by Ghidewon Abay Asmerom
There is apparently a new school of geopolitical thought among some Prosperity Party cheerleaders and conflict entrepreneurs: whenever somebody else’s country catches fire, check whether Ethiopia can somehow acquire a seaport from the ashes. One enthusiastic practitioner of this theory writes on X under the name “Pulp Faction”. After reading the argument, one is tempted to ask whether “Pulp Fiction” might have been the more accurate choice, because fiction is doing much of the heavy lifting here.
The argument is not so much an analysis of the Horn of Africa as a tower of speculation: pile one conjecture upon another, sprinkle in the Houthis, add the RSF, invoke “Islamists,” misrepresent a BBC report, resurrect a dispute settled nearly three decades ago, season generously with “revenge,” and presto! Assab somehow falls into Ethiopia’s lap. That is not geopolitics. It is geopolitical alchemy.
Hanish: A Dispute Settled Decades Ago
Start with the Hanish Islands. The Eritrea-Yemen dispute is not some festering territorial question suddenly reopened by the war in Yemen. Eritrea and Yemen submitted their dispute to international arbitration. The tribunal issued its sovereignty award in 1998 and its maritime-delimitation award in 1999, and both countries accepted the process and its outcome. The matter was settled.
Eritrea did not spend the next quarter-century complaining that geography had treated it unfairly, insisting that history entitled it to a different verdict, or demanding that the international community reopen an arbitration it had willingly accepted. It accepted the adjudication and moved on. Yet some Prosperity Party cheerleaders and commentators now appear to be engaging in a remarkable exercise in projection: they exhume Hanish from the graveyard of settled disputes and parade it around as evidence of Eritrean vulnerability, while attributing to Eritrea precisely the behavior they associate with Ethiopia’s own disputes over international agreements and adjudication. A corpse does not come back to life simply because someone keeps digging it up. Rather than manufacture a new Hanish controversy, these commentators would do better to examine Ethiopia’s own record, from the TPLF-led government’s rejection of of the 2002 Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission decision despite the parties’ commitment to a “final and binding” determination, to contemporary rhetoric questioning established borders and sovereign arrangements. Projecting that history onto Eritrea does not rewrite it, and resurrecting a dispute Eritrea and Yemen settled decades ago does not create a new one.
The BBC Apparently Said What the Writer Needed It to Say
Then there is the attempt to recruit the BBC as a witness. The reader is given the impression that BBC reporting establishes that territory “claimed by Eritrea” was seized by the Houthis while Asmara retreated into “complete silence” to avoid confrontation. There is a small problem: the BBC report and headline do not say what the argument needs them to say, so the report is embellished until it does. This is a curious method of citation; first decide what you would like the BBC to have reported, then attribute your interpretation to the BBC. That is not quoting a source; it is putting words into its mouth.
Somehow All Roads Lead to Assab
Then comes the masterpiece: Houthis in Yemen, RSF in Sudan, “Islamists” somewhere near Eritrea, and somehow, after this extraordinary geopolitical game of connect-the-dots, Ethiopia arrives at Assab. One almost admires the imagination. What is missing is the small matter of explaining how a conflict in Yemen, a hypothetical RSF advance in Sudan, or unspecified Islamist activity manufactures Ethiopian sovereignty over Eritrean territory. It does not.
No principle of international law says that if Yemen becomes unstable, Ethiopia gets Assab. No treaty, border agreement, arbitral award, or recognized principle of sovereignty establishes such a proposition. The argument inadvertently admits something far more revealing: Ethiopia is not being presented as possessing a legitimate legal title to Assab. Instead, it is being encouraged to wait for disorder in neighboring countries and exploit somebody else’s catastrophe in the hope that circumstances might create an opportunity to pursue what it cannot otherwise obtain. That is not sovereignty; that is fishing in troubled waters. Lest it forgets Ethiopia should remember what happened last time it was on the Red Sea coast.
The RSF Fantasy
The RSF portion is even more adventurous. We are asked to imagine an RSF advance into eastern Sudan, then imagine Islamist forces threatening western Eritrea, then imagine Eritrea becoming sufficiently vulnerable, and finally imagine that, after enough hypothetical dominoes have fallen, Ethiopia somehow gets its Red Sea opportunity. At this rate, one more hypothetical may put Addis Ababa on the Mediterranean.
No evidence is offered demonstrating that this extraordinary chain of events will occur. Apparently, none is considered necessary. Speculation is simply piled upon speculation until it is presented as strategy. But a row of imaginary dominoes remains imaginary no matter how confidently someone predicts that they will fall.
Recycling Al-Shabaab
Then comes the obligatory Al-Shabaab allegation. Earlier UN monitoring reports contained serious TPLF orchestrated allegations concerning Eritrean involvement with Somali armed actors, but historical allegations cannot simply be frozen in time and presented as evidence of a permanent Eritrean policy. In 2018, the UN Security Council noted that the Monitoring Group had found no conclusive evidence of Eritrean support for Al-Shabaab during its then-current and four preceding mandates. The Security Council subsequently terminated the sanctions measures against Eritrea. In fact to begin with in its 2008 report the UN Monitoring Group had claimed that most of the weapons flowing into Somalia were coming from Ethiopia.
If someone claims that Eritrea is supporting Al-Shabaab today, therefore, there is a straightforward requirement: produce current evidence. Recycled accusations, political folklore, and allegations preserved in amber from another era are not substitutes for evidence.
“Retribution and Vengeance”
Perhaps the most revealing words in the entire statement are “retribution and vengeance.” There, at least, the argument accidentally tells us what it is really about—not international law, commercial access, regional integration, or economic cooperation, but vengeance. Unfortunately for territorial revisionists, vengeance is not a title deed. Neither anger nor resentment creates sovereignty, and a country does not acquire its neighbor’s coastline because enough politicians, commentators, or social-media warriors feel historically aggrieved.
Assab does not become Ethiopian because somebody in Addis Ababa wants it, because Ethiopia is populous, because Ethiopia is landlocked, because Ethiopia once used the port, or because Yemen and Sudan are experiencing wars. Assab is not a geopolitical lost-and-found counter where Ethiopia can retrieve a coastline whenever regional disorder presents an opportunity.
A Tower Built on Air
Strip away the rhetoric and the argument becomes almost comically simple: maybe the Houthis advance, maybe the RSF advances, maybe Islamist forces threaten Eritrea, maybe Eritrea becomes vulnerable, maybe Ethiopia exploits the resulting chaos, and then, through some unexplained geopolitical miracle, Assab falls into Ethiopia’s hands. That is not a chain of reasoning; it is a chain of pipe dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies so detached from political and legal reality that they read more like the product of a khat-fueled geopolitical reverie than serious analysis.
The argument repeatedly converts possibilities into probabilities, allegations into facts, instability into opportunity, grievances into rights, and Ethiopia’s desire for maritime access into an imaginary sovereign entitlement. Repetition cannot perform that transformation. Ethiopia cannot manufacture sovereignty through demographic arithmetic, historical nostalgia, social-media bravado, territorial wishful thinking, or opportunistic calculations about wars consuming neighboring countries. A desire for a coastline, however loudly or repeatedly expressed, does not create one.
Those celebrating the tragedies of Yemen and Sudan because they imagine that regional turmoil might somehow deliver Assab should remember an elementary lesson about fishing in troubled waters: the fisherman does not control the storm. Those standing on the shore waiting for their neighbors’ misfortune to wash territorial prizes into their hands may discover that storms do not distinguish between opportunists and their intended prey. The same waves they imagine will carry them triumphantly toward Assab may instead sweep their expansionist ambitions to the bottom of the Red Sea.
Chaos does not create sovereignty, war does not manufacture title, and Assab is not a prize waiting to be washed ashore by somebody else’s catastrophe.
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