🔗 Share this article

Growing worries exist about the possibility of military engagement involving East African countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as hostile rhetoric has ratcheted up in the last month.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Stated?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for passage to the sea coast through Eritrea has sparked a heated verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in last year that his nation's access to the sea was an crucial concern, statements that Eritrea dismissed.

Diplomatic connections between the two countries have often been tense. Following a long-standing battle for independence, the Eritrean state, which has a long Red Sea coastline, legally broke away from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it landlocked.

Five years later, a military clash broke out in which over a hundred thousand people lost their lives.

Current Remarks from Ethiopian Government

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader the army commander have directly stated sovereignty of Eritrean coastal city of Assab – some 60 km from the frontier - and implied the wish to take it by force.

In early September, Abiy said the country's "blunder" of losing access to the sea as a result of Eritrea secession would be "rectified tomorrow".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopian property" and would be given back "by force".

Eritrea's Reaction to the Threats

Despite continuous threats from Ethiopian officials, Asmara's position has been restricted to brief comments on X from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

Officials have denied Ethiopia's push for sea access calling it "risky" and a "harmful plan" of "irredentism" – a policy of reclaiming previous domains.

Government spokespeople warned on mid-September that attempts to legitimise "obvious provocation" would have serious consequences for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Preparations on the Region

Currently, there are no reports of significant troop deployments in the boundary zones between the neighboring states.

Nevertheless, in the country, state television has displayed training completions of many recruits at various military training camps.

The director of human resources department of the military, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, recently said in an interview that the military was in a "strong stance" as "numerous of young people" were entering service, which he said was "a message to our opponents".

Past Roots of the Dispute

For decades from the late 19th century, the territory was governed by Italian rulers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then controlled by the British military before evolving into a integrated region of the Ethiopian empire.

But in the early 1960s the ruler ended this agreement and Eritrea became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A three-decade long internal conflict followed, finishing with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Sovereignty was then approved by the population in a plebiscite in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were good relations between the authorities in Ethiopia's capital and Eritrea's capital, but they clashed over the specific demarcation of their mutual frontier, causing conflict in 1998.

Although this ended in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations continued at odds.

This changed in 2018, when Abiy made gestures to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The two agreed to a statement that the war was finished – a action that gained the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The neighboring states were then partners in the country's previous internal conflict in Tigray.

But ties have later worsened again.