Zack,
Yes. Abbiy recognized Badme as part of Eritrea. Then the distraction of the Weyane rebellion became the excuse of not offially demarking it afterwards. Isayas minimized the importance of its demarcation. Well, he was blaming the Weyanes for years about it. Later, he reversed his view on the integration and demarcating the borders on the ground. Years before the border war, Jebha aka ELF and Weyanes fought for Badme. Later on Jebha faced a three front adversaries from the Derg, Weyane and EPLF at the same time. Hence the disappearance of ELF from the face of Eritrea. Even, now the Weyanes are demanding for both Badme and Welqait to be integrated back to Tigray. I don’t believe Abbiy had any love for Eritrea. His main reason for recognizing Badme as part of Eritrea was, why fight for Badme when you can find a way to make Assab as a pseudo territory of Ethiopia. Actually, his intention was very transparent from the beginning. The biggest question is, what exactly was Isayas trying to achieve. There is no transparency in Eritrea, and Isayas knows how to get transparency out of most Eritreans minds. Hence, the fiasco.