Abiy’s vision of Ethiopia includes a seaport in Eritrea. Some see a looming conflict
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — To his supporters, Ethiopia’s prime minister is a Renaissance man trying to reimagine his country’s former greatness.
For others, Abiy Ahmed is a provocateur who could light a fire in the restive Horn of Africa region as he campaigns for sovereign access to the sea via a hostile neighbor.
Last Sunday, at a stadium in southern Ethiopia, Abiy led a provocative parade of Ethiopian special forces as they demonstrated their maneuvers in a spectacle widely seen as aimed at neighboring Eritrea. A banner proclaimed that Ethiopia would not remain landlocked, whether “you like it or not”, with footage showing a soldier breaking down a gate while aiming for the port of Assab.
Assab has been part of Eritrea since 1993, when it separated from Ethiopia after decades of guerrilla warfare. Most of Ethiopia’s trade passes through the port of Djibouti, carrying high fees of around $1.5 billion a year, a sum until recently greater than the country’s entire foreign exchange reserves, according to London-based consultancy Africa Practice.
This is one of the reasons why Abiy sought to reach a controversial maritime access deal with Somaliland two years ago. The deal angered Somalia, which claims authority over semi-autonomous Somaliland, and increased regional tensions.
Abiy eyes port
As the conflict in Somaliland has calmed, Abiy’s stance on Assab has sparked real fears of a war pitting him against Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and his allies, possibly including rebel leaders in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Although “such a catastrophic turn of events is by no means inevitable,” without international intervention, the belligerents “could find themselves part of a new regional war that would prove difficult to contain or end,” the International Crisis Group concluded in its latest assessment.
At the center of the tensions is Abiy, who, at 41, rose from relative obscurity to power in 2018 as a pragmatic reformer.
Relations with Eritrea had been cold since the 1990s, and his efforts to repair relations with Afwerki helped him win the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. A year later, he confounded expectations by launching a military operation against Tigray’s rebel leaders in what ultimately became a brutal civil war.
The Ethiopian military and its allies, including Eritrea, have joined forces against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the group that administers the region. This conflict, marked by sexual violence and other crimes committed by both sides, ended with a peace agreement in 2022.
This time, analysts say, Abiy’s ambition for sovereign access to Assab has prompted a military buildup along the border with Eritrea.
Rebel leaders in Tigray and Eritrea are apparently “coordinating” against Ethiopian forces, according to Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at New University College in Oslo.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged Eritrea and Ethiopia to respect the border treaty signed 25 years ago. Others in the region have called for talks.
Meanwhile, a war of words rages as well as sporadic clashes on Ethiopian territory.
Tigrayan officials accuse Ethiopian federal forces of carrying out drone attacks. Ethiopia says Eritrea is “actively preparing to wage war” and that its forces are in Tigray, which shares a border with Eritrea. Eritrea warns that Ethiopia has a “long-standing war agenda” to seize Assab, an allegation Abiy appeared to confirm during the military parade in Hawassa attended by senior government and military officials.
The Prime Minister’s ambitious program
After taking office, Abiy saw himself as a philosopher of Ethiopia’s revival. With his theory of “medemer”, an Amharic word which designates strength in unity, the Ethiopian Prime Minister spoke of a “beautiful symphony of progress”.
As head of the ruling Prosperity Party, Abiy wanted the timely completion of the mega hydroelectric dam on the Nile, which Egypt strongly opposes due to concerns over the volumes of water flowing north. He wanted to transform Addis Ababa, the federal capital, into a beautiful city, with green plots and elegant buildings. A nuclear power program and 1.5 million housing units are planned. And earlier this year, it launched construction of what would be Africa’s largest airport, a $10 billion project, outside Addis Ababa.
Restoring Ethiopia’s access to the sea
But it has two big problems: Ethiopia, with more than 130 million people, is the most populous landlocked country in the world. There is also ethnic discord, with ongoing conflicts in the Amhara and Oromia regions, where federal troops are fighting militants.
Going to war over a seaport would set back Abiy’s ambitious infrastructure goals by committing troops and resources to yet another armed conflict with Eritrea, whose officials view Abiy as foolish.
They say Abiy’s public provocations mask his own internal problems and that his infrastructure plans are at odds with reports of famine in parts of Ethiopia. Yemane Gebremeskel, Eritrea’s government spokesperson, regularly describes Abiy’s Prosperity Party as the “Potemkin Party.”
This party “continues to spew and intensify, at almost every public occasion, toxic and provocative vitriol against the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of neighboring countries, he accused in a statement on Monday.
