Asmara and Addis Ababa Are Sending Our Children Back to War

Eritrean soldiers crossed a border this week. Ethiopian drones hunted them down in the streets of Adigrat. Witnesses told AFP that the lorries were burning, that the night was filled with "massive explosions," and that the people of northern Tigray were once again hiding indoors while the men with power played their games. Somewhere in that city, a mother is listening to the sound of drones and wondering whether her son is one of the bodies being counted.

We need to say this plainly, because the people who rule this region will never say it for us. Two governments that have spent decades treating their citizens as expendable are now pointing guns at each other across a border that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives in living memory. Neither should be trusted with another war.

Start with what is documented. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a border war from 1998 to 2000, a conflict that killed tens of thousands and left a trail of displaced families that never fully returned home. The Ethiopian government now accuses Eritrea of backing rebels in Tigray. Asmara accuses Addis Ababa of arming its own opponents and of hunting for a pretext to invade and seize access to the Red Sea. Both claims are being used as ammunition. Neither is being offered as evidence to a court, a parliament, or the African people who will pay for the consequences.

The conflict monitor ACLED reported "multiple drone strikes" on Eritrean troops and ammunition in the Adigrat area overnight between Wednesday and Thursday. Ethiopia's federal army has not claimed those strikes openly. A senior commander described the enemy as "small pockets" still "trying to create trouble." Notice the language. Dead Eritrean conscripts become "pockets." Ethiopian civilians sheltering in a city under drone attack become collateral noise. This is how governments talk when they have already decided that human beings are a rounding error.

Meanwhile, Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Meskel, accused Ethiopia on X of "openly working to bring about regime change in Eritrea." That accusation may contain some truth. Ethiopia has hosted Eritrean opposition figures and has its own record of arming militias. But the man making the claim speaks for a government that has not held a national election since independence in 1993, that has no functioning constitution in practice, and that has kept young Eritreans in indefinite national service for years, sometimes for the whole of their adult lives. Asmara is not a defender of anyone's freedom. It is a regime that has turned an entire generation into a labor reserve and a border guard.

And Addis Ababa? Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending the stalemate with Eritrea. Two years later, his government and Eritrean forces were fighting side by side against the Tigray People's Liberation Front in a war that killed civilians on a scale the world has been too slow to count. Humanitarian groups documented mass atrocities, sexual violence, and starvation used as a weapon. The Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities agreement of November 2022 ended the main fighting, but Eritrea, which was not a party to that deal, has never accepted its terms. The peace Abiy was celebrated for is now fraying, and the people paying for that fraying are the same people who always pay: farmers, students, mothers, and the poorest families in the rural towns.

Here is the question that should keep every African leader awake tonight. Why does the Horn of Africa keep producing wars that serve the men in power and bankrupt the people they govern?

Part of the answer is sea access. Ethiopia is one of the most populous countries on the continent, with well over 120 million people, and it has been landlocked since Eritrea's independence. Its dependence on the port of Djibouti for most of its trade is an economic vulnerability that no serious government should ignore. Ethiopia has every right to pursue reliable access to the sea. But a legitimate economic grievance does not justify drones over Adigrat. Sovereignty works both ways. Eritrea's borders are as real as Ethiopia's, and no country gains the right to invade a neighbor because it wants a better shipping lane.

The rest of the answer is impunity. Neither government has been held accountable for the crimes of the Tigray war. Neither has been forced to explain why its soldiers and its allies were allowed to commit atrocities. When leaders learn that the price of violence is nothing, they keep paying it in other people's blood.

Look at the regional neighbors who should be acting as a brake. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, known as IGAD, has the mandate and the membership to mediate. The African Union's Peace and Security Council has the authority to demand a ceasefire, to send observers, and to name names. Yet we hear statements, not consequences. We hear "deep concern," not sanctions, not troop withdrawals, not public demands for accountability. That silence is a choice, and it is being made by people who would never accept it if the same drones were falling on their own capitals.

Africa does have models of how to do this better. Botswana built one of the most stable democracies in the world by protecting property rights, funding institutions, and accepting peaceful transfers of power. Mauritius turned a sugar island into a financial and service hub by investing in rule of law and open markets. Ghana has passed power peacefully between parties on several occasions in recent decades. Senegal's 2024 election, in which voters rejected a government trying to postpone the vote, showed that citizens can defend their constitutions when they decide to. These are not perfect countries. But they prove that the path away from war runs through institutions that bind rulers to the people, not through the gun.

So here is what must happen, and what we, as African citizens, must demand.

The African Union must convene an emergency session of the Peace and Security Council on the Ethiopia-Eritrea crisis and put the following on the table: an immediate and verifiable ceasefire, withdrawal of Eritrean forces from Ethiopian territory, an end to drone strikes in populated areas, and an independent investigation into civilian casualties in Adigrat. IGAD should send a mediation team with a mandate to negotiate a formal sea-access framework for Ethiopia through Eritrean or regional ports, built on trade treaties and transparent tariffs, not on conquest.

Eritrea must begin the process of ending indefinite national service, setting a date for a constitution-based election, and allowing international monitors access to detention and conscription practices. Ethiopia must open an independent inquiry into the drone strikes it has conducted, end its reported support for armed groups operating across the border, and restore the civilian oversight that was supposed to follow the Tigray war.

Civil society across the Horn, from Addis to Asmara to Mekelle, deserves the space to speak without being arrested or labeled traitors. Business leaders in Ethiopia's private sector, who have the most to lose from a regional war, should be demanding a ceasefire in public. Diaspora communities should press their governments in Europe, North America, and the Gulf to stop selling drones and munitions to any party in this conflict without proof of compliance with international humanitarian law.

Stop waiting for the next press release. Write to your parliamentarian. Ask your government what it has done to stop this war. Ask your AU ambassador why the Peace and Security Council has not met on Adigrat. Share the reports from people on the ground, and refuse to let the word "pockets" pass without challenge. Our continent has buried enough of its children. We are done letting men with flags and drones decide that our sons are cheap enough to lose.

Based on reporting by RFI