Addis Ababa (PP Report) — A top Ethiopian diplomat who visited Garowe during the Ramadan month in 2023 had said that the conflict in Sool would have wide repercussions in the Horn of Africa. “The conflict forced USA to abandon its mooted security partnership with Somaliland Administration within ‘One Somalia’ policy. This strategic recalibration provides Ethiopia with once in a lifetime opportunity to find a foothold either in the Red Sea or in the Gulf of Aden” the diplomat said.
Ethiopia is the only country that made efforts to mediate between Somaliland Administration and SSC Khaatumo fighters when Hargeisa forces were shelling Laascaanood every day and caused death, destruction and displacement. Somaliland administration claimed it was fighting Al-Shabaab in Laascaanood and insisted that withdrawal of fighters from Laascaanood was the key to ceasefire. “I have the key to the peace” President of Somaliland Administration Muse Bihi boasted at an Iftar event in Hargeisa last year.
The Federal Government of Somalia called for de-escalation and sent a delegation to Laascaanood and Hargeisa without addressing the core of the Somaliland argument that it is a sovereign country and that its forces were at war with Al-Shabaab in Laascaanood.
The claim by Somaliland Administration Foreign Minister Essa Keyd that Somaliland was a buffer zone for Ethiopia had given Addis Ababa strategic clues about the trajectory of conflict in North Somalia. “We knew our role in North Somalia is not be similar to our presence in the South Somalia. Somaliland without the pretence of sovereignty can lend Ethiopia a strategic trump card to secure access to the sea” wrote an experienced strategic adviser to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry in a classified memo. Translation: the defeat of Somaliland forces and the transformation of the conflict to one between clans strengthens Ethiopia’s positon as a security anchor in the Horn of Africa.
For Bihi the opportunity to seek diplomatic recognition for the secessionist administration arrived in December 2023 when a trilateral summit was held in Djibouti to restart “Union” talks between the Somali Federal Government and Somaliland Administration under the aegis of Ismail Guelleh, President of Djibouti . The agreement signed in Djibouti by the Somali Federal Government and Somaliland Administration renewed existing agreements that stressed depoliticisation of economic development, an article in the agreement that Bihi invoked to defend the illegal maritime Memorandum of Understanding he signed with Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, on 1 January 2024 to lease a coastal district to Ethiopia for fifty years. Supplementary to the maritime MoU is the defence pact that, in December 2023, the Federal Government of Somalia signed with landlocked Ethiopia whose navy would cooperate with the Somali navy on maritime security. The defence pact limits the Somali Federal Government’s options to respond to the maritime MoU that in principle violates the sovereignty of Somalia.
With constitutional crisis looming in Mogadishu one year after Ethiopia played the role of a mediator in the conflict in North Somalia, Addis Ababa sees another opportunity for political fragmentation in Somalia where the incumbent federal government seeks to impose politically motivated constitutional amendments without wider national consultations. “President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud buries his head in the sand to busy himself in divisive plans that will irreparably dent the legitimacy of the Federal Government of Somalia. His policies damage the national interest of Somalia” said a journalist in Mogadishu.
© Puntland Post, 2024
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