Eight years after a reconciliation that was applauded around the world, Addis Ababa and Asmara are no longer on speaking terms. On Thursday, October 1, Ethiopia closed its embassy in the Eritrean capital and gave ten Eritrean diplomats forty-eight hours to leave the country. Asmara answered almost immediately by severing diplomatic relations altogether.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry says it acted in response to « direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence » by its neighbour. The expelled diplomats are accused of activities that threatened national security. Beyond that, the federal government claims Eritrea is working with the regional authorities in Tigray and with the Fano militias operating in Amhara, two forces that challenge its rule.
The announcement came a few hours after a series of explosions at the federal army headquarters in Addis Ababa, during the night of September 30 to October 1. Their cause is still unknown, and nothing so far ties them to the crisis.
Eritrea turns the charge around. Its government speaks of three years of « incessant hostility », which it describes as a public declaration of war. In its view Ethiopia has one aim: to take the port of Assab and secure sovereign access to the sea.
That is where the dispute really lies. Ethiopia has had no coastline since Eritrea became independent in 1993, and its leaders keep saying a country of its size cannot live with that. Assab, on the Red Sea, has become the focus of the claim. Eritreans see it as a direct threat to their sovereignty, all the more so because the border war of 1998 to 2000 is far from forgotten. The two capitals only restored relations in 2018, after eighteen years of frozen contact.
The crisis reaches beyond the two neighbours. An Egyptian diplomat was also expelled from Ethiopia this week. Cairo, already at odds with Addis Ababa over the waters of the Nile, is bound to Eritrea and Somalia by a three-way security agreement signed in October 2024. Seen from Ethiopia, that alliance looks like encirclement.
The African Union Commission voiced its concern on Thursday, urging all three states to show restraint and to avoid any step that could raise tensions further. The organisation, whose headquarters happen to be in Addis Ababa, has not announced a mediation effort for now.
Whether the rupture stays on the diplomatic front is the open question. No troop movements have been confirmed, but the channels of dialogue between the two countries are now shut, and the matter of Assab is as unresolved as ever.