After the second round of talks between Somalia and Ethiopia, the negotiations began to look more like political horse trading
Mogadishu is tightening its conditions for reaching an agreement
Explaining the reason for Mogadishu’s ultimatum, the Somali Foreign Minister said in a press conference that it was also a response to Addis Ababa’s desire to maintain its military presence on Somali territory as part of the new African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), which is due to replace ATMIS in January 2025.
He insisted that “these claims by Ethiopia are unacceptable” and stressed that Somalia, as a sovereign state, has the final say in the composition of the new mission. Should Ethiopian peacekeeping forces arbitrarily remain in Somali territory after December 2024, they would be considered “occupying” forces, according to Hussein Sheikh-Ali, the national security adviser to the Somali President.
Meanwhile, the issue of which countries will contribute to the new peacekeeping force and its operational mandate continues to be a bone of contention, reflecting the broader and more complex geopolitical realities in the Horn of Africa. In particular, it is likely to include Egypt, which, like Djibouti, sees Ethiopia’s access to the sea coast as threat to its revenues from the transit of Ethiopian goods. Units from the two countries are expected to replace the current Ethiopian military contingent of 4,000 troops.
Is Cairo starting to “play with fire” or engaging in the usual posturing?
On August 13, during the Ankara talks, in a step that can be described as nothing short of an attempt by Egypt and Somalia to blackmail Ethiopia, the Somali President visited Cairo, where he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the signing of a protocol on cooperation between the Armed Forces of Egypt and Somalia. After signing the document, el-Sisi reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to preserving Somalia’s territorial integrity and rejected “any interference in its internal affairs.”
The protocol on military cooperation provides, inter alia, for the training of the Somali Armed Forces to counter threats to Somalia’s territorial integrity, as well as the training of special forces to fight Al-Shabaab terrorists.
According to the Qatari publication The New Arab, the agreement was preceded by an agreement in principle with Mogadishu to deploy Egyptian troops as part of a new peacekeeping force in Somalia next year. The formation of this body, the publication notes, is linked to Somalia’s desire to exclude Ethiopian forces and replace them with Egyptian and Djiboutian units.
Cairo is expected to deploy up to 10,000 of its troops in Somalia, including units equipped with heavy military equipment, primarily along the border between Ethiopia and Somalia. Egypt’s policy here is to try to create an anti-Ethiopian alliance out of the members of the new mission in order to put pressure on Addis Ababa, which is not accepting Cairo’s demands in the matter of allocation of water from the Blue Nile.
Moreover, according to the experts writing for The New Arab, Somalia’s defense agreement with Egypt may lead to an aggravation of geopolitical competition, primarily among the regional players supporting the two opposing countries.
Such an unfriendly stance by Cairo is attributed by many experts to the fact that for decades it has viewed the Nile Valley in the Horn of Africa as its traditional sphere of influence and sees Ethiopia’s quest for access to the sea as a challenge to its political dominance in the region, as well as a threat to its revenue from the transit of Ethiopian goods.
As Egyptian Army Major General Nasr Salem candidly admits in an interview with The Arab Weekly, military cooperation with Somalia is one element of Cairo’s strategy to protect its vital interests, which extend from the source of the Nile in East Africa to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and also serves as a signal to deter Ethiopia’s ambitions to increase its influence in the region.
However, the New Arab believes that Cairo’s decision to deploy its troops on the Somali-Ethiopian border is a risky strategy, in that while it is intended to resolve the conflict over the use of water resources of the Blue Nile, it raises the risk of an escalation of tensions in this area of the world.
According to a report in Senegal’s African Press Agency, which requires verification, threats of possible airstrikes on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam by Egypt prompted Ethiopia to purchase air defense systems from Russia and Israel and install them at the construction site.
The US-based Critical Threats Project reports that amid rising tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia, two weeks after the signing of an Egyptian-Somali protocol on military cooperation, from 27–29 August, Cairo flew 1,000 troops with weapons and ammunition to Mogadishu airport using C-130 aircraft.
Back then, the publication pointed out, Egyptian officials announced that as part of the implementation of the agreement, they would send armored personnel carriers, rocket launchers, artillery pieces, radars and UAVs to Somalia by sea, and conduct joint exercises on Somali territory involving land, air and naval forces to “send a clear and strong message of our strong commitment to cooperation with and protection of Somalia.”
Moreover, the publication says, Egyptian troops began arriving in Somalia months ahead of the planned time for the reformatting of the African Union peacekeeping forces (late 2024–early 2025), when the issues of which countries would contribute troops to the new body, their funding, and how they would be used had not yet been resolved.
These moves by Ethiopia’s rivals provoked negative reactions in Addis Ababa. The Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, Field Marshal Birhanu Jula Gelalcha, stressing that “certain countries” are trying to destabilize the region under the pretext of protecting Somalis interests, has ordered the deployment of Ethiopian mechanized units to Somalia’s borders.
For his part, on August 28 Ethiopian Foreign Minister Taye Atskeselassie, in a press conference for local and foreign journalists, warned that Ethiopia would not stand idly by, and the next day Ethiopian Ambassador Teshome Shunde presented his credentials to Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi.
Commenting on Somalia’s agreements with Egypt on the imminent deployment of 10,000 Egyptian troops in Somalia, he described the moves by Mogadishu as “short-sighted and counterproductive,” and as a threat to Ethiopia’s national security.
The same point of view is held by experts of the British think tank Sahan Research, who believe that “the deployment of Egyptian troops along the border with Ethiopia may lead to a serious confrontation between the two countries.” Although the threat of a direct military clash is low, indirect conflict is possible, these experts conclude.
In this regard, it is interesting to note the comments by Haitham El-Zobaidi, executive editor of the London-based The Arab Weekly, on the rapprochement between Egypt and Somalia, in opposition to Ethiopia. In his opinion, Cairo’s recent moves to establish military ties with Mogadishu are little more than a manifestation of the usual “posturing.”
The military cooperation agreement is more in the interest of Somalia’s leadership, which is facing enormous challenges in bringing order to the country and fighting the Al-Shabaab terrorist organization. But it also clearly demonstrates that here Cairo is maneuvering in a bid to pressurize Ethiopia into resolving the problem of apportioning the water from the Blue Nile.
Egypt has already resorted to threatening Ethiopia on more than one occasion, the editor recalls. In particular, Cairo already made it clear to Addis Ababa, through the Egyptian media, that if its demands on the apportionment of the Blue Nile waters are not taken into account, the dam will be subjected to airstrikes and various kinds of sabotage by its special forces. But then the threats stopped for a while and there was silence.
Moreover, being in a state of deep financial and economic crisis, Egypt is unable to actively interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, and Somalia, given the current increase in terrorist activity from Al-Shabaab, cannot afford an outright conflict with Ethiopia. So the most likely outcome, concludes Haitham El-Zobaidi, is that the rhetoric will erupt into another exchange of diplomatic fire between Egypt and Ethiopia.
The only country that will experience any satisfaction from this “skirmish” between two new members of the BRICS+ group, on the eve of that body’s summit (which will take place on October 22–24, in Kazan, under the chairmanship of Russia) is the United States, along with its closest allies in the G7.
Viktor Goncharov, African expert, PhD in Economics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
