15/10/2026
Are Ethiopia and Eritrea already at war?
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali began a new term this October facing renewed instability in the north of the country, while renewing a commitment to regain his country’s maritime access. Is the Horn of Africa close to an interstate war, or is it already in one?
Just hours after PM Abiy Ahmed was sworn in 5th October, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) confirmed to the BBC that it had withdrawn from Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, in what it said is a deliberate strategy to choose the staging ground for conflict with the Ethiopian federal forces.
Ethiopia has accused its neighbour Eritrea of sending troops across the border into northern Tigray to support the TPLF, and the two countries have since severed all diplomatic ties with each other. Eritrea has denied all claims that it has sent troops across the border.
A recent Reuters report indicates that Ethiopian troops have moved into a town in the northernmost part of the country, near the border with Eritrea, stoking fears of direct conflict between the two forces.
The reports and preceding events have triggered a renewed flurry of diplomatic effort to avert an all-out war, as analysts rightly fear such escalation would not be contained.
“Outright conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea would likely spread to the Red Sea, disrupting the African side of this strategic waterway,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent analysis. “It could also prove to be yet another front in the Horn that is easy to open and hard to close, especially once it becomes entangled in the mesh of disputes among neighbours and across the region.”
The real question right now might be whether the two countries are not headed into war, but are already in one.
Schrodinger’s war
Both Asmara and Addis Ababa have sent letters to the United Nations Security Council, stating starkly different positions.
In his letter, Eritrea’s foreign minist
