Sudan has now responded, sharply. In a statement issued by its spokesperson and carried by SUNA, the Sudanese Armed Forces said it had "followed the statements made by the Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, including the allegations that Sudan is supporting the Ethiopian opposition," and "categorically" rejected them as baseless. The army reaffirmed that Sudan "is committed to international law and the principles of good-neighborly relations and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other states" — but warned that it "will not allow any infringement upon its sovereignty or national security." It urged the Ethiopian side to exercise "accuracy and responsibility" and to use dialogue and official channels "in a manner that preserves the security and stability of both countries and the region."

Then came the counter-charge. The same statement asserted that "information and facts indicate the continued support and assistance provided to the Rapid Support (RSF) Militia (Janjaweed) from Ethiopian territory, including training, supplies, and the use of Ethiopian territory for military activities, including strategic and suicide drones." Both the original accusation and the rebuttal should be read as state claims, not verified findings: neither side has produced public evidence that would allow independent verification.

How we got here

This is not the first round. In May, Ethiopia's foreign ministry accused the Sudanese Armed Forces of arming anti-Ethiopian mercenaries and facilitating incursions along Ethiopia's western frontier — while in the same breath rejecting an accusation from Khartoum's foreign minister that Ethiopia and the UAE had conducted a drone strike on Khartoum's airport. In March, Sudan's military made its first public allegation that RSF drone attacks were being launched "from inside Ethiopian territory," and on September 3 the commissioner of Kurmuk accused the RSF of operating four training camps inside Ethiopian territory, allegedly with UAE backing — a claim Sudan Tribune said it could not independently verify, and which Ethiopia denied.

There is also reporting that sits uncomfortably for Addis Ababa. In April, the Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab said it had "high confidence" evidence — based on satellite imagery and open-source data — of Ethiopian military assistance to the RSF at an ENDF base in Asosa, Benishangul-Gumuz, including RSF operations against Sudan's Blue Nile state launched from inside Ethiopian territory. And the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan has reported Ethiopian nationals among foreign fighters serving with the RSF, with its findings on the transnational support network for the paramilitary group based on what it described as converging evidence. Ethiopia has previously rejected accusations that it facilitates arms transfers or training for the RSF, and the UAE has repeatedly denied providing military support to the group.

The Ethiopian side of the collision is moving fast on its own. Tigrayan forces seized Alula Aba Nega Airport in Mekelle, the Tigray regional capital, overnight — federal police were evacuated and Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to Mekelle, Axum and Shire. The airport seizure coincided with the announcement of a seven-group alliance — the "Alliance of Ethiopian People's Forces for Survival" — bringing together the TPLF, the Amhara Fano movement, the Oromo Liberation Army and others with the stated aim of removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party government and installing a transitional administration. It is this alliance that Birhanu Jula claims is being externally bankrolled.

On Sudan's side, the army enters the row from a position of recent battlefield momentum: on September 25 it recaptured Sodari, a transit hub connecting North Kordofan to Darfur, and it says its air defences shot down two RSF long-range FH-95 drones over North Kordofan. It is also fighting near the Ethiopian border — an offensive in Blue Nile's Geissan and Kurmuk districts against an RSF–SPLM-N alliance, where Sudanese authorities have previously accused Ethiopia of logistical support. When both armies are operating near the same frontier and each accuses the other of sheltering its enemy, the border itself becomes the story.

Who gains, who loses, and what the critics say

For Khartoum, the rejection serves several purposes at once. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan just publicly defied Washington over a U.S. visa conditioned on a three-month truce, telling a Khartoum crowd the army answers to no foreign pressure. A flat denial of Ethiopia's claim — paired with a counter-accusation — keeps the army in its preferred posture: the sovereign defender, beset by external meddlers, answerable only to Sudanese. It also deflects attention from the awkward questions raised by the Yale and UN findings about RSF operations on Ethiopian soil.

For Addis Ababa, the accusation is a framing device. If the seven-group opposition alliance can be presented as a foreign-backed proxy rather than a homegrown revolt, the federal government gains justification for a harder military response in Tigray and the Amhara and Oromia regions — and it internationalises the blame if fighting returns at scale. Ethiopia has made this kind of claim before, about Eritrea; Eritrea denied it. The pattern suggests accusation is part of the toolkit, not merely a reaction.

The RSF is the quiet beneficiary of any escalation of the feud. Every week the SAF spends trading statements with Ethiopia is a week its diplomatic energy is not focused on isolating the paramilitary group; a genuinely hostile Ethiopia–Sudan relationship could even loosen the informal pressure that currently constrains RSF logistics. The losers are the civilians caught between the two wars: communities in Blue Nile and South Kordofan near the border, and the displaced Tigrayans, for whom a regional proxy dimension makes humanitarian access and ceasefire diplomacy harder, not easier.

The critics' view: UN envoy Haavisto has warned that both Sudanese camps are still seeking battlefield gains to strengthen their positions before any negotiations, and he has called for an end to the flow of weapons and drones into Sudan. His warning of growing drone strikes on civilian targets — schools, hospitals, aid convoys — applies to the entire theatre both armies now describe. Neither side's communiqués address that civilian cost; both are written as if the only victims are states.

What the numbers actually tell us

The drone war is the metric that matters most. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said drone attacks killed more than 1,000 civilians across Sudan in the first five months of 2026 alone — a figure that predates the current escalation in North Kordofan and Blue Nile. Both the SAF and the RSF now claim near-weekly drone shootdowns; the SAF's interception of two FH-95 long-range drones over Jargeira and Bara shows how far behind the front lines the war now reaches. The SAF's counter-accusation about "strategic and suicide drones" operating from Ethiopian territory is, in this light, an accusation about the war's most lethal growth industry.

On the Ethiopian side, the number that matters is seven: seven armed and political groups, from the TPLF to the Fano movement to the Oromo Liberation Army, now formally aligned. Coalitions of this kind have historically been the vehicle for regime change in Ethiopia — Birhanu Jula himself compared the alignment to the arrangements that preceded the fall of the Derg in 1991. Whether or not Sudan or Egypt is actually involved, a seven-front opposition is a structural threat to Abiy Ahmed's government that exists independent of any foreign hand.

And the scale of the civilian catastrophe underneath it all keeps growing: UN personnel told Haavisto that roughly 99 percent of unexploded ordnance in Khartoum still needs to be cleared — a measure of how much of Sudan's capital remains uninhabitable rubble even after the army retook it. Accusations do not clear mines.

What happens next

Rhetorical escalation, managed. The most likely near-term path is more of the same: duelling statements, summoned ambassadors, and mutual demands through "official channels," without direct military confrontation. Both governments have more urgent wars at home than a war with each other.

Border flare-up. The risk case is Blue Nile. The SAF is pushing toward Kurmuk, near the Ethiopian frontier, against an RSF–SPLM-N alliance that Khartoum already claims enjoys Ethiopian logistical support. A stray strike, a downed drone traced across the border, or a ground clash near the frontier could convert the war of words into an incident neither capital can walk back.

Mediator squeeze. The Quad and Haavisto's confidence-building track — prisoner exchanges, civilian detainee releases — assume the warring camps can be separated from their external backers. If Sudan and Ethiopia are now each other's accused backers, the mediation geometry gets another dimension: any Sudan settlement has to account for Ethiopia, and any Ethiopia de-escalation has to account for Sudan. The watch item is whether the UN or the Quad publicly addresses the cross-border allegations, or lets them fester as background noise.

The through-line is that both wars are becoming regional wars by accusation, even before they become regional wars by invasion. Verifying who is actually arming whom — through the UN mission's investigations, satellite analysis like Yale's, and on-the-ground reporting — is the only way to keep the accusations from becoming the casus belli for the next round.

Sources

Reporting basis: Published September 27, 2026. The SAF statement is reported via Sudan's state news agency SUNA as carried by Fana News; Birhanu Jula's allegation is reported via The Sudan Times and Shabelle Media. Both sides' claims about cross-border support are assertions, not independently verified findings; Yale HRL and UN mission findings are cited with attribution. Analysis is Signal Post News's.

War Desk analysis · Published September 27, 2026Back to the lead story