A Think Tank Warned Ethiopia and Eritrea Are 'Perilously Close' to All-Out War. Its Own Analysis Says That War Would Pull In Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Abstract: The International Crisis Group published an alert on 12 October 2026, titled "Pulling Ethiopia and Eritrea Back from War," describing Ethiopia and Eritrea as perilously close to an all-out interstate war for the first time since the two fought a formal border war from 1998 to 2000, and warning that such a conflict would likely spread into the Red Sea and risk drawing in Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to Crisis Group's own published analysis and reporting by the Globe and Mail and Al Jazeera. The warning follows a month of military escalation inside Ethiopia: federal forces and the allied Tigray Peace Force, a formation built from former Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters now loyal to Addis Ababa, have taken control of every major city in the Tigray region, including the ancient city of Aksum, according to the conflict monitor ACLED as reported by Al Jazeera on 15 October, and have advanced to within roughly 80 kilometres of Eritrea's Red Sea port of Assab, according to Globe and Mail reporting by Africa bureau chief Geoffrey York published the same week. Ethiopia scholar Kjetil Tronvoll told the Globe and Mail that several hundred thousand Ethiopian and Eritrean troops are now massed along the two countries' shared border. Both governments severed diplomatic relations and expelled each other's diplomats on 1-2 October; U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on 14 October to urge restraint and warn against cross-border incursions, and Canada separately said it was "deeply concerned" about the danger of regional escalation, according to the Globe and Mail. The Tigray Peace Force says Eritrean forces have suffered "heavy losses" in fighting near the border, a claim Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, rejects as false; ACLED reports that Eritrean troops did cross into Ethiopian territory near Zalambessa before pulling back toward their own border, with neither the casualty claims nor the scale of the incursion independently verified by any outlet reviewed for this analysis.

A warning with a specific, named cast of outside actors

What distinguishes Crisis Group's 12 October alert from the running day-by-day coverage of the Ethiopia-Eritrea standoff that FIKIR Institute has tracked since the two governments first traded letters at the UN Security Council is its explicit naming of who else gets pulled in if deterrence fails. According to Crisis Group's own published analysis, cited in reporting on the regional dimension of the crisis, an outright Ethiopia-Eritrea war would likely spread into the Red Sea and could draw in Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The mechanism Crisis Group identifies runs through Sudan's own civil war: the UAE is a major external patron of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, while Eritrea and Egypt have aligned with Sudan's army in that conflict, and Crisis Group's analysis anticipates Sudan's army and Egypt lending support to Eritrea in a wider Ethiopia-Eritrea war, with the UAE in turn backing Ethiopia with arms, according to reporting that reviewed the group's assessment. That is a strikingly specific prediction for a region FIKIR Institute has already documented pulling the UAE's RSF patronage, Egypt's GERD-era rivalry with Ethiopia, and Eritrea's own alignment with Khartoum into increasingly overlapping theatres, and it reframes a bilateral border dispute as a potential node connecting two already-active regional wars, Sudan's civil war and the Tigray conflict, through their external backers rather than through any direct territorial link between them.

Where the UAE and Saudi Arabia actually stand

Al Jazeera's 13 October examination of Gulf positioning found the UAE has already taken a public stance, with its minister of state reaffirming support for Ethiopia's sovereignty and calling for an end to hostilities and adherence to the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, while cautioning that the UAE's commercial ties to the region do not establish that Abu Dhabi can actually influence the TPLF, persuade Eritrea to de-escalate or shift Ethiopia's own military calculations. Saudi Arabia's position is murkier: Riyadh offered in November 2025 to mediate between Ethiopia and Eritrea, according to Chatham House analysis cited by Al Jazeera, but that earlier effort failed in part because it did not address Ethiopia's underlying interest in Assab, and Saudi Arabia has not publicly stated a position on the fighting that resumed in September. Crisis Group's own recommendation, per reporting on its analysis, is that Saudi Arabia and the UAE cooperate on de-escalating what could become a Red Sea-spanning conflict, a recommendation that implicitly acknowledges the two Gulf states are not currently aligned on the question. Underlying that misalignment is a wider Gulf rift FIKIR Institute has not previously covered in this context: tension between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, including a clash late last year over Yemen's Hadramawt region, that analysts say has already spilled into how the two capitals approach the Horn.

Aksum falls, and a militia claims Eritrean losses neither side can prove

The battlefield facts behind Crisis Group's warning hardened in the same week the alert was published. ACLED's tracking, as reported by Al Jazeera on 15 October, found Ethiopian government forces and Tigray Peace Force fighters had entered Aksum, a city of major religious and historical significance in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, while Tigrayan rebel fighters withdrew into the surrounding mountains rather than contest the city directly; the move follows federal forces' earlier recapture of the regional capital, Mekelle, and complements the six-month caretaker administration Addis Ababa installed for the region on 16 October, which FIKIR Institute covered separately. A Tigray Peace Force spokesperson, Solomon Hailemariam, said Eritrean forces had taken significant casualties in fighting associated with the advance, a claim Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, dismissed as false, according to Africanews and Al Jazeera reporting from 13 to 15 October. ACLED's own data point is narrower and more cautious than either side's public claim: it documents Eritrean troops crossing into Ethiopian territory near Zalambessa and subsequently pulling back across the border, without corroborating the scale of losses either side has described. None of the outlets reviewed for this analysis has independently verified troop casualty figures from either government, a gap consistent with the broader pattern of unverified claims, Ethiopian and Eritrean alike, that has characterised the standoff since Ethiopia's foreign minister first told the UN Security Council on 8 October that Eritrean mechanised units had advanced 60 kilometres into Tigray.

Why Assab, specifically, is the number that matters

Crisis Group's and the Globe and Mail's reporting converge on a single geographic fact that explains why this standoff reads differently from an ordinary border dispute: Ethiopian forces, equipped with tanks and heavy weapons, have advanced to within roughly 80 kilometres of Assab, the Eritrean Red Sea port Ethiopia lost when Eritrea gained independence in 1993 and which Ethiopian political and military figures have periodically demanded be returned ever since, according to the Globe and Mail's reporting. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said publicly that Ethiopia intends to secure sea access through peaceful means rather than by force, a position FIKIR Institute has tracked him articulating since 2023, but Eritrea's own public position, relayed through its information ministry, is that it fears Ethiopia will attempt to seize Assab militarily regardless of Addis Ababa's stated intentions. An 80-kilometre buffer closed by armour and heavy weapons, even if Ethiopian commanders have no present order to cross it, is the kind of proximity that converts a government's stated peaceful intentions into a credibility question for the other side, and it is the specific detail that appears to anchor Crisis Group's "perilously close" characterisation rather than the diplomatic rupture or the UN Security Council letters alone.

What to watch

Three signals will indicate whether Crisis Group's warning becomes the high-water mark of the crisis or an early flag for a war that actually arrives. First, whether Ethiopian federal forces advance further toward Assab itself or halt at their current positions near the border; continued movement toward the port, rather than consolidation of the territory already taken in Tigray, would be the clearest sign Addis Ababa's stated preference for peaceful negotiation over Red Sea access is not holding operationally. Second, whether Saudi Arabia breaks its public silence on the current fighting, either by reviving the mediation effort that failed in November 2025 or by aligning more explicitly with the UAE's public backing of Ethiopia, which would narrow the gap Crisis Group has flagged between the two Gulf states' positions. Third, whether any independent verification emerges of either side's casualty and incursion claims, from the Tigray Peace Force's account of Eritrean losses to Ethiopia's original claim of a 60-kilometre Eritrean advance, since the absence of independent confirmation on both sides has so far let each government frame an unverifiable narrative that serves its own case for defensive necessity.

Policy implications

For Ethiopia, Crisis Group's warning that its own Gulf-state backer, the UAE, might be expected to supply arms in a wider war is a reminder that the diplomatic cover Abu Dhabi has extended Addis Ababa carries an implicit, and so far untested, expectation of reciprocal alignment should fighting cross the border in earnest. For Eritrea, a warning that Sudan's army and Egypt would likely back Asmara in a wider conflict offers a measure of diplomatic insurance but does not change the immediate military calculus of Ethiopian forces positioned 80 kilometres from Assab. For Saudi Arabia, Crisis Group's explicit call for Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to cooperate on de-escalation is, read plainly, an acknowledgment that the two Gulf states are not currently coordinating on a crisis that borders waters central to both of their economic and security interests, a gap that widens the farther the broader Abu Dhabi-Riyadh rift over Yemen's Hadramawt region extends into Horn of Africa policy. For the Red Sea shipping and insurance industry already contending with Houthi attacks on Saudi and commercial targets, which FIKIR Institute has covered separately, Crisis Group's warning adds a second, distinct pathway, an Ethiopia-Eritrea war rather than a Yemen-based one, by which the same waterway could face renewed disruption. For international mediators, the specific, named list of states Crisis Group expects to be drawn in sets a far larger diplomatic task than managing Addis Ababa and Asmara alone, one that would need to engage Khartoum's and Cairo's relationship with Eritrea and Abu Dhabi's and Riyadh's unresolved rivalry simultaneously with the bilateral dispute itself.