Ethiopia’s long-running conflict between the army and Fano rebels in the north has created a humanitarian crisis. It has also prompted warring parties to use disinformation techniques to spread propaganda, including by altering videos of public figures. A recent Facebook post claimed that a video showed the country’s army chief announcing that militant attacks had caused the collapse of his forces. However, this is not true: AFP Fact Check discovered that a user had edited an old speech by the commander, released more than a year ago, to remove key context and add a misleading text overlay.
“As you said, the military has failed. Fano did this. You must accept this,” the Amharic-language post reads.
The post was published on Facebook on December 1, 2024 and has since been shared more than 760 times.
Screenshot of the modified message, taken on December 6, 2024
A text overlay, also in Amharic, says: “Fano is capable. However, you have not yet experienced its full power.”
At the beginning of the footage, another text overlay appears: “Birhanu’s speech in Metema”.
Birhanu Jula is the commander of the Ethiopian army, and Metema is a city in the northern Gondar zone of the Amhara region.
The video shared in the post contains 13 seconds of footage of the army chief speaking to the camera.
“The capability of the defense force was weakened,” he begins.
“The defense force had collapsed. It was lost. The preparedness of the defense force was weakened,” he added.
Laughter can be heard in the background during the speech.
Catastrophic conflict
In July 2023, fighting broke out between the Ethiopian army and the Fano rebels in the Amhara region.
A senior Ethiopian government official recently warned that the unrest had stretched the region’s healthcare system to its limits, putting people’s lives at risk (archived here).
In November 2024, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also expressed “concern about rising violence in Amhara” and emphasized the need for political dialogue to address the situation (archived here).
However, the images in which the army chief talks about the collapse of the army do not relate to the current conflict.
Modified video
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to perform reverse image searches on key frames from the video.
The results showed that the clip was originally published on October 21, 2023, on the YouTube channel of the state-owned Syrian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) (archived here).
It shows the army chief’s visit to the Defense Engineering Industry Corporation, a state-owned company that develops weapons and ammunition.
The original video is four minutes and 45 seconds long and begins with an EBC news presenter talking about Birhanu visiting the company as part of the 116th National Army Day commemoration (archived here).
Fifty seconds into the clip, he begins to address a meeting about the company’s historical development. He highlighted the fact that it was built under the Derg military regime in Ethiopia, which was overthrown in 1991 after ruling the country for almost two decades (archived here).
“Unfortunately, in the 27 years of the EPRDF regime, we have demolished the facilities and infrastructure built by the Derg regime. We have not developed them further,” says Birhanu at 1’24”.
EPRDF stands for the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a political party that ruled Ethiopia for 27 years before the current government came to power in April 2018.
The army chief then refers to the early days of the company, which was initially known as the Metals and Engineering Corporation, or METEC (archived here).
“After the establishment of METEC, all industries belonging to the armed forces were merged under it. During this period the defense industry had collapsed. The capability of the defense force was weakened. It collapsed. It was lost. The preparedness of the defense force was weakened,” he says at 1’49”.
In the altered video, the first two sentences discussing the METEC merger were removed to falsely give the impression that the army chief was talking about the consequences of the current conflict.
Screenshots of the original video (left) and the modified clip (right), taken on December 9, 2024
Additionally, the laughter heard in the background in the altered clip does not exist in the original version.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked edited videos related to the Ethiopian conflict here and here.
