Ethiopia: The Guilty Party Playing the Victim

By Ghidewon Abay Asmerom

There is an old Tigrinya proverb: “ጭጉራፍሲ ወቂዓ ተእዊ” — “The whip does the lashing, then cries out in pain.” Few expressions better capture the irony of the Ethiopian government’s latest pronouncement against Eritrea.

On October 1, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would close its embassy in Asmara and declared ten Eritrean diplomats in Addis Ababa persona non grata, giving them 48 hours to leave. The Ministry accused Eritrea of “direct and indirect acts of hostility and belligerence against Ethiopia” and alleged that the diplomats had engaged in activities threatening Ethiopia’s national security. The public statement, however, did not present detailed evidence substantiating those accusations.

The seriousness of such allegations should not be minimized. If a government possesses evidence that accredited diplomats have violated the Vienna Convention or participated in activities incompatible with their diplomatic status, established legal mechanisms are available to it, including declaring them persona non grata. But invoking those mechanisms does not, by itself, establish the truth of the underlying accusations. Allegations remain allegations until evidence is produced.

That distinction is particularly important because Addis Ababa’s action comes amid a rapidly expanding conflict within Ethiopia. Renewed fighting involving federal forces, Tigrayan forces, and other armed groups has spread across Tigray, Amhara, and Afar. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of supporting the opposition alliance. All three governments have denied the accusation.

And therein lies the irony.

When the Whip Begins to Scream

The Ethiopian statement declares that relations between sovereign states must be governed by respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and peaceful coexistence. These are admirable principles. Everyone should welcome them—if they are actually going to be observed. Principles acquire meaning through consistent application, not convenient invocation.

For years, Ethiopia’s political discourse over access to the Red Sea has generated deep anxiety in Eritrea. The issue has not merely concerned a commercial transit interests of a landlocked country. Increasingly, it has been framed in the language of strategic entitlement to maritime access. Over the past three years, Red Sea access—and specifically Assab—has become a major flashpoint in deteriorating Ethiopian-Eritrean relations, with Eritreans fearing that Addis Ababa could attempt another bloody war to acquire the port by force.

That history makes the language of the October 1 statement remarkable. Ethiopia now demands that Eritrea cease conduct allegedly contrary to “the principles governing relations between sovereign states,” while portraying itself as the injured party.

Hence the Tigrinya proverb: the whip lashes, and then the whip screams.

If sovereignty is inviolable today, it was inviolable yesterday. If territorial integrity deserves protection when Ethiopia believes its security is threatened, Eritrea’s territorial integrity deserves precisely the same protection when Ethiopian politicians discuss Eritrean territory. International law cannot mean one thing in Addis Ababa and another in Asmara.

An Accusation Is Not Evidence

The timing deserves scrutiny as well. The diplomatic rupture follows a dramatic deterioration in Ethiopia’s internal security. Explosions were heard in Addis Ababa overnight, and a source linked to the opposition alliance had told Reuters that it had carried out drone strikes, including attacks directed at military headquarters.

Meanwhile, federal forces and their allies are fighting an expanding war. Tens of thousands have reportedly been displaced in Afar, telecommunications have been disrupted in Tigray, and the Ethiopian government and its opponents are presenting sharply conflicting accounts of responsibility for the renewed fighting.

It is precisely under such circumstances that accusations against neighboring states require evidence rather than repetition. Eritrea should not be made the scapegoat for Ethiopia’s internal political contradictions.

Ethiopia is a complicated country containing competing political movements, armed organizations, regional grievances, and the unresolved consequences of previous wars. It has been like that for over a century. The current opposition alliance itself brings together seven Ethiopian armed groups. Its existence cannot simply be explained away by pointing north towards Eritrea.

Whatever one thinks of those organizations, they are Ethiopian political actors arising primarily from Ethiopian political conditions. Some of them, moreover, have been erstwhile enemies of Eritrea. Externalizing those conditions may be politically convenient, but it does not resolve them.

From Ally to Alleged Enemy

Ethiopia’s transformation is especially striking because only a few years ago Eritrea was described very differently by the same Ethiopian government. It was portrayed as the country that stood by Ethiopia in its darkest days. In the words of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Eritrea was “የቁርጥ ቀን ወዳጅ”—a friend in the hour of greatest need. When TPLF forces overran the Ethiopian Army’s Northern Command, Ethiopian soldiers crossed into Eritrea after losing their weapons. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed himself later acknowledged Eritrea’s role. In his words, when darkness falls, even one’s shadow disappears, but Eritrea stood with Ethiopia when Ethiopia faced the danger of collapse.

For Eritreans, there is an even longer historical memory behind this argument. Eritrea had also played a decisive role in the military developments that brought the Derg regime to an end in 1991. Yet it is this same Eritrea that is now being presented as the external enemy threatening Ethiopia.

The reversal is all the more striking because the Ethiopian embassy in Asmara that Addis Ababa has now ordered closed was reopened in 2018 during the rapprochement between the two countries. That reconciliation contributed to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed receiving the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. During the 2020–2022 Tigray war, moreover, Eritrean and Ethiopian forces fought on the same side against the TPLF.

Today’s narrative has almost completely reversed yesterday’s. The former partner has become the alleged external conspirator. Such a dramatic reversal should encourage observers to approach sweeping accusations with caution. Governments under pressure, Ethiopian in particular, frequently find foreign explanations useful because they transform complicated domestic political failures into simpler narratives of external aggression.

Sovereignty Cannot Be Selective

There is nevertheless something remarkable in Ethiopia’s October 1 statement, particularly for observers unfamiliar with the history of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations. Addis Ababa has now publicly placed sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful coexistence, and the accepted principles governing relations between sovereign states at the center of its declared foreign policy toward Eritrea.

Were these words coming from a government with a consistent record of adhering to such principles, Eritrea could simply hold Ethiopia to them. But Eritreans have ample historical reasons to be skeptical of declarations from Addis Ababa. Ethiopia’s shifting positions toward Eritrea, and the gulf that has repeatedly emerged between agreements made and policies subsequently pursued, are matters of historical record.

If Addis Ababa genuinely accepts these principles, however, they should govern the entire relationship. Eritrea should not have its sovereignty questioned by Ethiopia. Ethiopia should neither destabilize its neighbors nor have its own sovereignty violated by them.

That is what sovereign equality actually means.

A Dangerous Moment for the Horn of Africa

Whatever one’s judgment of Addis Ababa’s accusations, shutting diplomatic channels during an escalating regional crisis is dangerous. Ethiopia and Eritrea share geography and an extraordinarily painful history of war. Eritrea’s 1961–1991 war of independence brought untold suffering under two successive Ethiopian regimes. Then came the 1998–2000 border war, demonstrating once again how quickly political disagreements can become catastrophic once diplomacy gives way to military mobilization.

The aftermath of that war also left Eritreans deeply skeptical of Ethiopian commitments. The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission issued its delimitation decision pursuant to the Algiers Agreement, whose provisions made the Commission’s determination final and binding. Ethiopia subsequently refused for years to implement the ruling as issued. For Eritreans, that experience remains a powerful reminder of the distance that can exist between agreements signed by Ethiopian governments and their subsequent implementation.

The current regional environment is arguably even more dangerous. Ethiopia is again experiencing major internal warfare. Sudan remains engulfed in conflict, amid accusations that Ethiopia is supporting the RSF and contributing to Sudan’s destabilization. Somalia continues to face instability, while Ethiopia’s January 2024 memorandum of understanding with Somaliland generated another major regional confrontation over Somali sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, disputes over Nile waters have placed Ethiopia at loggerheads with Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia has also been courting, and training Eritrean groups declared terrorists by European governments. These crises are not isolated from one another. Together they have created an increasingly volatile Horn of Africa in which a confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea could have consequences far beyond their shared border.

Closing an embassy under such conditions removes one of the few remaining avenues through which misunderstandings can be contained. But de-escalation cannot require Eritrea to accept unsupported accusations as established fact. Nor can Ethiopia invoke sovereignty only when doing so serves its immediate political needs.

If Addis Ababa believes Eritrean diplomats violated the Vienna Convention, it should produce the evidence. If it believes Eritrea has committed acts of belligerence, it should identify those acts specifically and substantiate them. And if it now embraces sovereignty and territorial integrity as foundational principles of interstate relations, then it should apply those principles consistently, to Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and every other neighboring state, as firmly as it demands that they be applied to Ethiopia. Paying lip service to the UN or AU charters is not going to work. Otherwise, the October 1 statement will sound less like a principled defense of international law and more like the old Tigrinya proverb brought vividly to life:

“ጭጉራፍሲ ወቂዓ ተእዊ.”

The whip does the lashing—and then it is the whip that screams.