Eritrean soldiers enter Tigray. The (on paper) unequal confrontation with Ethiopia

With the arrival at the Zalambessa border crossing of hundreds of men crammed onto old lorries, Eritrea has effectively entered the war against Ethiopia, siding with the rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Eyewitnesses filmed the convoy in Adrigrat, a small town about 25 kilometres south of Ethiopia’s northern border. The soldiers were in uniform; it was impossible to count their exact number. It appears that the Ethiopian Armed Forces have already attempted to halt the advance, attacking the Eritreans with drones further south still, at Idaga Hamus, where a large proportion of the TPLF’s forces are massed. “All foreign military forces operating within our sovereign territory must withdraw immediately,” warned the Ethiopian government. But Asmara has responded by accusing Addis Ababa, in turn, of seeking a pretext to declare war. Yemane Meskel, Eritrea’s Minister of Information, has accused Ethiopia of constructing “a fallacious narrative of ‘self-defence’ to disguise its war of aggression”.

By an unfathomable twist of events, the forces from Asmara – which, as recently as four years ago, were responsible for the most brutal crimes against civilians in Tigray – are now allies of the TPLF rebels. These rebels, in turn, are challenging the despotic rule of the Ethiopian president, Abiy Ahmed, and claiming control of western Tigray – a region rich in gold deposits that Ethiopia wishes to keep under its direct control. In any case, the latest developments demonstrate just how imminent the risk of the war spreading across the region was. Abiy was waiting for nothing more than the Eritrean military to cross the border into the north to have sufficient grounds to declare war on the Asmara regime. A move which, officially, has not yet been made by Addis Ababa, but which, according to many observers, would be the logical consequence. At stake is access to the Red Sea, an ambition that Abiy has never concealed and for which the capture of the Eritrean port of Assab is his true objective. As soon as the Pretoria Peace Treaty was signed in 2022, it became clear that the alliance between Abiy and Isaias Afwerki, the brutal Eritrean dictator, had come to an end, because from the very outset the Ethiopian president’s ambitions had shifted towards access to the Red Sea. On paper, the conflict is one-sided. While Ethiopia is experiencing rapid economic expansion, attracting significant foreign capital, is armed by the United Arab Emirates and equipped with advanced weaponry, Isaias, on the other hand, barely has an army – one that fights in flip-flops and is poorly armed – to defend one of the poorest countries in the world.

Amidst this contradiction, the people of Tigray remain, described as “a cancer” by Abiy himself, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. By the time the Pretoria Agreement was signed a year later, over half a million people had been killed. The women abused by the Eritrean military during the war between 2020 and 2022; the Orthodox Christians massacred – again by the Eritreans – in Dengelat in 2021; the child soldiers being recruited today by the TPLF, the very same organisation that, until a few years ago, accused Eritreans and Ethiopians of genocide in Tigray.

And it cannot be ruled out that the war is set to escalate further. On Tuesday, in Sudan, the Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, visited the headquarters of the 11th Infantry Division of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Khashm el Girba, near the border with Eritrea and Tigray. As has already been the case with Eritrea, there are fears that Sudan too may decide to enter the war against Ethiopia, to punish Abiy for the support he has offered to the Janjaweed of the Rapid Support Forces. And Egypt’s role, for the time being, remains to be seen. For years, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been building an anti-Ethiopian alliance network comprising Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. It is unclear whether this axis will succeed in containing Addis Ababa, where Abiy—never one to hide certain narcissistic traits of his leadership—had already declared himself the victor on Monday: “On the battlefield and in the media, with the sword and through protest, through falsehoods and rumours, through malice, intrigues and conspiracies. They have tried everything to stand in our way. But they have not been able to, nor will they ever be able to, defeat Ethiopia!”