Senior Ethiopian officials, not conscripts, do push ups during a military training program, in a photograph Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed shared on X on October 31, 2026. The picture is used here as an illustration of official military training, not of the raids described in this report. Credit: Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, via @AbiyAhmedAli on X.
Mothers in Addis Ababa told The Globe and Mail that their sons were pushed onto trucks or taken from a bar and forced into Ethiopia’s army, as the government expands its forces on several fronts.
Azeb Girma told the Canadian newspaper that her 19 year old son, her only child, failed to come home one night, and that it took more than a month to learn that men in civilian clothes had pushed him onto an unmarked truck. He was among dozens of young men from her neighborhood conscripted in late night raids, the paper reported. After training he was sent to a border town in northern Ethiopia, where the army is fighting Tigrayan forces. “I found out about his fate when he called me in the middle of the night, using a stolen phone,” Azeb said. “I had big hopes for my child, including having him go to university.”
Etsegenet Tadios, 55, said two of her sons were taken in September from a bar in Addis Ababa, where they were playing pool and watching a soccer match with friends. She learned what had happened only when they called her from an unknown number on their way to a northern border town, sounding terrified, and she fears that with little training they may not survive, especially if the fighting grows into a war with Eritrea.
In Bishoftu, about an hour’s drive from the capital, a 49 year old taxi driver told the paper that many young people had disappeared and were later found in the military, among them some of his own nephews and cousins. “Many of our children live in fear of conscription,” he said. “Families are forced to sacrifice their children in a meaningless war.”
The Globe and Mail put the army’s size at about half a million soldiers, and the U.S. analyst Cameron Hudson estimates it has more than doubled since the Tigray war ended in 2022. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently sent cabinet ministers and senior officials to military training and posted photos of them exercising at an army base. A 2024 report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, cited by the paper, found that civilians in Oromia, including children, were detained and forced into the military, and that in one detention center almost half of 32 detainees were 15 or 16 years old.
Armed groups also recruit by force. The paper cited a July report by Human Rights Watch that accused Tigrayan forces of abducting and forcibly recruiting civilians, including children as young as 15. The Globe and Mail’s report did not include a government response, and Mereja Media found none from the Ministry of Defense by Thursday evening. This week five U.S. senators urged Washington to halt arms sales to the Ethiopian government, as Mereja Media reported.