Drones, Paperwork and Proxy War: What a Seized Memo Says About the Battle for Tigray

When Ethiopian federal troops walked into Mekelle — Tigray’s regional capital and the seat of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) — on October 3 without a fight, the city’s fall was supposed to mark a turning point in a war that had reignited only ten days earlier. Within days, though, the story shifted from what the army had taken to what it claimed to have found. Photographs quickly began circulating of an Iranian-designed Mohajer-6 (M-6) drone packed in a foam-lined crate. Alongside them was a one-page Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) recording the inspection and acceptance of three M-6 Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems, three fire-control units, 12 bomb-release units and four surveillance payloads. A pro-government Amharic outlet published the documents on October 7, reporting that the hardware had entered Tigray through Sudan before the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) seized it.

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