Abi’s vision in Ethiopia includes a port in Eritrea. Some see conflict

Kampala, Uganda — To his supporters, Ethiopia’s prime minister is a renaissance man trying to recreate his country’s old greatness.

To some others, Abi Ahmed is a provocateur who could ignite a fire in the restive Horn of Africa region as he demands sovereign access to the sea through an unfriendly neighbor.

At a stadium in southern Ethiopia last Sunday, Abiy led a provocative parade of Ethiopian special forces, maneuvering in a scene he intended to see neighboring Eritrea. A banner declaring that Ethiopia will not remain a landlocked country “like it or not” is accompanied by an image of a soldier breaking down a door aimed at the port of Assab.

Assab has been part of Eritrea since 1993, when it seceded from Ethiopia after decades of guerrilla warfare. Most of Ethiopia’s trade goes through the port of Djibouti, charging as much as $1.5 billion a year, which until recently was more than the country’s entire foreign exchange reserves, according to the London-based Africa Practices Consultancy.

This is one of the reasons why Abiy sought a controversial agreement on sea access with Somaliland two years ago. That deal angered Somalia, which holds sway over the semi-autonomous Somaliland, and heightened regional tensions.

Although the Somaliland dispute has cooled, Abiy’s stance on Assab raises real fears of an outbreak of war that would pit him against Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and his allies, possibly including rebel leaders from the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray.

While such a “catastrophic turn of events is not inevitable,” the International Crisis Group concluded in its latest assessment that without international intervention the belligerents “may prove difficult to commit themselves to or end a new regional war.”

At the center of the tension is Abiy, 41, who rose to power in 2018 from relative obscurity as a reform-minded pragmatist.

Relations with Eritrea have been cold since the 1990s, and his efforts to mend relations with Afwerki helped him win the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. A year later, he confounded expectations by launching a military campaign against Tigray’s rebel leaders, which eventually became a brutal civil war.

Ethiopia’s military and its allies, including Eritrea, have teamed up against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the group that controls the region. That conflict, marked by sexual violence and other crimes by both sides, ended with a peace accord in 2022.

This time, according to analysts, Abiy’s ambitions for sovereign access to Assab have provoked a military build-up on Eritrea’s border.

According to Kjetil Tronvol, professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, Tigray’s rebel leaders and Eritrea are apparently “coordinating” against Ethiopian forces.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged Eritrea and Ethiopia to respect the border agreement signed 25 years ago. Others in the region have called for talks.

Meanwhile, there is a war of words and sporadic clashes within the Ethiopian region.

Tigrayan officials have accused Ethiopian federal forces of carrying out drone attacks. Ethiopia claims that Eritrea is “actively preparing to wage war against it” and that its forces are in Tigray, which shares a border with Eritrea. Eritrea has warned that Ethiopia has a “prolonged war agenda” to seize Assab, a charge Abiy confirmed with a military parade in Hawassa watched by top government and military officials.

After Abi took office, he was seen as the philosopher of Ethiopia’s renewal. With his theory of “Medemer”, an Amharic word for strength in unity, the Ethiopian prime minister spoke of the “beautiful symphony of progress”.

As leader of the ruling Prosperity Party, Abiy wanted the timely completion of a mega-power dam on the Nile, which Egypt strongly opposed over the amount of water going north. He wanted to transform Addis Ababa, the federal capital, into a beautiful city, with green patches and elegant blocks. There is also a nuclear power program and plans for 1.5 million housing units. And earlier this year, he began construction on Africa’s largest airport, a $10 billion project outside Addis Ababa.

But he has two big problems: Ethiopia, with more than 130 million people, is the world’s most populous landlocked country. There is also ethnic discord as clashes continue in the Amhara and Oromia regions, where federal forces are battling militants.

Going to war over the port would set back Abi’s ambitious infrastructure goals by committing troops and resources to another armed conflict with Eritrea, whose officials dismiss Abi as a fool.

They say Abi’s public hype masks his own internal problems, and his infrastructure plans are at odds with reports of hunger in parts of Ethiopia. Eritrean government spokesman Yeoman Gebremeskel routinely describes Abiy’s Prosperity Party as the “Potemkin Party”.

The party “continues to spew and ramp up venomous and inflammatory vitriol against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring countries, on every public occasion,” he alleged in a statement on Monday.