Amid fears of fresh bloodshed, the country is hoping its offer of education and employment can provide a model for other nations to follow
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Mark Townsend in Asosa, EthiopiaTue 21 Jul 2026 05.00 BSTShare
It didn’t matter that he was so frail he could barely walk. Rahmatalla Abdeen knew if they found him he would be shot. For two days, the 65-year-old had clung to the back of a moped as it navigated an area teeming with militia.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had seized this corner of Sudan after crossing the border from Ethiopia. Abdeen was lucky: on 17 May, he became the last known refugee to cross into Ethiopia from Sudan.
There, he hoped to find his wife and three daughters, 883 days after being separated from them when the RSF stormed the city of Wad Madani.
Abdeen entered Ethiopia because it was supposed to be safe. But Sudan’s metastasising conflict is gradually, inexorably, destabilising the entire region.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2026/07/ethiopia_global-dev_map/giv-32554QBDIjfY9KiX0/?dark=false
Africa’s second-most populous country has finally been dragged in. A vast clandestine RSF training camp has emerged at an Ethiopian military base on the outskirts of the western town of Asosa.
A short distance from the base – its entrance heavily guarded as the Guardian drove past in late June – along the B40 highway and down a rutted dirt track lies the refugee camp of Ura.
Rows of neat tents house 14,500 Sudanese people who, like Abdeen, have fled the RSF. Their testimony offers an unsettling scenario: the relentless reprisals that characterise Sudan’s war may erupt within Ethiopia.
Some fear being hunted down by the RSF inside Ethiopia, a continuation of the genocidal slaughter seen in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
Khadijah Ahmed escaped the RSF’s vicious control of Khartoum two and a half years ago. She recounts the militia’s chilling threat as she fled. “‘We will follow you, wherever you go,’ they said. They chased us out of the country.”
Her two sons are so terrified they are sleeping under their beds, just as they did in Khartoum under RSF rule. Nodding towards the nearby RSF base, the 42-year-old adds: “They are so close to us here. We are in a very dangerous situation.”
Dawud Suliman, 31, fled the Darfur town of Zalingei after an RSF offensive in 2024. Half his family – 25 people – were killed. Now he fears his remaining relatives will be hunted down inside Ethiopia. “I am very worried,” he says.
Residents warn the RSF has already entered the camp, prompting concerns they are compiling kill lists for troops stationed at the Asosa training base 10 miles away – a 20-minute drive. “We are scared they will report back,” says Hamza Al Bashir, 52.
On 21 June, prime minister Abiy Ahmed cruised to another general election victory, confirming what the country already knew would happen. Along the Ethiopian capital’s sweeping boulevards, there appeared to be scant celebration.
Ethiopia teeters on the brink of potential calamity, warn experts. Signs suggest Ahmed’s new term may be defined by fresh bloodshed: a resurgence of the civil war with Tigray; perhaps an attempt to seize one of Eritrea’s Red Sea ports.
Ethiopia’s involvement in the Sudan conflict next door could also have dire repercussions. A cataclysmic scenario could involve the RSF’s opponents, the Sudanese military, teaming up with Tigray separatists, the Eritrean army and Egypt – Ethiopia’s historical nemesis.
Diplomats in Addis Ababa believe the likelihood of a regional, ruinous war is actually helping to suppress any fresh slaughter.
“They appreciate the likely outcome is mutually assured destruction,” says an official.
Some are less sanguine. “Abiy’s appetite for carnage? Enough to worry.”
Yet even as Ethiopia teeters, UN officials are hyping Ahmed’s approach to an inevitable byproduct of any future fighting: refugees.
Three days before the confirmation of his election triumph, the country’s government launched a pioneering project at a glitzy bash at the capital’s Adwa Victory Memorial Museum. The venture aims to transform Ethiopia’s more than 1.1 million refugees – one of the largest populations in Africa – into social and economic assets.
Refugees will be given improved access to education, healthcare and work, allowing them to become integrated, taxpaying residents rather than having to rely on aid.
Dubbed Makatet – meaning “inclusion” in Amharic – its apparent progressiveness has quickly turned heads. It is not only a dramatically different approach from the hostile environment, anti-migrant agenda of Europe and the US, experts believe it could offer a solution to the global migration crisis.
Advocates include the new head of the UN refugee agency. Barham Salih describes Ethiopia’s approach as the most ambitious attempt yet to address the growing displacement of millions.
Traditional approaches to dealing with migration are, he says, obsolete. Funding cuts mean long-term humanitarian assistance is unviable. Global instability – increasingly interlinked but intractable conflicts – means refugee populations are trapped in generational limbo.
About 70% of the 41.6 million refugees globally have been stranded for at least five years.
“We need to make the refugee population more self-reliant: you cannot keep people dependent on humanitarian assistance year after year. The nature of humanitarianism needs to be redefined,” says Salih, a former Iraqi president and refugee himself. The west, adds the 65-year-old, has to stop running from the politicised issue.
“Given the scale, this is not the moment to look away. This must not be about shifting responsibility. This has to be about sharing responsibility. Ethiopia is showing the way,” says Salih.