In a dramatic reversal after more than two years of evading the issue, Ethiopia accused Eritrea at the U.N. Human Rights Council in July of occupation and abuses in its northern Tigray region. Eritrean troops had fought alongside Ethiopia’s army during the 2020-22 Tigray war and never fully withdrew. The 2022 Pretoria Agreement between Ethiopia and Tigray’s dominant party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), ended the war but strained Ethiopia and Eritrea’s relationship.
Tensions escalated with the latest salvo of accusations. In May, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki claimed Ethiopia was engaging in a weapons “purchasing spree” and conspiring against his government. Ethiopia followed with a diplomatic note in June accusing Eritrea and the TPLF of planning a joint “major offensive” within Ethiopia.
The latest rhetoric and realignments have the makings of a full-blown regional crisis. Still, by recalibrating its approach to the Eritrean issue and the Tigray peace process, the Ethiopian government—and the wider international community—could mitigate or avert conflict.
Since its 1991 secession from Ethiopia, Eritrea has pursued a confrontational regional posture—staging periodic clashes and sponsoring armed groups—prompting U.N. sanctions. Its once cordial ties with Ethiopia’s TPLF-led government collapsed by the end of the decade. Asmara triggered a border clash to extract policy concessions over currency parity, sparking a bloody 1998-2000 war. The subsequently established Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission awarded the flashpoint village of Badme to Eritrea; Addis Ababa’s insistence on negotiated demarcation produced an almost two-decade impasse.
Eritrea seemed to be turning a new page in 2018. Isaias met Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and signed a thin peace deal to restore diplomatic, transport, trade, and communication ties, leading to the United Nations lifting sanctions. Though the hostilities subsided, Asmara didn’t terminate or ease its indefinite military service. Rather, it embarked on arms procurement, showing little interest in regularizing trade or finalizing border demarcation.
Isaias leveraged the friendship to further pursue regional ambitions, while Abiy viewed it as securing an ally for potential conflict with the TPLF.
Abiy’s 2018 rise to power sidelined the formerly dominant TPLF to its Tigray stronghold. Two years of escalating political tension and institutional measures alienated Tigrayans, culminating in the Tigray war, where Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces invaded Tigray and perpetrated systematic atrocities.
The Pretoria Agreement secured a cease-fire and sought to restore constitutional order, political normalization, accountability, economic recovery, and a “lasting settlement of the conflict.” However, it was a skeletal framework with weak monitoring mechanisms, and the Ethiopian government pursued informal overtures to Tigrayan leaders instead of following the formal process. Initially, there was progress on humanitarian access, resumption of telecommunication and transport services, disarmament, security, and interim regional administration formation through informal bilateral meetings. But the initial thaw failed to implement key commitments: a full withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces, return of forcibly displaced people, and credible political dialogue.
Despite an opportunity to reset ties with Eritrea following Ethiopia’s detente with the TPLF, both nations declined U.S. border demarcation assistance. Instead, Eritrea installed checkpoints inside Tigray, purporting to be in compliance with the boundary commission ruling. Addis Ababa turned a blind eye to reports of Eritrean forces’ occupation and abuses—perceiving it as a barrier to any TPLF-Eritrea rapprochement.
It soon became clear that tactic wasn’t effective.
As Ethiopia-Eritrea relations frayed, Asmara quietly moved toward TPLF rapprochement. This shift accelerated after Abiy’s vow in 2023 to regain sovereign access to the Red Sea lost during Eritrea’s secession, which had long vexed Ethiopia’s elite. Aligning with Tigray would give Eritrea a strategic buffer on Ethiopia’s border.
Back-channeled contact was in place at least by early 2024 and reportedly deepened by year’s end. In May, days after Eritrean troops removed a military checkpoint inside northeastern Tigray, which relaxed civilian movement to the Ethiopian border city of Zalambessa, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael publicly congratulated Eritrea on its Independence Day. The rapprochement was underscored in July, when a Tigrayan commander, in a controversial speech, suggested that Eritrea would remain neutral—if not lean toward Tigray—should war break out.
In March, a TPLF faction and allied armed officers forced out interim regional administration officials. Weeks later, in May, Ethiopia’s government revoked the party’s legal recognition on procedural pretexts and allegedly began backing a splinter faction.
Addis Ababa’s indiscriminate coercive tactics, such as fuel cuts and travel restrictions to Tigray, mirror those preceding the Tigray war. In May, it briefly shut the vital supply and market roads south of Tigray, citing smuggling across the Eritrean border. These measures may inadvertently strengthen the TPLF’s influence by enabling wartime rhetoric—invoking its resistance legacy and stigmatizing dissent as a security threat—and boosting support for an alternative supply corridor through Eritrea.
Debretsion argued in August that rapprochement with Eritrea—framed as people-to-people diplomacy—would break the encirclement that Tigray endured under the Ethiopia-Eritrea alliance. Yet such a recalibration of ties could prompt Addis Ababa to preemptively initiate conflict. And Eritrea’s transactional diplomacy and rationed economy offer Tigray little beyond a tactical military alliance.
Abiy downplayed the significance of a potential Eritrea-TPLF alignment, citing a technological edge and dismissing Asmara’s military capacity. He is counting on the Tigrayan public’s war fatigue and growing dissent against the TPLF. Yet a population disillusioned by the stalled peace process and limited peace dividends could quietly resign itself to the grinding wheel of fate.
The regional implications of an Eritrea-Tigray alignment cannot be overstated. Should any conflict erupt along this alignment, Ethiopia’s capital and maritime corridor to the port of Djibouti would be exposed due to the proximity of Eritrea’s southernmost territory, while its ability to enforce sieges and media blackouts would be effectively nullified. Sudan’s embattled military government—backed by Eritrea—has recently been accusing Ethiopia of cross-border incursions, raising the specter of Sudan being dragged into the wider fray.
A string of recent visits by U.S. and European diplomats to Mekelle, Tigray’s regional capital, sought to preserve the peace process by reiterating support for a full implementation of the Pretoria Agreement. But to chart a durable path to a political settlement, strategic shifts on Eritrea, the Pretoria Agreement, and harmonization of diplomatic engagements must be embraced.
Eritrea should be pressed by the international community to implement a good-faith border demarcation process and enter a time-pegged legal framework governing cross-border movement, customs, trade, and other key aspects of its relations with Ethiopia. Given Eritrea’s demographic ties to Ethiopia and its reliance on staple crops such as teff and coffee, mediators could explore arrangements granting Asmara privileged market access in exchange for accommodating Ethiopia’s coastal needs.
Though setting up a U.N.-mandated monitoring mechanism may be unfeasible due to U.N Security Council gridlock, a contact group—comprising the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—could be formed to track Eritrea’s behavior and coordinate incentives or penalties as needed.
The Pretoria Agreement should not be kept comatose. Concrete measures must be taken to transition the cease-fire into a durable peace settlement. Revitalizing the peace process requires modifications to its architecture. An addendum should establish a panel—comprising Tigray’s interim administration, regional political parties, and civic associations—as the Ethiopian government’s counterpart, ensuring broader representation and effective implementation.
The African Union’s High-Level Panel on Ethiopia should be equipped with a robust, outcome-oriented mandate beyond ad hoc facilitation. It should convene regularly to steer talks and monitor implementation, supported by a comprehensive implementation matrix and a secretariat including experts from the U.N., United States, and EU—current observers of the peace process.
Rebuilding the process’s credibility requires immediate, tangible progress on key issues, particularly the plight of hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Their home in western Tigray—where the U.S. State Department has accused Amhara forces of committing ethnic cleansing—remains under occupation, despite the Pretoria Agreement’s call for the restoration of constitutional order and withdrawal of forces besides Ethiopia’s regular army.
In diplomatic circles, Ethiopian officials justify the continued occupation of western Tigray as necessary to block potential arms flows from Sudan. But this rationale—predicated on sustained hostility between Eritrea and Tigray—has eroded trust in the peace process. Addis Ababa has yet to act even on its modest pledge to dismantle the illegal administration and accompanying settler networks in western Tigray, run by individuals whom Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for to be prosecuted.
The Tigray war showed how a handful of holdout states can gridlock EU action and blunt U.S. momentum. Today, meaningful intervention prospects look bleak: The Horn of Africa is at the bottom of Washington’s priority list and still hasn’t had a special envoy named. To fill that void, the United States and EU must synchronize around clear priorities and deliverables, empowering their senior diplomats in the region to jointly propose, coordinate, and oversee targeted initiatives.
Ethiopian officials customarily take pride in undercutting technical support and oversight from development partners. Yet, amid declining international engagement, this could mean no effective intervention or bailout if the crisis escalates into a regional conflagration. The Ethiopian government must urgently recalibrate its strategy, adopting an institutionally anchored approach to its relations with Eritrea and the peace process in Tigray. To that end, it should invite—and even demand—robust international engagement to help steer the country toward a path of sustainable peace.
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