Last February 22nd, celebrations were held for the 65th Anniversary of the Ethiopian Army Special Forces. At the stadium, before the military in parade and under the complacent gaze of Premier Abiy Ahmed and the national high civil and military ranks, among the propaganda banners exhibited from the stands one appeared that was seriously provocative and significant. What was depicted, in fact, left no room for interpretation: on the right, the portrait of the premier; in the middle, the slogan “Whether they want it or not, we will not remain without an outlet to the sea”; and on the left, the stylized image of a soldier breaking the barrier that separates him from a ship, with the Ethiopian flag and the name “Assab Ethiopia” on the hull. It is undoubtedly a very serious provocation, and very grave, also because it was ostentated on the occasion of an official event of the highest political significance, and relating to a foreign sovereign territory: it is in fact in Eritrea that the port city of Assab is located, in the Southern Red Sea region of which it is the capital. On another recent occasion, however, the Ethiopian military had exhibited a map of the Horn of Africa with Eritrea again annexed to Ethiopia, as it had been until 1991. Both this image, and for that matter that of the banner from two days ago, were then rapidly removed from the official portals of Addis Ababa; but both in fact made it in time to be noticed by various regional and international media, finding harsh and punctual reactions also from Asmara.
It does not appear accidental, in fact, that these provocations arrive a few days after the Anniversary of Operation Fenkil, with which the Eritrean fighters of the EPLF, the Tegadelti, between the 8th and 10th of February 1990 liberated the Eritrean port city of Massawa: that victory, hated by the then-Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, paved the way for its fall the following year, when Asmara was liberated and Addis Ababa itself was reached by the Eritrean fighters. In Eritrea, they are ready for when, to escape from his infinite internal problems, Abiy Ahmed will decide for aggression, violating the borders. In Asmara no clamor is made, and bluster has always been frowned upon: to the almost daily political provocations that arrive from Addis Ababa, they respond with communiqués that reiterate the historical truth and international legality, put into doubt by the well-paid propaganda agents of the Ethiopian government of the Prosperity Party. They do not publish images of arsenals or of the new and modern armaments purchased from multiple parties, from China to Iran, to enrich an army among the strongest and best trained of the Continent, but it is known that they are there and that use will be made of them should the need unfortunately arise: discretion and secrecy are in fact a constant of Eritrean political conduct.
Often the international press, in dedicating itself to the Horn of Africa, always speaks of Eritrea as a “pariah country,” politically rigid and an enemy of regional stability. We know these old stories, which are rooted in decades of propaganda against a country that, having just liberated itself, had above all the “grave fault,” absolutely unforgivable for an African nation, of refusing to go into debt with the West and to follow its dictates, or rather of saying no to neocolonialism. In the meantime, Ethiopia, whose governments have all always been model disciples of the IMF and the Washington consensus, is instead often depicted as a democratic country in great growth, even if in the meantime more than half of its territory is torn apart by civil war and the economy finds itself paralyzed by an inflationary spiral that forces a good part of the population to live on aid from abroad. In short, as much in the first as in the second case, reality is always unfailingly inverted and decontextualized. The distortions of the Western-led international press, when looking at the Horn of Africa, always truly give much cause for reflection.
As we were already saying, it is always the government of the Prosperity Party of Abiy Ahmed that provokes Eritrea day by day, as it also does with Sudan and Somalia. It alters regional and Eritrean maps, openly threatens to conquer Eritrean ports by force and distorts Eritrean history on its national channels, falsifying interpretations of international law so as to incite the population against Asmara and justify an attempted annexation. A fact even more serious, but which helps to understand why many extra-regional observers do not grasp the dramatic seriousness of the situation in the Horn of Africa, is that it makes use of a double political communication: when it speaks in English to the international community, it invokes diplomacy and negotiations; but when it speaks in Amharic to its neighbors and to its population, it launches explicit and bellicose threats.
One then wonders why the African Union, with its headquarters right in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, always avoids truly taking a position and calling upon the government of the Prosperity Party to respect the Charter of the African Union, which establishes the inviolability of the borders of African States, and the United Nations resolutions on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Eritrea. The AU’s silence, in this sense, rather than neutrality, ends up appearing as a form of connivance toward those who, incited by foreign powers such as the UAE and Israel, threaten regional peace. No differently could be said also for a regional body such as IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), so flattened on the Ethiopian positions to the point that in December 2025 Eritrea decided to leave it, after having briefly re-entered it in the vain attempt to seek space for dialogue.
A military conflict, according to the wishes of the Ethiopian premier, would allow him to extend the state of emergency to a national scale, currently in force only in some states like Amhara, and to find greater support at a popular level, with positive repercussions for the elections theoretically planned, after various postponements, for June 1st of this year. Theoretically, because at that point they could also be newly postponed, in time to complete the reforms that aim to stiffen governmental authority, and thus to win them with much more ease: after all, if they were to be held today, in the face of a reconfirmation of Abiy Ahmed, very few in Ethiopia would believe that they had not been truly infiltrated and conditioned. In short, for the Ethiopian government, war is the fuel that can allow not only a possible survival, but also the desired transformation into a full-blown regime, highly hierarchized and militarized.
In the meantime, 70% of the Ethiopian military forces are concentrating in the north of the country, toward Tigray, where with the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) the government of Abiy Ahmed is again on a war footing; their supply lines are however targeted also by other groups in revolt against Addis Ababa, such as OLA (Oromo) and FANO (Amhara). Rumors are already circulating that the Ethiopian premier has regretted the choice to send troops into an area and into a conflict that lay bare their vulnerabilities, exposing them literally to the looting of rebel groups, who easily force them to surrender or even swell their own ranks thanks to their defections, moreover pocketing a conspicuous booty in terms of new arsenal. But meanwhile the error has been made and, what is worse, there is no going back except with an immediate political damage that the premier wants in any case to avoid.
In his initial calculations, probably, once the TPLF in Tigray was hit and neutralized, a highway would open for an open conflict against Asmara, which moreover would also involve another of the Ethiopian federated states, Afar. Even there, the situation is not among the calmest for the central government, and the clash that is emerging day by day with the local forces of the ANURF could reach, in the event of open conflict with Asmara, a level of gravity equal to that already in place today with FANO and OLA. One need only think of the devastating humanitarian situation that would be created. For the moment, in Tigray the Ethiopian troops are blocked by the opposition of the local authorities and the TPLF who, having ended the 2020-2022 conflict, no longer intend to act as cannon fodder against Asmara, as instead requested by Abiy Ahmed. Of war, the local officials no longer want to hear a word, and to be honest, neither do the federal ones: the many defections in the Ethiopian units are in fact one of the most evident proofs.
The same revolts of all these ethno-political groups, expression of the various Ethiopian ethnicities, TPLF, FANO, OLA, ANURF, etc., prove in turn the difficulty of the current government in creating a serious common representation within a federal system on ethnic bases that has never really functioned and that today, with an economy in collapse, explodes in all its internal contradictions. If from many sides many in the region warn of the risk of an “Ethioslavia,” referring to the sad end that the old Yugoslavia met, there is a reason. Under this aspect, accusing other countries, starting with Eritrea, of supporting and provoking those groups, so as to create a further casus belli for a military settlement of accounts, does not appear very wise on the part of Abiy Ahmed.
It is a reckless and potentially suicidal move which, given the historical precedents—not exactly exciting—risks leading Abiy Ahmed and his Prosperity Party to the same epilogue as his predecessors of the EPRDF and the DERG; even more considering that in recent years he has done everything to create new enemies, outside and inside the country. Such a suicidal move is explained, however, also by the long-standing and intrinsic vacuum of sovereignty suffered by the country, forced into a war against its own interest and that of all the peoples of the region, but welcomed by the UAE-Israel axis which in the final instance truly holds the keys to power in Addis Ababa. This conditioned sovereignty too, like the cyclical internal disintegrations that open the doors to balkanization (think of 1991, after the flight of Mengistu), seems an eternal condemnation of the Ethiopian giant, which from time to time sinks on its feet of clay when the central power, after having created a vacuum around itself and within itself, finally implodes, collapsing upon itself.
We shall see therefore how much longer Abiy Ahmed will last and above all to what point he will truly push himself, before being dumped by his great sponsor, the UAE-Israel axis. After all, as guarantor of the Jeddah Accords of 2018, which healed the divisions between Ethiopia and Eritrea inherited from the EPRDF/TPLF governments and relating to the war of the 1998-2000 biennium, in case of open clash Saudi Arabia could take the defense of the attacked country—moreover already quite well-armed on its own—namely Eritrea. All the more so taking into account that already today, with Eritrea, Riyadh is developing an increasingly strong and cohesive regional alliance, which also involves other partners such as Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Sudan, Somalia, up to Pakistan. On the basis of what has been seen so far, the UAE-Israel axis, as it has already pulled back before the Saudi reaction in southern Yemen and in Somaliland, which it had evidently underestimated, so too could it do in this case: leaving then its local agent, Abiy Ahmed, with the classic smoking match (the short straw) in his hand.
