🔗 Share this article

Growing apprehensions have emerged over the chance of warfare between Horn of Africa neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as aggressive rhetoric has ratcheted up in the past few weeks.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Said?

Landlocked Ethiopia's demands for access to the Red Sea through Eritrea has provoked a fierce rhetorical conflict.

PM Abiy Ahmed previously announced in the previous year that his country's maritime access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrea ignored.

Ties between the two countries have regularly been difficult. Following a decades-long fight for sovereignty, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive maritime frontage, legally broke away from Ethiopia in 1993, making it cut off from the sea.

Subsequently, a border war erupted in which numerous people died.

Current Statements from Ethiopian Government

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader the army commander have directly stated ownership of Eritrean maritime facility of the port of Assab – some 60 km from the boundary - and suggested the intention to take it by force.

Recently, the Prime Minister said the country's "blunder" of losing entry to the sea as a because of Eritrea secession would be "rectified soon".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopian property" and would be returned "through military action".

Eritrean Response to the Claims

Amid continuous warnings from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been restricted to concise remarks on social media from Information Minister the minister.

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for sea access calling it "dangerous" and a "harmful plan" of "expansionism" – a strategy of retaking previous domains.

Government spokespeople alerted on 16 September that efforts to justify "flagrant aggression" would have significant repercussions for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Military Preparations on the Ground

So far, there are few indications of significant troop deployments in the boundary zones between the two countries.

Nonetheless, in Ethiopia, government media has shown graduation ceremonies of numerous trainees at various military training camps.

The leader of personnel division of the defense force, the officer, recently said in an interview that the army was in a "secure situation" as "tens of thousands of young people" were joining it, which he said was "a warning to our enemies".

Past Roots of the Tension

For decades from 1890, the territory was administered by Italian rulers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then administered by the British military before becoming a federated part of the Ethiopian empire.

However in the early 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie I terminated this system and the region became totally absorbed into the Ethiopian state.

A three-decade long internal conflict followed, ending with military reversal in 1991. Sovereignty was then endorsed by the population in a plebiscite in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were good relations between the leadership in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they clashed over the precise positioning of their shared boundary, leading to hostilities in 1998.

Even though this ended in a peace deal in 2000, it was partially applied, and the two nations continued at odds.

This changed in 2018, when Abiy made approaches to Eritrea's leader the president. The two signed a declaration that the war was finished – a decision that gained the Prime Minister the prestigious award.

The two governments were then partners in Ethiopia's 2020-2022 armed struggle in Tigray.

Yet diplomatic connections have subsequently deteriorated anew.