Cairo, Egypt - As fighting in Ethiopia threatens to reignite a full-scale war, Egypt has repeatedly denied accusations that it is backing the rebels.
But Cairo has good geostrategic reasons to watch the crisis closely.
In late September, seven armed groups in northern Ethiopia, several of them former enemies, formed an alliance united by a single aim: to topple the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The alliance has raised fears that the peace deal that ended Ethiopia’s two-year war in 2022 may unravel. That conflict killed an estimated 600,000 people, making it one of the deadliest of the 21st century, and drove tens of thousands from their homes across the country’s borders.
Egypt denies Addis Ababa’s allegations that it is supplying arms to the new alliance. Yet its interest in Ethiopia extends well beyond the latest fighting.
In recent years, Cairo has worked to expand its influence across the Horn of Africa, deepening political, military, and economic ties with Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, while maintaining longstanding relationships with Sudan and South Sudan.
Military-cooperation agreements and mutual-defence pacts have helped cement this presence. Egypt is also preparing to deploy troops to Somalia as part of the African Union’s Support and Stabilisation Mission.
For Cairo, instability in Ethiopia is not simply a neighbouring country’s problem: it is a potential threat to its wider regional interests and national security.
Containing Ethiopia
Egypt’s strategy in the Horn of Africa has centred on strengthening ties with countries surrounding Ethiopia, partly to counter what Cairo perceives as Addis Ababa’s ambitions for regional dominance.
A central source of friction is the Nile, Egypt’s principal source of freshwater. Over the past decade, Ethiopia has built the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile, giving it greater control over the timing of water flows downstream.
Addis Ababa is also planning at least three further dams that could affect water supplies to Egypt and Sudan.
The Ethiopian government argues that such projects are essential to economic development, electricity generation and lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty.
Egyptian analysts, however, see a broader strategic calculation. They argue that Ethiopia’s growing control over the Nile could give it economic and political leverage over downstream countries.
“My belief is that Ethiopia doesn't need all these dams to economically develop or generate electricity for its people,” Egyptian water resources expert Nader Nour-Eddin told The New Arab.
The GERD stalemate
Egypt is totally dependent on the Nile for the needs of its population of 120 million, as well as its agricultural and industrial activities.
The fallout from the GERD has forced Cairo into an expensive adaptation strategy that has so far cost it billions of dollars, including through the construction of a series of seawater desalination plants and others for sewage treatment.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has repeatedly described the Nile as an "existential issue" for his country.
Earlier this month, he described the Nile as his country's "lifeline" and said that Egypt would continue to defend its Nile water rights through all measures enshrined in international law.
The stalemate over the GERD, following a decade of failed negotiations between the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, is also part of an evolving struggle between the two sides over the Red Sea.
Landlocked Ethiopia's Red Sea quest is causing concern in Egypt, where it is viewed as part of Ethiopia's desire to control a crucial maritime chokepoint that leads up to an indispensable economic artery for the Egyptians, namely the Suez Canal.
Ethiopia says that Red Sea access is indispensable for its economic development and trade with the outside world.
The risk of a regional war
A war between Ethiopia and Eritrea might have seemed unlikely only a few months ago. Now, however, the two countries are edging towards confrontation, raising questions about how Egypt might respond.
Tensions between the two countries have been piling up for several months, especially as Ethiopia has escalated its rhetoric on access to the Red Sea, with the Eritrean Port of Assab at the centre of its plans.
Ethiopia talks about this port within the context of its historical right to ownership, with Ethiopian officials and commentators framing Eritrea's 1993 independence from Ethiopia and Ethiopia's loss of sea access as a "conspiracy".
Ethiopian political analyst Jemal Beshir Ahmed said the loss of his country's coastline in 1993 was the result of political decisions, the Eritrean armed struggle, and external geopolitical involvement that left Ethiopia landlocked.
"This is an Ethiopian political interpretation, rather than an undisputed historical fact," he told The New Arab.
Ethiopia views Assab as the "most natural option", he added, given its proximity to the Ethiopian border, its existing infrastructure, and its long history as an important outlet for Ethiopian trade.
The civil war raging in northern Ethiopia is now drawing in multiple outside parties, opening the door for them to settle old scores, achieve geostrategic gains, or vanquish their rivals.
Eritrea, reportedly supporting the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), has deployed troops in northern Ethiopia, in what is seen as an attempt by Asmara to create a buffer against Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) advances towards the Eritrean border and consequently into Assab, which is located only a few kilometres away from the Ethiopian border.
It probably views the war as a good chance to create an advance base in this area to prevent – or at least slow down – any attempt by the ENDF to march towards the joint border.
Ethiopia may use the same deployment of Eritrean troops as an excuse to move its forces into the neighbouring country and recapture Assab, thus killing two birds with one stone: regain a territory historically believed to be its own and settle old scores with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, a figure loathed by many in Addis Ababa.
In any war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, Egypt may exploit an opportunity to kill Addis Ababa's regional ambitions and undermine the Horn of Africa state for many years to come, preventing it from becoming the potential Red Sea threat or Nile Basin hegemon that Cairo fears.
It can do this by offering support to the Eritrean army in its expected showdown with the ENDF.
Those closely following these serious developments believe a war erupting in the Horn of Africa would become a magnet for all types of external forces.
Independent Eritrean Horn of Africa specialist Azeez Hagos said a war between the two countries would be difficult to contain as a purely bilateral conflict.
"This war would erupt in an already interconnected regional environment," he told The New Arab.
Northern Ethiopia is unstable, Sudan is emerging from a devastating war, in which Addis Ababa has faced accusations of supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and tensions involving Egypt, Somalia, and the Red Sea are already overlapping.
"If the balance in Sudan continues to shift, some of that political and security pressure could also rebound towards Ethiopia," Hagos said.
He noted that the danger becomes even greater if the conflict reaches southern Eritrea or Assab.
At that point, he said, it would no longer be only a land war between two neighbouring states.
"It would directly involve Red Sea security, ports, maritime routes and the interests of littoral states and other regional powers," Hagos said. "I would not see such a war as simply another Eritrean-Ethiopian confrontation."
A quadrilateral Egyptian-Eritrean-Somali-Sudanese summit in the Egyptian Mediterranean city of Alamein earlier this month offered insights into the anti-Ethiopia alliance forming on the margins of the Ethiopian civil war.
Calls for support for Addis Ababa are also pouring in, including from Israel, whose foreign minister in early October expressed backing for Ethiopia's unity and stability.
A war with Eritrea would complicate Ethiopia's situation, forcing it to fight a foreign enemy, while at the same time battling a host of internal adversaries.
The growing involvement of outside powers, alongside the flow of weapons to competing parties, illustrates how the conflict could become a proxy battleground in a wider struggle over maritime chokepoints and the distribution of political and military influence across the Horn of Africa.
Unless diplomacy prevails, the confrontation risks developing into a prolonged war of attrition, destabilising both the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region as rival powers compete to shape their future.
Saleh Salem is an Egyptian journalist
Edited by Charlie Hoyle