🔗 Share this article

Growing apprehensions have emerged regarding the possibility of military engagement between Horn of Africa countries, the Ethiopian government and Eritrea, as hostile language has ratcheted up in recent weeks.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Declared?

Landlocked Ethiopia's demands for access to the maritime outlet through Eritrean territory has sparked a intense verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in last year that his government's access to the sea was an vital issue, remarks that Eritrean authorities dismissed.

Relations between the two countries have often been tense. After a long-standing struggle for freedom, Eritrea, which has a extensive sea border, officially seceded from Ethiopian rule in the early 1990s, rendering it landlocked.

Five years later, a border war started in which numerous people died.

Latest Statements from Ethiopia's Officials

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader the army commander have openly claimed ownership of Eritrea's southern port of Assab – about 60km from the boundary - and suggested the wish to take it by force.

Recently, the Prime Minister said the country's "error" of losing entry to the sea as a due to Eritrea's separation would be "rectified soon".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be restored "through military action".

Eritrea's Response to the Claims

Amid ongoing challenges from Ethiopian officials, Eritrea's response has been restricted to concise remarks on online platforms from Information Minister Yemane G..

He has rejected Ethiopian requests for maritime entry calling it "risky" and a "harmful plan" of "expansionism" – a approach of claiming back previous domains.

The information ministry cautioned on 16 September that efforts to justify "blatant hostility" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Movements on the Region

There have been no reports of large-scale army activities in the border areas between the both nations.

However, in the country, state television has broadcast graduation ceremonies of many recruits at various military training camps.

The leader of personnel division of the military, General Hachalu, commented lately in an conversation that the defense forces was in a "secure situation" as "numerous of recruits" were enlisting, which he said was "a message to our opponents".

Previous Roots of the Tension

For over fifty years from 1890, the territory was administered by Italian rulers.

After Italy's defeat, it was then administered by the British military before evolving into a associated territory of Ethiopia.

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

A thirty-year internal conflict followed, finishing with the government's loss in 1991. Independence was then confirmed by voters in a plebiscite in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the governments in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they fell out over the exact location of their mutual frontier, causing conflict in 1998.

Even though this finished in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations remained at loggerheads.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrea's leader President Isaias. The two signed a statement that the war was over – a move that won the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The both administrations were then partners in the country's previous civil war in Tigray.

However ties have later worsened anew.