🔗 Share this article

Mounting apprehensions have emerged over the chance of military engagement among East African neighbors, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as aggressive discourse has intensified in the past few weeks.

What Has Ethiopia Declared?

Landlocked Ethiopia's requests for access to the sea coast through Eritrea has sparked a heated war of words.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in the previous year that his nation's maritime access was an vital issue, comments that Eritrea rejected.

Relations between the neighboring nations have regularly been difficult. Following a prolonged battle for independence, Eritrea, which has a long Red Sea coastline, officially seceded from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, making it without sea access.

Five years later, a border war broke out in which more than 100,000 people died.

Latest Comments from Ethiopian Government

Abiy and military leader the army commander have publicly asserted control of Eritrean maritime facility of the port of Assab – some 60 km from the boundary - and implied the intention to take it by force.

In early September, the Prime Minister said the country's "mistake" of losing entry to the sea as a result of Eritrean independence would be "corrected in the future".

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

Eritrea's Response to the Threats

Despite continuous challenges from Ethiopian officials, Eritrea's response has been limited to brief comments on social media from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

Officials have denied Ethiopian requests for access to the Red Sea labeling it "hazardous" and a "negative policy" of "irredentism" – a approach of retaking former lands.

Eritrean authorities warned on 16 September that moves to validate "obvious provocation" would have significant repercussions for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Movements on the Ground

There have been no reports of major military movements in the frontier regions between the both nations.

However, in Ethiopia, state television has displayed graduation ceremonies of many recruits at multiple army bases.

The leader of human resources department of the armed forces, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, recently said in an discussion that the army was in a "strong stance" as "many thousands of youths" were enlisting, which he said was "a signal to our opponents".

Historical Origins of the Dispute

For more than half a century from the late 19th century, the territory was ruled by Italian colonisers.

Following World War II, it was then managed by the British administration before becoming a associated territory of the Ethiopian empire.

However in the early 1960s the ruler ended this system and the region became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A thirty-year civil war followed, concluding with military reversal in the early 1990s. Independence was then approved by the population in a referendum in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were good relations between the governments in Addis Ababa and Eritrea's capital, but they fell out over the exact location of their shared boundary, causing war in 1998.

Though this concluded in a peace deal in 2000, it was partially applied, and the two nations remained at odds.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made approaches to Eritrea's leader the president. The both leaders signed a statement that the war was finished – a move that won the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The both administrations were then cooperators in Ethiopia's recent armed struggle in Tigray.

Yet relations have later worsened again.