Tigray fighting widens Horn tensions

Keypoints:

Pretoria peace deal is under severe strain
Ethiopia and Eritrea have severed ties
Regional rivalries are converging around Tigray

FIGHTING has returned to northern Ethiopia, but this time the danger stretches well beyond Tigray. Ethiopia and Eritrea, allies during the last war, have severed diplomatic relations. Egypt has been drawn deeper into the dispute, Sudan is already consumed by war, and the African Union is warning against further escalation.

What makes this moment particularly worrying is not that a regional war is inevitable. It is that several crises that once moved on separate tracks are beginning to collide. The unfinished business of Ethiopia’s 2022 peace agreement, its worsening relationship with Eritrea, the Sudan conflict, competition over the Red Sea and its long-running dispute with Egypt are now pressing against one another.

Pretoria faces its hardest test

The Pretoria agreement was meant to end a brutal two-year war.

Signed on November 2, 2022, by Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, it halted the main fighting and created a framework for tackling the political disputes left behind.

Nearly four years later, that peace is badly frayed.

In a September 23 statement on the renewed fighting, the African Union said the airports at Mekelle, Axum and Shire had been seized and occupied by the TPLF and that federal personnel had been detained.

It also reported escalating hostilities in parts of southern Tigray and the neighbouring Afar region.

For people in Tigray, those are names that carry painful memories. The previous war cut communities off from food, healthcare, banking and communications for long periods. The return of fighting inevitably raises fears that some of those hardships could follow.

The AU says Pretoria remains the ‘cornerstone’ of peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and has asked former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, its High Representative for the Horn of Africa, to re-engage the parties.

That matters because, for now at least, Pretoria remains the only agreed political framework available to pull the sides back from another prolonged war.

Former allies are now adversaries

The biggest change since the 2020–2022 conflict is Eritrea.

Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal forces against the TPLF during that war. Yet Eritrea was not a party to the Pretoria peace agreement, and relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara subsequently deteriorated.

The breakdown is now out in the open.

On October 1, Ethiopia announced that it was closing its embassy in Asmara and ordered 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours.

According to an Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement reported by ENA, Addis Ababa took the action in response to what it called Eritrea’s ‘direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence’.

Those are Ethiopia’s allegations.

Eritrea responded the same day, rejecting Addis Ababa’s accusations and making counter-allegations of its own. In an official statement published in Asmara, the Eritrean government said it would sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia.

The significance goes beyond closed embassies.

These are neighbours that fought a devastating border war between 1998 and 2000 before the dramatic reconciliation between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki in 2018.

Africa Briefing has followed how that rapprochement unravelled as Ethiopia–Eritrea tensions returned over security and Red Sea access.

A relationship once presented as one of the Horn’s great diplomatic breakthroughs has now swung back towards open hostility.

The military picture is more complicated

Ethiopia’s internal political landscape has also shifted.

Seven Ethiopian opposition organisations announced an alliance in September with the stated aim of removing Abiy’s government and establishing a transitional administration.

The grouping brings together movements with very different histories — including some that once fought one another.

That does not mean they have become a single army.

As Africa Briefing reported when the alliance was formed, its founding declaration set out a common political objective but did not announce an integrated military command or joint fighting force.

That distinction becomes more important as accusations of foreign involvement multiply.

Reuters reported on October 2 that diplomats and analysts believe Eritrea has allowed rebels access through its territory, potentially making Tigrayan forces less isolated than during the previous war.

Eritrea denies supporting the alliance.

Ethiopian authorities have separately accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing forces opposed to the federal government. All three have denied interfering.

Those allegations remain contested. They should not be read as proof that a coordinated regional coalition has formed against Ethiopia.

But they show just how far distrust has spread.

Egypt enters an increasingly tense picture

The diplomatic confrontation widened again when Ethiopia expelled an Egyptian diplomat on October 1. Egypt responded by expelling an Ethiopian embassy official.

The African Union quickly stepped in.

In an October 1 statement addressing Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt, the AU urged all three governments to exercise ‘maximum restraint’, preserve communication and settle their differences through diplomacy.

Egypt’s involvement adds another layer because its relationship with Ethiopia has long been strained by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.

Cairo says the dam poses concerns for its water security. Ethiopia insists the project is essential to its development and electricity needs.

That dispute did not create the fighting in Tigray, but it means renewed instability in Ethiopia is unfolding against an already difficult regional relationship.

The Red Sea adds another pressure point

Then there is the sea.

Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrea became independent in 1993. Abiy’s government has increasingly argued that dependable maritime access is vital to the country’s economic future.

For Eritrea, talk of Ethiopian access to the Red Sea has become a source of deep suspicion.

The issue has already shaken relations elsewhere in the Horn.

Ethiopia’s 2024 memorandum with Somaliland triggered a major confrontation with Somalia, which regards Somaliland as part of its sovereign territory. Turkish mediation later helped reduce tensions between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu.

Africa Briefing has tracked the subsequent efforts to repair Ethiopia–Somalia relations after the sea-access dispute.

But the argument showed how sensitive ports, coastlines and sovereignty have become in the Horn.

The Red Sea itself is also more strategically crowded than it was a decade ago. Gulf states, African governments and outside powers all have economic, military or political interests around one of the world’s most important shipping corridors.

Africa Briefing has also examined how Gulf competition is reshaping security calculations across the Horn of Africa.

That does not mean every dispute is part of one grand contest. It does mean that a local confrontation can quickly attract interests far beyond the immediate battlefield.

Sudan makes the neighbourhood more dangerous

To Ethiopia’s west, Sudan is already at war.

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has devastated large parts of the country and drawn in competing regional interests.

Reuters reports that several diplomats believe some Tigrayan forces have fought alongside Sudan’s army and that Khartoum hosted meetings connected to the creation of the Ethiopian opposition alliance.

Africa Briefing has not independently verified those claims.

They matter because they illustrate the possibility of conflicts beginning to overlap. But the region should not be reduced to two neat opposing camps. Alliances change, governments deny many of the accusations made against them, and states often cooperate on one issue while competing fiercely on another.

That messy reality may itself be part of the danger.

When several conflicts are running side by side, misunderstanding can be as destabilising as deliberate intervention.

For civilians, old fears are returning

For people on the ground, the calculations of governments and armed groups can feel very distant.

The consequences are not.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said 161 people were evacuated from conflict-affected Mekelle to Semera in Afar on September 28.

They included federal police personnel and relatives, Ethiopian Airlines employees, civil aviation security staff, African Union monitors and Ethiopian Red Cross workers.

It was not a mass evacuation. But it was a telling one.

Airports were again caught up in conflict. People whose work normally keeps aircraft moving, civilians travelling and peace monitors on the ground suddenly needed help getting out.

For families who lived through the previous war, the fear is painfully familiar: roads closing, flights stopping, communications failing and everyday life shrinking as the battlefield moves closer.

The diplomatic window is still open

The AU is now trying to stop two problems from becoming one much bigger crisis.

It wants the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan side to return to the Pretoria framework. At the same time, it is urging Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt to keep talking rather than allowing their separate disputes to spill into military confrontation.

There is no certainty that the fighting in Tigray will become a regional war.

There is equally little room for complacency.

A fragile peace deal is under severe pressure. Ethiopia and Eritrea no longer have diplomatic relations. Sudan is already engulfed in conflict. Egypt and Ethiopia remain divided by the Nile dispute. And competition over ports and Red Sea access has sharpened tensions across the Horn.

Any one of those problems would be difficult enough.

The danger now is that they are beginning to touch.

Tigray may once again be the battlefield attracting the world’s attention. But the forces shaping what happens next stretch far beyond its borders.