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Increasing worries exist regarding the potential of warfare involving East African neighbours, the Ethiopian government and Eritrea, as confrontational rhetoric has intensified in the past few weeks.

What Did Ethiopia Stated?

Landlocked Ethiopia's requests for passage to the sea coast through Eritrea has provoked a intense verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed initially stated publicly in last year that his nation's access to the sea was an existential matter, remarks that Eritrea dismissed.

Relations between the both governments have frequently been strained. Following a long-standing struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a long maritime frontage, formally separated from Ethiopian rule in 1993, rendering it cut off from the sea.

Subsequently, a border war started in which over a hundred thousand people lost their lives.

Current Remarks from Ethiopia's Leadership

Prime Minister Abiy and military leader General Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted ownership of Eritrea's southern port of Assab – approximately 60 kilometers from the boundary - and implied the intention to seize it militarily.

On 1 September, the Prime Minister said the country's "blunder" of losing entry to the Red Sea as a due to Eritrean independence would be "rectified soon".

The Ethiopian envoy to neighboring Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be given back "by force".

Eritrean Answer to the Statements

In the face of persistent warnings from Ethiopia, Asmara's position has been confined to short statements on social media from Information Minister Yemane G..

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for maritime entry labeling it "risky" and a "negative policy" of "expansionism" – a policy of claiming back previous domains.

Eritrean authorities alerted on 16 September that efforts to validate "blatant hostility" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries and is a "limit that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Movements on the Region

Currently, there are no reports of large-scale army activities in the border areas between the two countries.

However, in Ethiopia, state television has broadcast graduation ceremonies of many recruits at various military training camps.

The head of staff section of the armed forces, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, stated recently in an discussion that the army was in a "reliable position" as "numerous of young people" were joining it, which he said was "a warning to our adversaries".

Past Roots of the Tension

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

After World War II, it was then managed by the British administration before becoming a federated part of the Ethiopian empire.

Yet in 1962 the ruler ended this arrangement and the region became totally absorbed into the Ethiopian state.

A three-decade long civil war occurred, finishing with the government's loss in the early 1990s. Independence was then endorsed by the population in a referendum in 1993.

Temporarily in the 1990s, there were friendly connections between the governments in Ethiopia's capital and Eritrea's capital, but they fell out over the exact location of their common border, causing hostilities in 1998.

Though this concluded in a ceasefire agreement in 2000, it was never fully implemented, and the both countries stayed at loggerheads.

This changed in 2018, when the Prime Minister made gestures to Eritrea's leader Isaias Afwerki. The two agreed to a statement that the conflict was concluded – a move that earned the Prime Minister the prestigious award.

The neighboring states were then partners in the country's previous civil war in Tigray.

However relations have subsequently deteriorated anew.