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Mounting worries have emerged about the potential of armed conflict involving Horn of Africa neighbours, the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government, as aggressive rhetoric has ratcheted up in the last month.

What Did Ethiopian Officials Said?

Ethiopia's, being landlocked, requests for passage to the sea coast through Eritrea has sparked a heated verbal exchange.

PM Abiy Ahmed first openly declared in last year that his nation's maritime access was an crucial concern, statements that Eritrean authorities ignored.

Ties between the neighboring nations have regularly been difficult. Following a long-standing struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a extensive Red Sea coastline, formally separated from Ethiopian rule in the early 1990s, making it cut off from the sea.

Subsequently, a territorial conflict started in which over a hundred thousand people died.

Recent Statements from Ethiopia's Leadership

Abiy and military leader General Birhanu Jula have directly stated control of Eritrean coastal city of Assab – some 60 km from the border - and hinted at the desire to seize it militarily.

Recently, Abiy said the country's "error" of being denied passage to the sea as a due to Eritrean independence would be "rectified soon".

The Ethiopian envoy to neighboring Kenya, retired Gen Bacha Debele, said that the port was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be restored "by force".

Eritrean Response to the Claims

Despite continuous warnings from Ethiopia, Eritrea's reaction has been restricted to concise remarks on social media from Communications Head Yemane Gebremeskel.

The minister has dismissed Ethiopia's push for maritime entry describing it as "risky" and a "negative policy" of "irredentism" – a approach of claiming back former lands.

The information ministry warned on 16 September that moves to justify "flagrant aggression" would have major implications for Ethiopia and its regional partners and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".

Defense Activities on the Border

So far, there are no reports of large-scale army activities in the frontier regions between the two countries.

Nevertheless, in the country, state television has shown completion events of thousands of cadets at different defense facilities.

The head of personnel division of the military, the officer, stated recently in an conversation that the military was in a "secure situation" as "many thousands of young people" were entering service, which he said was "a warning to our enemies".

Past Origins of the Conflict

For decades from 1890, Eritrea was ruled by Italian colonisers.

Following the end of Italian rule, it was then controlled by the British military before becoming a integrated region of Ethiopia.

But in the early 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie I ended this system and the region became completely integrated into Ethiopia.

A three-decade long civil war followed, finishing with military reversal in the early 1990s. Independence was then endorsed by the population in a plebiscite in 1993.

For a few years in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the leadership in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they disagreed over the specific demarcation of their shared boundary, causing conflict in 1998.

Though this ended in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the neighbors stayed at in dispute.

This situation improved in 2018, when the Prime Minister made gestures to Eritrea's leader the president. The both leaders signed a statement that the hostilities was concluded – a decision that gained the Prime Minister the international recognition.

The two governments were then cooperators in the country's recent civil war in the northern region.

But ties have since broken down again.