A shop in the Tigrayan capital, Mek’ele, opens every morning with its shelves empty. Its owner, 28-year-old Werkalem Assefa, was forced to close the business after tensions escalated a few weeks ago, and she has moved back in with her mother because she no longer has enough money. “My business declined. I felt compelled to close my shop,” she says. Her story is a small version of a larger one. Fighting in northern Ethiopia has flared again, government forces have pushed armed groups back, and there is growing concern that the conflict could draw in neighbouring Eritrea and change the strategic map of the Horn of Africa.
Fighting in the Tigray region resumed at the end of September. Ethiopian troops took the regional capital, Mek’ele, and advanced toward the border with Eritrea. By 9 October, federal police units were resuming operations in Mek’ele after government forces pushed back rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The stated aim was to take control of Tigray and to drive back seven militias, which share a common ethnic nationality.
The situation is complicated, and its interpretation is disputed. Some observers see the offensive as an intermediate step toward a possible Ethiopian incursion into Eritrea, aimed at gaining control of the Red Sea port of Assab. That reading draws on the Ethiopian prime minister’s recent statement that access to the sea is a matter of survival for his country. Such access can only be obtained through Eritrean territory, since Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrea became independent in 1993. It should be stressed that the invasion scenario is an interpretation by analysts and not an announced policy.
The port issue is central. Ethiopia is among the world’s most populous landlocked countries, with a population well over 100 million, and it depends on neighbouring ports, above all Djibouti, for its trade. Ulf Terlinden, head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office for the Horn of Africa, explains the Ethiopian government’s view: it describes the loss of Ethiopia’s sea access with Eritrea’s independence as a historic mistake that must be corrected. He adds that Ethiopia has repeatedly threatened the Eritrean regime that it will take Assab by force if necessary.
At the same time, Eritrea is not a neutral bystander. Terlinden says that Eritrea is involved in the conflict in Ethiopia and, according to many reports, has supplied various ethnic militias with weapons and given them free access. Each side therefore accuses the other of destabilisation, and each has an incentive to see the other weakened. The result is a security dilemma: actions that one government regards as defensive appear aggressive to the other.
The expert’s greatest worry is that the conflict will extend beyond Ethiopia’s borders. “It is already being reported that Eritrean units in Tigray have been pushed back by Ethiopian drones,” Terlinden says. If accurate, this means that the two states’ forces are already in contact on Ethiopian soil, and that the line between an internal insurgency and an interstate war is thin. He describes the danger of the war crossing national borders as very great and calls for urgent, concerted diplomatic action. The first priority, he says, must be to ensure that the war does not escalate further.
These reports have not been independently confirmed in the material available, and the closed nature of Eritrea makes verification difficult. It is one of the most isolated countries in the world, an authoritarian state with almost no access to the internet or social media, so information about its military activity is scarce and mostly comes from outside sources.
Beneath the strategic calculations lies exhaustion. The previous war in Tigray, from 2020 to 2022, is estimated to have cost more than 600,000 lives and ended in a ceasefire that now appears fragile. The German ethnohistorian Wolbert Smidt, an expert on Ethiopia, observes widespread war weariness among Tigray’s civilian population and among soldiers. He describes it as “like a bottomless depression,” caused by the deaths in almost every family, constant economic stress and a lack of trust in the people’s own leadership.
Smidt expects solidarity with the political class to fall sharply, especially if the war lasts long, and sees growing public pressure for new solutions “that don’t just repeat the old patterns.” This matters for several reasons. A population that is tired of war is less likely to support leaders who promise more fighting. It also suggests that political actors in Tigray may come under pressure from their own communities to seek a settlement. At the same time, exhaustion can coexist with grievance, and a weakened population is vulnerable to manipulation by armed groups.
Both experts argue that the existing framework for managing the conflict is inadequate. Smidt calls for “international negotiators who think anew, who don’t just repeat the old patterns and say: ‘We had a ceasefire, everything will be implemented one-to-one as it was agreed back then.’ That will not work.” The point is that the 2022 agreement was designed for conditions that no longer apply: new militias, new alignments and a more direct Ethiopian-Eritrean confrontation.
Terlinden identifies the United States as a decisive actor, saying that pressure must come from Washington. The reasoning is that the US has leverage over Ethiopia through aid, security cooperation and diplomatic ties, and can coordinate with other international partners. Whether it will use that leverage is uncertain, particularly given competing priorities elsewhere, including the war with Iran and the pressures on shipping in the Red Sea.
The Horn of Africa is not an isolated theatre. The Red Sea is already a zone of disruption, with Houthi attacks affecting shipping and threatening Saudi infrastructure. A confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea over Assab would bring another source of instability to the same waters, affecting one of the world’s most important trade routes. Gulf and other powers with interests in Red Sea ports and security would also be drawn into the diplomacy, whether as mediators or as backers of one side. This is an inference from the geography and from the wider regional situation, not a point made in the underlying report, but it helps to explain why a local dispute attracts international concern.
Three broad paths can be sketched.
Containment. Ethiopian forces consolidate control in Tigray, the militias are weakened or negotiate, and Eritrea limits its involvement. This would reduce the immediate risk but leave the underlying grievances and the sea-access question unresolved.
Escalation. Clashes between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces expand, or Ethiopia moves against Assab. This would risk a regional war with severe humanitarian consequences, and would draw in external players.
Negotiated reset. International mediators, with US pressure as Terlinden proposes, bring the parties to a new framework that addresses both Tigray’s status and Ethiopia’s access to the sea through agreed commercial arrangements. It is the most desirable outcome and the hardest to achieve, since it requires concessions on sensitive issues of sovereignty.
The picture from northern Ethiopia combines a military offensive, a strategic ambition and a worn-out population. Experts quoted in the reporting agree that the risk of a wider war is real and that the old diplomatic formulas will not be enough. For people such as Werkalem Assefa, the immediate impact is economic: empty shelves, closed shops and a return to a parent’s home. For the region, the question is whether the dispute over Assab and the fighting in Tigray can be managed before the two conflicts merge. The window for diplomacy, as the experts stress, is narrow, and its use will depend on decisions made in Addis Ababa, Asmara and Washington.
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