Ethiopia, Eritrea tread a thin line
 

  
Rising tensions over a historic region may pull Ethiopia and Eritrea back into conflict, with the both sides placing blame on the other and a UN commission stuck in the middle.
 

By Daniel Auma in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (28/11/07)
 

The thin line between a potential border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea hinges on the identification of the families living in Badme, a disputed territory, considered "historic and symbolic" by the two rival states. And international observers are concerned that this old border dispute coupled with a tug-of-war over neighboring Somalia could see a renewal of the 1998 conflict.
 

Badme, the site of the original dispute that sparked a war in Eritrea in 1998, is a colonial boundary fixed in 1902 by a treaty between the Italian government, which had colonized Eritrea, and the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II - ruler of what was then one of the few independent African states.
 

The territory was awarded to Eritrea in 2002 following a ruling by the UN Boundary Commission. However, Ethiopia refuses to accept the ruling, a move which has stalled UN plans to demarcate the border between the two states. The Commission has given the two countries until the end of November to facilitate the demarcation of the border.
 

While Ethiopia insists that it will comply with the boundary's panel ruling, officials there say they want to control the demarcation to ensure no families are separated. There is also the fear that moving the border would shift the nationality of a portion of Badme's residents.
 

Enter Somalia
However, Ethiopia is also making specific demands similar in tune to the current exchange of hostilities in Somalia.
 

Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of backing Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) rebels fighting in the Somali region and Somalia insurgents battling Ethiopian and Somali government troops, while Eritrea accuses Ethiopia of sponsoring terrorism in Somalia.
 

Ethiopia also says that Eritrea supports insurgents in a bid to destabilize the weak Somali interim government and offering logistics for attacks against its troops in the country.
 

With the mess in Somalia further complicating matters, Ethiopian officials say now is not the time to address the ongoing border issue.
 

"We are not ready for talks on the border issue," Bereket Simon, an advisor to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi , told ISN Security Watch.
 

"We may talk to Eritrea once they fulfill several conditions including the support they provide to the [Somali] rebel groups," Simon said.
 

Eritrea rejects Ethiopia's claim, saying the UN panel's decision on the border is final.
 

"Ethiopia is occupying sovereign Eritrean territory in violation of international law. Ethiopia continues to reject the arbitration decision," Eritrea's presidential spokesman, Yemane Gebremeskel, told ISN Security Watch in a telephone interview from Asmara, the Eritrean capital.
 

Build-up along the border
Tensions have been rising along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border since early this month, with both sides amassing troops in close proximity to each other, raising fears of a renewed war, similar to the 1998-2000 conflict.
 

A UN boundaries panel has warned that the 2002 ruling, made on the basis of the Algiers Agreement that ended the earlier war, would stand if the dispute was not resolved by 30 November. Ethiopia is demanding that Eritrea allow UN monitors to police the border.
 

The increasing border tension in the Horn of Africa has alarmed the European Parliament, which passed a resolution on 22 November calling for the urgent withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, saying they were aggravating the political crisis in the region.
 

The parliament also stated that tensions were being exacerbated by the US, which was pursuing what the EU body termed "simplistic perceptions" of the terrorist threats in the Horn of Africa.
 

UN mediators during the Eritrea-Ethiopia war in 2000 created a 25-kilometer-wide Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) to separate the two armies and keep them out of each other's artillery range. Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin says the agreement has been violated, with troops coming into close contact with each other, separated at times by no more than 100 meters.
 

In its latest report, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) warns of a growing danger of renewed war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in the coming weeks, urging both the UN and the US to act quickly to head it off.
 

"A military build-up along the common border over the past few months has reached alarming proportions," the ICG says, citing statistics that each side has at least 100,000 troops available to fight along the 1,000-km frontier.
 

"To prevent this, the international community [...] must act immediately to give both sides the clearest possible message that no destabilizing unilateral action will be tolerated," the group recommends.
 

Regional analysts told ISN Security Watch that the US views Ethiopia as its best ally in the region, but ties with Eritrea have deteriorated to such an extent that it may put Asmara on its list of terrorism sponsors for backing Somali Islamists.
 

Observers say winning back Badme is strategically important for the small ruling elite in Ethiopia, which makes up 10 percent of the country's population of 76 million.
 

According to the ICG, the Ethiopian government believes the boundary commission's ruling was "improper and illegal" and outside the confines of its original mandate.
 

The ICG argues that protecting Badme was important for Ethiopia's safety and security as well as economic prosperity.
 

Furthermore, Ethiopians in the capital, Addis Ababa, are outraged at the loss of the port of Assab, another disputed territory that used to be the main entry port to Ethiopia, but with the border ruling has become a part of Eritrea.
 

"We would still be importing a lot of our goods through Eritrea. This was part of Ethiopia but now we have to use the Port of Djibouti," Henok Getachew, 25, a political science student at the University of Addis Ababa, told ISN Security Watch.
 

Tit-for-tat
The UN Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE) has retained 1,700 troops along the disputed frontier to monitor the security buffer zone on Eritrea's side of the frontier in disputed Badme, but the movements of the monitors have been curtailed by the Eritrean government. Eritrea has restricted UN helicopter flights in its airspace, expelled UNMEE's North American and European troops and arrested Eritreans working for these foreign embassies.
 

The country is also hitting back at Ethiopia through consistent attacks in its state-controlled newspaper, The Eritrea Profile, claiming that the refusal to implement the Algiers Agreement was similar to a declaration of war.
 

"It is significant that the TPLF clique - Ethiopia's ruling party - should now [find itself in a position to] declare war or refrain from doing so, because the regime has long declared war on Eritrea," the newspaper commented in an editorial on 10 November.
 

Eritrea also announced its decision to withdraw from the seven-member Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) because it sanctioned the continued stay of Ethiopian troops in Somalia as a temporary security measure.
 

In January, the Ethiopian government claimed to have arrested "Eritrean terrorists" in Addis Ababa, accusing them of importing arms and explosives into the country in an apparent attempt to destabilize the African Union Summit, which Addis hosted.
 

The ICG says there is enough blame to go around for the current situation in Badme, with the Boundary Commission being part of the problem due to political insensitivity. The Commission's role as laid out by the Algiers Agreement is also a factor in the strife, the group says.