Has Isaias Overplayed His Hand? Jawar Mohammed
In my earlier analysis of the Eritrean frontier, I argued that Abiy faced a difficult choice. Pursuing the TPLF to the border could deny it the sanctuary it needs for another insurgency, but entering Eritrea before a clear cross-border threat emerged could allow Isaias to portray Ethiopia as the aggressor. Recent developments are changing that calculation.
Reuters, AFP, BBC and Deutsche Welle have now reported Eritrean troops moving deeper into Ethiopian territory. This increasingly looks less like defensive positioning and more like an attempt to halt the federal advance, create military space for the TPLF and push ENDF southward. Once Eritrean forces operate deep inside Ethiopia, the issue becomes one of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ethiopia has now formally accused Eritrea of an incursion and demanded the withdrawal of its troops.
The Abiy government also bears responsibility for leaving this problem unresolved for almost four years. The Pretoria Agreement was signed on 2 November 2022, while the Nairobi implementation declaration linked Tigrayan disarmament to the withdrawal of foreign and non-ENDF forces. Although some Eritrean troops withdrew from major towns, the withdrawal was never completed, with Eritrean forces remaining in key strategic locations. Whatever diplomacy took place behind closed doors failed to secure their full removal before relations deteriorated into the present confrontation.
That unresolved presence also brings us back to an argument I made five days ago in Can the TPLF Sustain Another Insurgency? The TPLF does not need to retake Mekelle immediately to remain militarily relevant. Prolonged fighting across eastern Tigray and the broader northern front could itself become the strategy if Eritrean involvement gives the TPLF the external depth it previously lacked. It would gain time to preserve fighters, reorganize its command structure and sustain military support. For Ethiopia, allowing such a battlefield to stabilize would mean accepting an externally supported armed zone from which pressure on the state could continue.
The danger may not remain confined to the immediate Tigray battlefield. On 7 October, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa warned of reports of possible long-range attacks against Ethiopian military installations on several occasions in October, without identifying a responsible actor. I take this as a sign that U.S. officials are seriously considering the possibility that the conflict could reach important military targets beyond the immediate front. If such long-range missiles are indeed fired at targets deep inside Ethiopia, state actors, particularly Eritrea to some extent Sudan, would be more plausible sources than the TPLF alone, given the capabilities involved.
That broader threat environment also changes the logic of an Ethiopian counteroffensive. As I noted yesterday, Isaias may have made the move Abiy was waiting for. The federal government had strong reasons to avoid appearing responsible for widening the conflict. That constraint weakens, however, as forces of the Isaias regime move farther inside Ethiopia. A northward counteroffensive can increasingly be presented as an effort to expel foreign forces, re-establish control up to the internationally recognized border and prevent northern Tigray from becoming an Eritrean-backed sanctuary.
The immediate Ethiopian objective should be to reverse the southward pressure before Eritrea and the TPLF can consolidate it. If ENDF maintains its technological advantage, protects its supply routes and carries the counteroffensive through the Wukro–Idaga Hamus–Adigrat axis toward the border, the strategic space available to Isaias and the TPLF will narrow considerably.
I think the next phase will be shaped along the broader Mekelle–Wukro–Idaga Hamus–Adigrat corridor, where significant military activity is now concentrated. If Eritrean and TPLF forces succeed in pushing the federal line back from around Wukro toward Mekelle, they could create the space needed for a prolonged war and renewed TPLF insurgency. Conversely, an ENDF advance northward from Wukro toward Idaga Hamus and eventually Adigrat would narrow that space and shift the strategic pressure back toward Isaias and the Eritrean frontier.
If long-range missiles continue to strike targets deep inside central Ethiopia, Abiy would have a stronger justification to respond against Eritrean military targets far from the frontier. Combined with a ground campaign, this could take the war into Eritrean territory. If the combined Eritrean-TPLF defense fails to deter the ENDF, Abiy may become unable or unwilling to stop the advance, much as Meles did after the fall of Barentu, from pushing all the way to the other side of the border.
Therefore, if Eritrea’s deeper intervention was intended to halt the federal advance and preserve strategic space for the TPLF, it may have created the conditions for precisely the opposite outcome. By moving the confrontation deeper into Ethiopian territory, Isaias may have strengthened the sovereignty argument, military justification and political pressure for a stronger Ethiopian response.
Whether Isaias has overplayed his hand will ultimately depend on whether Ethiopia can reverse the pressure, repel Eritrean forces and carry the fight back toward the Eritrean border. But there is a larger question that needs to be considered now: what happens if the ENDF does push deep into Eritrean territory?
Beyond the military feasibility of such an advance, the political consequences inside Eritrea also deserve serious attention. Any democratic transformation that follows a weakening of the Isaias regime would have to be Eritrean-led and rooted in Eritrean society itself. It should not be imposed or designed from outside. The critical question is whether Eritreans can turn such a moment into an orderly political opening and build a more accountable system. If that opportunity is lost, the alternative could be a security vacuum, fragmentation or another cycle of authoritarian rule. For Ethiopia, the main interest should be a peaceful and stable Eritrea next door, while Eritreans themselves decide their political system and leadership.
