Horn of Africa crisis: Eritrea severs diplomatic ties with Ethiopia

NAIROBI – Eritrea has announced that it is severing diplomatic relations with Ethiopia after Addis Ababa closed its embassy in Asmara and declared around ten Eritrean diplomats ‘persona non grata’.

The back-and-forth is fuelling fears of a regional conflict in the Horn of Africa following the latest flare-ups of violence in Tigray, amid a web of internal and international tensions with increasingly threatening repercussions.

The Ethiopian military leadership had already accused Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea of supporting the militias of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which have now joined forces with six other armed groups in a new wave of clashes against Abiy Ahmed’s government. The latest rift between Addis Ababa and Asmara marks a further deterioration in relations and may open up new scenarios in a conflict that is spreading across the borders of Africa’s second most populous country, marking one of the most serious escalations since the 2020–2022 civil war between the Tigrayans and the central government. On 1 October, explosions were reported in Addis Ababa, and sources cited by the agency Reuters speak of drone attacks launched by the rebels on the capital.

Hostilities have flared up again in recent weeks, following the announcement on 21 September of a coalition of seven regional anti-Abiy militias and the capture of the airport in Macallè, the capital of Tigray, by Tigrayan forces on 23 September. Since then, the Ethiopian authorities have claimed to have ‘neutralised’ hundreds of rebels, and pro-government militias have taken credit for recapturing swathes of territory, but the situation remains precarious in terms of its domestic and international repercussions. The diplomatic rift with Eritrea is a case in point, with an open confrontation between the two governments and a breakdown that has cemented tensions which have been simmering since the 2022 peace agreement.

At the time, Asmara had viewed its exclusion from the peace agreements – following the support it had offered to Abiy’s army – as an affront, sparking years of intermittent tensions with Addis Ababa. This latest row marks the peak of tensions to date and represents a major setback for the reconciliation that earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has closed the Eritrean diplomatic mission and expelled its diplomats on the explicit charge of collaborating with the Tigrayans. “Eritrea has no choice but to respond with similar measures and sever all diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, with all the negative consequences that this entails,” replied the Eritrean Foreign Ministry.