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Growing worries exist about the possibility of armed conflict between Horn of Africa neighbors, Ethiopia and the Eritrean government, as confrontational discourse has ratcheted up in the last month.

What Did Ethiopia Said?

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

Ethiopian Prime Minister initially stated publicly in the previous year that his nation's sea access was an vital issue, comments that Eritrean authorities ignored.

Ties between the neighboring nations have often been tense. After a decades-long struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a long Red Sea coastline, legally broke away from Ethiopia in 1993, rendering it without sea access.

Subsequently, a territorial conflict started in which over a hundred thousand people were killed.

Latest Comments from Ethiopian Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have directly stated control of Eritrea's southern port of Assab – some 60 km from the frontier - and suggested the desire to capture it through military means.

In early September, Abiy said the country's "mistake" of being denied passage to the Red Sea as a because of Eritrea secession would be "rectified tomorrow".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that Assab was "Ethiopian property" and would be given back "using武力".

Eritrea's Response to the Statements

In the face of ongoing threats from Ethiopian officials, Asmara's position has been restricted to brief comments on X from Information Minister Yemane G..

He has rejected Ethiopian requests for sea access calling it "hazardous" and a "toxic agenda" of "irredentism" – a policy of reclaiming lost territory.

Eritrean authorities alerted on recently that efforts to legitimise "blatant hostility" would have major implications for the Ethiopian government and its regional partners and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Activities on the Border

So far, there are little evidence of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the both nations.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, government media has broadcast completion events of numerous trainees at different defense facilities.

The director of human resources department of the military, the officer, recently said in an discussion that the defense forces was in a "reliable position" as "tens of thousands of young people" were entering service, which he said was "a warning to our opponents".

Previous Roots of the Tension

For over fifty years from 1890, Eritrea 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.

Yet in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie I ended this agreement and Eritrea became totally absorbed into the Ethiopian state.

A thirty-year civil war followed, concluding with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Sovereignty was then confirmed by voters in a vote in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the leadership in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they disagreed over the exact location of their mutual frontier, causing hostilities in 1998.

Though this finished in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations stayed at in dispute.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made approaches to Eritrea's leader the president. The both leaders endorsed a announcement that the war was concluded – a action that earned the Prime Minister the prestigious award.

The two governments were then allies in Ethiopia's previous armed struggle in Tigray.

Yet relations have subsequently deteriorated again.