By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, NYT, 25 May 2008=

ON THE DJIBOUTIAN-ERITREAN BORDER – The distance between the rival armies is shorter than the barrel of a gun. Hundreds of opposing troops are lined up on the border, staring each other down, from just inches away.

On one side are the Djiboutians, a relatively well-equipped African military with combat boots, CamelBak strap-on water bottles and the occasional buttery croissant in the field.

On the other side are skinny Eritrean soldiers, covered in dust and wearing plastic sandals, camped out in thatch-roofed huts that look like fortified tropical bungalows.

There is no buffer zone between the soldiers, as there usually is along a contested frontier. Instead, the heavily armed fighters, who are becoming increasingly tense and irritable, are squeezed together on a sweltering hilltop, watching each others’ every move.

“It’s a very confusing situation,” said Maj. Youssouf Abdallah, of the Djiboutian Army.

A David versus David battle is shaping up here, with two of Africa’s tiniest nations squaring off over a few piles of uninhabited sand.

The problem is, that sand happens to lie in a very strategic spot, at the mouth of the Red Sea. A war here could imperil some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and alter the precarious balance of power in the Horn of Africa, a conflict-prone, drought-prone region that already is on the cusp of famine.

Djibouti, a country of about 700,000 people, is backed up by France and the United States, both of which have big military bases here. Eritrea, which has a population of five million, is already in a border standoff with Ethiopia and is accused of fueling chaos in Somalia.

The Djiboutians say the Eritreans invaded in January and point to Eritrea’s history of friction with just about all of its neighbors. They suggest that the country either thrives on war or has gone a little border crazy.

The Eritreans have not said much. Their few statements deny any wrongdoing, with Eritrean state media calling the standoff “a wild invention.”

But there is no doubt about it. The Eritrean soldiers are here, hundreds of them, squinting in the sun with their rifles and head wraps. Recently, the soldiers shooed away a team of journalists who came up to the disputed area for a look.

“No pictures, no pictures,” one Eritrean soldier yelled. When asked what he and his men were doing here, he just shook his head, “No English.”

The disputed zone includes a hill called Gabla, or Ras Doumeira, and a small island called Doumeira, deserted except for the occasional fishermen who use it as a pit stop. It is all sand out here — miles of it, trimming a Windex-colored sea. The wind regularly whips the grit into your face, and temperatures routinely soar past 110 degrees.