My latest for RFI:
In the middle of the month of January, the Ethiopian police said they seized thousands of rounds of ammunition sent by Eritrea to rebels in Ethiopia's Amhara region last week, an allegation Eritrea dismissed as a falsehood intended to justify starting a war.
The Ethiopian police said in a statement that they had seized 56,000 rounds of ammunition and the arrest of suspects.
"The preliminary investigation conducted on the two suspects who were caught red-handed has confirmed that the ammunition was sent by the Shabiya government," the statement said, referring to the ruling party of Eritrea, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
But for Eritrea's Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party (PP) is looking for a pretext to attack.
"The PP regime is floating false flags to justify the war that it has been itching to unleash for two long years," he told news agencies.
Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki said, in an interview earlier in February with state-run media, that the PP had declared war on his country. He added that Eritrea did not want war, but knows "how to defend (its) nation."
Historical feud and Tigray war
Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia in 1993, after a series of episodes of insurgency, guerilla and war, started in 1961. The two countries were then openly at war from 1998 to 2000, followed by a border conflict for nearly two decades.
They finally signed a historic agreement to normalise relations in 2018 that won Ethiopia's Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, reaching a fragile peace deal that has since given way to renewed threats and acrimony.
The war in Tigray, at the border with Eritrea, which erupted in 1975, but was reactivated multiple times and more recently from November 2020 to the end of 2022, has complicated relations.
Since the conflict started again in January, the situation has created new tensions.
For experts, the situation in Tigray is at the core of the escalation between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
"I think one has to start with the Tigray war, with the consequences of the war and the rift that the post-war period and the Pretoria agreement has created between the federal government of Ethiopia and their Eritrean leadership," an Addis-based security analyst, who did not want to be named, told me.
Eritrea has been trying to get closer to the TPLF, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, recently, leading to a feud with Addis Ababa.
"There is information circulating that the Eritrean troops have gotten deeper into Tigray, even nearing the capital, Mekelle," the security analyst added, "and they station at some of the checkpoints around that area."
The insurgency movement in the Amhara region might also take a different dynamic
following "the security vacuum that has unfolded following the partial withdrawal of the security forces and the Ethiopian National Defense Forces from the region," the analyst said.
Need for sea access
The tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia have many other unresolved roots.
Ethiopia's anger at Eritrea's independence also stems from the fact that with it, it lost its access to the Red Sea, Eritrea sitting along the coastline.
According to Clionadh Raleigh, the director of ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data organisation, and a professor of African politics and conflict at the University of Sussex in England, Ethiopia absolutely needs access to the sea.
"It's a much larger country than Eritrea," she told me. "I'm a political geographer and I've never seen anything as insane as that. It was a terrible idea when it happened. And Ethiopia has every right to say, 'listen, we're going on 120 million people, we need sea access.'
Meanwhile, Eritrea, she said, is less densely populated, and led by an old dictator.
"The Isaias Afwerki regime is something that people cannot wait to see end. And Addis is still hoping to reintegrate it into a larger Ethiopia, potentially within the next generation," Raleigh added.
Eritrea regularly accuses the government of Addis Abeba of threats of military action to get access back to the Red Sea.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy has also tried to get another access, notably via a deal with another breaking-away region of the Horn of Africa, Somaliland, which is destabilising the equilibrium of power within the whole region.
But Abiy keeps saying Ethiopia does not seek conflict with Eritrea and wants to address the issue of sea access through dialogue.
"The need to access the Sea is one of where Ethiopia's strategic vulnerabilities lie," the Ethiopian analyst confirmed. "It is the second most populous country in the continent, and the largest economy in the region."
He says it is strategically important, particularly to the current leadership, which aspires to play a greater regional role and address its geopolitical, strategic vulnerabilities stemming from lack of access to the sea.
Weeks of escalation and regional instability
Additionally, the war in Sudan is contributing to worsening relations, as Asmara supports the Sudanese army, along Cairo and Riyadh, against the paramilitary RSF, that many accuse Ethiopia of supporting.
According to Raleigh at ACLED, there'll be no stability in the Horn for a long time.
"Ethiopia is desperate to change, and they do not expect this process to be victimless or peaceful. It has allied itself to both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, against a Saudi - Egyptian - Sudanese coalition, with Somalia somehow," she told me.
So, while the two countries appear to be moving toward intensified proxy conflict, the peacebuilding consulting agency Crisis Group (ICG) recommend de-escalatory steps to avoid direct hostilities, accidentally or, as many fear, through Ethiopian aggression.
"Either scenario would be a disaster for the Horn of Africa and its vicinity, potentially drawing in neighbours and non-African powers, particularly from the Arab Gulf," the group wrote in its latest report, titled Seven Peace and Security Priorities for Africa in 2026.
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