The ongoing armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Amhara region continues to fuel online disinformation. A widely shared Facebook post claimed the army’s deputy chief of staff recently threatened to turn against the ruling Prosperity Party. But AFP Fact Check found the footage had been digitally manipulated. In the original interview, filmed in 2020, the then-retired general warned leaders of the former ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) against creating instability. Neither the modified nor the original version contains any threats against the current government.
An Ethiopian Facebook user shared a 93-second clip with an Amharic text overlay that can be translated as: “The general has revealed the truth: ‘We will turn our weapons against the Prosperity Party’.”
Prosperity is the ruling party of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The video has been viewed more than 260,000 times and shared more than 700 times since it was published on July 19, 2024.
The clip shows the deputy chief of staff of the federal army, Abebaw Tadesse, talking to Bacha Debele, a former general who now serves as Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya.
The footage also includes a photo of Abiy.
Abebaw retired from the military in 2018, but returned after Abiy appointed him to his current position in November 2020 at the start of the Tigray war.
“We have enough information at our disposal. If we were to reveal the information, we would completely remove it from the political space,” Abebaw appears to say at the beginning of the video in the Facebook post.
“This country has been in a state of instability for five or six years. The political instability has been created by the ruling party itself.”
He then warns that Abiy “could lose his post tomorrow”.
Armed conflicts
The video emerged as the Ethiopian army continues to clash with rebels in Oromia and Amhara, the country’s two most populous regions.
In Amhara, the army is fighting Fano, a militia group and former key ally of Abiy during the Tigray war, which ended in November 2022 (archived hereThe rebels turned against the government in July 2023 after it decided to disarm all regional troops.
Meanwhile, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has been active in the Oromia region since 2018, when the rebels took up arms (archived here).
However, the video does not show Abebaw threatening to turn against the Ethiopian government.
Changed video
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to execute reverse image search on key frames from the video.
The results led to a longer version of the clamp published on the official YouTube channel of the state television station Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) on July 11, 2020 (archived here).
The original runs 95 minutes and features Abebaw and Bacha discussing various topics.
The interview was released as Ethiopia prepares for the first round of filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a mega hydroelectric power plant on the Nile.
Its construction has been at the center of regional disputes since it began in 2011. Egypt and Sudan feared the massive dam would significantly reduce the amount of Nile water they received and repeatedly asked Addis Ababa to stop filling it until they all reached an agreement on its operation.
During the first 40 minutes, the pair discussed the dam’s security risks for East Africa and tensions with Egypt.
They also discussed the TPLF’s accusation against Abiy’s government of abandoning the country’s national interests over the dam.
Before Abiy came to power in April 2018, Ethiopia was ruled by successive State of emergency decrees issued by the TPLF-led coalition in response to a popular uprising known as the Oromo protests (archived here).
“The budget allocated for the dam was embezzled by the previous regime,” Abebaw says in the footage.
“Thanks to Abiy’s government, the construction of the dam is now progressing smoothly.”
Edited images
An investigation by AFP Fact Check found that the first 18 seconds of the Facebook video had been cut from the original footage, between 40’40” and 41’10”.
“The claim by former ruling party leaders that the dam was sold to others has recently become top politics. We know the previous and current regimes very well. It is better to remain calm. Otherwise, we have enough information at our disposal. Revealing the information would completely remove them from the political space,” Abebaw told Bacha.
“The organization (TPLF) itself was a source of all instability in the country,” he adds.
This means that the edited clip omits the mention of the “former leaders” and instead makes it appear as if Abebaw was talking about Abiy.
Then, at the 18-second mark in the altered footage, Abebaw seems to imply that the current ruling party has caused political instability. In reality, he was referring to the TPLF again.
The manipulated statement about this was cut from the original video between 61’20” and 61’38”.
The senior military officer also did not say Abiy was at risk of losing his job.
At 38 seconds into the edited clip, Abebaw can be heard saying, “Dr. Abiy.” Then there’s a major jump before he continues with “he could lose his current post tomorrow.”
But in the original video, Abebaw thanks Abiy “for the reform measures he has taken regarding the military. It is a fitting and right decision. Because he could lose his post tomorrow. However, the military as an institution will continue to exist.”
Instead, the edited clip gives the impression that Abiy could lose his power due to pressure from the military.
AFP Fact Check reviewed both the original and edited videos and found that at no point did Abebaw warn that the military would use its weapons against the ruling party.
