🔗 Share this article

Growing worries are present regarding the potential of warfare among East African countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as aggressive rhetoric has intensified in the last month.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Said?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for entry to the maritime outlet through Eritrean territory has triggered a heated rhetorical conflict.

The Ethiopian leader previously announced in the previous year that his government's access to the sea was an vital issue, statements that Eritrea dismissed.

Relations between the neighboring nations have frequently been strained. Following a prolonged struggle for freedom, Eritrea, which has a extensive Red Sea coastline, legally broke away from Ethiopia in 1993, rendering it landlocked.

In 1998, a territorial conflict erupted in which numerous people were killed.

Latest Remarks from Ethiopian Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief General Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted sovereignty of Eritrean southern port of the port of Assab – about 60km from the frontier - and suggested the wish to seize it militarily.

In early September, Abiy said the country's "blunder" of losing access to the Red Sea as a because of Eritrea secession would be "addressed soon".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that the port was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be restored "through military action".

Eritrea's Answer to the Threats

Amid continuous warnings from Ethiopian officials, Eritrea's response has been restricted to brief comments on social media from Information Minister Yemane G..

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's demand for maritime entry describing it as "hazardous" and a "harmful plan" of "expansionism" – a strategy of retaking former lands.

Government spokespeople alerted on 16 September that efforts to justify "obvious provocation" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Military Preparations on the Ground

Currently, there are no reports of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the both nations.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, national TV has displayed training completions of many recruits at multiple army bases.

The leader of human resources department of the defense force, the officer, recently said in an conversation that the defense forces was in a "secure situation" as "many thousands of recruits" were enlisting, which he said was "a message to our adversaries".

Previous Origins of the Dispute

For more than half a century from 1890, Eritrea was governed by colonial powers.

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

However in 1962 the Ethiopian emperor ended this arrangement and Eritrea became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A thirty-year armed struggle occurred, ending with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Sovereignty was then approved by voters in a vote in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were good relations between the leadership in Ethiopia's capital and Eritrea's capital, but they fell out over the precise positioning of their shared boundary, causing conflict in 1998.

Though this ended in a truce in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the neighbors stayed at in dispute.

This changed in 2018, when Abiy made gestures to Eritrean President President Isaias. The two agreed to a declaration that the hostilities was over – a move that earned the Prime Minister the Nobel Peace Prize.

The neighboring states were then partners in the country's previous civil war in the northern region.

But diplomatic connections have since broken down once more.