With news of the formation of a new three-party alliance between Egypt, Somalia and Eritrea, there has been an increasing consolidation of “anti-Ethiopian” forces in the Horn of Africa.
Somalia: in search of protection, or a bid to regain control of Somaliland?
The current crisis in the Horn of Africa itself would not have been possible without Somalia’s involvement. To recap, the signing on January 1, 2024, of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ethiopian government and the leadership of the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland — which declared independence from Somalia back in 1991 — immediately led to protests from Mogadishu, which perceives Addis Ababa’s move as a clear violation of Somalia’s sovereignty and an attack on its territorial integrity. Thus, it was the legal aspect of the Ethiopia-Somaliland deal that provided the strongest formal reason to start forming a “resistance group” to oppose Addis Ababa’s policies in the region. Lacking any significant Armed Forces or any real economic leverage over its neighbor, the federal government of Somalia is playing the role of a victim, thus providing the necessary pretext for any group of countries seeking to antagonize Ethiopia.
Nevertheless, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed’s goals for the triple alliance may not be as obvious as might first appear. On the one hand, Mogadishu claims that it wishes to prevent further fragmentation of the country as a result of Ethiopia’s policies and to gain support in the fight against Islamists. On the other hand, military cooperation with Eritrea, which, along with Ethiopia, has the largest army in the region, and with Egypt, one of the key actors across the continent, may encourage the Somalian federal government to feel that now is the time to bring Somaliland back into the Somali state. If that is this case, then, in addition to its own Armed Forces, Somalia would need active and decisive support from abroad in order to restore power in the northwest, whether through military or political means.
Eritrea: confrontation with Ethiopia as an “ideological bond”
Eritrea’s acquisition of statehood was inextricably linked to its fight against Ethiopia’s imperial ambitions: its years of armed struggle for independence from its much larger neighbor inevitably shaped Eritrean society’s understanding of the threats to its existence as a nation. As the three decades since Eritrea’s final secession in 1993 have shown, for the current ruling regime in Asmara, relations with Addis Ababa are viewed in binary terms: Ethiopia is either a friend or an enemy. In other words, the government of Isaias Afwerki, with its self-fulfilling sense of threat from Ethiopia, has perceived the latter either as an existential threat, or, much less frequently, as a situational ally, which, however, was in practice only possible when the former imperial power was weakened by internal conflict.
Following the peace agreement signed between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in Pretoria in November 2022, Eritrea, deprived of the opportunity to be a party to the negotiations soon — in a matter of weeks — distanced itself from its recent ally, most likely seeing Addis Ababa as having betrayed it. During 2023 and 2024, there have been a number of reports concerning Eritrea’s support for Fano militias, Amharic groups in direct conflict with the Government of Ethiopia. When Ethiopia began talks about gaining access to the sea, Asmara opposed Addis Ababa’s aspirations: Eritrea has consistently been in favor of maintaining the status quo as a means to halt Ethiopia’s further strengthening and, naturally, has expressed its support for Mogadishu.
Egypt: formalizing its achievements
It should be kept in mind that Egypt is not a new player for the Horn of Africa, and the first contacts between the two regions date back to ancient times. In the 20th century, Cairo, traditionally, although not always openly, opposed to Ethiopia, established friendly contacts with independent Eritrea, while remaining an attractive partner for predominantly Muslim Djibouti and Somalia. The subsequent deterioration of relations with Ethiopia in the 2010s in the context of the dispute over the latter’s Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile made it more important for Cairo to find allies to put pressure on Addis Ababa. In fact, faced with Ethiopia’s increased foreign policy activity in the region, within less than a year Egypt, in addition to the already friendly Sudan, resented by its leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, established an alliance with Somalia, promising the latter full assistance in the protection of its territorial integrity, and with Eritrea, which fears Ethiopia’s rise.
Overall, the creation of the three-party alliance in its current form could hardly be described as a major breakthrough for Egyptian diplomacy, as it is natural, given the current crisis, that the much less powerful Somalia and Eritrea are interested in friendship with Cairo. However, the move demonstrates the seriousness of Egypt’s intentions and removes what little uncertainty there was concerning Eritrea’s position.
Ivan Kopytsev, political scientist, junior research fellow at the Center for the Study of North Africa and the Horn of Africa at the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; research intern at the Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at the Institute of International Studies of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, exclusively for the magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
