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Mounting apprehensions exist regarding the potential of armed conflict among East African neighbours, Ethiopia and the Eritrean government, as aggressive rhetoric has intensified in the last month.

What Has Ethiopia Said?

Landlocked Ethiopia's requests for entry to the Red Sea through Eritrea has triggered a intense verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed previously announced in 2023 that his country's maritime access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrea rejected.

Ties between the both governments have regularly been difficult. After a long-standing struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a 1,350km (840-mile) maritime frontage, formally separated from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it cut off from the sea.

Subsequently, a border war erupted in which more than 100,000 people lost their lives.

Current Comments from Ethiopian Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief the army commander have openly claimed sovereignty of Eritrean southern port of the port of Assab – some 60 km from the border - and implied the desire to take it by force.

On 1 September, Abiy said Ethiopia's "blunder" of losing entry to the sea as a due to Eritrea's separation would be "corrected in the future".

The Ethiopian envoy to neighboring Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopian property" and would be restored "by force".

Eritrean Answer to the Statements

In the face of ongoing threats from Ethiopia, Eritrea's response has been confined to concise remarks on online platforms from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

He has rejected Ethiopia's demand for sea access labeling it "dangerous" and a "negative policy" of "expansionism" – a approach of claiming back former lands.

Eritrean authorities alerted on recently that efforts to validate "blatant hostility" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Activities on the Border

Currently, there are no reports of large-scale army activities in the frontier regions between the neighboring states.

However, in Ethiopia, state television has broadcast completion events of numerous trainees at multiple army bases.

The director of human resources department of the military, the officer, commented lately in an interview that the defense forces was in a "strong stance" as "tens of thousands of youths" were entering service, which he said was "a message to our adversaries".

Historical Origins of the Dispute

For more than half a century from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian colonisers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then administered by the British military before becoming a integrated region of Ethiopia.

Yet in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie I ended this agreement and Eritrea became completely integrated into Ethiopia.

A extended civil war ensued, ending with Ethiopia's defeat in 1991. Sovereignty was then endorsed by Eritreans in a plebiscite in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were good relations between the authorities in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they clashed over the exact location of their shared boundary, leading to war in 1998.

Although this finished in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was partially applied, and the neighbors continued at in dispute.

This situation improved in 2018, when Abiy made overtures to Eritrea's leader Isaias Afwerki. The both leaders signed a declaration that the hostilities was finished – a decision that won the Prime Minister the Nobel Peace Prize.

The two governments were then partners in the country's recent civil war in the northern region.

Yet ties have subsequently deteriorated once more.