Eritrea Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Ethiopia as Fighting Spreads in the North

Addis Ababa expelled ten Eritrean diplomats and accused Asmara, Sudan and Egypt of backing an armed opposition alliance, a rupture that comes after the 2022 Tigray ceasefire.

Eritrea severed diplomatic relations with Ethiopia on Thursday after Addis Ababa closed its embassy in Asmara, Al Jazeera reported. Each government accuses the other of supporting armed conflict inside its territory, according to the South China Morning Post, and fighting has continued in northern Ethiopia since heavy clashes resumed last week.

Ethiopia declared ten Eritrean diplomats, including the charge d'affaires and officials accredited to the African Union, persona non grata for what it called activities threatening national security, and gave them 48 hours to leave. Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of supporting an armed opposition alliance led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Al Jazeera reported that hundreds have been killed or wounded since the fighting resumed, with the TPLF attacking into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

Asmara describes the dispute differently. Eritrea says Ethiopia has spent three years pursuing sovereign access to the Red Sea and has threatened Eritrean ports and coastal areas, a charge Addis Ababa rejects. Ethiopia, with more than 120 million people, has been landlocked since Eritrean independence in 1993 and routes the bulk of its trade through Djibouti, which gives the question of a second port economic weight independent of any territorial claim.

Neither state has confirmed direct military engagement between their regular forces. The 2020 to 2022 war in Tigray, in which Eritrean troops participated, killed an estimated several hundred thousand people and ended with a ceasefire that left the border question unresolved.

Veracity: Corroborated

84/100

If true, who benefits: Addis Ababa gains an external explanation for a domestic insurgency and a case for pressing its maritime access demand, Asmara gains international attention for its sovereignty claim over Assab, and Djibouti retains its transit monopoly and the fees that come with it while Ethiopian importers absorb higher freight costs.
The nuance: The diplomatic rupture and the expulsion of ten Eritrean diplomats are confirmed by multiple independent outlets, but each government's accusation of sponsoring the other's armed opponents is unverified, casualty counts come from the belligerents, and the claim that Addis Ababa rejects any designs on Eritrean ports sits uneasily with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's own public statement that the return of Assab is a matter of time.

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What this means

The mechanism is the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden corridor, which already carries a risk premium from attacks on shipping further north, and the Ethiopian economy's dependence on a single transit route through Djibouti. A widening conflict would raise Ethiopia's import costs, damage an economy that has been restructuring its external debt, and pull in Egypt and Sudan, both of which Addis Ababa accuses of backing the opposition alliance and both of which have their own disputes with Ethiopia over the Nile. Asmara wants to prevent any Ethiopian claim to a port and has an interest in keeping northern Ethiopia unsettled, while Addis Ababa needs the war contained to protect its reform programme. The likelier outcome over the coming months is sustained fighting inside northern Ethiopia with proxy support rather than declared interstate war, because neither government can finance a conventional campaign. Confirmed movement of Eritrean regular units across the border, or Ethiopian strikes on Eritrean territory, would mark the shift to the more dangerous case.

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