Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed Inches the Horn of Africa Towards New Conflict
In a new year bombshell, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia announced that his country signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland’s Muse Bihi that will see his country capture 20 km of Somali Territory, allowing it to gain access to the Red Sea, an age-old pipe dream of landlocked Ethiopia.
In exchange for the Somali territory, Somaliland, an unrecognized breakaway region in Somalia’s northwest, will gain a stake in Ethiopian Airlines and its national telecommunication company, Ethio Telecom. President Bihi of Somaliland, on his part, announced that the exchange would lead to Ethiopia’s recognition of his breakaway nation.
It is a remarkable turn of things in a conflict-prone region of Africa – one that has the potential to plunge the region into a new, fresh conflict between neighbors already mired in multiple, unresolved conflicts. The United States, for instance, expressed serious concerns about the resulting spike in tensions in the Horn while fully recognizing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia within its 1960 territories.
A Long-Held Pipe Dream
Access to the sea has always been a pervasive issue for landlocked Ethiopia, one that has led to repeated Ethiopian claims over Somali Territories as far back as the late 1890s, on the heels of the great scramble for Africa.
In 1897, as part of its negotiations with Great Britain over Somali lands, Ethiopia demanded large swaths of Somali territory that included access to the Red Sea. Its demands were built on earlier assertations that wide-ranging territories, from the Indian Ocean to Khartoum of Sudan, were Ethiopian lands. The Brits didn’t bite.
In the early 1930s, the dream of gaining Red Sea access lived on as Haile Selassie sought to acquire Somalia’s port of Zeila. But Italy and World War II interfered. The dream wasn’t to be.
In 1949, the Brits sought to get back parts of the Haud and the Reserved Areas, Somali regions ceded to Ethiopia in earlier agreements, in a land swap deal with Ethiopia that involved ceding the port of Zeila to Ethiopia. This too wasn’t meant to be as confederation with Eritrea made possible access to the Red Sea. The British offer became mute.
In the 1970s, Ethiopia’s DERG regime and Mengistu Haile Mariam were preoccupied with the 1977 war with Somalia. Eritrea and Tigray national movements were also fighting to overthrow the DERG. Despite efforts by the Eritrean rebels, access to sea waters via Eritrea was available.
However, the dissolution of the confederation with Eritrea in 1991 and, consequently, the loss of access to sea waters once again awoken the Ethiopian dream of owning direct access to sea waters. However, the EPDRF that ruled Ethiopia following the departure of Eritrea was otherwise too occupied to worry about the seawater issue.
Until Abiy Ahmed arrived.
Emboldened by war victories over the Tigray in northern Ethiopia, PM Abiy Ahmed, the current prime minister and a man of dreams and folktales, appears determined to acquire access to sea water by a hook or a crook. He said as much in a nationally televised speech to Ethiopia’s parliamentarians a month ago.
A Spike in Tensions with Real Consequences
Ethiopia is just coming off a bloody civil war that saw the decimation of the country’s northern region of Tigray. Somaliland is still mired in a tribal conflict that saw inhabitants of the eastern regions of Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC) unilaterally form a new State of Somalia, SSC-Khatumo State. Somalia itself is in a never-ending war with Al Shabaab terrorists.
Beyond conflicts in Somalia, Ethiopia is involved in multiple conflicts with multiple regional states, all with the potential to rupture. For example, Ethiopia and Eritrea are at each other’s throats. Ethiopia and Djibouti are in an African cold war of sorts. Ethiopian disagreements with Egypt over the Nile water and GERD (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) remain unresolved.
In response to Abiy’s poker move of overbetting with Bihi, the Somali cabinet, led by Prime Minister Hamse Abdi Barre, convened an emergency meeting on Tuesday, Jan 2, that saw the country reject the MoU and recall its ambassador to Ethiopia for urgent consultations. Somalia condemned Ethiopia’s action as a breach of Somalia’s territorial integrity and called the MoU “null and void.”
In a more colorful and stronger language, PM Hamze unequivocally expressed Somalia’s commitment to safeguarding its territorial integrity and sovereignty. The PM declared, “No one could violate any part of Somalia’s land, sea and air.” Somalia’s President Hassan Sheik Mohamud followed suit, declaring in an address to the Somali Parliament, “Somalia’s territory is inviolable and non-negotiable” and that “no one can or will surrender any part of it.”
PM Abiy appears undeterred. In a Twitter video, the PM referenced his speech to Ethiopia’s parliamentarians in which he promised Ethiopia would gain access to the Red Sea by a hook or a crook. In his twitter posting, Abiy essentially said, ‘promises made, promises kept.”
This turn of things is unfortunate for a region already on thin ice. As if to poke a finger in the eye, President Hassan Sh. Mohamud of Somalia spoke by phone with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt about wide-ranging issues, including “the importance of uniting efforts to address shared challenges in the region.”
Does that ring a bell?
As the calls to Sisi of Egypt indicate, the implication of this conflict is far-reaching, with complicated geopolitical consequences beyond the Ethiopia-Somali conflict. There already appears to be an alignment of nations for and against the MoU. States and individuals with nefarious goals will certainly explore it for their purposes.
Sounds like thunderstorms of new war are gathering in the Horn of Africa over pipe dreams and poker moves of a landlocked nation.
So much for a Nobel Peace Prize!
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Dr. Abdirizak Warfa is a professor at the University of Minnesota. He is also the author of “Cries in the Hinterland,” a historical book about the Somali Region in Ethiopia. Prof. Warfa writes about Somali issues and politics