🔗 Share this article

Growing worries have emerged regarding the potential of warfare involving Horn of Africa neighbors, the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government, as aggressive language has intensified in recent weeks.

What Has Ethiopia Stated?

Landlocked Ethiopia's calls for access to the sea coast through Eritrean territory has triggered a heated rhetorical conflict.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in 2023 that his government's access to the sea was an existential matter, comments that Eritrea rejected.

Ties between the both governments have regularly been difficult. Following a long-standing struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive Red Sea coastline, formally separated from Ethiopia in 1993, leaving it cut off from the sea.

Five years later, a territorial conflict started in which numerous people lost their lives.

Current Remarks from Ethiopia's Officials

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief General Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted control of Eritrean coastal city of the port of Assab – about 60km from the border - and hinted at the intention to capture it through military means.

On 1 September, the Prime Minister said the country's "error" of being denied passage to the sea as a because of Eritrean independence would be "addressed in the future".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be restored "using武力".

Eritrean Reaction to the Claims

Amid persistent warnings from Ethiopia, Eritrea's response has been restricted to concise remarks on X from Information Minister Yemane G..

He has rejected Ethiopia's demand for maritime entry describing it as "dangerous" and a "toxic agenda" of "irredentism" – a approach of retaking lost territory.

Government spokespeople cautioned on recently that attempts to legitimise "flagrant aggression" would have serious consequences for the Ethiopian government and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Military Preparations on the Ground

So far, there are little evidence of large-scale army activities in the boundary zones between the both nations.

Nonetheless, in Ethiopia, state television has displayed graduation ceremonies of numerous trainees at various military training camps.

The leader of human resources department of the military, General Hachalu, recently said in an discussion that the military was in a "reliable position" as "many thousands of recruits" were enlisting, which he said was "a message to our opponents".

Historical Background of the Tension

For over fifty years from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian colonisers.

After World War II, it was then controlled by the British administration before becoming a federated part of the Ethiopian empire.

Yet in 1962 the ruler terminated this agreement and the region became fully incorporated into the Ethiopian state.

A extended internal conflict ensued, finishing with Ethiopia's defeat in the early 1990s. Independence was then endorsed by voters in a plebiscite in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were good relations between the authorities in Addis Ababa and Eritrea's capital, but they fell out over the precise positioning of their common border, leading to hostilities in 1998.

Though this concluded in a peace deal in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the two nations stayed at in dispute.

This ended in 2018, when Abiy made overtures to Eritrea's leader the president. The both leaders agreed to a declaration that the war was concluded – a move that earned the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The both administrations were then cooperators in the country's previous internal conflict in Tigray.

But relations have since broken down again.