Escalating Verbal Conflict Involving Ethiopia and Eritrea Sparks Anxieties of Military Confrontation

Mounting worries exist about the possibility of military engagement between Horn of Africa neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as confrontational rhetoric has escalated in the past few weeks.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Said?

Landlocked Ethiopia's calls for entry to the sea coast through Eritrean territory has triggered a fierce war of words.

Ethiopian Prime Minister previously announced in last year that his country's maritime access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrea ignored.

Diplomatic connections between the both governments have regularly been difficult. Following a prolonged fight for sovereignty, Eritrea, which has a long Red Sea coastline, officially seceded from Ethiopian rule in the early 1990s, rendering it without sea access.

Subsequently, a military clash started in which over a hundred thousand people were killed.

Current Statements from Ethiopian Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted ownership of Eritrean southern port of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the border - and suggested the wish to capture it through military means.

On 1 September, Abiy said Ethiopia's "mistake" of losing entry to the sea as a because of Eritrea's separation would be "addressed tomorrow".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be returned "through military action".

Eritrea's Answer to the Statements

Despite continuous warnings from Ethiopia, Eritrea's response has been confined to brief comments on online platforms from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

He has rejected Ethiopian requests for sea access labeling it "hazardous" and a "harmful plan" of "expansionism" – a policy of reclaiming previous domains.

The information ministry alerted on recently that moves to validate "blatant hostility" would have major implications for the Ethiopian government and its neighbors and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Activities on the Region

There have been few indications of major military movements in the frontier regions between the both nations.

Nonetheless, in Ethiopia, national TV has shown graduation ceremonies of thousands of cadets at various military training camps.

The director of human resources department of the defense force, the officer, recently said in an conversation that the military was in a "secure situation" as "numerous of youths" were joining it, which he said was "a message to our adversaries".

Past Background of the Dispute

For decades from 1890, the territory was ruled by colonial powers.

After the end of Italian rule, it was then managed by the British administration before turning into a associated territory of the Ethiopian empire.

But in the early 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie I ended this agreement and the region became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A thirty-year armed struggle followed, finishing with the government's loss in 1991. Sovereignty was then endorsed by voters in a plebiscite in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they fell out over the exact location of their shared boundary, resulting in conflict in 1998.

Even though this concluded in a peace deal in 2000, it was partially applied, and the both countries continued at loggerheads.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made gestures to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The two endorsed a statement that the conflict was over – a decision that won Abiy the prestigious award.

The two governments were then allies in Ethiopia's recent internal conflict in Tigray.

However ties have subsequently deteriorated again.