Tigray war may spill over to Eritrea — helped by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's rhetoric

Ethiopia: Abiy begins new term as regional tensions mount October 6, 2026Amid escalating conflict in Ethiopia's northernmost Tigray region, Abiy Ahmed has been sworn in for another term as Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Shortly after the ceremony on Monday afternoon, Abiy reiterated his will to work toward giving the landlocked country direct access to the Red Sea. "Based on the principle of give and take, we will work diligently to ensure that Ethiopia has an outlet to the sea," Abiy said — a comment that risks exacerbating tensions with neighboring Eritrea. The two countries have been at odds over Ethiopia's desire to control Eritrea's port of Assab. DW correspondent Solomon Muchie, who followed the swearing-in ceremony in Addis Ababa, said despite the renewed mandate, Abiy faces challenging times ahead. "The new term gives Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stronger political authority," Solomon said. "But the country's complex internal and regional challenges could make it difficult to translate the authority into lasting stability." Solomon gave an example of Sunday's meeting in Cairo of countries that opposed Ethiopia as a case in point: "The leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan discussed regional issues. But Ethiopia was excluded from this meeting. So this is also what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government will face in his tenure in the coming years." Ethiopia still eyeing Eritrea's port of Assab For analyst Abdurahman Sayed, who leads the London-based Horn of Africa Center for Regional Integration, Eritrea now faces an imminent threat of entering the war in Tigray. This comes after a three-year Ethiopian campaign to gain control of the port of Assab. "Eritrea has legitimate concern of Ethiopia's intentions to occupy it, if it can, and then if not, then at least take the port of Assab, which is a very important port, not only for commercial purposes but also strategically," Sayed said. "It oversees the Bab el Mandeb [Strait], which is the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Now, without that port, Eritrea's strategic significance would be reduced to almost nil, so there wouldn't be any importance of Eritrea." Last week, Ethiopia severed its diplomatic ties with Eritrea and Egypt. According to Sayed, this might be a sign that the government is determined to pursue its push for the Red Sea port by force. The renewed fighting in Tigray might point in that direction. Just days ago, the Ethiopian National Defence Forces took control of Tigray's capital Mekelle. On Monday, a pro-government media outlet reported that the Ethiopian army had begun mobilizing its troops towards the Eritrean border, following a movement of the opposed Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) retreating to the area near Adigrat — an important gateway to Eritrea and the Red Sea. "The Tigrayan people have cultural, linguistic, and religious links with those in southern Eritrea," Sayed said. "In fact, the ones in power in Eritrea have many more similarities with those in Tigray," he stressed, adding that there could be a spillover effect, especially now that the TPLF is out of Mekelle, and they might be out of major towns as well. "So they might go for a kind of ragtag fighting tactic." According to Sayed, the Ethiopian government and army are only waiting for Eritrea to enter the war. "They've already been making allegations without substantiating them, without any evidence, that the Eritrean army is already in Ethiopia fighting against the Ethiopian government. Although the truth is the Ethiopian rebel movements, they are quite well experienced in fighting, and they have plenty of armaments and so on," Sayed said. "So there is not much need for the Eritrean army to be there physically to support them. But the Ethiopians would love to see that, so they can justify their attack on Eritrea by claiming that they were the first one to be attacked, and therefore they were now responding to that attack." Calls for diplomacy While allegiances in the Horn of Africa region and the Near East have been much debated in the context of the recent crisis, actors from the global North have remained relatively silent — though experts like Abdurahman Sayed have welcomed a statement by the United States for diplomatic efforts to be renewed. One decisive factor, then, might revolve around access to Djibouti, the one Horn of Africa country that Ethiopia has long been on good terms with. At a recent webinar by the independent conflict monitor ACLED, the institution's senior East Africa analyst Dr Jalale Getachew Birru elaborated on this. "Ethiopia's main trade route is through Djibouti, and that is why we're seeing one of the fronts being within [Ethiopia's adjacent region] Afar. Just like in the previous war, the TPLF wants to control the main route from Djibouti to Addis Ababa," Jalale said. She also said that, since Israel officially recognized Somalia's autonomous Somaliland region as an independent state, the past year has brought a new dynamic to diplomatic relations in the Horn. "This also includes Djibouti sometimes aligning with Eritrea, Egypt and so on, but they're also trying to remain neutral," Jalale said. At the moment, however, both Ethiopia and Djibouti seem to be determined to maintain the trade from which they both profit. "There is also hyperinflation in Ethiopia," Abdurahman Sayed said. "And if there is a shortage of supplies and oil, that can cause major pressure on the Ethiopian government between yesterday and today." Also, Djibouti, located strategically at the entrance to the Red Sea, hosts many international airbases, including those of the US, China, France, Italy, and Japan. Cutting off the country's trade route to mainland Africa could be the tipping point that finally prompts international players to speak up and pressure Ethiopia to end the conflict. Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu