Ethiopia Once Again Seeks to Invert Reality: Aggressor Masquerading as Victim

by Ghidewon Abay Asmerom

Ethiopia once again seeks to invert reality: aggressor masquerading as victim, revisionist ambitions dressed in the language of peace, and threats against Eritrea recast as “restraint.” For the sake of the record, and for the clarity of the international community, it is necessary to set out the facts.

Ethiopia’s letter to the UN pretends that Eritrea’s concerns are “pretexts” for hostility, yet it is Addis Ababa itself that has loudly proclaimed, at the highest levels, that access to the Red Sea is an “existential” issue. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly declared the “correction” of a supposed “historical mistake” by acquiring Eritrea’s sovereign coastline. Ethiopia cannot openly threaten to redraw borders, undermine the principle of uti possidetis juris that underpins the African Union, and then feign surprise when its neighbors take such rhetoric seriously.

Eritrea is not destabilizing Ethiopia; Ethiopia destabilizes itself by elevating expansionist fantasies over governance, law, and development. Consistent with tradition, Ethiopia continues to blame others for its self-inflicted crises. Today, the regime in Addis Ababa would have the world believe that Fano is incapable of checkmating the Ethiopian army and holding territory. Yet for three solid years, Fano—dismissed at first as a “cakewalk”—has proven a formidable adversary, exposing the regime’s vulnerability.

Past governments in Addis were no different; they blamed Arab states for Eritrea’s liberation struggle rather than confronting their own failures. Now, despite relentless bombings and drone strikes against the Amhara and OLA, the Ethiopian government has been unable to secure victory. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed remains in denial, clinging to bravado even as his regime crumbles from within. And, true to form, he seeks to deflect responsibility by accusing Eritrea of being the source of Ethiopia’s unraveling.

The latest letter accuses Eritrea of forming a “tsimdo” alliance with the TPLF. This is a grotesque distortion. Eritrea bore the brunt of TPLF aggression for decades and sacrificed immensely to help free Ethiopians from TPLF dictatorship in 2020. To now claim a secret alliance is a clumsy attempt to externalize Ethiopia’s own internal fractures. The reality is that Ethiopia’s ruling elites have managed to alienate nearly every community within their borders: Amhara, Oromo, Tigrayans, Afar, Somali, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz. Ethiopia’s crises are homegrown; scapegoating Eritrea will not conceal that.

Ethiopia boasts of a “policy of maximum restraint.” This is an insult to memory. It was Ethiopia that waged two full-scale wars against Eritrea in 1998–2000 and again after refusing to implement the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) ruling of 2002. For two decades, Ethiopia illegally occupied Eritrean territory, in defiance of international law and the Algiers Agreement. Eritrea exercised true restraint during those long years of Ethiopian intransigence, while Addis insisted on “dialogue” as a pretext to delay compliance with binding arbitration.

The pattern is unmistakable: Ethiopia talks peace while preparing war; invokes law while violating treaties; claims victimhood while threatening conquest. Ethiopian leaders have long been marked by duplicity, adopting a pattern of striking first and crying victim afterward. Here the Prosperity Party (PP) is simply lifting pages out of the TPLF’s old playbook.

Ethiopia’s letter dresses naked expansionism in the costume of “economic integration.” Eritrea has never opposed integration based on sovereignty, equality, and mutual respect. But integration cannot mean submission to Ethiopia’s demographic bullying or historical revisionism. To demand Eritrea’s coast under the guise of “shared prosperity” is not integration—it is coercion.

The international community should recall that Ethiopia speaks of “brotherhood” with Eritrea in the same breath that it threatens to “secure access” to the sea, not through commerce, but through the language of necessity. It is precisely this instrumental use of peace rhetoric that has destabilized the Horn for generations.

Ethiopia demands that Eritrea “respect its sovereignty and refrain from interfering in internal affairs.” This from a state whose officials openly debate maps of the Red Sea, whose leaders insist that Eritrea’s very borders should be redrawn so that they can occupy Eritrea’s coastline, and whose lobbyists urge foreign powers to pressure Asmara into submission. It is Ethiopia, not Eritrea, that daily undermines the sovereignty of others.

The international community must see through Ethiopia’s performance of victimhood. Eritrea is not the aggressor. Eritrea has no designs on Ethiopian territory, no ambitions to destabilize its society, and no illusions about rewriting colonial borders. It is Ethiopia that must be prevailed upon to cease its reckless rhetoric, abandon its imperial nostalgia, and finally learn the basic discipline of statehood: respecting the borders it inherited at independence, as every African state is bound to.