SUPPORT ETHIOPIA INSIGHT .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } Existential threats demand dismantling manufactured hostilityFor millennia, the highlands of what are now Tigray and Eritrea formed a single, connected civilization. Families straddled what would later become a colonial boundary, trading, intermarrying, and praying in the same ancient churches.Then came the borders, first Italian, then Ethiopian, then Eritrean. And with them, decades of manipulated enmity, proxy wars, and finally, the devastating 2020–2022 war that saw Eritrean soldiers fighting alongside Ethiopian forces to devastate Tigray.Ethiopia’s and Eritrea’s political sovereignty has done little to ensure safety for the people living along their shared frontier. Daily life, language, faith, and family ties continue to link Tigrayans and Eritreans, especially in diaspora communities under identities like Habesha or broader Tigray-Eritrea networks.Yet regional politics and internal power struggles often come at the expense of those connections.The uncomfortable truth Tigrayan and Eritrean elites must confront is that peace cannot rest on goodwill alone. It must be approached as a practical necessity, a way to protect both peoples from the predatory calculations of Addis Ababa.Weaponized DiscordThe Horn of Africa remains highly sensitive to conflict and proxy wars. Tigray and Eritrea sit at the epicenter. Both are historically conscious political societies with strategic depth and influence. Both have paid for that consciousness in blood: Eritrea through thirty years of independence war, Tigray through seventeen years of liberation struggle followed by the recent genocide.Regimes in Addis Ababa have long viewed peaceful relations between Eritrea and Tigray with suspicion. Whenever either side attempts genuine reconciliation, they meet backlash, shame campaigns, and political pressure.Consider the grassroots Ximdo initiative. When a few Eritrean and Tigrayan activists organized meetings in border towns, elders and religious leaders gathered. Communities celebrated together for the first time in five years.Whatever mixed reactions emerged within Eritrean and Tigrayan communities themselves, the fierce opposition from Addis Ababa and its affiliates revealed something deeper: peace between Eritreans and Tigrayans threatens expansionist ambitions built on their suffering.Recent events leave little ambiguity. Authorities in Addis Ababa have repeatedly treated division as a political instrument, keeping old wounds active and steering tensions toward confrontation. The border openings under Ximdo closely resembled those of 2018: same communities, same aspirations, same calls for reconciliation.At the grassroots, people celebrated in defiance of war propaganda and decades of hostile narratives. Their instincts were sound.Their reaction was rooted in something older than the current dispute.Ubiquitous archaeological evidence shows organized societies in Tigray and Eritrea stretching back millennia. Polities like Punt and Dʿmt predate the Axumite state and influenced the region for more than a millennium. These interactions, between Cushitic and Semitic communities, created enduring cultural and political ties.This shared history shaped both regions’ modern struggles. Eritrea’s thirty-year independence war and Tigray’s seventeen-year struggle against central oppression both transformed the region’s political landscape in 1991.The federal system that enabled Ethiopia’s nationalities to coexist in relative peace, and the recognition of Eritrean independence, emerged from sacrifices made by these two peoples.Yet Tigray has often been caught between Addis Ababa’s ambitions and Eritrea’s sovereignty, a position that has proven perilous.Fragile PeaceThe Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, signed in November 2022, offered Tigrayans hope for reconstruction and rehabilitation.Instead, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government systematically undermined the agreement, delegitimizing the TPLF, redeploying troops toward Mekelle, and training new forces, including militias in neighboring regions, targeting both the interim administration and the broader Tigrayan polity.Tigrayans, deferring justice for stability, continued to give peace a chance. Yet neither the TPLF, nor Tigray’s security forces, nor the population at large could remain passive indefinitely.Following its long-standing strategy, Addis Ababa withdrew federal forces from parts of Tigray along the Eritrean border, deliberately creating conditions for tension between Mekelle and Asmara. Tigrayan leaders read the signals and exercised restraint, seeking to prevent clashes.Pretoria can now be seen as a continuation of this approach: reconciliation used selectively to manage threats while maintaining leverage. In 2018, the federal government exploited Eritrean grievances to devastate Tigray; after Pretoria, it engaged with one TPLF faction while recalibrating its posture toward Eritrea.Abiy sees Tigray’s autonomy as a threat to his rule and Eritrea as an obstacle to his legacy of controlling a maritime outlet.Despite years of peace rhetoric, the signs point toward preparation for another large-scale conflict. Many Tigrayans, including TPLF figures, view war with Eritrea as increasingly likely. For Tigray, any such conflict would again turn its territory into a battlefield and constitute an invasion of a sovereign neighbor.The federal government is recycling its prior playbook: reviving historical traumas, weaponizing identity-based grievances, and mobilizing ethnonationalist sentiment. Similarly, Afar nationalism is leveraged to blur borders, while anti-Eritrean and anti-regime actors are courted in parallel. The machinery of manufactured conflict continues to turn.Strategic ChoiceWhat, then, should Tigrayans and Eritreans do?The answer begins with recognizing that elites on both sides face a choice between nationalist competition and pragmatic coexistence grounded in mutual understanding. It requires daring the untried and correcting the mistakes of predecessors.Both sides must listen to and recognize each other’s traumas, individual and collective. A superficial pacifism cannot build trust. Only mutual recognition of past harm and serious commitment to repair can construct lasting peace. The past continues to shape the present, yet it remains only a small fraction of the future.The wellbeing of generations not yet born must take priority. Justice, reconciliation, and truth-telling should replace bitterness and revenge. Those future generations deserve the right to scrutinize and interpret the histories both sides bequeath them.Concretely, Tigrayans and Eritreans can begin by holding unofficial dialogues, led by respected diaspora figures, religious leaders, and elders, where painful histories are acknowledged away from political spotlights.They can draft joint declarations that recognize each side’s grievances and security concerns, and organize cultural events in diaspora communities, spaces where freedoms allow what the borderlands still forbid.The question of Tigray’s political future remains live among Tigrayans. Conversations about exercising self-determination rights, independence, or other constitutional arrangements to ensure Tigray does not suffer another round of genocidal war proceed in homes and gatherings across the region and diaspora.In parallel, Eritrea as a sovereign nation must revise its policies toward Tigray. This does not mean interference in Ethiopian affairs, but rather strategic recognition that a stable, self-determining Tigray serves Eritrea’s long-term interests far better than a fragmented society easily exploited by Addis Ababa.One major factor behind Ethiopia’s centrist hostility toward Tigrayans has been Tigray’s principled recognition of Eritrea’s historical struggle and independence. Even though Eritrea’s independence has been achieved, this solidarity has placed Tigray between two mutually distrustful forces, both directing hostility toward Mekelle.Building TrustTigrayans must also help protect Eritrea from Ethiopia’s invasive rhetoric, which weaponizes ancient history to justify irredentism and territorial ambitions. Tigray itself faces dangerous de-Tigraying projects: depopulation, territorial dismantling, appropriation of its heritage.In any war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Tigray risks becoming a symbolic springboard for history-driven expansionism. Tigrayans and Eritreans share ancient history, but Addis Ababa must not be allowed to abuse Axumite and pre-Axumite connections to the Red Sea, or selectively interpret historical maps, to justify modern conquest. Such thinking undermines peaceful coexistence and runs counter to Tigray’s interests.Today, any attempt by Eritreans and Tigrayans to build shared spaces of peace is treated as a threat by Addis Ababa. Diaspora communities must therefore use the freedoms they enjoy to create events and platforms where Eritreans and Tigrayans gather.The unifying cultural fabrics are countless: the shared liturgy of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the poetry of the Tigrigna language, the economic networks spanning Minneapolis, Stockholm, and Nairobi. These can gradually weaken the foundations of manufactured hatred.Over generations, such grassroots momentum can pressure leadership on both sides to treat peace as a strategic interest.Addis Ababa, seat of power with robust state machinery and anchored to Western capitals, continues to dominate narratives. Narratives shape public consciousness and determine political destinations. Tigray and Eritrea must consciously challenge and defeat war narratives by amplifying public will for genuine peace, rehabilitation, reconstruction, cultural reintegration, and economic cooperation.The choice is stark. Remain instruments of Addis Ababa’s ambitions, bleeding each other for others’ benefit. Or recognize that in a region where sovereignty is often illusion and alliances shift like desert sands, the most reliable strategic asset is a neighboring people who share your language, your faith, your history, and your interest in not being sacrificial lambs. .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } Query or correction? Email us window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function(){if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") {sfsi_widget_set();}}); While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.Main photo: Residents of Zalambesa (Tigray) and Senafe sub-zone (Eritrea) celebrate together, sharing a meal from the same plate during Eritrea’s 34th Independence Day festivities. May 2025. Source: Social media.Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.The post Tigray and Eritrea Must Cooperate to Survive appeared first on Ethiopia Insight.