One by one, embassies are emptying across the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia has ordered six staff members of the Sudanese consulate in Assosa, a town near the border, to leave the country within 48 hours, without giving a reason, according to a senior Ethiopian official quoted by Reuters. Khartoum hit back the very next day by closing the Ethiopian consulate in Gedaref, in south-eastern Sudan. Sources in Addis Ababa now mention the possible expulsion of the Sudanese ambassador himself, while Ethiopia has had no ambassador-level representation in Sudan since the war began.
At the heart of the dispute lies a double accusation. Sudan’s army-backed government accuses Ethiopia of providing logistical support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and of serving as a rear base for drones striking power and fuel facilities in several Sudanese states. Khartoum has filed a complaint with the UN Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, accusing Addis Ababa of allowing the paramilitaries to launch suicide drones from its territory against civilian infrastructure. Ethiopia denies this and turns the charge around, accusing Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea of backing the Tigrayan rebels who launched an offensive against federal forces in September. All three countries deny it.
This standoff with Khartoum is only the latest chapter in Ethiopia’s growing isolation. In early autumn, Addis Ababa closed its embassy in Asmara and declared ten Eritrean diplomats persona non grata. Eritrea immediately severed all diplomatic ties with its neighbour, just as several explosions rocked Addis Ababa, one of them near the Ministry of Defence headquarters, raising fears that fighting in the north was spreading to the capital. Ethiopian authorities have since banned drone flights over the city. Asmara accuses Addis Ababa of seeking access to the Red Sea by force and fears an attempt to seize the port of Assab. It is a spectacular reversal for two countries whose 2018 reconciliation earned Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize.
Egypt completes the picture. Cairo and Addis Ababa expelled each other’s diplomats last month, against the backdrop of a long-running dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt says threatens its share of the Nile’s waters. Seen from Ethiopia, the convergence between Cairo, Asmara and Khartoum looks like an attempt at encirclement, according to Ethiopian sources quoted in the Sudanese press.
On the ground, fighting is no longer confined to Tigray and has spread to the Amhara and Afar regions. Analysts at the US-based Critical Threats project note, however, that Ethiopia’s federal army is stretched across several fronts, and that Eritrea does not appear, for now, to be seeking open war. In Sudan, the conflict between the army and the RSF has already displaced more than 14 million people according to the UN, and Khartoum is looking for new backers, going as far as offering Russia a free economic zone on its Red Sea coast.
Each side denies the accusations levelled against it, but they all point in the same direction: two wars feeding off each other. Unless a mediation effort takes hold quickly, the Horn of Africa could slide into a regional conflict, amid international indifference largely absorbed by other crises.