Ethiopia and Eritrea have cut diplomatic relations as renewed fighting across northern Ethiopia raises fears of a wider regional conflict spiralling beyond the country’s borders.
Ethiopia moved first on Thursday, announcing the closure of its embassy in the Eritrean capital Asmara and ordering ten Eritrean diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours, accusing them of activities that threatened national security. Eritrea’s foreign ministry called the decision “astounding” and responded by severing all diplomatic ties, warning of “negative corollaries” from the breakdown.
The diplomatic rupture arrived hours after powerful explosions were heard overnight in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, including near the country’s military headquarters. The situation is wider than an Ethiopia-Eritrea dispute. On the same day, Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat, giving him 48 hours to leave, without publicly stating a reason. Egypt responded by ordering an Ethiopian embassy official out of Cairo within the same timeframe.
Relations between the two countries have been strained for years over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which Egypt views as a threat to its share of Nile water.
On the ground, Ethiopian federal forces are battling fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and allied groups across parts of the northern regions of Tigray, Afar, and Amhara. Last month, the TPLF joined six other armed movements, including the Fano militia from the Amhara region, forming a new rebel alliance with the stated objective of removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government from power. A pro-government militia commander told the BBC that Eritrean soldiers had been seen fighting on the front lines, an allegation Asmara has consistently denied.
The scale of what is being risked here is enormous. The Tigray war of 2020 to 2022 killed an estimated 600,000 people according to an African Union mediator. The peace agreement that ended it now appears to be collapsing. And the diplomatic architecture that Abiy built in 2018 has disintegrated in a 48-hour expulsion notice.
