Longtime foes Ethiopia and Eritrea could be headed towards war, officials in a restive Ethiopian region at the centre of the tensions have warned, risking another humanitarian disaster in the Horn of Africa.
Direct clashes between two of Africa’s largest armies would signal the death blow for a historic rapprochement for which Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and could draw in other regional powers, analysts said.
It would also probably create another crisis in a region where aid cuts have complicated efforts to assist millions affected by internal conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.
“At any moment war between Ethiopia and Eritrea could break out,” Gen Tsadkan Gebretensae, a vice-president in the interim administration in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, wrote in Africa-focused magazine the Africa Report on Monday.
A 2020-2022 civil war in Tigray between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s central government killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Fears of a new conflict are linked to the TPLF’s split last year into a faction that now administers Tigray with the blessing of Ethiopia’s federal government and another that opposes it.
On Tuesday the dissident faction, which Tsadkan accused of seeking an alliance with Eritrea, seized control of the northern town of Adigrat.
Getachew Reda, the head of Tigray’s interim administration, asked the government for support against the dissidents, who deny ties to Eritrea. “There is clear antagonism between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” Getachew told a news conference on Monday. “What concerns me is the Tigray people may again become victims of a war they don’t believe in.”
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