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Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict could intersect with increased Houthi escalation in Yemen, experts fear

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Renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia and worsening tensions between Addis Ababa and Asmara are reopening one of the Horn of Africa’s most dangerous fault lines at a moment when the Red Sea itself is under growing pressure.

The latest fighting in Ethiopia has already shaken the 2022 Pretoria agreement that ended the previous Tigray war. Tigrayan forces launched a major offensive last week, seizing airports and advancing into neighboring areas before Ethiopian federal forces and allied militias began counterattacks. On Monday, pro-government forces claimed to have recaptured the strategic town of Alamata, south of Mekelle.

But the concern now extends beyond another internal Ethiopian conflict.Ethiopia’s army chief, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula, has publicly accused Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of supporting forces fighting the federal government, adding a regional dimension to an already volatile confrontation. All three countries have denied involvement, while Sudan has in turn accused Ethiopia of supporting forces hostile to Khartoum - allegations Addis Ababa denies.

At the same time, just across the Red Sea, the Houthis have dramatically expanded their position along Yemen’s western coast, taking Mokha and strategic islands near Bab el-Mandeb in September. The advance has increased pressure on one of the world’s most important maritime passages and renewed fears that conflicts on the two shores of the Red Sea could increasingly intersect.

Armed men march through Alamata, Ethiopia, in this screengrab from a social media video released on September 28, 2026. (credit: Tigrai Peace Force/Handout via REUTERS)

Ethiopia–Eritrea conflict is serious, expert says

For Dr. Gashaw Ayferam Endaylalu, Senior Researcher of Hydropolitics and Geopolitics in the Horn of Africa and Director General for African Affairs at the Institute of Foreign Affairs, the current Ethiopia–Eritrea tensions cannot be reduced to another temporary deterioration in bilateral relations.

“It is serious, and it would be a mistake to treat it as a passing spike in tension,” Endaylalu told The Media Line. “The current escalation has several layers. On the surface, there is renewed fighting between the federal forces and TPLF [Tigray People’s Liberation Front]-affiliated elements in the north. Beneath that is a wider effort to build an anti-Ethiopia alignment, the so-called ‘Tsimdo’ alliance, in which Eritrea is a key organizer and driver.”

“In my assessment, Asmara pushed for the early resumption of hostilities and provides political and logistical backing,” he further noted.

Those claims reflect an Ethiopian assessment of Eritrea’s role and remain contested. Asmara has denied Ethiopian accusations of destabilization, while the precise extent of external support for the various armed groups remains difficult to establish independently.

The deterioration is particularly striking because Ethiopia and Eritrea were allies during the 2020-2022 Tigray war. Their relationship worsened after the Pretoria peace agreement, from which Eritrea was excluded despite the participation of Eritrean forces in the conflict. Red Sea access has since emerged as another point of friction, with Addis Ababa repeatedly stressing the economic and strategic importance of obtaining reliable maritime access.

Endaylalu, however, argued that the port question should not be viewed as the main cause of the present confrontation.

“Ethiopia sees access to the sea as an existential and economic necessity,” he said. “A country of more than 120 million people cannot indefinitely depend on a single corridor, given that over 97 percent of its trade passes through Djibouti,” he added.

But, he continued, “I would not describe the sea-access question as the likeliest cause of war. If confrontation comes, sea access will be a secondary cause, not the primary one.”

Main disagreement stems from Horn of Africa political order, expert says

For Endaylalu, the deeper disagreement concerns the political architecture of the Horn itself.

“The primary driver is a deeper disagreement between Addis Ababa and Asmara over the regional order in the Horn of Africa,” he said. “Ethiopia envisions a Horn based on interdependence and shared economic opportunity, while Asmara’s approach depends on an Ethiopia that stays inward-looking and divided.”

He pointed to the earlier Ethiopia–Eritrea war as evidence that bilateral hostility predates the latest debate over Assab and Red Sea access.

“Look at Asmara’s conduct during the EPRDF [Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front] era, from 1991 to 2018. That government did not press any claim on Assab, and yet relations still deteriorated into a devastating war and years of hostility,” he said.

“The risk is real, but it is not inevitable,” he added.

The danger becomes more complicated when Ethiopia and Eritrea are placed within a much wider regional map.

Mowlid Ali, a security intelligence analyst on the Red Sea at INGO Advisory, said the Horn can no longer be analyzed separately from the competition among regional and international actors for ports, military access and influence.

“The situation in the Horn of Africa is deteriorating because of the dominance of powers trying to come to Africa and occupy the ports,” Ali told The Media Line. “They are all in competition. So the violence in the Horn of Africa is going to get worse,” he added.

That competition now overlaps with instability from Sudan to Yemen.

Sudan has been at war since 2023, while Ethiopia and Sudan still have unresolved tensions along their border. At the same time, both governments have traded accusations of assisting hostile armed actors. Reuters reported this month that diplomats increasingly fear a renewed Ethiopian conflict would unfold not in isolation but alongside Sudan’s civil war, Nile tensions, and the spillover of Middle Eastern rivalries into the Horn.

Endaylalu called the Ethiopia-Sudan-Eritrea border area one of the most vulnerable points in that landscape.

“The border triangle is the region’s most delicate fault line,” he said, citing “unresolved border issues between Ethiopia and Sudan” and “the convergence of three states at a single point, with overlapping security interests.”

“Any confrontation in this area would very likely make the conflict regional,” he further noted.

He also alleged that Port Sudan and Eritrea are facilitating forces hostile to Addis Ababa. Such claims have not been independently established, and Sudan’s military has called Ethiopian accusations that it supports armed opposition groups “baseless.”

Egypt-Ethiopia-Eritrea dynamics add layer of diplomatic complexity

Egypt adds another layer.

Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have for years been strained by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and disagreements over the Nile. Eritrea, meanwhile, has developed closer relations with both Sudan and Egypt, creating a diplomatic geometry that Ethiopian officials increasingly view with suspicion.

Endaylalu described Cairo as a major actor in the current regional competition.

“Egypt is already deeply engaged. Cairo’s policy in the Horn is one of encirclement, aimed at limiting Ethiopia’s strategic reach and thereby sustaining its own dominance over the Nile and the Red Sea,” he said.

“We see Egypt trying to assemble an anti-Ethiopia axis - Cairo, Port Sudan, Asmara, and others - to pressure Ethiopia into accepting a Nile arrangement that reflects colonial-era assumptions,” he added.

That is Endaylalu’s assessment, rather than an established description of Egyptian policy. Egypt on Tuesday rejected allegations that it was supporting Ethiopian opposition forces and said its foreign policy is based on respect for sovereignty and non-interference in other states’ internal affairs.

For Cairo, however, developments farther north in the Red Sea create an additional security concern. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have already stressed the need to guarantee freedom of navigation through Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea as Yemen’s conflict intensifies.

Men gesture in a screen grab from a video released September 11, 2026 and said to show Khaled bin Walid camp after Houthis captured the city of Mocha in Taiz Province. (credit: Al-Masirah TV/Handout via REUTERS)

That is where the Horn’s internal tensions risk intersecting with a second crisis.

The Houthi advance through western Yemen has brought the group to strategically important territory overlooking Bab el-Mandeb. Although commercial shipping has not been completely halted, the military shift has increased the Houthis’ capacity to threaten or influence navigation through the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

Ali said the implications go far beyond Yemen.

“If they get hold of Bab el-Mandeb, it is going to become a chokehold for humanitarian access and for the shipping lines,” he said.

He warned that deteriorating security on both shores of the waterway could turn separate crises into an interconnected regional security problem.

“You have the situation in Somalia to the east, piracy, and you have the Houthis on the other side of the Red Sea attacking ships and cargo vessels,” Ali said. “There is also a humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan,” he added.

“We have to keep an eye on the escalating security situation in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea,” he further noted.

Horn of Africa-Red Sea intersection makes conflicts hard to contain

For both analysts, that intersection is what makes the present moment particularly difficult to contain.

Endaylalu warned that the Horn already contains “overlapping alliances, including Gulf, Turkish, Egyptian, and Israeli engagement,” and said that if Ethiopia’s internal conflict develops into “a proxy arena for these competing alignments, the consequences could extend well beyond Ethiopia’s borders.”

Ali reached the same broader concern from the maritime-security side.

“If Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz and then you have the Houthis in Yemen blocking Bab el-Mandeb entirely,” he said, “it is going to be catastrophic.”, he concluded.

Neither an Ethiopia–Eritrea war nor a wider regional confrontation is inevitable. But the number of unresolved disputes is increasing at the same time: renewed war in northern Ethiopia, tensions with Eritrea, Sudan’s continuing conflict, the Nile dispute with Egypt, and a rapidly changing military balance across the Red Sea in Yemen.

The risk is therefore no longer limited to one border or one conflict. It lies in the possibility that crises that have so far remained partly separate begin to converge around the same strategic space - the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.

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