Longtime foes
Ethiopia and Eritrea could be headed towards war, officials in a restive
Ethiopian region at the center of the tensions have warned, risking another
humanitarian disaster in the Horn of Africa.
Direct
clashes between two of Africa's largest armies would signal the death blow for
a historic rapprochement for which Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and could draw in other regional powers, analysts
said.
It would also
likely create another crisis in a region where aid cuts have complicated
efforts to assist millions affected by internal conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and
Ethiopia.
"At any
moment war between Ethiopia and Eritrea could break out," General Tsadkan
Gebretensae, a vice president in the interim administration in Ethiopia's
Tigray region, wrote in Africa-focused magazine the Africa Report on Monday.
A
2020-2022 civil
war in Tigray between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and
Ethiopia's central government killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Fears of a
new conflict are linked to the TPLF's split last year into a faction that now
administers Tigray with the blessing of Ethiopia's federal government and
another that opposes it.
On Tuesday,
the dissident faction, which Tsadkan accused of seeking an alliance with
Eritrea, seized control of the northern town of Adigrat.
Getachew
Reda, the head of Tigray's interim administration, in turn asked
the government for support against the dissidents, who deny ties to
Eritrea.
"There
is clear antagonism between Ethiopia and Eritrea," Getachew told a news
conference on Monday. "What concerns me is that the Tigray people may once
again become victims of a war they don't believe in."
Sudan is now
the largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world,
‘Dry
tinder waiting for a match’
Ethiopia's
federal government has not commented on the tensions. Eritrea's information
minister dismissed Tsadkan's warnings as "war-mongering psychosis".
However,
Eritrea ordered a nationwide military mobilisation in mid-February, according
to UK-based Human Rights Concern - Eritrea.
And Ethiopia
deployed troops toward the Eritrean border this month, two diplomatic sources
and two Tigrayan officials told Reuters, asking not to be named due to the
sensitivity of the situation.
Reuters could
not independently verify these developments. Eritrean and Ethiopian government
spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Payton Knopf
and Alexander Rondos, the former U.S. and EU envoys to the region, say the
prospects of a new war are real.
"The
deterioration of the political and security situation in Tigray is dry tinder
waiting for a match," they wrote in an essay for U.S. publication Foreign
Policy on Wednesday.
Relations
between Ethiopia and Eritrea have long been fraught.
Eritrea broke
away from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year fight for independence. The
neighbours then fought a 1998-2000 border war.
They remained
formally at war until 2018, when Abiy and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki
agreed to normalise ties. Eritrean troops even supported Ethiopian federal
forces against TPLF-led rebels during the Tigray civil war.
But the
exclusion of Eritrea from subsequent peace negotiations once again chilled
relations.
Eritrean
officials have bristled at repeated public declarations by Abiy since 2023 that
landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access, comments some analysts view as
an implicit threat of military action against Eritrea, which lies on the Red
Sea.
Last October,
Eritrea, an authoritarian and insular state, signed a security
pact with Egypt and Somalia that was widely seen as aimed at
countering Ethiopia's potential expansionist ambitions.