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Mounting apprehensions have emerged about the potential of armed conflict among East African countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as confrontational language has intensified in the last month.

What Has Ethiopian Officials Said?

Landlocked Ethiopia's calls for access to the Red Sea through Eritrean territory has sparked a heated rhetorical conflict.

The Ethiopian leader previously announced in the previous year that his country's maritime access was an existential matter, statements that Eritrea dismissed.

Diplomatic connections between the two countries have regularly been difficult. Following a long-standing battle for independence, the Eritrean state, which has a long sea border, formally separated from Ethiopian rule in the early 1990s, leaving it landlocked.

Subsequently, a military clash started in which over a hundred thousand people died.

Recent Statements from Ethiopian Government

Prime Minister Abiy and army chief Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have openly claimed sovereignty of Eritrean coastal city of the port of Assab – some 60 km from the border - and suggested the desire to seize it militarily.

In early September, Abiy said Ethiopia's "blunder" of losing access to the Red Sea as a result of Eritrean independence would be "corrected soon".

The Ethiopian envoy to Kenya, former General Bacha Debele, said that Assab was "belonging to Ethiopia" and would be restored "by force".

Eritrean Reaction to the Claims

Amid continuous challenges from Ethiopia, Eritrea's reaction has been restricted to brief comments on social media from Information Minister Yemane G..

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for access to the Red Sea calling it "risky" and a "harmful plan" of "irredentism" – a approach of retaking lost territory.

Government spokespeople cautioned on mid-September that moves to justify "blatant hostility" would have serious consequences for the Ethiopian government and its regional partners and is a "redline that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Security Preparations on the Region

There have been no reports of significant troop deployments in the border areas between the neighboring states.

Nevertheless, in Ethiopia, national TV has broadcast completion events of thousands of cadets at various military training camps.

The director of human resources department of the military, General Hachalu, stated recently in an discussion that the military was in a "reliable position" as "many thousands of young people" were joining it, which he said was "a warning to our adversaries".

Past Origins of the Dispute

For decades from 1890, the territory was governed by Italian colonisers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then managed by the UK forces before evolving into a associated territory of the Ethiopian empire.

However in the early 1960s the ruler ended this system and Eritrea became completely integrated into the Ethiopian state.

A thirty-year civil war ensued, ending with military reversal in the early 1990s. Independence was then approved by Eritreans in a referendum in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were friendly connections between the governments in Addis Ababa and Asmara, but they disagreed over the precise positioning of their mutual frontier, resulting in war in 1998.

Though this concluded in a truce in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the neighbors continued at in dispute.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made overtures to Eritrean President President Isaias. The both leaders endorsed a declaration that the hostilities was finished – a move that earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize.

The two governments were then cooperators in the country's previous armed struggle in Tigray.

Yet diplomatic connections have later worsened once more.