A fresh Al Jazeera opinion piece lands on a point that has been overdue in international coverage: Ethiopia is not being passively ‘dragged’ into regional conflict. Its ruling elite is actively trying to rewrite the political record.

The article is framed as a response to a recent narrative pushed by senior Ethiopian officials Redwan Hussein and Getachew Reda. Its core argument is blunt. The crisis now radiating out of Ethiopia is not principally the product of external manipulation. It is the product of internal fractures, accumulated state violence, political polarization, and a governing class that keeps searching for foreign explanations whenever domestic failures become too visible to hide.

That matters for Eritrea because one of the most dangerous habits in Ethiopian elite discourse has been the effort to turn Eritrea into a convenient explanatory device. When the center cannot hold, blame the border. When the political project fails to deliver stability, manufacture a larger geopolitical drama. When internal contradictions deepen, rename them as somebody else’s provocation.

The Al Jazeera piece pushes back directly on that method. It argues that the war that devastated northern Ethiopia cannot honestly be described as an externally imposed disaster. Nor can the current atmosphere of hostility toward Eritrea be treated as some reluctant security reflex detached from the federal government’s own rhetoric and mobilization choices since late 2023.

This is the part many outside observers still flatten. Ethiopia’s establishment repeatedly wants two stories to coexist: first, that it is a victim of destabilization; second, that its threatening language, military signaling, and revisionist political framing should be interpreted as defensive necessity. That contradiction is not a side issue. It is the mechanism.

For Serwe readers, the significance is larger than one op-ed. What is at stake is the ongoing attempt to normalize a false regional script in which Ethiopia’s internal disorder is endlessly externalized while Eritrea is expected to absorb accusation, pressure, and strategic suspicion as if that were neutral analysis.

The smarter reading is simpler. States in crisis often try to export confusion. Political systems under strain often reach for narrative warfare before they reach for accountability. And leaderships that cannot fully master events at home often become louder abroad.

That is why this intervention matters. Not because it settles every question, but because it refuses a lazy diplomatic fiction. Ethiopia is not being ‘dragged’ anywhere. It is facing the consequences of choices made at the center of its own power — and trying, once again, to shift the burden of that truth onto others.

Why this matters now

  • The piece arrives as regional rhetoric around Eritrea, the Red Sea, and Ethiopia’s internal direction remains highly charged.
  • It challenges a storyline that could otherwise harden into accepted international shorthand.
  • It reminds outside audiences that narrative management is itself part of the political struggle in the Horn.

That alone makes it worth treating not as just another opinion article, but as a marker of the contest over who gets to define the recent history of the region.