The Post-Tigray Realignment
The Tigray war, which Eritrea joined decisively on Ethiopia's side in 2020, ended for most practical purposes with the Pretoria Agreement of November 2022. For Eritrea, however, the end of formal hostilities did not produce the political outcome Isaias had sought. The Tigray People's Liberation Front, while substantially weakened militarily, was not eliminated. Its leadership survived. Its political structures survived. And the Pretoria Agreement, brokered without Eritrea's participation, did not address Eritrea's core demand: that the TPLF, which Asmara regards as an existential threat, be permanently removed from power.
The result has been an Eritrean posture of continuing hostility toward Tigray's post-war political arrangements, combined with a cooling of the relationship with Abiy Ahmed that had been the centerpiece of the 2018-2019 peace process that won Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize. Isaias and Abiy remain formally at peace, and relations are not openly hostile. But the strategic convergence that seemed to define their early relationship has given way to a more transactional, occasionally tense coexistence in which each is pursuing regional objectives that do not always align.
Eritrea's position on the TPLF issue remains the clearest expression of this divergence. Abiy's government, under the Pretoria Agreement, is committed to a process of reintegrating Tigray into Ethiopia's federal structure. Isaias regards this process with deep suspicion, seeing any political survival of the TPLF as a potential threat to Eritrea's security. The TPLF central committee's recent meeting in Axum, and its decisions to reject the interim administration and back Debretsion Gebremichael, have likely reinforced Isaias's conviction that the Pretoria process was a mistake and that a military solution was the only durable option.
The Egypt-Somalia-Eritrea Alignment
The most significant development in Eritrea's regional positioning in the past year has been its deepening alignment with Egypt and Somalia in what analysts have characterised as an anti-Ethiopia axis. The strategic logic is clear: all three have significant concerns about Ethiopian ambitions, whether expressed through the GERD dam that Egypt sees as an existential threat to its Nile water security, the maritime access agreement with Somaliland that Somalia's federal government regards as a violation of its territorial integrity, or the TPLF issue through which Eritrea defines its core security interest.
Egypt has been the most active external actor in cementing this alignment. Egyptian military cooperation agreements with Somalia, including the deployment of Egyptian weapons and military advisors to Mogadishu, represent a significant geopolitical shift that has been carefully watched in Addis Ababa and Asmara. Eritrea's role in this alignment is less about direct military cooperation with either Egypt or Somalia and more about political signalling and intelligence sharing that strengthens the collective posture of those with concerns about Ethiopia's regional behaviour.
The alignment is also a hedge for Isaias against Eritrea's broader isolation. An Eritrea that is simply a pariah state, sanctioned, diplomatically isolated, and with no significant regional partners, has less leverage over events that affect its interests. An Eritrea that is part of a coalition that includes Egypt, with its resources and diplomatic weight, and Somalia, whose federal government controls a strategically important coastline, has more. The alignment does not require deep trust or formal treaty structures. It requires shared interests that are currently sufficient.
Eritrea's isolation is selective. It is isolated from Western diplomatic engagement and from most international institutions. It is not isolated from the regional power dynamics that shape the Horn's political order.
Military Posture and the Tigray Border
Eritrea has not withdrawn its military forces to pre-war positions following the Pretoria Agreement. Eritrean Defence Forces remain positioned in parts of western and southern Tigray, in areas that were administered as Eritrean territory before the TPLF governments of the 1990s formalised the border. Eritrea's presence in these areas, which include agricultural land and the town of Badme that was at the centre of the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea war, has been a persistent source of tension in the post-war period.
Internally displaced Tigrayans from areas occupied by Eritrean forces have not been able to return to their homes. The Eritrean military presence has been accompanied by reports of abuses against the remaining population in those areas. The international community has called for Eritrean withdrawal without producing the political pressure that would make such withdrawal likely. Isaias, having accepted substantial military losses during the Tigray war, is not going to withdraw from territory he regards as strategically valuable without a compelling reason to do so.
The military posture on the Tigray border also serves a domestic function. Eritrea has maintained compulsory national service that, in practice, functions as indefinite military conscription. The continued forward deployment of forces justifies this system in the regime's framing. The conscription system, which traps hundreds of thousands of young Eritreans in poorly compensated military and national service roles indefinitely, is one of the primary drivers of Eritrea's massive emigration rates and the diaspora that simultaneously sustains the country financially and organises politically against the PFDJ regime abroad.
What the Silence Conceals
Eritrea's opacity is a deliberate strategic choice, not simply a product of limited state capacity or poor communications infrastructure. Isaias has consistently maintained that Eritrea's security is best served by not revealing its capabilities, intentions, or internal deliberations to outside observers. This opacity frustrates analysts but also, from Isaias's perspective, preserves strategic ambiguity that gives Eritrea leverage it would not otherwise have.
What the silence conceals includes the true state of Eritrea's domestic economy, which is under significant stress from the combination of international sanctions, the diaspora tax that provides an important but insufficient revenue stream, the costs of maintaining a large standing military, and the disruption of the Tigray war to agricultural and commercial activity in border areas. The Eritrean economy is not growing in any meaningful sense. Basic goods remain in short supply. The national service system suppresses labour mobility and productive economic activity. The country survives, in part, because its population has been so extensively trained in deprivation that its expectations are calibrated to the austere.
The silence also conceals the intelligence role Eritrea plays in Horn of Africa dynamics. Eritrean intelligence services have historically been assessed as among the more capable in the region, with networks that extend into the Tigray diaspora, into Somalia, and into the Gulf states where Eritrean labour communities provide information access. This intelligence capacity is an asset in negotiations and alignments that are worth more to regional actors than Eritrea's limited economic or conventional military weight might suggest.
- Military forces still positioned in parts of western Tigray, creating ongoing friction.
- Political alignment with Egypt and Somalia as counterweight to Ethiopian regional ambitions.
- Relationship with Abiy Ahmed cooled from 2018 high but not openly hostile.
- PFDJ intelligence networks active in Tigray diaspora, Gulf states, and Horn politics.
- No constitutional succession mechanism; Isaias health and age increasingly watched.
- Diaspora 2% tax sustaining economy alongside Gulf remittances; sanctions limiting investment.
The Succession Question
Isaias Afwerki is over 80 years old. There is no constitutional mechanism for presidential succession in Eritrea. The PFDJ party, which is the only legal political organisation, has not publicly identified a successor or a process for identifying one. This is not an accident: Isaias has consistently governed in a way that prevents the emergence of alternative power centres that could challenge his authority, including by imprisoning or sidelining anyone who might plausibly succeed him.
The succession question matters for the whole Horn because Eritrea's regional role is so thoroughly personalised around Isaias's own strategic vision and relationships. An Eritrea after Isaias would have different leadership with different priorities, possibly including a period of internal power struggle that could generate its own instability on the Ethiopia and Sudan borders. Whether that would ultimately produce a more or less difficult partner for regional stability is genuinely uncertain, because so little institutional capacity for governance exists beneath the level of Isaias's personal authority.
What is certain is that the question will become increasingly urgent. Eritrea's neighbours, its diaspora, and its international observers are all watching for signs of Isaias's health and for any indication of how the transition, when it comes, will be managed. It is the most consequential unplanned event in Horn of Africa politics, and there is no plan for it.