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Mounting worries have emerged regarding the chance of military engagement involving East African neighbors, the Ethiopian government and Eritrea, as confrontational language has intensified in the past few weeks.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Stated?

Landlocked Ethiopia's requests for entry to the Red Sea through Eritrean territory has sparked a intense verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed initially stated publicly in 2023 that his government's maritime access was an existential matter, remarks that Eritrea rejected.

Ties between the both governments have often been tense. After a decades-long fight for sovereignty, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive sea border, officially seceded from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it without sea access.

Subsequently, a military clash erupted in which numerous people died.

Latest Comments from Ethiopian Government

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have directly stated sovereignty of Eritrea's maritime facility of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the frontier - and hinted at the intention to seize it militarily.

On 1 September, Abiy said Ethiopia's "error" of being denied passage to the Red Sea as a due to Eritrea secession would be "rectified soon".

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

Eritrean Answer to the Threats

Amid ongoing threats from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been limited to concise remarks on X from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.

He has rejected Ethiopia's push for access to the Red Sea labeling it "dangerous" and a "harmful plan" of "territorial claims" – a approach of reclaiming lost territory.

Eritrean authorities cautioned on mid-September that efforts to legitimise "obvious provocation" would have major implications for the Ethiopian government and its neighbors and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Movements on the Border

So far, there are little evidence of major military movements in the boundary zones between the neighboring states.

Nevertheless, in the country, state television has shown training completions of many recruits at multiple army bases.

The director of human resources department of the defense force, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, recently said in an discussion that the army was in a "reliable position" as "many thousands of recruits" were joining it, which he said was "a warning to our enemies".

Previous Origins of the Dispute

For more than half a century from 1890, the territory was ruled by Italian colonisers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then controlled by the British administration before becoming a associated territory of Ethiopia.

Yet in the early 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie I cancelled this arrangement and Eritrea became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A three-decade long internal conflict followed, ending with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Autonomy was then confirmed by voters in a referendum in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were good relations between the governments in Addis Ababa and Eritrea's capital, but they disagreed over the precise positioning of their common border, resulting in conflict in 1998.

Although this finished in a truce in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the neighbors remained at in dispute.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made approaches to Eritrea's leader President Isaias. The two agreed to a statement that the hostilities was finished – a action that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The both administrations were then cooperators in Ethiopia's 2020-2022 internal conflict in Tigray.

However ties have subsequently deteriorated again.