Thursday October 3, 2024
Ethiopia and Somalia are courting escalation in a quarrel over port access/ Photograph: Tommy Trenchard/Panos Pictures
Few parts of the world are more turbulent than the Horn of Africa, the continent’s north-eastern chunk that contains Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has been racked by war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, by civil war in Ethiopia, and by war and state collapse due to a prolonged jihadist insurgency in Somalia. Outside powers, particularly those from across the water in the Gulf, vie for the Horn’s loyalties and resources.
In recent months the situation has grown even more alarming than usual. A tense stand-off over port access has pitted Ethiopia against Somalia and Eritrea, and is drawing in regional powers, including Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (uae). With no sign of an early resolution, the dispute threatens further strife across the Horn by fuelling regional rivalries within Somalia and strengthening al-Shabab, the jihadist group terrorising much of the country and its neighbours.
The port dispute began in January, when Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, a self-declared breakaway republic that is not recognised by the un or any other country. Under the agreement Ethiopia, which lost its direct access to the sea in 1993, when Eritrea seceded, would lease a stretch of coast from Somaliland on which to build a naval base. In return, it would be the first country to recognise Somaliland since it declared independence more than three decades ago.
Somalia, which regards Somaliland as part of its own territory, was furious. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Somalia’s president, lays the main blame on Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister. “Abiy is the bad guy in the region,” Mr Mohamud told The Economist on September 30th in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. “Today everyone is worrying about the unpredictable behaviour of the Ethiopian leadership.”
Initially, much of the region was inclined to agree with him. Following the memorandum, both the African Union (au) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the east African regional bloc, put out statements in support of Somalia’s “territorial integrity”. So did America and the eu. Turkey, Somalia’s sturdiest foreign investor, promised to send troops to help defend Somalia’s maritime borders. Mr Mohamud “managed to put Abiy on the defensive”, notes a veteran au diplomat. Ethiopian officials began wavering over their commitment to recognise Somaliland, suggesting that Abiy had agreed to consider the matter only after the terms of the naval base had been settled.
This political victory for Somalia might have provided a way to avoid confrontation. Yet observers have recently been alarmed by Mr Mohamud’s own escalatory manoeuvres. In June he threatened to expel thousands of Ethiopian peacekeepers stationed in Somalia as part of an au mission to fight al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate that controls swathes of the countryside outside Mogadishu. Then in August he visited Egypt to sign a military co-operation agreement with President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt pledged to send Somalia weapons and possibly, though Mr Mohamud would not confirm this, several thousand troops in a new au peacekeeping mission which is due to begin next year. Two Egyptian arms shipments have since arrived in Mogadishu.
Playing with fire
Many foreign diplomats and analysts see the security pact as a dangerous escalation, given the hostile relations between Ethiopia and Egypt. Those two countries have been locked in a bitter dispute ever since Ethiopia began building its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a giant hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile near its border with Sudan in 2011. Egypt, which relies on the Nile for almost all its water supply, views the dam as an existential threat and once threatened to bomb it. Last December it said talks to reach a compromise were “dead”.
Ethiopia also worries about Somalia’s increasingly cosy relationship with Eritrea. One motive for Abiy’s deal with Somaliland was the collapse of a previous understanding with Eritrea that Ethiopia might gain access to the Red Sea via its northern neighbour’s ports. Understood to be part of the peace deal between the two countries in 2018, for which Abiy was awarded the Nobel peace prize, the agreement appeared to disintegrate in the wake of Ethiopia’s civil war in 2022. The deal between Ethiopia and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (tplf) that ended their civil war angered Eritrea, which was also fighting against the tplf.
Amid those disputes, Ethiopia’s deal with Somaliland has prodded Mr Mohamud to find common cause with Issaias Afewerki, Eritrea’s dictator since independence in 1993. This year Issaias has twice hosted the Somali president in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital. Like Egypt, Eritrea might send troops to take part in the au’s next peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Eritrea and Egypt are reportedly also discussing a military co-operation and intelligence-sharing agreement. If such talks result in a formal tripartite alliance, Ethiopia would be further isolated.
It would also entrench the division of the Horn into two geopolitical blocs. Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia are most closely aligned with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They all back the regular Sudanese army in that country’s civil war. On the other side are Ethiopia, Somaliland (plus some of Somalia’s regional statelets) and the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group battling the Sudanese army. They are under the tutelage of the uae, which seeks to expand its influence around the Red Sea.
So far, Abiy has been characteristically defiant. On September 8th he proclaimed, rather ominously, that Ethiopians “usually embarrass and repel those who dare try to invade us”. Ethiopia’s army chief lambasted Egypt directly, describing it as a “historic enemy”.
Mr Mohamud, by contrast, accuses Ethiopia of waging a campaign of sabotage against Somalia. He claims that Ethiopia is funnelling arms to clan-based Somali militias near the two countries’ shared border in an effort to destabilise the government in Mogadishu. He says these weapons could fall into the hands of al-Shabab, boosting the jihadists. Ethiopia is also mobilising clan leaders and opposition politicians in Somalia against the potential deployment of Egyptian troops, he says. Whipping out his phone to show your correspondent photographs of river floods in Somalia, he claims they were caused by Ethiopia deliberately releasing water from reservoirs at dams upstream.
Some of these allegations are probably overblown. Omar Mahmood of the International Crisis Group (icg), a think-tank in Brussels, notes that the trade in illegal arms across the Ethiopian border long predates the mou between Ethiopia and Somaliland. Likewise, the government’s fight against al-Shabab, which made some progress in the months after Mr Mohamud took office, had already started to lose momentum last year, as Somalia’s ill-trained national army struggled to hold onto towns it had won back.
Still, it is plausible that Ethiopia might give succour to Somali regional leaders who are opposed to Mr Mohamud—if it has not done so already. Several of Somalia’s statelets, in particular South West, close to the capital, are at odds with the president over his agreement with Egypt. Some might happily strengthen relations with Ethiopia as a hedge against his government, which they find overbearing.
Such conflict could further undermine Somalia’s control of its own territory, hardly solid at the best of times. Mr Mohamud suggests that, if pushed, he could stir up disaffected ethnic Somalis living in Ethiopia. “It would be very easy [...] to scratch their grievances,” he says.
The risk of direct war between either Ethiopia and Somalia or between Ethiopia and Egypt remains low. Somalia’s army is too weak to confront Ethiopia head-on. Abiy is too busy fighting insurgents in Ethiopia’s Amhara region to take on Egypt. More worrying is the prospect of a fresh conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. If a boxed-in Abiy should attack Eritrea to take control of its Red Sea ports, “the chance of war on that front cannot be ruled out,” says an Ethiopian analyst.
But even without all-out war, the dispute over the ports could easily worsen stability throughout the region. Talks between Ethiopia and Somalia, mediated first by Kenya and more recently by Turkey, have made little progress. A new round that was originally planned to be held in September has been postponed indefinitely. “A naval base on Somalia’s territorial waters is a red line we can never accept,” insists Mr Mohamud.
Mind the jihadists
Abiy, for his part, has a record of dragging out negotiations while establishing “facts on the ground”. He also appears to have the uae’s support. In private, Emirati officials have told their Western counterparts they have no interest in seeing an Ethiopian naval base, and would prefer Ethiopia to use an Emirati-owned port in Somaliland’s coastal town of Berbera. But many observers (including, judging by heavy hints to The Economist, Mr Mohamud himself) reckon Ethiopia already has at least tacit support from the uae. Few in the region expect Abiy to back down. “Maritime access is his calling,” says another Ethiopian analyst.
Time is short. The new, slimmed-down peacekeeping force to keep fighting al-Shabab in Somalia is supposed to be ready by January 1st. Mr Mohamud says that if the mou between Ethiopia and Somaliland is not scrapped by then, Ethiopian peacekeepers must leave. America, in particular, does not want untested and diplomatically contentious Egyptian or Eritrean forces to replace them.
That risks jeopardising the mission altogether. “There is a serious risk of a physical security vacuum opening on the ground which al-Shabab can fill,” warns the icg’s Mr Mahmood. Even more reason for all the sides to get talking. ■
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