Mounting concerns exist over the chance of warfare among East African neighbors, Ethiopia and Eritrea, as aggressive discourse has escalated in the past few weeks.
Ethiopia's, being landlocked, demands for access to the maritime outlet through Eritrean territory has sparked a heated war of words.
PM Abiy Ahmed previously announced in the previous year that his nation's access to the sea was an vital issue, remarks that Eritrean authorities rejected.
Ties between the two countries have regularly been difficult. Following a decades-long struggle for freedom, the Eritrean state, which has a 1,350km (840-mile) maritime frontage, officially seceded from Ethiopian rule in 1993, rendering it cut off from the sea.
Subsequently, a military clash erupted in which numerous people died.
Prime Minister Abiy and military leader Field Marshal Birhanu Jula have publicly asserted sovereignty of Eritrea's maritime facility of Assab โ some 60 km from the frontier - and suggested the wish to capture it through military means.
In early September, the Prime Minister said the country's "error" of being denied passage to the Red Sea as a because of Eritrea's separation would be "corrected soon".
Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya, ex-military officer Bacha, said that the port was "Ethiopia's wealth" and would be restored "usingๆญฆๅ".
Despite continuous challenges from Ethiopia, Eritrea's reaction has been restricted to short statements on X from Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel.
He has rejected Ethiopian requests for maritime entry describing it as "dangerous" and a "toxic agenda" of "territorial claims" โ a approach of claiming back former lands.
Government spokespeople cautioned on 16 September that moves to validate "obvious provocation" would have major implications for the Ethiopian government and its regional partners and is a "boundary that should not be crossed|violated|breached".
So far, there are few indications of significant troop deployments in the border areas between the both nations.
Nonetheless, in the country, state television has broadcast training completions of many recruits at various military training camps.
The director of human resources department of the military, Lt Gen Hachalu Sheleme, recently said in an interview that the military was in a "secure situation" as "many thousands of youths" were joining it, which he said was "a warning to our adversaries".
For over fifty years from 1890, the territory was administered by Italian colonisers.
Following World War II, it was then controlled by the British military before becoming a associated territory of Ethiopia.
Yet in the early 1960s the ruler terminated this system and Eritrea became totally absorbed into the Ethiopian state.
A thirty-year civil war ensued, ending with military reversal in the early 1990s. Sovereignty was then endorsed by the population in a plebiscite in 1993.
Briefly in the 1990s, there were positive ties between the authorities in Ethiopia's capital and Asmara, but they clashed over the exact location of their shared boundary, leading to war in 1998.
Though this finished in a peace deal in 2000, it was incompletely executed, and the neighbors stayed at in dispute.
This changed in 2018, when Abiy made gestures to Eritrea's leader President Isaias. The both leaders agreed to a declaration that the hostilities was concluded โ a move that won the Prime Minister the prestigious award.
The neighboring states were then partners in the country's previous internal conflict in the northern region.
However relations have subsequently deteriorated anew.
Rashid Al-Mansoori is a tech journalist with over a decade of experience covering innovations and digital transformations in the Middle East.
