International Crisis Group’s 18 February 2026 briefing advertises itself as conflict prevention. In reality, it performs something closer to narrative management: it repackages Ethiopia’s Red Sea ambition as a “grievance” to be accommodated, while keeping Eritrea boxed into the f
Abiy Ahmed tried to stage the usual Addis photo-op when Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived. But the camera caught something different: a stiff, guarded prime minister sitting beside a visitor who didn’t look like he came for flattery. What played out at the joint app
Eritrea’s Ministry of Information has dismissed Ethiopia’s latest diplomatic message as “patently false and fabricated,” rejecting what it described as a familiar two-year pattern of hostile campaigns — and pointedly refusing to be pulled into public escalation. In a short press
Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry has sent Eritrea a formal letter dated 7 February 2026 that reads less like a genuine diplomatic outreach and more like a paper trail for escalation. It accuses Eritrea of “occupying Ethiopian territory,” of providing “material assistance” to militan
An open letter from former Ethiopian foreign minister Gedu Andargachew has directly contradicted Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s claim in parliament that Gedu was dispatched to Eritrea to convey Abiy’s concerns about alleged abuses against civilians in Tigray. Abiy’s parliamentar
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stood in Ethiopia’s parliament today and tried a quiet pivot: the standoff with Eritrea, he argued, isn’t really about Ethiopia’s campaign for “access to the sea.” It’s about alleged Eritrean crimes during the Tigray war—claims he bundled into a single s
What Addis Ababa has spent two years denying is now staring it in the face—on White House letterhead. The January 16 letter from Donald Trump to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi isn’t just about mediation. It’s a signal. Clear, deliberate, and consequential. Washington is aligning itself
There are moments in diplomacy when silence is louder than words. And there are moments when a picture—deliberately chosen, officially circulated—does more damage than a thousand speeches. The map displayed this week in a video released by Ethiopia’s Prime Minister’s Office belon
Twenty-five years after the signing of the Algiers Agreement, the United Nations Secretary-General has once again urged Eritrea and Ethiopia to “respect the border pact.” On the surface, the message sounds balanced, even responsible. But anniversaries are not just moments for rit
There are moments in political life when a leader inadvertently reveals the architecture of his worldview. Sometimes it comes dressed in eloquence; sometimes it leaks out through a metaphor so coarse, so naked in intent, that it cannot be brushed off as a slip of the tongue. Abiy
For anyone who has followed the AU’s behavior over the last two decades, the events of December 4 in Ethiopia were not shocking. They were simply the latest chapter in a long, predictable pattern: the African Union being instrumentalized by whichever Ethiopian government happens
There are moments in African politics when the truth hides in plain sight, yet the world pretends it sees fog. Sudan’s war is one of them. For nearly two years, analysts have wasted ink debating “complexity,” “dual narratives,” and “moral ambiguity.” It’s nonsense. Strip away the
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