On 11 March 2021, a Facebook post by the name of Tedros Zeru (an account with over 4,595 friends) shared an image that shows numerous troops entering a plane with the claim that the US Military and Air Force has started a joint military exercise respectively with Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers. The text written in Tigrinya reads, “Senior US and Egyptian military officers have entered Sudan. According to our Sudan sources, the American military has started exercise in Sudan and the US Air Force and the Egyptians are conducting a joint military exercise. The span of Abiy [Ahmed] and Isaias [Afwerki] is being shortened and Russia and China are concerned…” However, HaqCheck has interrogated the claim and confirmed that the image below doesn’t show US armed forces conducting military exercise neither in Sudan nor in Egypt. Therefore, HaqCheck has rendered the post as FALSE due to the usage of an inaccurate image to support the claim.
Granted, Ethiopia is amid an armed conflict between the federal government and TPLF-led armed forces. The US recently called for the immediate cease of fighting in Tigray. The American state secretary Antonio Bllinken called for an immediate end to hostilities and the withdrawal of Amhara and Eritrean forces from Tigray. A week ago the UN Security Council held a session on the Tigray conflict and China, Russia and non-permanent member India refused the Council’s call for an end to violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray.
In addition to that Ethiopia and Sudan are in dispute on un demarcated territories. Recently Sudan and Egypt have signed a military cooperation agreement which emerged amid the revived tensions between Ethiopia and the lower Nile riparian countries.
It is in this context that the image was shared claiming the US armed forces along with Sudanese and Egyptian armed forces have started joint military exercises. However, a reverse image search of the picture used in the Facebook post doesn’t prove the claim. The image was first posted on Dreamstime, an American online image site on 20 September 2019 and shows American paratroopers entering a US Air Force aircraft in Eindhoven, the Netherlands military base. The original post related to the image can be with the following link.
Therefore, HaqCheck has interrogated the claim and confirmed that the image below doesn’t show American armed forces conducting joint military exercise along with Sudanese and Egyptian armies. Thus, HaqCheck rendered the post FALSE due to the usage of an inaccurate image to support the claim.
Fact Checked by: Hagos Gebreamlak
This article is part of HaqCheck, Addis Zeybe’s multilingual fact checking initiative, which is run by its R&D Department.
