For families in Tigray, Afar and Amhara, the worry in early 2025 was simple: the next war might not wait. The European Council on Foreign Relations warned in April 2025 that Ethiopia and Eritrea were edging toward renewed conflict, with Tigray sitting at the centre of the board.
Two armies, one flashpoint
Eritrea launched a nationwide mobilisation in February, and Ethiopia followed in March. Reports suggested heavy weapons and mechanised units were being stationed near the border in the Afar region. The countries’ last war ran from 1998 to 2000 and began as a border dispute.
The relationship broke after the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended the two-year war in Tigray. It was negotiated between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the TPLF, and it sidelined Eritrea. Abiy has since stepped up talk of Ethiopia’s historic right to sea access, which Asmara reads as a threat to its territory. The Eritrean port of Assab appears to be Ethiopia’s main objective, and Ethiopian forces have gathered in Afar, close to it.
Tigray splits
The Pretoria deal also divided Tigray’s leaders. The interim administration under Getachew Reda fell out with the core of the TPLF led by Debretsion Gebremichael. Slow implementation of the peace and dire humanitarian conditions, made worse by US aid freezes, piled pressure on both. After the administration suspended three commanders on 11 March, the region’s forces rallied behind Debretsion and Getachew fled to Addis Ababa. Abiy chose talks over force, removing Getachew and appointing Tadesse Werede.
Ethiopia’s army is stretched, partly by an insurgency in Amhara by Fano militias that once fought alongside the government. Eritrea shares the Fano’s anger over Pretoria and has kept its wartime ties to them. Asmara has also opened talks with TPLF leaders, which the analysis reads as an attempt to pull Ethiopian attention away from Assab. Any military escalation in Tigray, it argued, would likely become a war between the two states.
Outsiders pick sides
Asmara has drawn closer to Egypt and to Sudan’s army, partly because of Egypt’s feud with Ethiopia over the Nile dam. Saudi Arabia has leaned toward Eritrea, while the UAE has deepened ties with Ethiopia, Somaliland and Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Iran, close to Eritrea since its independence in 1993, could use it to regain a supply channel for the Houthis. A war would also feed into Sudan’s civil war, since the two states back opposing sides.
The human stakes are large. Estimates put the Tigray war’s dead at 600,000. A second conflict, ECFR argued, would likely trigger a humanitarian crisis, push refugees toward Europe and threaten Red Sea security.
What Europe was urged to do
With the Trump administration unlikely to step in, the think tank said the EU should lead diplomacy, with Italy at the front and France and Germany behind it. Its first priority was reversing the Afar deployment and Eritrea’s mobilisation, working with Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the African Union.
It also called for relaunching the Pretoria Agreement, backing a compromise on Western Tigray, and scaling up European aid to fill the US gap. An economic package could build on Ethiopia’s preliminary $8.5 billion debt relief agreement, tied more closely to de-escalation. It said Europe’s failure to act would sideline European players in the region.
