November 7, 2025

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Ethiopia and Eritrea Edge Toward a Renewed War in the Horn of Africa

(AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

• On Wednesday night, authorities in Ethiopia’s Afar region accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) — from the neighboring Tigray region — of launching fresh attacks across their shared border, in what officials call a serious violation of the 2022 peace deal that ended Ethiopia’s brutal northern war. According to authorities, the TPLF crossed into Afar on Wednesday, seized six villages, and shelled civilian areas with mortars, including herders in the Megale district. Afar authorities condemned what they called “acts of terror” and warned that their forces would defend themselves if the attacks continued. These renewed clashes mark one of the most serious flare-ups since the peace agreement between Ethiopia’s federal government and the TPLF three years ago. 

Between 2020 and 2022, northern Ethiopia was the epicenter of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts in recent memory. The war pitted the federal government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed against the TPLF, which governed the Tigray region and had once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. The conflict killed an estimated 600,000 people, displaced millions, and drew in neighboring Eritrea, which fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces, viewing the TPLF as a long-standing existential threat dating back to the 1998–2000 border war. The war was also characterized by reports of atrocities committed by all sides — including massacres, sexual violence, and blockades that created famine-like conditions. 

Although the Pretoria Agreement formally ended the fighting between Ethiopia’s federal government in Addis Ababa and the TPLF, it also left many questions unresolved. Eritrea regarded the agreement as a direct betrayal of its wartime objectives which were to eliminate the TPLF as a political and military force. From Eritrea’s perspective, the accord legitimized rather than dismantled the TPLF — the same organization it had fought for decades and sought to eliminate permanently during the war. By reestablishing the TPLF as a political actor within Ethiopia’s federal system, the agreement, in Eritrea’s view, preserved a hostile force along its border. Because Eritrea was neither consulted nor included in the talks, it felt Ethiopia’s federal government deliberately tried to sideline its interests and claim unilateral credit for ending the war.  

In response, Eritrean forces remained in parts of northern Tigray for months after the Pretoria Agreement was signed, carrying out security and clearance operations against alleged TPLF remnants, while maintaining de facto control over several towns and border crossings, which Ethiopia viewed as a spoiler to peace implementation and a violation of their national sovereignty. These developments served as a catalyst for the eventual deterioration of relations between the two neighboring countries and by mid-2023 Ethiopia began reasserting central control in the north and pushing Eritrean forces to withdraw from Tigray. 

By 2024, Abiy Ahmed began to pursue a policy of recentralizing authority over the entire country’s ethnically based regional states to consolidate power domestically. To Eritrea, this strategy appeared dangerous as it had long viewed a strong, unified Ethiopia a danger to its own national identity ––harkening back to the decades of conflict and domination before Eritrea’s independence. This was also a dangerous policy to the TPLF who hoped to enjoy some sense of its own political legitimacy after the Pretoria Agreement. These shifting political dynamics have drawn the TPLF and Eritrea into cautious alignment and the TPLF has sought to exploit the growing rift between Ethiopia and Eritrea to counter federal pressure and consolidate its influence within Tigray.  

Against this backdrop, tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea have grown even higher over the past year. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears increasingly focused on redefining Ethiopia’s strategic posture — looking beyond domestic instability with the TPLF toward the country’s place in the regional order. He has sought to channel national attention toward a broader vision: reclaiming what he describes as Ethiopia’s rightful access to the Red Sea, now obstructed by Eritrea. 

For Abiy, the Red Sea is more than a question of economics or logistics; it has become a symbolic cornerstone of national identity and sovereignty. Since Eritrea’s independence in 1993 left Ethiopia landlocked, successive governments have grappled with the reality of depending almost entirely on Djibouti for seaborne trade, something Abiy has begun to frame as a historic injustice that Ethiopia must eventually correct. 

While regional analysts have long warned of rising tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the situation has escalated markedly in recent weeks. In early October, Addis Ababa formally notified the UN Secretary-General that Eritrea was “actively preparing for war” and collaborating with the TPLF to “destabilize and fragment” Ethiopia. Asmara dismissed the accusations as a “deceitful charade,” yet responded by mobilizing its internal reserve forces and sending Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in an effort to deepen Eritrean alignment with Egypt — a country whose own relations with Ethiopia have strained over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile, which Cairo fears will threaten its vital water supply. 

Simultaneously, according to The Defense Post, satellite imagery from early this year revealed mounting troop concentrations on the more than 600-mile Ethiopia-Eritrea frontier, especially near the port of Assab, which Ethiopia has repeatedly identified as a strategic priority for maritime access. Eritrea sees Ethiopia's activity as an attempt at encirclement or coercion, while Ethiopia interprets Eritrea’s military posture as interference in its domestic affairs (particularly in Tigray).  

On October 28, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed Ethiopia’s parliament in one of his most overt and pointed speeches in recent years. Abiy declared that Ethiopia’s claim to the Red Sea was “irreversible” and warned that “once war begins, the outcome is clear — we have reliable capability; no one can stop us.” He emphasized that no official decision or legal document exists outlining how Ethiopia lost access to the sea after Eritrea’s 1993 independence, implying that Addis Ababa retains legal and historic recourse to maritime access via Eritrean territory 

Many interpret the speech as a strategic escalation — not only a diplomatic demand, but a prelude to possible coercive measures or concrete military action. A renewed conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea would likely not remain contained within the Horn of Africa. Both nations sit at the crossroads of vital shipping routes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — the narrow chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden — through which roughly 10 percent of global trade and much of Europe’s energy supply flows. A war in this region could disrupt maritime traffic, threaten Red Sea port infrastructure, and draw in outside powers already invested in the area — from Egypt and Sudan to Gulf monarchies and Western navies stationed in Djibouti. It would also further destabilize a region already contending with multiple crises: Sudan’s civil war, Somalia’s fragile political order, and Yemen’s ongoing Houthi conflict across the waterway.