Why Ethiopia is Preparing to Invade Eritrea Next

as catastrophic Wars continue to rage between Russia and Ukraine in Europe and between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East there were ominous storm clouds gathering over the Horn of Africa that Whisper of yet another cataclysmic War still to come soon this time between Ethiopia and Eritrea Ethiopian troops are currently massing themselves directly on the aitran border here at zalambessa a mere 100 miles away from the aitran capital of Asmara with additional deployments further to the southeast near the air train Port City of assab all is the current prime minister of Ethiopia's rhetoric has grown dramatically stronger and more assertive over the past month first elected to the office in 2018 ABI akmed has found himself as the leader of a Nation with both tremendous potential and tremendous vulnerabilities with a population of 126 A2 million people as of 2023 Ethiopia is the second most populous country on the African continent and by far the most populous one in East Africa with a population that is roughly equivalent to every single one of its Geographic neighbors combined mind and a population that is continuing to grow very rapidly by the end of this decade in 2030 the Ethiopian population has projected to grow to as many as 150 million people which will make Ethiopia the ninth most heavily populated country in the world by then with even more people than Russia but uniquely out of all the countries in the world that will be in the top 10 most populous states by 2030 only Ethiopia among them will be completely landlocked without any direct access to the global ocean in fact out of the the top 33 largest countries in the world today by population Ethiopia is the only one among them who is landlocked which makes Ethiopia by far the world's most heavily populated landlocked country the next most populous landlocked countries after Ethiopia are Uganda and usbekistan and they only have a fraction of the same population that Ethiopia does obviously this lack of direct access to the sea is a serious limitation on the ability for Ethiopia to conduct trade with the rest of the world as all of Ethiopia's Imports and exports must each flow through other countries that surrounded first who can leverage their Geographic position over Ethiopia in the form of charging taxes tolls and fees on allowing that trade to pass through them right now an overwhelming 95% of Ethiopia's entire trade volume consisting of both imports and exports flows exclusively through the deep water container Port of dorla within the neighboring small coastal country of Djibouti which is connected by an electric railroad that was only inaugurated in 2018 all the way to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa nearly 350 Mi or 560 km away this rail route and Port access in Djibouti is therefore Ethiopia's Lifeline to trade with the outside world and its single most important logistical artery but it hasn't come very cheap for them it turns out that the trade volume conducted by 126 million landlocked Ethiopians is large enough to account for about 70% of the entire Port of djibouti's commercial activity and jibuti has been able to leverage their Geographic position to charge the Ethiopians more than a billion dollar a year in annual port fees a sum that represents more than a quarter of djibouti's entire nominal GDP and a sum that is a high price to pay for Ethiopia a country where nearly 1/5 of the population continues to remain dependent on humanitarian food Aid at the same time the port of dorla itself within Djibouti is almost certainly safe for Ethiopia to continue using there's a Chinese pla base located only 2 miles to the west of the port while the United States France Japan and Italy all maintain their own military bases within Djibouti nearby as well nobody will ever attack Ethiopia's Port access here with so many big military great Powers bases nearby but that's not really what Ethiopia's fear is the bigger fear is the vulnerability of the railroad that connects Ethiopia to the port a railroad that various Rebel forces operating within Ethiopia that might be receiving foreign support could attack and sever which would in a Flash isolate the Ethiopian government from access to the port of dorla and Djibouti and block off 95% of the country's entire trade volume and for that reason Ethiopia would prefer to directly control their own ports to reduce this vulnerability during a televised speech on the 13th of October 2023 abman exclaimed with clear frustration that 150 million Ethiopians couldn't be expected to live within a geographic prison cut off from the ocean in their most important trade routes adding on to his remarks that quote whether you'd like it or not the prison will have to blast somewhere during that same speech he further warned by saying directly quote we can see that only a narrow strip of land separates us from the Red Sea it is crucial for the present leaders of Somalia jibuti Eritrea and Ethiopia to engage in discussions not just for the present but to ensure the lasting peace if this is not going to happen there will be no fairness and Justice and if there is no fairness and Justice it's only a matter of time we will fight end quote understandably these recent aggressive comments by the the Ethiopian Prime Minister accompanied by increasing Ethiopian troop buildups and airplane activity on the border with Eritrea has sent alarm bells ringing across the entire region from Eritrea to jibuti and Somalia three nations all with vastly smaller populations than Ethiopia and which like the Ethiopian Prime Minister so plainly stated block Ethiopia soon to be 150 million people access to the ocean through only narrow sparsely populated strips of land that potentially appear right for the taking where the world's attention is more heavily focused on the ongoing events in Gaza and Ukraine perhaps the Ethiopian Prime Minister senses that the opportunity could soon be near to finally break out from his country's Geographic prison and overcome one of Ethiopia's greatest weaknesses and handicaps by seizing parts or even the entirety of arrea through Force which would finally establish Ethiopian controlled ports directly on the Red Sea itself and reduce their crippling over Reliance on Djibouti for international trade in the process after all Ethiopia's weakness of being the world's most heavily populated landlocked country is only a fairly recent phenomenon it was only reduced to this landlocked status in a flash a little more than 30 years ago when Eritrea itself became independent and seceded from the rest of Ethiopia and now 30 years later it appears that Ethiopia is potentially preparing for a war to retake it a war that could easily end up becoming one of the 21st Century's most catastrophically cataclysmic because it could throw the entire delicate region of Eastern Africa into an apocalypse and in order to understand why it helps to start with how Ethiopia and eritrea's current borders came to be and why there is so much controversy between them you see Ethiopia is one of the world's most ancient civilizations dating back thousands of years ago to the kingdom of axom that at its apex in the thirr century dominated the entire Red Sea with a formidable Navy and was considered to have been one of the icient world's foremost great Powers alongside the Romans the Persians and the Chinese while going through many changes over the eons of time since then the modern-day state of Ethiopia was more or less created through a series of military campaigns across the mid to late 19th century and gradually assumed its currently recognized borders as a unified Imperial Empire by the end of the 19th century in 1898 during that time the Ethiopian Empire drove out two attempted foreign conquests one by the Egyptians who attempted to invade and subjugate Ethiopia between 1874 and 1876 and then another by the Italians who came marching in 20 years later in 1896 between 1869 when an Italian company first purchased the port of aab on the Red Sea Coast to 1889 the colonial Italian authorities steadily expanded their colony that they called Italian Eritrea up to modern-day eritrea's borders in 1896 they invaded Ethiopia from Italian arria with the intention of subjugating Africa's sole remaining independent nation into their still growing growing Colonial Empire but that Invasion turned into a complete disaster for them Ethiopia you see is by far the most mountainous country located in Africa with a complex series of valleys Lakes lowlands and very tall Highlands the political capital in the largest city of the country has long been in Adis Ababa and at an elevation of 88,200 Ft above sea level it is one of only four cities worldwide to currently have a population of more than a million people that's above 8,000 ft in elevation with the only other three all being found in South America with bogot Columbia keto Ecuador and laaz Bolivia further surrounded by a buffer of lowlands Adis Ababa and by extension the whole of Ethiopia is essentially a mountainous Fortress that has always been challenging for outside Invaders to conquer and occupy even technologically Superior Outsiders like the Italians in 1896 their failure to conquer Ethiopia then secured the Empire's continued existence based on Ethiopia's current borders for the next 40 years years to come a fact that cemented Ethiopia's Fame as the only state in Africa that managed to successfully fight off all of European colonialism and retain their own independence But ultimately as an Empire of its own independent creation Ethiopia has always had similar problems as many other modern African states that were born from European colonialism nonetheless all of the Towering mountains wide valleys large lakes and thundering rivers of the Empire have long divided the country geographically and restricted easy travel from one part of it to another which has encouraged the development of multiple different ethnic groups and languages over thousands of years of history that has made Ethiopia one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world today Ethiopian leaders have always struggled with keeping the whole thing together as a result and today there are nine different major ethnic groups within Ethiopia and more than 80 different languages that are spoken from four separate major linguistic families the Imperial period of Ethiopia across the 19th and 20th centuries was dominated by the ethnic mhara the legacy of which is that the Amharic language Remains the primary lingua franka of Ethiopia today and is the language that's most used by the national government but the amharas are only the second largest ethnic group in Ethiopia today at only about 27% of the overall population the aromo were the largest ethnic group at about 35% of the entire country's population but the T graay represent about 7% in the Somali at a further 6% with dozens of others representing the final 25% on top of being extremely ethnically and linguistically diverse Ethiopia is highly religiously diverse as well Ethiopia was one of the very first countries in the world to officially adopt Christianity way back in the 4th Century ad a legacy that is continued today with the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox Church being followed by roughly 44% of the country and newer Protestant Evangelical Christianity being followed by a further 23% of the population bringing Christianity up to a total of about 2/3 of the modern population the remaining onethird of ethiop I's population mostly follow the Islamic faith a legacy of the country's close proximity to the Arabian peninsula in North Africa and different ethnic groups in the country largely follow One Faith or the other diomo and the Somali largely follow Islam while the T gray and the mhara higher up in the more geographically isolated Ethiopian Highlands largely follow Christianity a fact that has long contributed to a centuries long world view within the amhara community that they are effectively an isolated island of Christianity surrounded by a sea of Islam in 1930 Hal salasi an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mhara ascended to the Imperial throne and though his Reign would be long he was nonetheless destined to become Ethiopia's final Emperor 5 years after he took the throne in 1935 the Italians under Bonito musolini and his fascist party decided to try their luck and invaded Ethiopia again and their quest to expand the Italian Empire and this time their technological superiority was simply far too great to handle the Ethiopians were still relying on foot Messengers to transmit Battlefield information while the Italians were using radio heavy artillery and airplanes they used to drop bombs and chemical weapons like mustard gas without any outside intervention stopping the Italians they overan Ethiopia this time in only a matter of months which caused the emperor to flee to Britain in Exile in the aftermath in 1936 the fascist Italians administratively merged conquered Ethiopia with their pre-existing colonies in Eritrea and Somalia to form what they simply called Italian East Africa but it wouldn't end up lasting for very long in 1940 Italy decided to enter World War II on the side of Nazi Germany and declared war on Britain and France which quickly LED them to invading and conquering the nearby colony of British Somali land in 1940 and adding it to the rest of Italian East Africa before the British launched their own Invasion into the area the following year in 1941 and brought Emperor Hal salasi back with them Italy of course ended up disastrously losing the second world war and all of their former colonies in East Africa consisting of modern day Ethiopia Eritrea and Somalia all ended up under British military occupation the British quick Aly restored Ethiopia's independence based on their current borders with Hal salasi reinstated as the emperor in 1944 but after 1945 there was a considerable amount of controversy over what exactly to do with the rest of Italy's former Colonial possessions in Eritrea and Somalia the British continued occupying both of them until 1950 when the former Italian Somalia became the UN trust territory of Somalia placed back under Italian Administration which eventually became independent a decade later in 1960 and then merged with a former British Somali land to become the United Republic of Somalia Eritrea however turned out to be far more controversial it had been an Italian Colony for nearly three4 of a century before World War II and expecting that the Communists would soon emerge victorious in the post-war Italian elections the Soviets initially argued that Eritrea should be simply returned back to Italy's control or become a Soviet trustee instead the eritreans themselves and most of the Arab world meanwhile who viewed the country as an extension of their own argued for aat Tran self-determination and Independence while Hal salasi the restored Emperor of Ethiopia argued that Eritrea could never be self-sufficient on its own and insisted that it should be annexed into Ethiopia instead which would also happen to ensure that Ethiopia would break out from its landlocked prison and control a direct Coastline on the Red Sea as an absolute monarchy hi solas's regime in Ethiopia was staunchly opposed to the spread of Communism and to the Soviet Union and that made him a natural Ally for the Americans in the following Cold War who decided to back his view that Eritrea should be given to Ethiopia and so at Washington's insistence the United Nations passed resolution 390a in December of 1950 that went into Effect 2 years later in 1952 officially joining Eritrea with Ethiopia in a newly created country that was creatively called the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea in this Federation Eritrea was supposed to possess a very high degree of autonomy separate from Ethiopia with its own flag it's own police force control over its own Administration and taxes and so on but the Ethiopian Emperor would spend the following years continually whittling away at this autonomy the emperor eventually imposed the Amharic language of Ethiopia as the sole official language upon Eritrea in place of the indigenous Arabic into Gran languages which eventually sparked a full-blown armed independence movement in Eritrea that rose up against him in 1961 the following year in 1962 Hal salasi declared that the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea was being formally abolished and that the Ethiopian Empire was simply annexing all of Eritrea outright a development that didn't sit very well with most aitran armed arran insurgents and guerillas would rise up and continue to fight against the Ethiopian state for their independence for decades in the meantime the lines of the Cold War deepened around Ethiopia's neighborhood to reward the United States for supporting Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea Hal salasi granted the Americans the right to establish a naval base on the coast at masawa in between the Strategic Suez Canal in the North and the narrow bab Elman Deb straight in the South along with a vast radio antenna Farm in the aitran capital of Asmara nearby a geographically ideal location to place one at due to its close proximity to the Middle East and the equator and high altitude at 7,300 ft up above sea level the Soviet Union meanwhile initially chose to counter America's close relationship with the Ethiopian Empire by supporting their biggest Regional rival Somalia a nation that laid cl to the ethnically Somali majority area of Eastern Ethiopia in a region known as the aadan in pursuit of a foreign policy in Mogadishu to establish a greater Somalia out of all the ethnically Somali majority areas in the Horn of Africa after emerging as the leader of the only country in Africa that had fought off European colonialism Hal salasi also carried with them a lot of diplomatic clout on the continent during the decolonization era of the 1960s which led to him successfully arguing that the new organization of African Unity should have their headquarters established in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1963 decades later in 2002 that organization would evolve into the modern African Union and retain its headquarters in Adis Ababa to this day but eventually after decades on the throne of Ethiopia the by then 82-year-old autocratic Hal salasi was finally overthrown by a military coup in 1974 and he was dead by the following year the officers who overthrew him then appointed a major named mistu Hal arum as essentially the country's new dictator and they sought to radically transform the former feudal monarchy of Ethiopia into a communist Marxist leninist state that they called The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia the new communist Ethiopia inherited the continuing war for independence going on in arrea that they similarly attempted to crush with Force while Somalia sensed an opportunity in the Revolutionary chaos and invaded Ethiopia in 1976 in an attempt to conquer the ethnically Somali majority area of the aadan but with Ethiopia now ruled by Communists and the Americans out of the country the Soviets decided to abandon their prior support for Somalia and switch sides over to Ethiopia the Soviets then organized a massive airlift of military equipment to Ethiopia worth around $ billion that was accompanied by Soviet military advisers and about 12,000 soldiers who came over from Fidel Castro's Cuba who together managed to decisively crush the Somali Invasion by 1978 that defeat was so great that it led to a Revolt in the Somali Army afterwards which was the spark that ignited the Somali Civil War that is still ongoing today a war that has long made Somalia the 21st century poster child of the failed state but while Ethiopia's territorial integrity was maintained including its control over the ongoing Insurgency in Eritrea the Communist regime's gross mismanagement of the Ethiopian agricultural economy combined with a drought led to an apocalyptic famine between 198 3 and 1985 that potentially killed as many as 1.2 million people within the country and was most heavily represented by deaths where active rebellions against his regime were ongoing in Eritrea and in Tigre that were largely denied assistance representing one of the worst famines of the entire 20th century unrest and anger at the Communist regime's response to the famine within Ethiopia grew and anti-government rebellions like the T people's Liberation Front in the t region who allied with the aitran insurgents began steadily gaining the upper hand in 1990 with the Soviet Union and the Eastern block actively collapsing Moscow decided to cut off their continued economic assistance to Ethiopia and the thousands of Allied Cuban troops all went home cutting off mistu 17-year long Communist Regime from its primary supporter afterwards the various anti-government forces operating across the country began rapidly gaining ground even further with the aitran Insurgent securing complete control over the entirety of arrea and pushing the Ethiopian Army out by May of 1991 and anti-government to Gran forces nearing the capital of Adis Ababa sensing that the gig was up mistu fled the capital for Zimbabwe where he was granted political Asylum and continues to reside to this day at the age of 86 despite an Ethiopian Court subsequently finding him guilty of genocide in absentia that carried a death sentence for which Ethiopia has repeatedly requested his extradition from Zimbabwe and which Zimbabwe has continually rejected for decades ever since the new Ethiopia that emerged after the collapse of Communism in 1991 became the federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia the Ethiopia that continues to exist today a new constitution was drafted to transform the entire country into an ethnically based Federation with powers devolved to 12 new ethnolinguistically defined Regional States and two chartered cities these 12 new regions were semi-autonomous states that were created within the country for all of Ethiopia's largest ethnic groups the aromo the amhara the Tigra the Somali the afar and so on but the very first leader of the new country who had governed until his death in 2012 was an ethnic tan named melis sawi from the T people's Liberation Front which caused a significant degree of angst within the ethnic mhara Community who had been the ones used to running Ethiopia and all of its various forms for the past several centuries initially Eritrea was the 13th region of this new Ethiopia created after 1991 but since the tigran and the errans had fought together as allies to overthrow the Communists and the aans now controlled their entire territory a referendum on Eritrean independence from Ethiopia was granted in April of 1993 that was overwhelmingly approved by Eritrean voters which led to Eritrea being formally granted its independence by Adis saaba the following Month in May resulting in the first time that Eritrea had been truly independent in well over a century immediately upon that Independence in 1993 a man named Isaiah seori Rose to the position of arat tra's new presidency a man who is contined to remain aritra's president ever since right up until the current day more than 30 years later Isaiah has ever since run what is often regarded as one of the most extreme totalitarian regimes in all of contemporary history in arrea no elections have ever been held in the more than 30 years since Isaiah came to power there has never been a constitution there's never been a published government budget and there hasn't never even been a legislature literally all political power and authority within arria has been solely concentrated in the person of Isaiah SE turkey ever since 1993 and so it is his word and only his word that is law in the country in 2022 reporters Without Borders literally ranked the isaas regime in Eritrea as dead last in the entire world on its freedom of the press index with a score that was somehow even lower than North Korea and part of the reason why is that in many ways Isaiah's regime in Eritrea is even more totalitarian and hardcore than the Kims in North Korea which is why Eritrea nickname in the 21st century has sometimes been the North Korea of Africa for example all men and women in the country are forced to serve what's on paper an 18-month long mandatory conscription service within the aat Tran Armed Forces but in practice nearly everybody serves vastly longer than a mere 18 months there are virtually no available means for military conserts in nitraa to actually get themselves discharged while conscripts and their families face severe legal reprisals for desertion conscripts who do desert at any time will often have their parents or siblings houses and property confiscated by the government with orders further put into place then nobody else can give them shelter essentially forcing them into an indefinite legal state of homelessness so the fear of these reprisal and no means to actually get themselves discharged ultimately means that virtually all conscripts in arrea end up serving within the Armed Forces for indefinite periods of time that are often measured in the span of decades which has led to widespread accusations of the Isaias regime utilizing what is essentially a 21st century slave Army where one in five people in the country are indefinitely trapped in and a big part of why the isaas regime in rraa became this way was that almost immediately upon Independence in 1993 his regime in Eritrea and the new government in Ethiopia didn't exactly trust each other very much between 1993 and 1998 relations began warm enough and Eritrea continued granting Ethiopia the rights to continue use their parts in masawa and assab assab being the more critical of the two is before aat tr's independence it accounted for around 70% of Ethiopia's entire trade volume but at the same time after Eritrea was granted Independence the new international border between Eritrea and Ethiopia was never properly demarcated both sides in the 1990s interpreted older colonial era treaties defining the border between Italian erria and Imperial Ethiopia differently which led to a series of disputed territories between them that both new countries claimed the most important of which was the largest chunk of disputed land in the west around the town of bod in 1998 a series of military skirmishes between Ethiopia and Eritrea developed around bod that rapidly escalated into a full-blown war that would last for the following two years both sides would end up throwing just about everything they had into the war over those two years and they each lost significant amounts of blood and treasure with an estimated 100,000 people losing their lives as a direct result of the Fighting by the summer of 2000 Ethiopia was the one in control of all of the disputed territories and their army was beginning to advance into erat tra proper which sparked international calls for a ceasefire this culminated with the United Nations mediating an Armistice between Eritrea and Ethiopia with the algers agreement that was signed in December of 2000 in which both parties agreed to set up a border Commission in collaboration with a permanent Court of arbitration based in the haue that would determine the final legally accepted border between the two countries so then in April of 2002 the commission announced their final verdict which determined that most of the disputed territory including the town of bod that sparked the war in the first place belonged in fact to arat tra despite the fact that all of the disputed territory was still under the control of the Ethiopian Army Ethiopia had fought for years and paid tens of thousands of lives to gain control over these territories and a big chunk of the territories were just to the north of Ethiopia's t region while the T people's Liberation Front the government that dominated Ethiopia at the time saw them as an extension of the t region itself and refused to give them up so they basically just refused to accept any of the findings of the boundary commission and kept their soldiers in place occupying all of the disputed territories instead which kept relations between themselves and arrea tense for years the land dispute between them essentially became a frozen conflict with neither side backing down neither side agreeing to end the official state of war between between them and both sides keeping their respective borders locked down with no permissions for anyone to cross and soldiers placed on high alert for the next 16 years after 2002 until 2018 this was the dangerous situation that remained Frozen in place between Ethiopia and arria while Eritrea further severed Ethiopia's access to their pors in masawa and assab that they had been using between 1993 and 1998 and with Somalia still trapped in a seemingly NeverEnding chaotic Civil War this is why Ethiopia began to rely so heavily upon the port of dorla within Djibouti during the 2000s as it was really the only geographically available Lifeline to trade with the outside world but things seemed like they were finally beginning to change in Ethiopia in 2018 with the election of a new prime minister ABI ammed obi's father was an ethnic aromo and his mother an ethnic mhara and so he represented the very first aromo in Ethiopia's Millennial long history to manage to rise to the position of the country's leadership despite the aromo having long been the country's largest single ethnicity within only a matter of weeks of assuming the office ABI suddenly announced that Ethiopia would end up finally honoring the results of the 2002 border commission that awarded most of the disputed territory with Eritrea to arrea Obby pulled the Army out of all the territories that the commission had awarded to arrea 16 years previously agreed on a transfer of all those territories to Eritrea and a formal peace agreement finally ending the state of war between them that had been ongoing for the past 20 years ever since 1998 relations were fully restored and flights between them opened for the first time in decades well ABI expected that an exchange for finally settling the conflict Eritrea would return Ethiopia's access to their ports at asab and masawa again just like they used to have for decades previously back in the 1990s and for all of these efforts at making peace with aritra in 2018 ABI ammed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year in 2019 a prize that would very quickly age like finely curdled milk because as it soon turned out resolving the decades long border dispute with Eritrea didn't also mean a sudden and end to all of Ethiopia's many other problems as well especially Ethiopia's internal problems ever since 1991 there have been fears that Ethiopia could One Day end up following a similar path as Yugoslavia dead and collapse into a freefor all ethnicity based civil war between all of the countries doz of different groups who all want power for themselves the amhara continue to be angry that after centuries in charge of Ethiopia they had no longer been the ones calling any of the shots ever since 1991 the aromo were still largely upset that despite being the largest ethnic group they had never been granted most of the country's power and continued to feel disenfranchised the Somali to a degree continued to gaze towards Somalia well the Tans who were largely the ones in power between 1991 and 2018 wondered after 2018 if they could eventually return despite only representing about 7% of the country's total population there were many ethnic Deans within the t region after all who saw obi's handing away of the disputed territories to Eritrea in 2018 as a severe political betrayal because they saw those territories just to their North as rightfully belonging to te and so the te people's Liberation Front or tplf the party that governed within the t region and the party that had dominated Ethiopian WI politics until 2018 condemned the peace treaty then the following year in 2019 ABI aked dissolved the ethnically based National Coalition government that had been ruling the country ever since the collapse of Communism and replaced it with a brand new party that he called the prosperity party which the tplf in the t region refused to join tensions between the Ethiopian federal government in the t region then began to escalate and it erupted into a fullscale war between them in November of 2020 the so called Tay war that followed would end up raging across the whole of Ethiopia for the following 2 years until November of 2022 a war that saw the Ethiopian federal government Ally itself with Eritrea and amhara militias against the tplf and the t region and the Oro Liberation Army or Ola a militia who controlled pockets of territory across Ethiopia's Oro region that war would end up costing everyone involved incredibly dearly hundreds of thousand thousands of soldiers at a minimum were mobilized by both of the coalitions involved to fight nobody knows exactly how many lives were lost as a result of the fighting but there is an estimate from gent University who researched the conflict in depth that concluded upwards of 600,000 people across Ethiopia and Eritrea were killed by the te war in only the 2 years of fighting between 2020 and 2022 which if accurate would make the te War one of the the 21st Century's top three bloodiest conflicts and on top of the potentially catastrophic loss in human life the war also cost the Ethiopian State an estimated $20 billion worth of economic damage as well the war finally concluded with a peace treaty signed between the Ethiopian federal government and the tplf in Petoria South Africa in November of 2022 the TP agreed to completely disarm while Federal Ethiopian Authority was reestablished across most of the T region but even after that devastating war ended other internal conflicts within Ethiopia remained the Oro Liberation Army has continue to wage an Insurgency against the government with pockets of control across the Oro region remaining while both the amhara militias and the isaas regime in Eritrea who fought alongside ABI amman's forces against T felt betrayed by the prime minister's peace agreement signed in ptor because they wanted to finish the job and destroy the tplf in the t region once and for all the fact that the tplf was allowed to continue existing was seen by Eritrea and the mhara militias with suspicion the war had concluded with the amhara militia known as Foo in de facto control over large swaths of the amhara region and the Western most part of the t region and with the aitran Armed Forces still in control over some sections of Northern Tigra as well fono views its movement of amhara nationalism as the same thing as Ethiopia nationalism and so their primary goal is to return the amhara to the leadership position within the country that they enjoyed for centuries until 1991 when the TPL left the tigran took over abiad's Federal Ethiopian government meanwhile espouses the unity of all Ethiopians and advocates for Ethiopian national identity as being Supreme Over Regional ethnol linguistic and religious identities as such his government has no tolerance for regional separatism or Regional Supremacy movements within Ethiopia which is part of what's brought the government into conflict with the tplf in the t region the OA in the aromia region and now the fono in the mhara region as well tensions between the federal government and fono escalated dramatically in April of 2023 when Abi's government attempted to force the fono to disarm themselves which they refused to do tensions escalated further to the point where fono began an armed Insurgency against obby's federal government which Obby responded to with drone and artillery strikes and sending the Ethiopian Army in to deal with them so by the middle of 2023 Ethiopia's Federal Authority had been restored across most of the t region but the government was continuing to fight separate Wars against the OA in the aromia region and against the fono in the amhara and Western te regions while relations with Eritrea who continue to also occupy parts of Northern Tigra were continuing to deteriorate as well especially as Eritrea never ended up graning Ethiopia their desired Port access in either assab or masawa something the Nai had apparently expected would have happened by now five years later after he first signed the peace agreement with Eritrea back in 2018 ob's government in Ethiopia fears that Isaiah SE work's regime in Eritrea is attempting to destabilize Ethiopia by supporting both aono and the OA militarily a hypothetical capability made all the Easier by the fono militia's control of Western te and the direct access by land into Eritrea that that grants them something that Abby's Federal Ethiopian government would like to relieve them of and something the funo Won't Give Up voluntarily these Fe were potentially evidenced in May of 2023 when a group of amhara extremists assassinated the head of the amhara regional branch of obby's prosperity party an assassination that the Ethiopian government claims received direct support from Eritrea ABI akmed publicly warned Eritrea from interfering in Ethiopia's Internal Affairs following that assassination and behind closed doors he reportedly warned aritra in generals against supporting the amhar and militias that he is currently fighting against and then a few months later later after all of this internal chaos came ABI amed's increasingly bellicose rhetoric towards Ethiopia finally acquiring access to the Sea as well in October of 2023 he first suggested the neighboring coastal countries like Eritrea jibuti and Somalia could exchange shares of their ports for equivalent shares in his own country's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Ethiopia's greatest engineering Mega project and the largest hydroelectric Dam on the African continent that has cost more than $5 billion to construct and which will be capable of providing enormous amounts of energy for both Ethiopia and surrounding countries too once it's fully completed but Djibouti Eritrea and Somalia have all so far rejected these offers insisting that the sovereignty of their ports is not a subject that's open for negotiation perhaps to foreshadow the current crisis in Ethiopia's Coastal Ambitions the Ethiopian Navy was disbanded back in 1996 only 3 years after the independence of arrea in 1993 left the country landlocked but shortly after ass assuming power in 2018 abied announced the restoration of the Ethiopian Navy as a branch of the country's armed forces in 2019 the new Ethiopian Navy currently maintains its headquarters on Lake Tana where the Blue Nile originates from but in the future it's almost a certainty that ABI and his government view the Ethiopian Navy's rightful place on the Red Sea again just as it used to be for decades between the 1950s and the 1990s with the refusal of Eritrea jibuti or Somalia to consider exchanging shares of their ports for shares of Ethiopia's dams and Ethiopia's continued massive and costly overreliance on the port of Djibouti for all of its international trade it might seem tempting for Ethiopia to decide on rolling the iron Dice and attack Eritrea at a time when the International Community May hardly even notice or care in November of 2020 Obby launched his war against the tplf in the t region in the midst of global attention being focused on the American presidential election and now he may choose to launch another war against aatr while International attention is fixated on the other Wars going on in Gaza and Ukraine there were still even further concerns that the world might not end up particularly caring if Ethiopia launches an attack on Eritrea anyway because of how internationally isolated and despised the totalitarian regime of Isaiah saeri is already many other countries around the world may not particularly care if the regime that utilizes a modern-day slave Army that ranks even lower than North Korea on numerous human rights abuses gets removed from Power especially while Global attention is more focused on bigger uncertainties concerning the ultimate futures of Gaza and Ukraine and ABI akmed is probably aware of that he could send the Ethiopian Army into Eritrea with the stated objectives of pushing aritra's continued occupation in the te region out and liberating errans from their oppressive totalitarian regime but with the actual quiet objective of reconquering parts or even all of the country and reincorporating training it back into Ethiopia again like it was for most of the second half of the 20th century if it does end up coming to war like it seems in might uncertainties abound on all sides the aitran are only 3.7 million people against Ethiopia's 126.5 million but the atrans are far more unified than the chronically internally unstable Ethiopia is Isaiah's fery and forced slave Army might not end up having the greatest Affinity to protecting their dictator who has forced them into Decades of servitude but they might also rally around him against an Ethiopian attempt to re subjugate them aerotrans fought a long and bloody Insurgency against Ethiopia for decades voted overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and tens of thousands of them sacrificed their lives fighting against Ethiopia in the war between 1998 and 2000 so it's almost a certainty that virtually none of them would be very thrilled about the Ethiopian Army returning to reimpose their authority over them again and while the timing of the war now could be advantageous to Ethiopia in some ways it could also be disastrous in others the country was wrecked by the te war that raged between 2020 and 2022 and suffered over2 billion do worth of economic damages and likely hundreds of thousands of deaths Ethiopia is therefore currently engaged in negotiations with the IMF to secure billions of dollars worth of loans to help itself rebuild following that war and so launching another war against Eritrea could simultaneously jeopardize those negotiations and cause even further economic damages that the country would struggle to dig itself out from moreover an outright unilateral conquest and annexation of parts or all of arrea by Ethiopia would likely be met with at least some International condemnation and sanctions but obi's government May calculate that the price would be worth it anyway in exchange for securing the long-term goals and benefits that would come from a breakout of its landlocked state and the acquisition position of a coastline with Ethiopian military units currently massing themselves near the border with Eritrea a collision course between them is appearing increasingly likely if an invasion does end up following it is likely that Ethiopia's initial attacks would be heavily concentrated on the Southeastern front near the aat Tran Port of assab which would likely be a primary Ethiopian wartime objective to capture assab of course had been the primary Port that Ethiopia used back when rraa had been a part of the country between the 1950s and the 1990s and it continued being the primary Port of Ethiopia used after Eritrea became independent until the War Began in 1998 but asb's geostrategic importance has increased even further very recently since 2015 in that year Eritrea allowed the United Arab Emirates to establish an overseas Naval and air base in assab a base that enabled the amadis to launch rapid attacks on the houthis in Yemen very close by from the United Arab Emirates then dumped a ton of money into modernizing all of the facilities in assab to sustain a these military objectives in Yemen modern Barracks a brand new pier and a brand new air strip capable of handling modern Fighters and bombers but then as the war in Yemen continued dragging on with no end in sight the United Arab Emirates began to withdraw from the war in 2019 and so they began to withdraw from their base in assab as well by 2021 there was reportedly very little trace of the United Arab Emirates former presence in assab at all besides for all the work they put into modernizing it this meant that after 2021 assab has been basically a fully capable port and Airfield just sitting there for a modern military to use which is why there's been frequent discussions between Eritrea and Moscow over establishing the Russian Navy's presence in assab ever since a hypothetical development that would place the Russian Navy near the bab Elman Deb Strait and on both sides of the Suz canal through which Russian oil tankers travel towards important markets in India and China and thus if the Russian Navy ever established itself in assab Moscow would be highly incen device to ensure AER tr's continued Independence in order for them to continue hanging on to assab and so before that can ever happen Ethiopia might rationalize that it would be better for them to be the ones to seize control over the port of assab first in order to own a fully modernized port on the Red Sea that can become the new Home Port of the Ethiopian Navy From aritra's perspective assab is a distant and remote part of the country located 300 M away from the aitran core around the capital city of Asmara there is only a single road that connects aab back to the aat Tran core across this large and mostly empty distance meaning that arrayo will find it to be very logistically challenging to support and resupply aab during an attack or a Siege it will be even more difficult when you consider that at its narrowest point this single Road between assab and Asmara is fewer than 5 miles away from the Ethiopian border implying that all Ethiopian forces would have to do is Advance about 5 miles into AA TR sever the road and block the ability for errea to resupply aab At All by land which would then Grant the Ethiopians the ability to lay Siege to an assab with greatly depleted supplies and resources ABI aed's War aims may be limited to Simply capturing aab and finally establishing an Ethiopian controlled port on the Red Sea nearby to the Strategic bab element Deb Strait through which 9% of the world's oil supply is traded but he might also decide to go further and expand Ethiopia's War aims to restore the entire entirety of Eritrea back beneath Ethiopian control again establishing Ethiopian control over a very long coastline with the Red Sea in the process just like the Ethiopian Emperor Hal salasi managed to do diplomatically back in 1952 there were already historical arguments and claims being made by several figures within the Ethiopian government that Ethiopia's natural borders are the Red Sea with maps being shown during recent Ethiopian televised addresses dating back to the ancient Kingdom of axom and to hi salasi Empire in the Communist era during the 20th century when rraa was fully controlled from Adis Ababa abak met himself is ultimately a leader who believes in a glorious future for Ethiopia and he has repeatedly stressed recently that Ethiopia's future greatness or failure will be determined by whether or not the nation can acquire access to Ports and its own international trade or not for long periods of its history in the past Ethiopia has indeed controlled significant amounts of Coastline and maintained a powerful Navy that has at times dominated the trade routes of the Red Sea but the way that many Ethiopian nationalists view things currently is that Ethiopia's rightful access to this sea was stolen by Italian colonialists in the 19th century with their establishment of Italian Eritrea it was then given back to Ethiopia by the United Nations in 1952 and then lost again with the stroke of a pen in 1993 when arrea was granted its independence by the tplf or the Tans the party who came to govern e Ethiopia following the collapse of Communism and a party that aakman and other Ethiopian nationalists have since come to blame for allowing arrea to ever become independent something that they view is only a recent historic mistake that deserves to be fixed in a similar way that Vladimir Putin viewed the sudden loss of Crimea in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union as a historic error that they needed to fix by 2014 sooner or later ABI amed's warnings and threat may end up coming true by 2030 150 million Ethiopians will be trapped in what he has referred to as their Geographic prison and the nation will be the only one of the top 30 most populous worldwide to be landlocked unless something is done about it for thousands of years it has been well understood that Maritime access is one of the greatest advantages and sources of wealth and prosperity that a country can have a study from the United Nations in 2018 indicated that access to the Sea can account for up to 25 to 30% of a country's entire gross domestic product a study that ABI akmed himself has frequently cited to emphasize that Ethiopia's own lack of direct access to the sea is a severe handicap on Ethiopia's future obet's government in Ethiopia views that in order for Ethiopia to emerge as a prosperous nation in the 21st century it must achieve internal stability and must harness the power of its rivers through Mega projects like the grand Ethiopian Renaissance Day and it must secure direct access to the Sea even if it comes at the expense of the territorial Integrity or even the independence of Eritrea as ABI akman himself stated during that speech in October of 2023 150 million Ethiopians will not be expected to live trapped within their Geographic prison forever and sooner or later the prison will blast out somewhere to regain their lost access to the Sea again expect that they will do so shortly and be prepared to seal War erupt over this issue in the not too distant future now something that I've begun to notice about myself is that despite being a very busy person I always seem to have small little gaps across my days that I end up filling by browsing through the recent news on Reddit Tik Tok or Twitter and while that's fine in small doses I also usually find myself believing that I also don't have enough free time to do certain things that I really want to do like learning more about how our complicated World actually works learning new things especially new complex things like stem subjects is often pretty tough to do without having a bunch of open free time to dedicate towards it and that's why I'm such a huge fan of this video sponsor brilliant brilliant designs these fantastic interactive courses on stem subjects that are broken down into all of their smaller bite-sized chunks so that you can genuinely fit learning something very useful into literally any schedule from Casino probability to computer science to logic and so many 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