🔗 Share this article

Mounting concerns have emerged over the potential of warfare involving East African neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as aggressive rhetoric has ratcheted up in recent weeks.

What Has Ethiopia Said?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, demands for entry to the maritime outlet through Eritrea has triggered a fierce war of words.

Ethiopian Prime Minister previously announced in the previous year that his country's maritime access was an vital issue, comments that Eritrean authorities ignored.

Relations between the two countries have regularly been difficult. After a decades-long battle for independence, Eritrea, which has a long sea border, formally separated from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it landlocked.

Subsequently, a border war broke out in which numerous people lost their lives.

Latest Statements from Ethiopian Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader General Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted ownership of Eritrea's southern port of the port of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the frontier - and implied the desire to capture it through military means.

Recently, Abiy said the country's "mistake" of losing access to the Red Sea as a result of Eritrean independence would be "rectified tomorrow".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopian property" and would be restored "using武力".

Eritrea's Response to the Threats

In the face of ongoing challenges from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been confined to brief comments on X from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for access to the Red Sea labeling it "hazardous" and a "negative policy" of "territorial claims" – a policy of retaking former lands.

Government spokespeople alerted on 16 September that moves to legitimise "blatant hostility" would have serious consequences for Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Preparations on the Region

So far, there are little evidence of large-scale army activities in the frontier regions between the two countries.

However, in the country, government media has displayed completion events of numerous trainees at various military training camps.

The director of personnel division of the defense force, General Hachalu, recently said in an interview that the military was in a "reliable position" as "many thousands of recruits" were entering service, which he said was "a signal to our opponents".

Previous Roots of the Tension

For more than half a century from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian rulers.

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

But in the early 1960s the Ethiopian emperor cancelled this system and the region became totally absorbed into Ethiopia.

A three-decade long armed struggle occurred, ending with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Autonomy was then endorsed by Eritreans in a referendum in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they clashed over the exact location of their common border, leading to conflict in 1998.

Even though this finished in a peace deal in 2000, it was partially applied, and the neighbors continued at odds.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrean President President Isaias. The both leaders agreed to a declaration that the war was over – a action that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The neighboring states were then cooperators in the country's 2020-2022 internal conflict in Tigray.

However diplomatic connections have subsequently deteriorated anew.