Five days before Tigrayan forces seized three local airports and fighting spread into Afar and Amhara, Washington let the national emergency underpinning its Ethiopia-related sanctions regime expire. The Treasury Department removed senior Eritrean financial official Hagos Ghebrehiwet and the Red Sea Trading Corporation from its sanctions list. The timing was, at minimum, a striking coincidence. The logic is straightforward. Eritrea controls a long coastline opposite Yemen, and its southern port of Assab sits near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. With Houthis threatening Red Sea shipping and the Strait of Hormuz periodically constrained, Washington needs cooperative or at least non-hostile governments along these corridors. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki controls the geography the US needs. As analyst Abdurahman Sayed told DW: "This may give Eritrea some advantage to establish a meaningful relationship with the US." The cost of this bargain falls on Tigrayans and on whatever remains of the 2022 Pretoria peace agreement. On September 21, seven Ethiopian armed and political groups — including the TPLF, the Amhara Fano National Movement, and the Oromo Liberation Army — announced an alliance to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Two days later, fighting escalated. Both sides blame the other. The renewed conflict has raised immediate questions about whether Eritrea, which fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces in the 2020-22 war, will intervene again. Eritrea's potential reentry is the scenario that transforms this from a domestic Ethiopian conflict into a regional interstate confrontation. Relations between Afwerki and Abiy have deteriorated sharply, particularly over Ethiopia's demand for Red Sea access — a strategic necessity for a landlocked country that Eritrea views as a sovereignty threat. The Ethiopian government has accused Eritrea of supporting armed groups in the new conflict; Eritrea denies it. No public evidence ties the US sanctions decision to encouraging Eritrean military action, but the removal of pressure is unmistakable. The broader Horn of Africa context makes containment harder, not easier. Sudan is at war. Somalia is unstable. Ethiopia and Egypt remain locked in their dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Saudi Arabia backs Eritrea and the Sudanese Armed Forces; the UAE backs the RSF. Journalist Martin Plaut warns: "You could get one conflict leading into another." Moses Okello of the Institute for Security Studies notes that the Middle East conflagration "puts a new contextual layer over that primary tension." The economic impact of sanctions relief may be limited — Eritrea is, as Sayed puts it, "a closed country" with minimal external trade. But the political signal is the point. Washington's renewed engagement with Asmara elevates one of Africa's most repressive regimes (no elections since 1993, indefinite national service) from pariah to partner. The more strategically valuable Eritrea becomes, the less leverage anyone has to press on governance or human rights. This is the classic great-power extraction pattern: a distant power trades local accountability for geographic access, local populations absorb the consequences, and the strategic partner captures diplomatic immunity. The question is not whether this pattern is familiar. The question is whether the Horn of Africa's multiplying conflicts can survive the removal of even modest restraints.
