Ethiopia and Eritrea Are On The Brink Of War…Again

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Video originally published on December 6, 2025.

Ethiopian and Eritrean leaders have traded hostile rhetoric in recent weeks, triggering international fears of a fresh regional conflict. These fears are hardly new—talk of war between the two first surfaced in late 2023, and warning signs escalated to critical levels as recently as August before subsiding without open conflict. This time, however, the warning signs feel more ominous. All over Eritrea, the government has been ramping up its conscription drive with soldiers going door to door looking for young recruits and draft dodgers. Across the border, the Ethiopian foreign minister wrote to the UN Secretary General on October 2nd accusing Eritrea of funding and directing armed groups in the Amhara region to destabilize Addis Ababa. Beyond that, Prime Minister Abiy has continued to insist that Ethiopia will have access to the sea—access that could only be gained by annexing part of Eritrea. For regional observers, all the kindling is there to start another catastrophic war, and it's growing larger with each passing day.

Key Takeaways

Despite escalating rhetoric and military preparations, most regional experts believe a full-scale war between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains unlikely in the immediate term, though future escalation cannot be ruled out entirely.

Ethiopia is already stretched thin fighting insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, with more than 3,000 government soldiers reportedly killed in recent operations, making it difficult to open a new front against Eritrea.

Eritrea faces a dire manpower crisis, with widespread desertion from its forced conscription army and the government resorting to punishing families of those who flee as a deterrence measure.

Both nations are uncertain where international support would fall if war broke out, with potential involvement from the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Sudanese Armed Forces complicating the regional calculus.

The most likely scenario is a proxy war in the Tigray region, potentially involving factions of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front siding with Eritrea against the Ethiopian government, risking a coordinated multi-front insurgency.

De-escalation requires difficult concessions from both sides and effective mediation, possibly from the African Union or the United States, to prevent a conflict that would further destabilize a region already devastated by wars in Sudan and Somalia.

Is War Inevitable?

The most important question facing the Horn of Africa is whether war between Eritrea and Ethiopia is inevitable. According to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed himself, it isn't. During a speech in parliament, he stated: "We have no intention of going to war, rather we firmly believe the issue can be resolved peacefully."

While taking a war criminal at his word might seem naive, most regional experts appear to agree with this assessment. Professor Clionadh Raleigh, the President and CEO of the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data Project (ACLED), wrote: "A direct confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea is unlikely despite the threat of military action in both countries."

Rene Lefort, an observer of Ethiopian politics since the 1970s, wrote in the local Ethiopian outlet the Addis Standard: "Many argue that another large-scale conflict is inevitable. While future escalation cannot be ruled out entirely, a full-blown war in the immediate term remains unlikely."

For most analysts, the reasons why a full-scale war isn't inevitable are straightforward. First, according to Lefort, the Ethiopian government is already stretched thin fighting insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, and it can't afford to open up a new front. In Amhara, more than 3,000 government soldiers were reportedly killed as part of Operation Arbegna Adem Ali—a recent military campaign launched by the Fano insurgents. While these numbers haven't been independently verified and are inherently biased because they were provided by the Fano, they do illustrate the scale of the fighting happening in the region and why Addis Ababa might feel uncomfortable drawing soldiers away to fight Asmara.

Second, even if Ethiopia could quell all of the insurgencies happening within its own borders and marshall all its troops to face Asmara, victory isn't guaranteed. The last time Ethiopia and Eritrea fought an all-out war in 1998, Ethiopia failed to seize the port of Assab—a mere 60km from the border—despite having air superiority and a nation that was mostly at peace. If the same happens again, it will be a major blow to Abiy Ahmed and his military, especially given that Ethiopia is the larger and more economically powerful country.

All the headwinds that Ethiopia is facing might seem to give Eritrea the advantage, but Asmara has its own problems. As a former recruit told Dr. Mohamed Kheir Omer, a researcher writing for New Lines Magazine, Asmara has ramped up its conscription drive, which indicates that the country is in the throes of a dire manpower crisis. According to Human Rights Watch, desertion is common in the Eritrean army—which uses a forced conscription model—and as a result the government has resorted to punishing the families of those who flee in an attempt at deterrence. But even that hasn't stopped the exodus, which means Eritrea's military readiness and morale is questionable at best.

The International Dimension

There's also the fact that Ethiopia and Eritrea aren't sure where international support would fall if a war were to break out. Ethiopia can probably rely on the UAE to support it, because Abu Dhabi has been a long time backer of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The UAE supports Abiy not just because it loves sticking its oar into East African conflicts—such as by supporting the genocidal RSF in Sudan's civil war—but because Abiy's goal of getting Ethiopia a port on the Red Sea dovetails with the Emirates' goal of becoming the dominant maritime power in the region.

According to Michael Woldemariam, the Ph.D. program director in the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, in a piece for Foreign Policy, if the UAE gets involved on Ethiopia's side, Egypt and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) would probably intervene on Eritrea's side to prevent the UAE from establishing an even stronger foothold in the region.

However, it isn't a guarantee that regional powers would intervene. The Sudanese conflict has transformed into a gruelling stalemate after the fall of El Fasher to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and no one is sure which side will emerge victorious. So it's unclear whether the SAF would be willing to commit precious troops and equipment to another war.

Additionally, there's the question of optics, particularly for the UAE. After the fall of El-Fasher and the subsequent genocide that resulted in bloodstains so large they were visible from space, the UAE faced intense international scrutiny for its backing of the RSF. Getting involved in another Horn of Africa conflict, especially one where the humanitarian costs could rival or exceed those of Sudan, would be a PR nightmare that even Abu Dhabi's sophisticated lobbying apparatus might struggle to contain.

The U.S. also plays a part in any calculus on whether to go to war or not. Woldemariam notes that both Ethiopia and Eritrea are racing to repair bilateral ties with Washington, however, these have their own hurdles to overcome. For Ethiopia it's the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The first Trump administration considered withholding some aid to Ethiopia over the dam's construction as a pressure tactic to resolve the feud between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt over the dam.

Eritrea, on the other hand, has a much deeper diplomatic hole to dig itself out of, as decades of anti-U.S. sentiments means that it has few friends in Washington it can rely on to push its agenda. However, a source that spoke to New Lines Magazine said that there were Saudi-mediated talks between Washington and Asmara. And given Saudi Arabia's close ties to the Trump administration, Eritrea might have found a back channel to American influence. If Riyadh can successfully position itself as a broker between Eritrea and the U.S., it could shift the entire regional balance of power and potentially give Asmara the diplomatic cover it needs to take a harder line against Ethiopia.

This is a big if. Other than the source that spoke to New Lines, there are no other mentions of Saudi-mediated back channel communications between Washington and Asmara. This isn't to say that they don't exist, just that if they do, they're being kept remarkably quiet. And in a region where even minor diplomatic moves tend to leak as a way to project influence, that suggests either an impressive level of discipline or that the talks aren't as substantial as suggested.

Why the Concern Remains

With all these reasons why a full-scale war isn't likely to break out, one might reasonably ask why concern persists. If conflict would be so costly for both sides as to be suicidal, surely there's no need to worry?

Sadly, we don't live in an era of common sense. If we did, we wouldn't have seen Russia sacrifice hundreds of thousands of men to secure minor gains in the Donbas. Wouldn't have seen Hamas launch a brutal attack on Israel that they must've known would end in the destruction of Gaza. Wouldn't have seen two Sudanese generals turn their own nation into a burnt-out hellscape in the pursuit of power.

And now the fear is that good strategic sense won't be enough to restrain Ethiopia and Eritrea either.

A Proxy War

For regional experts, there's one very good reason to worry that war may be on the horizon. According to a retired Ethiopian general who spoke with Dr. Mohamed Kheir Omer on the condition of anonymity, it's because both Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea, want a war. Quoting him: "Both Abiy and Isaias want war, but their own limits trap them."

That would explain the contradictions we are seeing. Prime Minister Abiy insists that he wants peace, yet his army chief of staff made one of the most provocative statements of the conflict, recently saying: "Today we are 130 million (of us); in 25 years we will be 200 million, and 2 million people cannot determine the fate of those." A reference to the fact that Ethiopia's population is orders of magnitude larger than Eritrea's. In other words: "If we decide we want a port, we're numerous enough to take it from you."

This isn't pure warmongering, and Ethiopia has some historical claims to the port of Assab. One of the conditions of Eritrean independence—which took effect in the early 1990s—was that Addis Ababa would retain access to the port. This, though, was rescinded during that 1998 war, and Ethiopia hasn't been allowed access since.

Not that this historic claim makes it any less concerning to see Addis Ababa banging the war drum. A drum that Eritrea is also beating with equal fury. Eritrea keeps denouncing Ethiopian aggression but at the same time, it's ramping up its conscriptions, and the Eritrean army is making its own aggressive remarks. According to the BBC, the Eritrean army warned Ethiopian leaders against leading their country into a quagmire, saying: "The fate of anyone crossing the red line is plunging into an abyss from which they will never have a second chance to learn."

However, as the retired general noted, while both leaders might want a war, they are very cognizant of their own limits.

The Most Likely Outcome

If we won't see a full-scale war, what is the most likely outcome? Most analysts believe that in place of a full-scale war, we are likely to see a proxy war in the Tigray region—the northern Ethiopian province that borders Eritrea and was the scene of its own horrific civil war between 2020 and 2022. A civil war that saw Ethiopia and Eritrea put aside their differences to jointly invade, resulting in the deaths of perhaps 600,000 people, and what were likely the worst war crimes of the decade prior to the fall of El-Fasher. It also ended with an awkward peace deal—one in which the Tigrayans and Ethiopia's federal government agreed to end hostilities, but then excluded Eritrea from the talks—a big contributor to the tensions we are seeing now.

As to what a new proxy war in Tigray would look like, it's up for debate. But most analysts agree it would most likely see factions of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the armed group that fought against both Addis Ababa and Asmara in 2020, side with Eritrea against the Ethiopian government.

If the idea of the TPLF siding with Eritrea sounds like a head-scratcher, given that just a few short years ago they were on opposing sides of a brutal war, it makes perfect sense when you remember this simple fact: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Despite the war ending with a peace deal, the TPLF and Addis Ababa are far from being considered friends.

And speaking of common enemies, there's also the risk that the various separate armed groups within Ethiopia form a united front against Addis Ababa. This is the worst case scenario, and there are no guarantees that it would happen. Such a coalition would never cover all of Ethiopia's armed groups—the idea of the Amhara and the Oromo militias putting aside their differences is even wilder than the Tigrayans and the Eritreans making common cause.

However, if the TPLF side with Asmara, and Addis Ababa has already accused Eritrea of funding the Fano rebels in Amhara, it might mean that Abiy's government ends up facing a coordinated multi-front insurgency. An insurgency in which achieving its goal of overthrowing the government would immediately lead to another round of fighting between any forces left standing.

If events do go down the route of such a proxy war, and the worst case scenario materializes, it risks becoming an even messier conflict than what we saw from 2020 to 2022.

A Way Out

According to Ahmed Soliman and Dr. Abel Demissie, research fellows at Chatham House's Africa Program, de-escalation is urgently needed to prevent Ethiopia and Eritrea from going to war.

That is easier said than done, since any agreement to deescalate will require a lot of mediation. On Ethiopia's end, it might mean difficult concessions like looking away from the port of Assab to fulfil its growing maritime demand to other ports that come with a lot less geopolitical baggage such as Lamu in Kenya or exploring Djibouti's proposal for a controlled port. For Eritrea on the other hand, it means accepting that Ethiopia's quest for sea access isn't going away any time soon, and that stonewalling only increases the chances of the very military confrontation Asmara claims it wants to avoid.

According to Abdurahman Sayed, a UK-based expert on the Horn of Africa, speaking with DW, the African Union (AU) would be the right body to mediate this conflict, however, they have a legacy of failure that makes it difficult for any nation to trust them. He stated: "The African Union has always had a chronic problem when it came to addressing issues of conflict within Africa, but also within Ethiopia, too."

If the African Union is unable to deescalate the conflict, then according to Woldemariam, it might fall to the U.S. to address it. In his view, the Trump administration could pressure both sides into making concessions since both Ethiopia and Eritrea are interested in improving ties with Washington.

Woldemariam writes in Foreign Policy that it doesn't matter who brings both sides to the table, the only thing that matters is avoiding a war. Quoting him: "Whatever the formula for de-escalation, the bottom line is that the Horn of Africa, and the world, cannot afford another Eritrea-Ethiopia war. It would further destabilize a region already racked by a constellation of devastating conflicts from Sudan to Somalia. And it would take generations for the region and its people to recover."

Will that be enough to prevent a catastrophe? In this era of disintegrating international norms and the rise of "might makes right," it's depressingly common to see two powers deciding that the only way to settle their differences is on the battlefield.

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FAQ

Is war between Ethiopia and Eritrea inevitable?

According to most regional experts, a full-scale war is unlikely in the immediate term. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has stated Ethiopia has no intention of going to war and believes the issue can be resolved peacefully. Experts like Professor Clionadh Raleigh of ACLED and observer Rene Lefort agree that while future escalation cannot be ruled out entirely, a full-blown war remains unlikely due to both countries facing significant military and strategic constraints.

Why can't Ethiopia afford to go to war with Eritrea?

Ethiopia is already stretched thin fighting insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara regions. In Amhara alone, more than 3,000 government soldiers were reportedly killed in Operation Arbegna Adem Ali. Additionally, Ethiopia failed to seize the port of Assab during the 1998 war despite having air superiority and a peaceful nation, so victory against Eritrea is not guaranteed even if Ethiopia could marshal all its troops.

What military challenges does Eritrea face?

Eritrea is experiencing a dire manpower crisis. The country has ramped up its conscription drive with soldiers going door to door looking for recruits and draft dodgers. Desertion is common in the Eritrean army, which uses forced conscription, and the government has resorted to punishing families of those who flee as deterrence. This means Eritrea's military readiness and morale are questionable at best.

Which countries might get involved if war breaks out?

Ethiopia can likely rely on UAE support, as Abu Dhabi has been a longtime backer of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and shares his goal of Red Sea access. If the UAE intervenes, Egypt and the Sudanese Armed Forces would probably support Eritrea to prevent the UAE from establishing a stronger regional foothold. However, given Sudan's ongoing civil war stalemate, it's unclear if the SAF would commit troops. Saudi Arabia may also play a role through potential mediation between Eritrea and the United States.

What is the most likely scenario if conflict occurs?

Most analysts believe the most likely outcome is a proxy war in the Tigray region rather than a full-scale war. This would likely see factions of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) siding with Eritrea against the Ethiopian government, despite having fought against Eritrea in 2020-2022. The worst-case scenario involves a coordinated multi-front insurgency with various Ethiopian armed groups forming a united front against Addis Ababa.

Why does Ethiopia want access to the Red Sea?

Ethiopia seeks maritime access for its growing economy. The country has historical claims to the port of Assab—one condition of Eritrean independence in the early 1990s was that Ethiopia would retain access to the port. However, this access was rescinded during the 1998 war between the two countries. Prime Minister Abiy has continued to insist that Ethiopia will have access to the sea, which could only be gained by annexing part of Eritrea.

What would it take to prevent war between Ethiopia and Eritrea?

According to Chatham House researchers, de-escalation requires difficult concessions from both sides. Ethiopia would need to look away from the port of Assab and explore alternatives like Lamu in Kenya or Djibouti's controlled port proposal. Eritrea must accept that Ethiopia's quest for sea access isn't going away and that stonewalling increases confrontation risks. Effective mediation from the African Union or the United States would be necessary, though the AU has a legacy of failure in conflict resolution.

What was the Tigray War and how does it relate to current tensions?

The Tigray War (2020-2022) saw Ethiopia and Eritrea jointly invade the Tigray region, resulting in perhaps 600,000 deaths and what were likely the worst war crimes of the decade prior to the fall of El-Fasher in Sudan. The war ended with an awkward peace deal where Tigrayans and Ethiopia's federal government agreed to end hostilities but excluded Eritrea from the talks—a major contributor to current tensions.

Sources

About the Author

Wilfred M. Waimiri

Wilfred M. Waimiri creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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