By late April 2019, less than a year after the peace spectacle, Eritrea had shut all border crossings with Ethiopia, Africanews reported, with the Bure–Assab route the last to close after Serha–Zalambesa and Omhajer–Humera.
Afar officials said the Assab-Bure closure was only on the Eritrean side. Reuters correspondent Aaron Maasho’s reporting tracked the sequence. Families and traders who had surged across after 2018 suddenly faced sealed gates again.
Abiy Ahmed’s government had sold the Eritrea thaw as historic. Asmara’s unilateral closures showed how little institutional peace existed beneath the airport embraces. Ethiopian Foreign Ministry voices claimed limited information; Eritrea stayed silent as usual.
For Horn geopolitics, the 2019 shutdowns are essential memory. The open-border honeymoon was short, reversible, and controlled from Asmara, while Addis celebrated optics that civilians could not cash at the checkpoint.
Sources: Africanews, borkena
