As armies deploy, Gulf states and their Western allies must halt an impending conflict that could inflame the entire Red Sea region.
When the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan opposition signed a cessation of hostilities agreement in late 2022, the deal ended one of the most lethal wars of the 21st century. The conflict involved land armies of tens of thousands of troops, mechanized units, and air power more evocative of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (albeit with more advanced weaponry) than the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Credible estimates suggest that the death toll surpassed 600,000, which is likely an underestimate.
The Pretoria Agreement, named after the South African capital in which it was signed, provided for the establishment of an interim administration in Tigray, a small province in northern Ethiopia bordering Eritrea and Sudan. As that administration’s two-year anniversary approaches in mid-March, it is in critical condition.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) formed the vanguard of the movement to overthrow Ethiopia’s communist dictatorship, the Derg, in the 1990s and dominated the country—and the region’s—politics until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Abiy sidelined the TPLF and now its rival factions are engaged in a zero-sum struggle for dominance inside Tigray. One is led by TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael; the other by the interim administration’s president, Getachew Reda.
The political divides have infected the Tigrayan Defense Forces (TDF), which had fought both the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries in the last war. On March 10, Getachew ordered the removal of three senior army commanders, whom he accused of plotting against the interim administration in collusion with Debretsion’s faction. On March 11, reports emerged that dissident TDF units had seized control of eastern Tigray from the legitimate administration. The risk of a coup against the administration or the assassination of some of its leaders can no longer be ignored.
Amid broader regional and international disorder, the deterioration of the political and security situation in Tigray is dry tinder waiting for a match that could ignite an interstate war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Such a situation could create an international wildfire, exacerbating Sudan’s own civil war next door and generating further instability in the region.
Developments in the Horn of Africa have to be seen within the context of the rivalries amid the Gulf countries over control of the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia, for example, may not welcome the military presence of Ethiopia on the Red Sea coast, so long as Ethiopia is seen to be closely aligned with the United Arab Emirates.
The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the ruling party of Eritrea after it gained independence, fought alongside the TPLF against the Derg, but relations between the two grew acrimonious in the mid 1990s, resulting in a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998, sparked by a border dispute. After Abiy ascended to Ethiopia’s premiership in 2018, diluting the TPLF’s power, he moved swiftly to arrange a rapprochement with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki that then sustained the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments’ military cooperation against the Tigrayan forces during the war. However, this cooperation was subsequently severed by the Pretoria Agreement, which called for Eritrea to withdraw its forces but did not include Isaias as a signatory.
An atmosphere of mistrust and mutual recrimination now dominates. Addis Ababa accuses Asmara of undermining the Pretoria Agreement, destabilizing Tigray, and supporting insurgent groups elsewhere in Ethiopia. Asmara perceives landlocked Ethiopia’s calls for access to the Red Sea as a casus belli and Ethiopia’s attempt to establish a port year ago through Somaliland as a trial run to return Eritrea to Ethiopian sovereignty and gain control of its ports in Assab and Massawa.
The speed and scale of mobilization and deployment on all sides—the Ethiopian federal army, Eritrea’s Defense Forces, and the TDF—suggests that conflict is imminent. A vice president of the Tigray interim administration and one of Africa’s foremost generals, Tsadkhan Gebretensae, issued a public warning on the matter on March 10.
Prudence dictates that governments faced with hostile neighbors prepare for all contingencies. The risk, however, is that once mobilized for war, the prospective belligerents in Tigray, Addis Ababa, and Asmara will find it easier to proceed than to reverse course. Each side’s confidence in its own capacities may nonetheless prove short-lived.
A conflict is likely to drag on for months and years, destroying any semblance of security in the wider region on either side of the Red Sea and sucking in an ever-widening circle of external interests from the Middle East and further afield.
