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Increasing apprehensions have emerged about the possibility of warfare involving East African neighbours, Ethiopia and the Eritrean government, as aggressive rhetoric has ratcheted up in the past few weeks.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Declared?

Landlocked Ethiopia's requests for entry to the sea coast through Eritrea has triggered a heated verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in 2023 that his nation's access to the sea was an existential matter, comments that Eritrean authorities ignored.

Ties between the neighboring nations have regularly been difficult. Following a decades-long battle for independence, Eritrea, which has a long sea border, formally separated from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, rendering it landlocked.

Subsequently, a border war broke out in which numerous people were killed.

Recent Statements from Ethiopia's Government

Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have openly claimed ownership of Eritrean maritime facility of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the boundary - and hinted at the intention to capture it through military means.

On 1 September, Abiy said the country's "mistake" of losing access to the Red Sea as a result of Eritrea secession would be "corrected in the future".

Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, retired Gen Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "belonging to Ethiopia" and would be restored "through military action".

Eritrean Answer to the Statements

Amid persistent warnings from Ethiopia, Eritrea's response has been restricted to concise remarks on social media from Communications Head Yemane Gebremeskel.

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's demand for access to the Red Sea calling it "risky" and a "harmful plan" of "irredentism" – a strategy of reclaiming previous domains.

Eritrean authorities alerted on 16 September that moves to validate "obvious provocation" would have significant repercussions for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Movements on the Ground

There have been little evidence of significant troop deployments in the frontier regions between the both nations.

Nonetheless, in Ethiopia, national TV has shown completion events of thousands of cadets at various military training camps.

The leader of staff section of the defense force, the officer, commented lately in an conversation that the army was in a "secure situation" as "many thousands of young people" were entering service, which he said was "a message to our adversaries".

Previous Origins of the Dispute

For over fifty years from 1890, the territory was administered by Italian rulers.

Following Italy's defeat, it was then managed by the British military before evolving into a integrated region of the Ethiopian empire.

But in the early 1960s the Ethiopian emperor terminated this arrangement and the region became fully incorporated into Ethiopia.

A thirty-year internal conflict ensued, finishing with Ethiopia's defeat in the early 1990s. Autonomy was then endorsed by Eritreans in a plebiscite in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Ethiopia's capital and Eritrea's capital, but they clashed over the specific demarcation of their mutual frontier, resulting in hostilities in 1998.

Even though this finished in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the both countries remained at loggerheads.

This ended in 2018, when Abiy made overtures to Eritrea's leader Isaias Afwerki. The two endorsed a statement that the conflict was over – a move that won the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The two governments were then partners in Ethiopia's 2020-2022 internal conflict in Tigray.

However relations have later worsened once more.