The country on the verge of three different wars

Think you’re busy? Wait ‘til you meet Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed Ali (above), who’s now juggling three separate and interrelated conflicts, starting with… 

1. Ethiopia vs Eritrea 

This one’s got more backstory than Carrie and Mr Big, but basically Ethiopia’s 1962 annexation of its neighbour triggered Eritrea’s brutal 30-year war for independence, which eventually plunged Ethiopia back into its current landlocked isolation from the 1990s.

The two were then stuck in frozen hostility for decades more until the current PM (Abiy) emerged in 2018 and did a historic deal with Eritrea that scored him the 2019 Nobel Prize.

But no volume of photo ops or prizes could paper over the tensions, which culminated in Ethiopia’s startling letter last week demanding Eritrea “immediately withdraws its troops from Ethiopian territory and cease all forms of collaboration with rebel groups”.

And to understand how we got there, we need to look at Ethiopia’s second war…

2. Ethiopia vs Ethiopia (civil war)

Abiy’s 2018 rise to power was a massive deal, not just because he signed the Eritrea truce, but because his ascent ended 30 years of dominance by Ethiopia’s ethnic Tigray elites (up north), who quickly got sidelined in the country’s military, intelligence, and beyond.

That sowed the seeds for a full-blown civil war that erupted in 2020, and guess who helped Abiy’s federal troops? Neighbouring Eritrea! (with its own historic Tigray beef)

So two years and endless war crimes later, Tigray lost, but guess which troops then refused to leave town? That’s right, neighbouring Eritrea, which voiced distrust at getting excluded from 2022’s big Tigray-Ethiopia peace deal.

But there are now signs dissident Tigray groups are active again — and can you guess who’s reportedly helping them? That’s right, neighbouring Eritrea! After first crushing Tigray, there are growing reports Eritrea may now be hedging its bets with some Tigray factions as a proxy front to destabilise Ethiopia. Why? To force Ethiopia to back off its persistent demands for Red Sea access via Eritrea.

And that brings us to Ethiopia’s third war…

3. Ethiopia vs Sudan

Thanks to some spicy Reuters reporting, it turns out Ethiopia is also hosting a secret training camp for 4,000 members of neighbouring Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary, which controls 40% of the country amid its own brutal civil war.

Why would Ethiopia do that? Just look at who is ✌️allegedly✌️ funding and staffing the camp: the United Arab Emirates, which denies the allegations though has been collecting East African proxies like Pokémon to secure a Red Sea footing plus gold assets, while curbing Islamist influence.

And… why would Ethiopia help the Emiratis? Well guess who first helped the Ethiopians against Tigray as part of its above Pokémon strategy? That’s right, the Emiratis.

So even if the above leaves you more confused than season six of Lost, just hold onto this big takeaway: with local US power looking to draw down, you’ve got this overlapping map of history, rivalry, and proxies that risks pulling an entire region into open conflict.

And conveniently, the same country at the edge of all three wars is also the host of the African Union, which gathers for its 39th regional summit in Addis this Saturday!

Intrigue’s Take

So for those of us not living right there… why care? Here are three reasons, starting with…

• First, the humanitarian implications dwarf anything else you might’ve seen in your feed, with a regional death toll approaching a ~million since Tigray, plus another ~20 million folks displaced, fuelling…
• Second, continued irregular migration as far as Europe, playing not only into transatlantic spats with the US but also offering more fertile ground for Putin to keep backing angry voices to divide and weaken Europe, which takes us to…
• Third, even if this doesn’t hit your conscience or your ballot, it’ll hit your wallet: the Houthis are already making Red Sea shipping (~12% of world trade) risky and therefore pricey, and these other conflicts will only further delay any stability. Plus if you want to get into specific sectors, consider Ethiopia is not only a top coffee exporter, but also has vast critical minerals shaping up as the next venue for the US-China race to secure their supply chains (something we visited last month). 

Sound even smarter:

• Ethiopia has been the world’s most populous landlocked country since Eritrean independence stripped it of key Red Sea ports in the early 1990s. 
• Meanwhile, the US continues to mediate another long-standing dispute involving Ethiopia’s new mega-dam, which downstream Egypt sees as a direct threat to its entire Nile water supply.