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Growing worries are present about the possibility of military engagement among East African countries, the Ethiopian government and Eritrea, as aggressive discourse has ratcheted up in the last month.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Declared?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for passage to the maritime outlet through Eritrean territory has sparked a fierce verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in 2023 that his government's sea access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrean authorities dismissed.

Ties between the both governments have often been tense. Following a decades-long fight for sovereignty, Eritrea, which has a long sea border, formally separated from Ethiopia in 1993, rendering it cut off from the sea.

Five years later, a military clash started in which more than 100,000 people lost their lives.

Recent Statements from Ethiopian Officials

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have openly claimed sovereignty of Eritrean maritime facility of Assab – about 60km from the frontier - and suggested the desire to capture it through military means.

Recently, the Prime Minister said the country's "mistake" of losing access to the sea as a result of Eritrea secession would be "corrected soon".

The Ethiopian envoy to neighboring Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be returned "by force".

Eritrea's Reaction to the Statements

Despite ongoing warnings from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been limited to concise remarks on online platforms from Information Minister the minister.

Officials have denied Ethiopia's push for sea access calling it "hazardous" and a "harmful plan" of "territorial claims" – a policy of claiming back former lands.

The information ministry alerted on recently that attempts to legitimise "blatant hostility" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its neighbors and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Military Activities on the Region

Currently, there are no reports of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the two countries.

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

The leader of personnel division of the armed forces, General Hachalu, commented lately in an conversation that the defense forces was in a "secure situation" as "tens of thousands of recruits" were joining it, which he said was "a message to our adversaries".

Historical Roots of the Dispute

For over fifty years from 1890, Eritrea was governed by Italian colonisers.

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

Yet in the early 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie I terminated this arrangement and Eritrea became fully incorporated into the Ethiopian state.

A extended armed struggle followed, finishing with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Sovereignty was then approved by voters in a referendum in 1993.

Briefly in the 1990s, there were good relations between the authorities in Ethiopia's capital and Eritrea's capital, but they clashed over the specific demarcation of their common border, leading to conflict in 1998.

Though this finished in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the two nations remained at loggerheads.

This ended in 2018, when Abiy made approaches to Eritrean President President Isaias. The two agreed to a statement that the hostilities was concluded – a action that won Abiy the prestigious award.

The neighboring states were then cooperators in the country's recent civil war in Tigray.

But diplomatic connections have since broken down again.