The political situation in the Horn of Africa remains tense due to tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has no doubts about this: during a television appearance earlier this week, he stressed that continuing to view Ethiopia as a landlocked country is “not possible at any time”.
When Eritrea gained independence in 1993 after decades of war, the country lost access to the Red Sea. Initially, an agreement allowed Ethiopia to import goods duty-free through the port of Assab.
But a renewed border conflict in the late 1990s ended this arrangement. Today, a large share of Ethiopia’s trade passes through Djibouti – an expensive undertaking for the landlocked country.
Opposition to Ethiopia’s expansion
According to political analyst Abdurham Saeed, Abiy Ahmed wants to reduce this dependence.
“The reason they are insisting on this at the moment is not because they have no access to the Red Sea or to ports near Ethiopia,” he told DW. While access is already possible through neighboring Djibouti and Somalia, Saeed says, Abiy Ahmed wants direct Ethiopian control, which the coastal states are opposed to.
The 2018 peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea would have provided a good opportunity. On this basis, Sayeed says, Ethiopia could gain easy access to the sea with some guarantees of stability and security.
Peace efforts earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 – now signs point once again to conflict with the neighboring country.
The skeptics said Ethiopia’s push for access to the sea “is largely motivated by external interests outside the Horn of Africa region, and the Ethiopian government is simply imposing these interests as part of its agenda. Otherwise, access would have been secured by then.”
Ethiopia’s partners under pressure
He is referring to Ethiopia’s geo-strategic partners, primarily the United Arab Emirates.
But the UAE is under pressure: “Due to the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, sooner or later the UAE will be forced to reduce its presence and involvement in the Horn of Africa in order to focus on its own country’s problems.”
This means that Ethiopia can expect less support in the event of a possible war against Eritrea.
Prime Minister Abiy is demanding separate access to a port for Ethiopia from 2023.
Their rhetoric on the matter has intensified over the years, says Guido Lanfranchi, a researcher at the Dutch Institute of International Relations, Clingendael.
Earlier this year, multiple news agencies reported that Ethiopian government troops and fighters from Tigray were deployed along the region’s thousand-kilometer border with Eritrea.
Yet a situation of war has not yet arisen.
Lanfranchi says tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been rising for more than a year and remain at very high levels.
“Now it seems as if the threat has passed and war has been averted – which is due, among other things, to problems such as fuel shortages in the region linked to the crisis in Iran,” he told DW.
Civil threats persist in Ethiopia
“However, this does not mean that the international community should reduce its attention to this crisis, as the underlying causes of rivalry between the two sides still exist,” Lanfranchi says.
According to Lanfranchi’s colleague Emmanuel Desaglen Gedebo, Eritrea has never had much interest in direct conflict, given its weak economic and military position.
Instead, indirect maneuvers have been made such as strengthening ties with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and providing some assistance to armed groups such as the Amhara ethnic militia Fano. Eritrea has also strengthened its ties with Ethiopia’s regional rivals, particularly Egypt.
Transport and food prices have risen in Ethiopia due to the war in oil-producing areas. This has made an already fragile economic situation even worse, and any new military operations are not possible at the moment.
However, the current “pause” is only a postponement, Amanuel told DW.
According to analysts, the central conflict in Ethiopia is the ongoing delicate situation in Tigray. This continues even though the two-year civil war in the northern Ethiopian region was officially resolved with an agreement in November 2022.
Since then, Tigray has been governed by an interim administration appointed by Addis Ababa, whose mandate was extended for another year in April despite criticism from the TPLF.
In response, the TPLF recently announced the restoration of a regional parliament. The election of this body was one of the triggers for Tigray in 2020.
Observers fear that armed conflict between the Ethiopian government and regional forces could flare up again.
was not inevitable in ethiopia
Gerrit Kurtz of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) told DW that external and geopolitical factors have escalated the conflict in Ethiopia, but the multi-ethnic state cannot be limited to the interests of the partners.
Kurtz says it would be an escalation if Tigray installs a rival government. He further said that although war is not inevitable, it is a matter of both sides moving for dominance.
According to Kurtz, the TPLF may view Eritrea as a partner, but the extent of support in the event of war with Ethiopia remains uncertain.
Ethiopia’s upcoming parliamentary elections on June 1 are key to securing legitimacy for Abiy Ahmed’s ruling Prosperity Party (PP).
According to analyst Lanfranchi, the PP inherited the political dominance and economic networks of its predecessor, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – which ruled Ethiopia for several decades after overthrowing the Derg regime in 1991.
The opposition has little chance in the election, Lanfranchi says: “From Abiy’s point of view, postponing the election before the military operation makes no sense.”
Rather, his priority is to win the elections first.
Edited by Cai Nebe