Sovereignty Under Siege: Reading the Fracture Lines Between Asmara and Addis

A Correspondent’s Dispatch

ADDIS ABABA — The Economist’s stark assessment landed like a stone in still water. “Africa’s most secretive dictatorship,” it called Eritrea, now facing an “existential crisis” engineered by its giant neighbour. The ripples spread quickly, some nodding in grim recognition, others bristling at what they saw as inflammatory oversimplification. But between these poles of reaction lies something more troubling: a convergence of historical grievances, strategic desperation, and human tragedy that refuses easy categorisation.

What emerges from conversations with diplomats, academics, refugees, and political operatives across the Horn is not consensus but a fractured landscape of interpretation. The question isn’t merely whether crisis looms, but whose crisis this is, how it might unfold, and whether our very language for describing it has already become weaponised.

The arithmetic of vulnerability tells part of the story. Eritrea, with barely six million souls, has haemorrhaged over 680,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers by latest count, perhaps ten to fifteen per cent of its entire population, depending on which estimates one trusts. This exodus speaks to something broken at the core. The country’s indefinite national service, formally an eighteen-month obligation but in practice stretching into decades, has transformed citizenship into a form of bondage. By early 2023, the government escalated forced recruitment, sweeping up reservists approaching fifty, punishing families of draft evaders, conducting midnight roundups that sent thousands more fleeing towards Sudan and beyond.

Then came February 2025, when Asmara ordered a nationwide mobilisation extending to citizens under sixty. Previously discharged conscripts received summons. Married women, traditionally exempt, were called. Exit permits were denied to those under fifty. The machinery of the state, long geared towards control, shifted into what many recognised as a wartime posture, though no war had been declared.

Across the border, Ethiopia’s calculus operates on a different scale entirely. With over 120 million people and an economy that, before recent upheavals, consistently posted near-double-digit growth, it confronts what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly termed an “existential” constraint: landlocked isolation. Since Eritrean independence in 1993 severed Ethiopia from the Red Sea, successive Addis governments have chafed at dependence on Djibouti’s ports, at the vulnerability this creates, at what many Ethiopians view as a historical injustice.

Abiy’s public pronouncements walk a careful line. Yes, sea access is existential, he insists. Yes, Ethiopia must secure reliable outlets to global trade. But no, he adds with studied emphasis, this will not be achieved through war. Negotiations, mutual benefit, respect for sovereignty, these are the terms he deploys before international audiences. Yet other signals complicate this reassuring narrative. Senior military officers speak differently in less formal settings. Eritrean officials, including Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, warn of “misguided and outdated ambitions” being pursued “through diplomacy or military force.” Reports filter through of Ethiopian troop concentrations along shared borders, though reliable confirmation proves elusive.

The regional architecture shifted dramatically when Washington, in a move that reverberated from Mogadishu to Asmara, formally recognised Somaliland as an independent state in early 2025. This American endorsement of Somaliland’s three-decade quest for international legitimacy, achieved through relative stability and democratic governance that contrasts sharply with Somalia’s persistent fragility, transformed Ethiopia’s strategic calculus overnight. The port agreement Addis had negotiated with Hargeisa suddenly acquired the imprimatur of great power blessing, offering Ethiopia not merely access but partnership with an internationally recognised entity. For Asmara, watching from across the Red Sea, the implications proved chilling: if borders could be redrawn with American approval, if separatist regions could achieve statehood through sustained lobbying and strategic alignment, what precedents were being established?

The Afar dimension adds another volatile element to this combustible mixture. Straddling the borders of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, the Afar people have long navigated between competing sovereignties and their own aspirations for self-determination. Within Eritrea’s southern lowlands, Afar communities have endured decades under Asmara’s centralised, highland-dominated authoritarianism a regime that has systematically marginalised pastoralist populations, conscripted their youth into indefinite military service, and shown little tolerance for ethnic or regional autonomy. Now, observing Somaliland’s recognition and Ethiopia’s aggressive pursuit of coastal access, some Afar political movements see opportunity in the emerging disorder.

Whispers of Afar separatism, long dismissed as fantasy given the community’s relatively small numbers within Eritrea, have acquired new currency. If Somaliland could persist for thirty years before achieving recognition, if Ethiopia might support entities offering port access, if Asmara’s grip weakens under combined internal and external pressure, might the Afar-inhabited regions, including the strategic port of Assab itself, become viable as an autonomous zone or even an independent entity aligned with Ethiopia? The logic, however premature, circulates in diaspora forums, in hushed conversations in Addis, in the calculations of regional power brokers seeking leverage.

For Asmara, this represents nightmare arithmetic: not merely Ethiopian pressure for port access, but the potential fracturing of the state itself along ethnic and regional lines, encouraged by external actors and legitimised by recent precedent. The regime’s response, intensified mobilisation, tightened control over border regions, heightened surveillance of Afar communities reflects paranoia that may not be entirely unjustified.

Those who accept the “existential crisis” framework point to this accumulation of pressure. The mobilisation in Eritrea, they argue, represents not paranoia but rational response to genuine threat. Ethiopia’s diplomatic offensives the port agreement with now-recognised Somaliland, the careful cultivation of regional alliances, the persistent public discourse about maritime necessity these lay groundwork for coercion, whether overt or subtle. When a country already weakened by mass emigration, economic anaemia (trade deficits approaching ninety million dollars), and systemic repression faces pressure from a neighbour forty times its size, whilst separatist movements within its borders sense opportunity and external powers redraw regional maps, the word “existential” seems less like hyperbole than description.

Human rights investigators reinforce this reading. Their documentation of indefinite conscription as forced labour, of torture in military camps, of families punished for their children’s escape, paints a picture of a state consuming itself to maintain control. When over half a million citizens have chosen refugee camps over home, when the working-age population drains away despite shoot-to-kill border policies, internal collapse becomes thinkable even without external invasion.

Yet the opposing interpretation deserves serious hearing. Its proponents note that Ethiopia has not, in fact, massed invasion forces. Abiy’s repeated disavowals of military action, whilst perhaps convenient, have been consistent and public. The port negotiations with Somaliland, controversial as they are, represent exactly the kind of diplomatic alternative to force that critics claim Ethiopia rejects. Moreover, Ethiopia’s strategic interest in Red Sea access, however aggressively pursued, remains fundamentally rational for a landlocked nation whose economic future depends on trade. To frame legitimate national interest as inherently threatening, this argument runs, is to deny Ethiopia agency whilst infantilising Eritrea.

This camp also notes Eritrea’s demonstrated resilience. The Isaias Afwerki regime has survived decades of isolation, weathered UN sanctions, maintained internal control through comprehensive surveillance, and even deployed forces to support Ethiopia during the Tigray conflict. The state apparatus, however repressive, remains functional. The military, though weakened by defections, retains discipline. And the psychological and diplomatic costs of interstate war international condemnation, economic disruption, unpredictable escalation create powerful deterrents that armchair analysts too easily dismiss.

Then there are those who reject the framing itself as distorted, though from opposing directions. Some accuse Western media of whitewashing Eritrea’s self-inflicted wounds by emphasising external threat over internal oppression. The “existential crisis,” they contend, originates not in Addis but in Asmara’s brutal governance. By foregrounding Ethiopian ambitions and American recognition of Somaliland, the narrative obscures decades of systematic human rights violations, forced labour masquerading as national service, and economic mismanagement that has produced the exodus. The suffering is real, but attributing it primarily to Ethiopian pressure absolves those actually responsible.

Others see whitewashing in the opposite direction a sanitising of Ethiopian assertiveness. They point to selective leaks from military circles, to the gap between Abiy’s diplomatic language and harder rhetoric from security officials, to the historical precedent of the 1998-2000 border war when Ethiopia proved willing to deploy massive force over disputed territory. The port deal with Somaliland, they note, violated Somalia’s sovereignty and American recognition rewarded that violation in ways that suggest Ethiopia’s commitment to legal norms remains contingent. If Ethiopia can unilaterally negotiate away another country’s territorial integrity and secure great power endorsement, what prevents similar logic being applied to Eritrea? And if Afar separatism becomes a useful tool for achieving port access, what ethical constraints would prevent its exploitation?

Weighing these competing accounts requires moving beyond assertion to probability. The likelihood of sustained diplomatic and economic pressure approaches certainty Ethiopia’s strategic imperatives and public commitments make this inevitable. The probability of border incidents or low-intensity clashes seems considerable, given the military posturing, historical tensions, and potential for miscalculation. The risk of internal fragmentation, particularly amongst Afar and other marginalised communities emboldened by regional precedents, has risen from theoretical to plausible. But the risk of full-scale invasion or territorial seizure, whilst not dismissible, appears lower. International norms, African Union protocols, and the sheer logistical and political costs of overt aggression create meaningful constraints, even if imperfect ones.

What seems most probable is something murkier than either war or peace: a prolonged period of coercive diplomacy, incremental pressure, perhaps proxies and leverage points that fall short of invasion but nonetheless compromise Eritrean sovereignty in practice if not in law. This is the space where “existential crisis” becomes not metaphor but slowly unfolding reality not a single catastrophic moment but an erosion of autonomy, a reduction of options, a state that retains formal independence whilst losing substantive control over its strategic choices.

The humanitarian implications unfold regardless of which interpretation prevails. Mobilisation alone has already accelerated refugee flows. The families of conscripts face impossible choices impoverishment and punishment if their children flee, conscription without end if they stay. If tensions escalate to actual conflict, or if internal fracturing accelerates, displacement could overwhelm already strained neighbouring countries. Sudan, itself convulsed by civil war, can absorb no more. Djibouti’s camps overflow. European destinations grow increasingly hostile to African migrants.

Regional stability hangs in the balance as well. The Red Sea corridor, critical to global commerce and energy flows, becomes a theatre where Horn of Africa conflicts intersect with Gulf rivalries, Egyptian security concerns, and great power competition. Port politics in Somalia and Somaliland reverberates through clan dynamics and federal disputes. American recognition of Somaliland signals shifting Western priorities in the region, potentially encouraging other secessionist movements whilst alarming governments facing their own territorial integrity questions. Every move at this chessboard shifts pieces across the broader game.

For those watching closely, certain indicators matter more than others. Ethiopian military deployments beyond what Addis officially acknowledges would signal genuine preparation rather than mere posturing. Further expansion of Eritrea’s mobilisation, particularly if it begins affecting previously protected categories of citizens or targeting specific ethnic communities like the Afar with particular intensity, would suggest Asmara perceives imminent rather than theoretical threat. International reactions whether the African Union and United Nations respond with forceful diplomacy or empty resolutions to both the Somaliland precedent and Ethiopian assertiveness will shape both sides’ calculations about costs and constraints. And internal developments in Eritrea, from student resistance to military defections to elite fractures to organised Afar political activity, could transform the equation overnight.

What remains clear is that Eritrea’s crisis, existential or not, is simultaneously internal and external, self-inflicted and imposed, slow-moving and potentially sudden. The state apparatus survives through repression that guarantees its long-term weakness. The population’s exodus reflects both tyranny at home and fear of worse to come. Ethiopia’s strategic necessity collides with Eritrea’s desperate determination to preserve what independence it has retained at such terrible cost. And now, American recognition of Somaliland and the stirrings of Afar separatism add new dimensions to a crisis already dangerously multifaceted.

The Economist’s warning, then, captures something real even if incomplete. This is not yet collapse, not yet invasion, not yet the catastrophe that “existential crisis” suggests as imminent. But neither is it ordinary diplomatic friction or media exaggeration. It is rather a convergence of structural pressures demographic, economic, strategic, political, ethnic that creates conditions where catastrophe becomes thinkable, where decisions made in coming months could tip towards outcomes no one fully intends but everyone will inherit.

Those who report on such matters must navigate between Cassandra’s curse and Pollyanna’s blindness. To sound alarm too loudly risks inflaming the very tensions one hopes to defuse. To reassure too readily risks complicity when prevention was still possible. The narratives we construct “existential threat,” “legitimate interest,” “internal repression,” “external aggression,” “separatist opportunity” do not merely describe reality but shape it, influencing how policymakers act and populations react.

Perhaps what distinguishes this moment is not whether crisis has arrived but whether enough people believe it has to make it so. Eritrea mobilises because it perceives threat. Ethiopia presses harder because it perceives necessity. Afar activists sense possibilities their parents never imagined. International observers parse language and count troops, trying to divine intention from incomplete evidence. And ordinary citizens, on all sides of increasingly contested borders, watch their leaders’ rhetoric and their own diminishing options, wondering whether the next headline will announce what no one wanted but many feared: that the Horn of Africa’s long, troubled peace has finally broken.

The fracture lines are visible. Whether they hold or give way remains the question that haunts every informed observer’s sleepless nights.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​