A Landlocked Empire and a Red Sea Gamble: Ethiopia and Eritrea Once Again Accuse Each Other of Open Warfare

According to Al Jazeera, Ethiopia has filed a complaint with the UN Security Council over what it called Eritrea's "full-scale invasion." In a letter addressed to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gideon Timotheos said Eritrean forces had advanced as deep as 60 kilometers (37 miles) into the Tigray region and demanded their immediate withdrawal. The letter, dated Thursday, stated that "Eritrea's full-scale invasion of parts of Ethiopia is a matter of documented public record" and warned that it constituted "a flagrant act of aggression triggering Ethiopia's inherent right of self-defense."

Eritrean Information Minister Yemani Ghebremeskel promptly responded on the social media platform X: "The Eritrean regime has, in fact, been engaged in a war of unprovoked aggression against Eritrea for more than three years." He stressed that, ever since the Abiy government publicly declared in 2023 that it would secure access to the sea, the Asmara side had been "exercising restraint," and accused Abiy of seeking to use the current conflict to seize the Eritrean Red Sea port of Assab in order to restore a corridor to the Red Sea. The Eritrean side also denied supporting the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

Diplomatic relations have already collapsed in advance. Ethiopia last week closed its embassy in Asmara and ordered ten Eritrean diplomats to leave the country; Eritrea promptly announced it was severing ties with Ethiopia.

Today's mutual exchange of fire did not erupt out of nowhere. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, a separation produced by colonial-era boundary demarcations that permanently turned landlocked Ethiopia away from its traditional maritime gateway through Eritrea, the ports of Assab, Massawa and others now becoming the sovereign assets of another state. In 1998 the two countries fought a two-year war triggered by a border dispute. During the Tigray war of 2020 to 2022, Eritrean forces fought shoulder to shoulder with the Abiy government against the TPLF, but the 2022 ceasefire agreement excluded Eritrea from the negotiations as a major frontline combatant, and Eritrea's security concerns were never formally admitted to the negotiating table, a circumstance that has since directly catalyzed the renewed shattering of bilateral relations.

On the battlefield, Ethiopian government forces retook the Tigrayan capital Mekelle over the past week. Citing multiple witnesses, AFP reported that anti-government forces have lost the Tigrayan cities of Shire and Adi Grat; one witness said Eritrean soldiers had been seen in Adi Grat before an Ethiopian drone strike. Al Jazeera noted that the TPLF is a member of a coalition of seven armed groups that has been attempting since September of this year to overthrow the Abiy government.

Abiy has repeatedly stated publicly that landlocked Ethiopia has "a right to access the sea," a claim Eritrea interprets as a long-standing threat to its territorial sovereignty. Yemani's language placed his own side's military operations inside a "defensive" semantic frame, despite Ethiopia's accusation that Eritrea supports the TPLF, a charge Eritrea denies; the underlying evidentiary details have not been disclosed in public reporting, and independent verification of how deep and when Eritrean forces actually entered Tigray remains absent.

The current crisis is the product of overlapping structural factors: colonial legacies fixed the original pattern of who owns a coastline and who is cut off from one; a border wound from 1998 that never truly healed continues to bleed; the 2022 peace talks that shut Eritrea out closed the door on using negotiations to secure long-term stability; and the steadily rising geopolitical value of the Red Sea as a global trade chokepoint amplifies the reverberations of every power play in the region. Between two parties whose militaries, economies and populations are starkly asymmetrical, civilians have never borne equal risk: the farmers of Tigray, the herders of the Eritrean highlands, the port workers of Assab all lack the match to ignite or extinguish this war.