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Growing concerns are present about the potential of armed conflict involving Horn of Africa neighbors, the Ethiopian government and Eritrea, as hostile rhetoric has ratcheted up in the past few weeks.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Stated?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, calls for entry to the sea coast through Eritrea has provoked a fierce war of words.

PM Abiy Ahmed initially stated publicly in 2023 that his government's access to the sea was an vital issue, remarks that Eritrea rejected.

Relations between the neighboring nations have often been tense. After a decades-long struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive sea border, legally broke away from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, leaving it cut off from the sea.

Five years later, a territorial conflict broke out in which over a hundred thousand people were killed.

Recent Statements from Ethiopian Government

Abiy and military leader the army commander have openly claimed ownership of Eritrea's coastal city of the port of Assab – about 60km from the frontier - and implied the desire to seize it militarily.

Recently, the Prime Minister said the country's "blunder" of losing entry to the sea as a due to Eritrea secession would be "addressed in the future".

Ethiopia's ambassador to neighboring Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be given back "using武力".

Eritrean Reaction to the Claims

Despite continuous warnings from Ethiopian officials, Asmara's position has been limited to brief comments on social media from Communications Head the minister.

Officials have denied Ethiopian requests for access to the Red Sea describing it as "risky" and a "negative policy" of "territorial claims" – a approach of retaking former lands.

The information ministry alerted on 16 September that efforts to validate "obvious provocation" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Movements on the Ground

There have been no reports of large-scale army activities in the boundary zones between the neighboring states.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, government media has shown graduation ceremonies of numerous trainees at multiple army bases.

The head of personnel division of the defense force, General Hachalu, commented lately in an discussion that the military was in a "secure situation" as "numerous of recruits" were entering service, which he said was "a message to our opponents".

Previous Origins of the Tension

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

After World War II, it was then administered by the British administration before becoming a integrated region of the Ethiopian empire.

But in 1962 Emperor Haile Selassie I terminated this arrangement and Eritrea became fully incorporated into the Ethiopian state.

A three-decade long civil war ensued, ending with Ethiopia's defeat in the early 1990s. Independence was then endorsed by the population in a vote in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the governments in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they disagreed over the precise positioning of their mutual frontier, causing conflict in 1998.

Although this concluded in a peace deal in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the two nations continued at loggerheads.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrean President the president. The two signed a announcement that the conflict was over – a decision that gained Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The both administrations were then cooperators in the country's recent internal conflict in Tigray.

But ties have later worsened anew.