Over the past week, the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU), and African Union (AU) have all issued statements urging the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea to commit to the terms of the peace agreement the two countries signed to end a brutal border war a quarter-century ago.
The Algiers Agreement, signed in December 2000, has largely been forgotten, and this week’s reminders come amid fears of a return to conflict as friction between Addis Ababa and Asmara continues to grow more heated.
Ethiopia’s advances towards securing maritime access have triggered alarm in Eritrea, with the administration of Isaias Afwerki accusing Addis Ababa of preparing to annex the port of Assab in its bid to gain a sea outlet. On the other hand, Ethiopia has accused Asmara of providing support to various armed groups and political factions in the country, including Fano militia in the Amhara region and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
The finger-pointing has escalated to the world stage in recent months, with foreign affairs officials from both countries crying foul at the UN on several occasions.
The tensions suggest that another war could be in the offing, leading observers to call for calm and suggest solutions for a peaceful ending to the saga. One analyst proposes a territory swap: the border town of Badme for the port of Assab.
However, a deeper look at relations between the two countries over the past three decades shows the situation is not nearly that simple.
Many political pundits consider the Algiers Agreement and Assab as cardinal mistakes that defined the TPLF-led Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which ruled Ethiopia until relatively recently.
They note the Algiers Agreement birthed the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission, which concluded a hotly disputed demarcation process in late 2007 without resolving the issues that had led the two countries to war in 1998.
In hindsight, analysts observe the border dispute, which revolved primarily around the small town of Badme, was not the real cause of the two-year war. They note the Ethiopian military did not advance into Eritrea during the conflict, arguing this was due to a degree of sympathy from the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Pundits argue his strong belief in Eritrea’s secession and independence is rooted in family ties to the country, while others say the conflict was engineered by regional powers who had a vested interest in keeping Ethiopia landlocked.
The negotiations that led up to the Algiers Agreement have also come under scrutiny. Analysts argue EPRDF erroneously assented to the use of colonial-era treaties to demarcate the border. These treaties were enforced by Italy during the reign of Emperor Menelik II in 1900, 1906, and 1910.
Experts note the 1906 treaty in particular, which the Boundary Commission relied on, favored Eritrea, and argue the EPRDF made a grave mistake by omitting the use of other evidence and documents in the negotiations. They note that the treaties in question had been nullified by both Ethiopia and Italy by the mid-20th century and argue that factors like ethnography, local allegiances, trade routes, and political identity were disregarded during the process.
The Boundary Commission was eventually dissolved without completing the physical demarcation process as both Ethiopia and Eritrea continued to dispute its rulings.
More than two decades later, realities along the border have changed markedly, particularly over the past five years.
Today, Eritrean forces control large swathes of Ethiopian territory as a direct result of Asmara’s involvement in the two-year northern war, which ended in November 2022. Areas like Irob, Badme, Tahtay Adiabo, Zelambessa, and others remain under Eritrean military control.
Adding fuel to the fire, renewed tensions between the TPLF and the federal government have escalated the probability of war. Despite the historical enmity and the human rights violations the Eritrean military committed in Tigray during the latest war in the north, the TPLF has abruptly changed its stance and is currently forging an alliance with Asmara.
Some observers argue the Algiers Agreement is no longer binding as Eritrea breached its terms by crossing the border and occupying Ethiopian territory. Others say differently.
“Since the Boundary Commission did not demarcate the exact border, there is no border agreement for Eritrea to breach. Rather, Eritrea breached Ethiopia’s borders, not the border determined by the Commission,” said one researcher who has published a series of papers on the issue.
Nonetheless, experts say Ethiopia can provide sufficient justification for its claims over Assab.
Among them is Yacob Hailemariam (PhD), a former prosecutor of the UN Tribunal on War Crimes in Rwanda and member of the Nigeria-Cameroon Border Commission. Yacob has kept a close eye on developments on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and is the author of the widely read Amharic-language book, ‘Assab: Whose is it?’
In a recent interview, Yacob explained why Ethiopia’s claims over the port are legitimate.
“Historically, Assab was never part of Eritrea. When Eritrea was formed, Assab was under Rubatino. The people of Assab are the people of Afar in Ethiopia. Assab was sold by an Afar landholder to an Italian. Emperor Menelik did not know about the sale at the time, due to [poor] connectivity. Menelik repeatedly announced to the world that Ethiopia is bounded by the Red Sea. There is nothing that relates Assab to Eritrea historically,” said Yacob.
The expert noted that several territorial agreements signed between Emperor Menelik and Italy have all been voided by the UN.
“Even Italy itself nullified the agreements after it lost the Second World War. Ethiopia also nullified the agreements,” said Yacob.
His book argues the Algiers Agreement is also void, with Yacob blaming TPLF and EPRDF for what he describes as a historic failure.
“There were many opportunities to include Assab as Ethiopian territory. The international community was also positive in supporting Ethiopia on this. But EPRDF officials, particularly Prime Minister Meles, were unwilling to do this. Meles was unwilling to retain Assab. This affinity towards Eritrea was nothing short of treason,” said Yacob.
Hidden Hands: Assab, 2018, and TPLF’s fate
Documents from a UN Security Council Monitoring Group show reports of unusual military activity in and around Assab in 2016. At the time, the port was being used by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Eritrea for the transport of troops and equipment to Aden in the context of the conflict across the Red Sea in Yemen.
Reports from the time indicate the port was a source of concern for Israel, which feared Assab could fall under the control of the Iran-backed Houthis fighting a coalition of forces from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others with the backing of the US and Europe.
The reports suggest that Israel moved to encourage Eritrea to re-integrate with Ethiopia as a way to secure Assab. The port was a key agenda during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2016 visit to Ethiopia and PM Hailemariam Desalegn’s reciprocal visit to Israel the following year, according to the reports.
Israeli diplomats visited both Asmara and Addis Ababa in 2017, and a one-person delegation travelled from Israel to Mekelle on 24 December, 2017 for a meeting with senior officials in the regional capital.
While the visit to Mekelle was framed as a discussion over proposals for collaborations in research, documents and anecdotal sources reveal the key agenda was a political proposal for resetting relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, including the port of Assab.
Leaders of the TPLF refused the proposal, with the refusal, according to researchers, sealing the party’s fate.
Publications including ‘A Secret Deal to Conceal: The Eritrean Involvement in the Tigray War’ as well as ‘The Ximdo Gamble: TPLF–Eritrea Alliance and the Fragile Peace in Tigray and the Horn of Africa’ also reach the same conclusion.
Reports indicate that Israel’s dissatisfaction with the TPLF/EPRDF’s unwillingness to collaborate led Isaias Afwerki, an archenemy of the TPLF, to utter the phrase “game over, TPLF” in 2018, while other sources say he made the comment as far back as 2016.
The rest is history. The TPLF-led EPRDF was toppled in April 2018, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ascent to power was characterized in its early days by the normalization of relations with Eritrea. In July 2018, the PM visited Asmara and signed the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship.
Two months later, Abiy and Isaias signed the Jeddah Agreement, marking the formal end of more than two decades of hostilities between their respective countries.
The reconciliation promised a new era of peace, holistic cooperation, and joint-development aspirations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and spurred a new wave of investment in the region.
In 2019, the EU and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) launched infrastructure projects linking Eritrean ports with the Ethiopian border. The EU Trust Fund for Africa immediately allocated the first tranche of a 20 million euro pledge to finance a road linking Assab with Ethiopia.
The normalization also earned PM Abiy a Nobel Peace Prize.
A few years later, the Eritrean military would serve as a key ally for the two-year war between the federal government and forces loyal to the TPLF.
The Deeper Entanglement
The war, and the cessation of hostilities agreement that ended it in November 2022, would ultimately undo the normalization of relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea—a process that observers criticized for lacking institutionalization from the outset.
The Pretoria Agreement was signed as a result of mounting international pressure surrounding the conflict and reports of grave rights violations. Reports indicate the peace deal was ill-received in Asmara.
“Isaias was furious because Abiy signed the agreement. They had agreed to annihilate TPLF completely, but TPLF was saved by the peace deal. However, Abiy could not sustain the war due to its economic toll and the pressure from the international community,” said a seasoned geopolitical analyst who spoke to The Reporter anonymously.
Getachew Reda, who was among the signatories on the TPLF side and is currently an advisor to the PM, described the conditions leading up to the agreement in a recent article.
He argued the peace deal was the only option to save Tigray from “a near breakdown,” and revealed the 10-day negotiation process in Pretoria seemed hopeless before PM Abiy and Uhuru Kenyatta salvaged the situation.
“In the final hours, it was the federal side—negotiating from a stronger position—that nearly risked collapse,” stated Getachew, who also chairs Simret, a new political party that seeks to push TPLF out of political power in Tigray.
He explained Tigray was on the verge of collapse, and TPLF representatives went to Pretoria to sign a truce without any preconditions. While he praised the deal for saving Tigray, he argues the faltering implementation of its terms has “created space for spoilers and encouraged selective foot-dragging where cooperation from the federal side was required.”
Like other analysts, Getachew agrees the peace agreement’s exclusion of Eritrea continues to impact the post-war environment.
“Pretoria is largely silent on external actors, above all, Eritrea. Many Tigrayans—and a wide range of independent reports during the war—have alleged grave abuses by Eritrean forces, including killings and widespread sexual violence. Eritrea was not a party to the negotiations and did not sign the agreement. It has also shown no appetite for external scrutiny. No domestic Ethiopian process can credibly adjudicate crimes committed by a foreign military. That creates an accountability asymmetry that continues to poison the peace. Eritrea’s exclusion from Pretoria was not an oversight. It was a diplomatic necessity. Bringing Asmara into the room would have risked collapsing the talks. Leaving it out allowed the ceasefire to be signed. But the cost was obvious: a central actor in the war was left outside the peace architecture,” wrote Getachew.
Eritrean leaders have publicly criticized the agreement, framing it as an external plot and signaling resentment that it halted what they saw as a decisive final push.
A historical researcher and political analyst who spoke to The Reporter anonymously notes that while relations between TPLF and Shabia have been uneasy since they began as part of a mutual struggle against the Derg regime, the real source of the tension is Asmara’s nation-building aspirations and the obstacles that TPLF poses.
Decades after gaining statehood, Eritrea has largely been unable to embark on nation building, says the researcher.
“Eritrea still lacks the ingredients required for nation building and development. The first ingredient is the foundational history and fabric to bond together and brand the nation of Eritrea using its robust history and ‘ancientness.’ The history and civilization of both the people of Eritrea and Tigray is Axum. Axum is in Tigray. So, Eritrea needs Axum to succeed in its nation building. Eritrea tried to draw this from Adulis. But their efforts to bring the nation-building narrative to Adulis did not work because Adulis has neither the religious nor civilization fabric,” he told The Reporter.
The alternatives, according to the researcher, were to either destroy TPLF and integrate with Ethiopia, or to crush Tigray and claim Axum. Asmara opted for the second route.
“Immediately after the TPLF was crushed during the war, Eritrea took control of Axum. It also redrew its borders to include Axum, among other parts of Tigray, in Eritrea,” said the researcher. “Isaias’ plan was to make the TPLF politically irrelevant and use Tigray as an economic and cultural stepping stone for his nation building. Eritrea knows it cannot realize its nation building as well as achieve economic development without dependence on Ethiopia. The TPLF says to Eritrea ‘you can access Ethiopia only through TPLF.’ Eritrea wants to access Ethiopia directly, without the TPLF,” said the researcher.
Nonetheless, the TPLF (or part of it) is currently in the process of forming an alliance with Asmara.
“Now, after the federal government failed to fully implement the Pretoria Agreement, and the Ethiopian government articulated its interest in sea access, Eritrea and TPLF are forming an alliance against it,” said the researcher.
The strange change in circumstances has been accompanied by increasingly fiery rhetoric between the federal government on one side, and the TPLF and Asmara on the other. And while fear that another war could erupt remain heightened, analysts and insiders who spoke to The Reporter do not believe a major conflict will break out.
“Isaias and Abiy would love to fight, but whether the war happens or not will be decided by foreign powers and not by Addis Ababa or Asmara,” said a military analyst, speaking anonymously.
He warned that if a war were to break out, it would almost certainly be fought in Tigray.
“Although Ethiopia wants Assab, both Ethiopia and Eritrea have a number of reasons not to fight in the lowlands. Eritrea relies on its mechanized forces, but its old USSR tanks and machines cannot function in the searing temperatures of the lowlands. So it prefers the bushy land along the Tigray border. Deploying a fleet of tanks to the lowland plains where there is no forest cover exposes it to Ethiopian drones. For Ethiopia, fighting in the lowlands of Assab leaves it open to a flank. Assab is far from Asmara, and fighting there cannot enable Ethiopia to access the political center of Eritrea. Tigray is closer, so Ethiopia may prefer to fight there; at least in northeastern Tigray,” the analyst told The Reporter.
What’s Next?
The statements issued by the AU, UN, and EU over the past week signal the international community’s growing concern about the potential for another war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Analysts contend the most serious concern at the moment lies with the TPLF and its frantic efforts to regain political footing both in Ethiopia and regionally, which they warn might spiral to a major conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Some argue the circumstances are more likely to result in minor clashes or engagements through proxies rather than a full-blown conflict.
“Eritrea is already supporting TPLF and Fano forces in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is also working on organizing forces against the Eritrean regime leveraging forces in the Afar region. The Afar ethnic group in Ethiopia is the same as in Assab. On top of these, the two countries might also lean on the Tsimdo forces,” said the military analyst.
Analysts like Costantinos Berhutesfa (PhD), however, worry about the lack of effort toward mediating a resolution between the two countries.
“The absence of a credible and assertive international community is eroding the venue for peaceful resolutions. I am worried about who will initiate credible and strong mediation and peaceful conflict resolution between Ethiopia and Eritrea, if the two countries edge to war with each other? I believe the reason the UN, AU, and EU are issuing statements now is likely because they see the likelihood of an upcoming conflict. The international community must step up, initiate strong mediation, secure peaceful resolution, and avert the possibility of war between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” urged Costantinos.
Eritrea’s willingness to take part in mediation appears to be growing thinner.
Last month, UN Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Guang Cong, traveled to Asmara and held discussions with Isaias. The Eritrean president criticized the UN for failures in conflict resolution and decried what he sees as an absence of holistic underlying frameworks, unwarranted external interventions, and external influence in regional organizations.
Last week, Eritrea formally withdrew from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Over the past few months, Isaias has made official visits to Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, leading analysts to argue he is mobilizing support in the Arab world in case a war were to break out with Ethiopia.
Still, people like Getachew Reda contend there is little chance the tensions will boil over into open conflict. He argued the point during an intense interview on Aljazeera’s Head-to-Head program.
However, the military analyst says the outcome will ultimately be determined not by decisions made in Ethiopia and Eritrea, but in Egypt and Israel.
“Both Egypt and Israel have a growing interest in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Egypt is leveraging domestic forces in Ethiopia and regional forces in neighboring countries. Egypt intends to influence Ethiopia into turning focus away from developing the Abbay River. If Egypt prevails, this might drag Eritrea towards the Arab world. However, Israel has a strong interest in protecting the Red Sea from further infiltration of extremist presences. All in all, the outcome of the tension between Egypt and Israel will also decide the situation of Ethiopia and Eritrea. But the outcome of the tension between Egypt and Israel will be determined by who will get stronger backing from Washington,” he told The Reporter.
Regardless, another war would be devastating for both countries and the wider region, which is already burdened by conflict. Yacob urges both governments to look for a mutually beneficial solution.
“I don’t believe Ethiopia’s interest in Assab is a dead end. But accessing Assab must be peaceful, through negotiation. The ideal way would be for Ethiopia and Eritrea to install a special administration to co-manage Assab,” he said. “As long as Ethiopia has no port, Ethiopia’s existence is always in danger. At the same time, Eritrea needs Ethiopia to utilize its ports for its own development.”
The AU’s statement also urges both countries to opt for peace.
“As we mark this [Algiers Agreement] anniversary, the Chairperson calls upon Ethiopia and Eritrea to renew their commitment to the spirit of the Algiers Agreement, and to embrace dialogue, good neighborliness as the best path to durable good-neighbourliness. The stability of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and the wellbeing of their peoples, depend on sustained efforts to strengthen trust, deepen cooperation, and prevent escalations that undermine collective security,” it reads.
