Stop the Next Ethiopia-Eritrea War Before It Begins
As armies deploy, Gulf states and their Western allies must halt an impending conflict that could inflame the entire Red Sea region.
When the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan opposition signed a cessation of hostilities agreement in late 2022, the deal ended one of the most lethal wars of the 21st century. The conflict involved land armies of tens of thousands of troops, mechanized units, and air power more evocative of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (albeit with more advanced weaponry) than the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Credible estimates suggest that the death toll surpassed 600,000, which is likely an underestimate.
The Pretoria Agreement, named after the South African capital in which it was signed, provided for the establishment of an interim administration in Tigray, a small province in northern Ethiopia bordering Eritrea and Sudan. As that administration’s two-year anniversary approaches in mid-March, it is in critical condition.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) formed the vanguard of the movement to overthrow Ethiopia’s communist dictatorship, the Derg, in the 1990s and dominated the country—and the region’s—politics until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Abiy sidelined the TPLF and now its rival factions are engaged in a zero-sum struggle for dominance inside Tigray. One is led by TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael; the other by the interim administration’s president, Getachew Reda.
The political divides have infected the Tigrayan Defense Forces (TDF), which had fought both the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries in the last war. On March 10, Getachew ordered the removal of three senior army commanders, whom he accused of plotting against the interim administration in collusion with Debretsion’s faction. On March 11, reports emerged that dissident TDF units had seized control of eastern Tigray from the legitimate administration. The risk of a coup against the administration or the assassination of some of its leaders can no longer be ignored.
Amid broader regional and international disorder, the deterioration of the political and security situation in Tigray is dry tinder waiting for a match that could ignite an interstate war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Such a situation could create an international wildfire, exacerbating Sudan’s own civil war next door and generating further instability in the region.
Developments in the Horn of Africa have to be seen within the context of the rivalries amid the Gulf countries over control of the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia, for example, may not welcome the military presence of Ethiopia on the Red Sea coast, so long as Ethiopia is seen to be closely aligned with the United Arab Emirates.
The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the ruling party of Eritrea after it gained independence, fought alongside the TPLF against the Derg, but relations between the two grew acrimonious in the mid 1990s, resulting in a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998, sparked by a border dispute. After Abiy ascended to Ethiopia’s premiership in 2018, diluting the TPLF’s power, he moved swiftly to arrange a rapprochement with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki that then sustained the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments’ military cooperation against the Tigrayan forces during the war. However, this cooperation was subsequently severed by the Pretoria Agreement, which called for Eritrea to withdraw its forces but did not include Isaias as a signatory.
An atmosphere of mistrust and mutual recrimination now dominates. Addis Ababa accuses Asmara of undermining the Pretoria Agreement, destabilizing Tigray, and supporting insurgent groups elsewhere in Ethiopia. Asmara perceives landlocked Ethiopia’s calls for access to the Red Sea as a casus belli and Ethiopia’s attempt to establish a port year ago through Somaliland as a trial run to return Eritrea to Ethiopian sovereignty and gain control of its ports in Assab and Massawa.
The speed and scale of mobilization and deployment on all sides—the Ethiopian federal army, Eritrea’s Defense Forces, and the TDF—suggests that conflict is imminent. A vice president of the Tigray interim administration and one of Africa’s foremost generals, Tsadkhan Gebretensae, issued a public warning on the matter on March 10.
Prudence dictates that governments faced with hostile neighbors prepare for all contingencies. The risk, however, is that once mobilized for war, the prospective belligerents in Tigray, Addis Ababa, and Asmara will find it easier to proceed than to reverse course. Each side’s confidence in its own capacities may nonetheless prove short-lived.
A conflict is likely to drag on for months and years, destroying any semblance of security in the wider region on either side of the Red Sea and sucking in an ever-widening circle of external interests from the Middle East and further afield.
Put simply, a war in Tigray will not stay in Tigray. The Horn of Africa is already reeling from Sudan’s civil war, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis where every major Middle Eastern power as well as Ethiopia, Tigray, and Eritrea are involved. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) gave the TDF refuge and supplies during the Tigray war, and TDF units—along with the Eritrean Defense Forces—are operating in Sudan to support the SAF in its contest with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. South Sudan is on the brink of renewed, large-scale violence. Conflict between the Somali government Islamist militants in Somalia continues. From Yemen—less than 180 miles from the Eritrean coast—the Houthis continue to perpetrate attacks into the Red Sea.
The risks are compounded by a global landscape in which diplomatic norms are being subordinated to violent action that creates new facts on the ground. The respect for internationally recognized borders and state sovereignty that had stabilized the international order has eroded. Russia’s disregard for Ukraine’s borders and, in Africa, the Rwanda-backed seizure of swaths of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by the M23 insurgent group is not lost on other leaders with expansionist agendas in the region.
The blast radius of a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea provoked by the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement could consume northeast Africa and the geopolitically vital Red Sea as well. It would destroy what is left of Sudan, destabilize Chad, and create a highway of instability connecting the Sahel to the Red Sea.
This is no time for multilateral committees to design diplomatic processes. It is difficult to imagine that countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE would want to allow leaders in the Horn of Africa—over whom they have decisive influence—to turn the Red Sea into an extension of the conflicts in the Middle East that they are now trying to resolve with the United States. It is within their power to call for a halt to the current slide into conflict.
A direct and threatening show of high-level interest by a coalition of Western and Middle Eastern states in concert with the African Union, which midwifed the Pretoria Agreement, might freeze the protagonists and their backers, allowing time for serious and pragmatic diplomacy. This should aim to bring the local actors and related external interests in the Gulf and beyond to the table to find solutions to the conflict nexus of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan. At the very least, this could divert a headlong rush over the cliff.
Failing that, license will be given to those who may think they can get away with land grabs and the redrawing of borders without consequence— paving the road to anarchy on a scale that would surpass ongoing crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine and sending the entire Red Sea region into chaos.
Payton Knopf was the U.S. deputy special envoy for the Horn of Africa in the Biden administration, as well as an advisor to two presidential special envoys for Sudan and a U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.
Alexander Rondos is the former EU special representative for the Horn of Africa and is now co-chair of the Red Sea Study Group at the U.S. Institute of Peace.