Issue No. 267

Last week, Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) Major General Alemeshet Degife gave an interview for state television. The controversial senior military commander, returned in November 2020 by PM Abiy Ahmed for the Tigray war, spoke about a number of topics, including the status of the Fano insurgency in Amhara and Ethiopia's relationship with Eritrea and Egypt. He gave several insights into the often subterranean thinking of the federal government. 

Degife, the senior advisor to the ENDF Chief of Staff, called Eritrea and Egypt the "historical enemies" of Ethiopia– marking yet another senior government official to signal the deteriorated relationship between Addis and Asmara. Similar rhetoric towards Cairo has ebbed and flowed over the years. Still, it remains extraordinary for a military official to refer to Egypt as a "historical" enemy and a sign of how influential the army has become in Ethiopia. For decades, the two countries have competed over access to the Nile water basin, which flows from the Ethiopian highlands and is considered existential by Cairo. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which now reportedly requires another ETB 80bn despite 'nearing completion,' has proved a successive flashpoint since 2011. 

Regarding Eritrea, meanwhile, Degife's comments underscored the decline of the infamous love-in between Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed. It was also the latest in a growing number of anti-Asmara stances taken by senior Ethiopian federal officials. In September 2024, ENDF Chief of Staff Berhanu Jula acknowledged that Eritrean troops were responsible for "terrible actions" in Adwa, Adigrat, and Axum in Tigray. While not going nearly far enough to describe the deliberate massacres of hundreds of civilians and obscuring the Ethiopian role, it marked a definitive split in the rhetoric coming from Addis. Further criticisms of October's Tripartite Alliance between Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt were to follow, if mostly ambiguously worded. Most recently, in December, a critical documentary entitled 'Asmara Government's Matter' released by the state-owned Fana Broadcasting was published in an apparent response to an interview by Isaias Afwerki with Eritrean television.

In one of his favourite attacks, the Eritrean president criticised the 1994 Ethiopian constitution that established an ethnic-federal system, asserting that several conflicts, including the Tigray war, can be ascribed to it. Unsurprisingly, no mention was made of his own role in stoking hatred towards Tigrayans and Eritrea's devastating invasion of the region in November 2020. 

Though Eritrea opposed the Pretoria agreement in November 2022-- preferring to continue the genocidal war against Tigray-- it was Abiy's aspirations for vaguely worded 'sea access' that caused bilateral relations to take a steep dive in 2023. Repeat statements were made about forcibly 'restoring' Ethiopia's historical access to the Red Sea, and particularly Assab, which was lost upon Eritrean independence 30 years ago, triggering alarm in a number of Ethiopia's smaller neighbours.  

While talk of invading Eritrea cooled in 2024 after the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland, Eritrean officials remain on war footing. Internal Eritrean discussions have continued to emphasise the existential threat that Ethiopia poses to the country. Increasing mobilisation and manoeuvres on the international border have been reported in recent months, particularly near the Eritrean-occupied Zalambessa town in Tigray. The threat of a broader direct conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia remains very much alive. This may have partially motivated Addis' silence towards the continued violent occupation of the Eritrean army in Tigray, but the federal government also appears satisfied with a politically divided and distracted Tigray. Though the Pretoria agreement was signed over two years, Ethiopia's federal government appears no more likely to compel an Eritrean military withdrawal. 

Today, Eritrea and Ethiopia are on different sides of the contentious MoU and the Sudan war. In 2024, Asmara seized upon the deteriorated Mogadishu-Addis relations to further draw Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud into its fold. Just two weeks after the signing of the 'Ankara Declaration' on 11 December, Hassan Sheikh was back in Asmara, seeking to assuage the concerns of Isaias. Though there has been a gradual detente established between Mogadishu and Addis, Ethiopia clearly perceives Asmara as a pernicious influence on its neighbour.

Though Saudi Arabia and the UAE were instrumental in negotiating the detente between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, the Saudi-Emirati schism has since upended the Red Sea's politics. Eritrea, in particular, has established a closer alliance with Saudi Arabia and, increasingly, Egypt– both close allies of the Sudanese army. Asmara is currently training several militias from eastern Sudan– predominantly drawn from the Beni-Amer and Beja ethnic groups, forces that were once used to destabilise the Omar al-Bashir regime. Addis, meanwhile, is one of the principal beneficiaries of Emirati largesse, with Abu Dhabi believed to be underwriting the imperial palace in the capital's Yeka hills. The Ethiopian relationship with the Rapid Support Forces is more contested.

In Degife's interview, he also stated that the Ethiopian army would soon withdraw to military camps in the Amhara region and leave the fighting against Fano to police and militia. If accurate, that would mark an extraordinary about-turn by the federal government that has pursued a highly militaristic policy against the disparate insurgent forces to date. This, too, will have implications for the Addis-Asmara relationship, with Eritrea hosting and arming several Fano militias with which it established a close relationship during the Tigray war. And Degife's comments that the ENDF may withdraw from Amhara, with numerous yet unknown consequences, to prepare for future large-scale conflicts were ominous. Still, any invasion of Eritrea would likely require the support of Mekelle, which remains riven by a schism within and between two factions of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). The region remains devastated by the two-year war, and though the Tigray Defence Forces is an effective and professional fighting force, its leaders would not countenance prosecuting a war for 'sea access.'

During the years of Meles Zenawi– when Ethiopia was the Horn's undisputed hegemonic power, Addis was able to shut out Eritrea, making it a regional pariah. But as Ethiopia's power and image have waned, Asmara has been transformed from 'victim' to 'kingmaker,' according to the regime's own rhetoric. Isaias has increasingly cast himself as the stable, venerable statesman of the Horn of Africa, even as he actively works to secure his destabilising interests in Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia. As it actively celebrates the transition to the 'multi-polar' world, Eritrea is also forging closer alliances with China, Iran, and Russia. 

Degife's interview was revealing, but trying to guess the next steps of the Abiy government can be a fool's errand. And though the tensions between Addis and Mogadishu have eased somewhat, though it may not last, the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as Ethiopia and Egypt, are at their lowest ebb in years. The risk of further conflict in the Horn, either proxy or direct, remains high.