Ethiopian women buy and sell goods at a street market in Mekelle in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia on Jan. 26. Many people have fled from Mekelle as the fear of war intensifies.Jody Ray/The Associated Press
After weeks of mobilization by the Ethiopian and Tigrayan armies, local leaders are warning of a looming war that could swiftly spill across borders in the volatile Horn of Africa and Red Sea regions.
The rising tensions and sporadic clashes in northern Ethiopia are signs of a potential conflict in the same region where an earlier war caused an estimated 600,000 deaths from 2020 to 2022 before a fragile ceasefire was negotiated.
Renewed fighting could be more dangerous for the Horn of Africa this time because of multiplying conflicts in the broader region. A devastating war has been raging in neighbouring Sudan since 2023, while another neighbouring country, Eritrea, has had troops in northern Ethiopia since 2020 and has been feuding with Ethiopian leaders in recent weeks.
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The most likely conflicts this time, analysts say, are a cross-border clash between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces and an internal battle between Ethiopian and Tigrayan troops in the north of the country.
Many people have fled from Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, as the fear of war intensifies. Cash withdrawals have been restricted, causing long queues at banks, while shops have suffered shortages because of stockpiling by customers. Videos on social media, meanwhile, have shown long convoys of Ethiopian military vehicles moving into position near Tigray’s borders.
Clashes broke out in late January between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopian troops in disputed territories on the edge of Tigray, but have subsided since then.
Tigray People's Liberation Front fighters walk in Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, Ethiopia, in 2021.YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
“The international community must act – urgently and decisively – before the situation spirals beyond control,” said a statement Sunday by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant political force in the region.
It said the Ethiopian government has “mobilized its full military force along Tigray’s borders, signalling preparations for yet another invasion.”
The TPLF, which fought against Ethiopian forces in the 2020-22 war, said a revived war is still avoidable with international intervention. Any war will “inevitably engulf Ethiopia and destabilize the wider Horn of Africa,” it said.
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United Nations leaders and human-rights groups have been pleading for restraint. “Ethiopia stands on the brink of renewed large-scale conflict amid mounting indications of escalating violence and shrinking space for de-escalation,” said a statement Friday by 20 civil society and human-rights groups.
In some ways, the situation is more explosive now than it was in 2020 because of the conflicting regional entanglements of the different sides. In the Sudan war, the Ethiopian government has forged links with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, reportedly allowing the RSF to use sites in Ethiopia to train fighters and mobilize cross-border attacks against Sudan’s military, while the TPLF is believed to have connections with the Sudanese army.
In another entanglement, leaders from landlocked Ethiopia have repeatedly voiced their ambition to secure a port on the Red Sea, with the Eritrean port of Assab their most likely target. At an Ethiopian military parade this weekend, signs in the spectator stands showed an Ethiopian soldier breaking down a door to a ship marked “Assab Ethiopia.”
Fearing an Ethiopian attack, Eritrean leaders appear to have formed a new unofficial alliance with the TPLF, their enemy in the last war.
A bullet-riddled vehicle sits abandoned on the grounds of Wukro Lodge, once occupied by Eritrean troops, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia on Jan. 26. Eritrea has had troops in northern Ethiopia since 2020, and has been feuding with Ethiopian leaders in recent weeks.Jody Ray/The Associated Press
Tensions between the two countries have escalated. Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Gedion Timothewos, in a letter to the Eritrean government on Feb. 7, accused it of “outright aggression” by occupying territory inside the Ethiopian border. Eritrea’s Information Ministry responded by complaining of hostile acts and “sabre rattling” in an Ethiopian “war agenda.”
Any conflict in northern Ethiopia, or across the borders, would probably also draw in Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, an ally of Ethiopia. It could also involve militias from the Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia, which have been battling against the national army for years.
“War would devastate a region where past conflicts have cost hundreds of thousands of lives,” Comfort Ero, president of the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, said in a social-media post.
“It would overlap with Sudan’s war, pull in powerful states from outside the Horn of Africa and further roil the volatile Red Sea region.”