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Increasing concerns exist regarding the chance of warfare involving Horn of Africa neighbours, the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government, as hostile rhetoric has intensified in the last month.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Stated?

Landlocked Ethiopia's demands for access to the sea coast through Eritrea has triggered a fierce rhetorical conflict.

The Ethiopian leader first openly declared in last year that his government's sea access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrean authorities dismissed.

Relations between the two countries have often been tense. Following a decades-long battle for independence, the Eritrean state, which has a long sea border, legally broke away from Ethiopian rule in 1993, making it cut off from the sea.

In 1998, a military clash erupted in which more than 100,000 people were killed.

Latest Statements from Ethiopian Leadership

Abiy and army chief the army commander have publicly asserted control of Eritrea's coastal city of Assab – some 60 km from the border - and implied the intention to seize it militarily.

In early September, Abiy said Ethiopia's "mistake" of being denied passage to the Red Sea as a due to Eritrean independence would be "corrected in the future".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "belonging to Ethiopia" and would be restored "using武力".

Eritrean Response to the Statements

Despite persistent challenges from Ethiopian officials, Eritrea's response has been limited to short statements on X from Communications Head Yemane Gebremeskel.

Officials have denied Ethiopia's demand for sea access describing it as "dangerous" and a "negative policy" of "expansionism" – a approach of claiming back previous domains.

Eritrean authorities alerted on recently that efforts to legitimise "flagrant aggression" would have significant repercussions for Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Movements on the Region

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

Nonetheless, in the country, national TV has displayed graduation ceremonies of numerous trainees at different defense facilities.

The head of human resources department of the military, the officer, recently said in an conversation that the defense forces was in a "secure situation" as "tens of thousands of young people" were joining it, which he said was "a signal to our enemies".

Previous Roots of the Tension

For over fifty years from the late 19th century, Eritrea was administered by Italian colonisers.

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

However in the early 1960s the Ethiopian emperor ended this arrangement and the region became fully incorporated into Ethiopia.

A extended armed struggle occurred, ending with Ethiopia's defeat in the early 1990s. Independence was then confirmed by voters in a vote in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the governments in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they clashed over the precise positioning of their shared boundary, causing war in 1998.

Even though this finished in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the two nations remained at loggerheads.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made approaches to Eritrean President the president. The two signed a statement that the war was finished – a action that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The both administrations were then cooperators in Ethiopia's previous internal conflict in the northern region.

However relations have subsequently deteriorated once more.