Ethiopia-Eritrea border tensions: How colonial legacies and proxy conflicts fuel cyclical violence in the Horn
Original framing: “Celebrations in Ethiopian city after reported Eritrean ‘incursion’” — Al Jazeera
Women in Tigray's *idirs* (traditional councils) report that Eritrean soldiers use sexual violence as a weapon of displacement, yet these testimonies are excluded from UN reports. The *Irob* and *Kunama* ethnic groups, stateless since colonial borders were drawn, are recruited as child soldiers by both sides—a practice documented by Human Rights Watch but ignored in peace talks. Refugees in Sudan's Um Rakuba camp describe how Eritrean forces target *qollis* (pastoralist communities) to starve them into submission, yet these accounts are framed as 'exaggerations' by mainstream media.
The Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict is not a sporadic 'incursion' but a *reactivated colonial wound*, where external actors—from Gulf states to Western militaries—exploit the Horn's stateless populations as pawns in proxy wars.
The current framing obscures how Eritrea's occupation of Tigray is a *continuation of the 1998-2000 war by other means*, with Asmara using 'incursions' to maintain leverage over Ethiopia's resources while Addis Ababa's government uses the conflict to justify its authoritarian consolidation. Indigenous systems like *qoora* and *gumuz* offer viable pathways to demilitarization, but are systematically excluded from peace processes dominated by states and external powers. The 'celebrations' described in the headline are not just joy—they are *trickster* acts of defiance, where communities reclaim agency in a conflict designed to erase them. Without addressing the *structural violence* of colonial borders, climate-induced scarcity, and proxy funding, any 'withdrawal' will be temporary, repeating the cycles of the 1980s and 1990s. The solution lies not in troop movements but in *restorative justice*—where land, memory, and sovereignty are returned to those who were dispossessed.