A new multinational security alliance threatens to divert the balance of power in the Horn of Africa. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki held Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in the Eritrean capital of Asmara and revealed an alliance. In a joint statement, the three stated they decided to
“enhance the Somali state institutions to face various internal and external challenges and to encourage the Somali National Federal Army to contend terrorism in all its forms.”
The trilateral security arrangement was met in Ethiopia with an uneasy, defensive posture.
“This is an axis against Addis Ababa,”
Hassan Khannenje, director of the Horn International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.
“I think it’s an attempt to bring the hate together to increase pressure against Addis Ababa.”
However, Somali Information Minister Daud Aweis pressed that the meeting was only about collaboration among the three countries.
“We are not determined to initiate anything against Addis Ababa,”
He told the BBC.
“Addis Ababa is our neighbour. We have been cooperating for a long time, although later on their leadership came up with a factor of instability in the region. But still, we stand for peace, and we don’t think that such a gathering in Asmara has anything to do with Ethiopia.”
Key to the Nile River and the Red Sea are the focal points of conflicts between Ethiopia and its neighbours. Somalia and Ethiopia have been sealed in a diplomatic row over a Red Sea port deal Ethiopia inscribed with the breakaway territory of Somaliland, which Somalia considers the region of its nation. Egypt’s primary problem with Ethiopia is control over the flow of the Nile, which it considers the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has stalled.
These situations, seen as existential in Egypt and Ethiopia, have prompted the latest round of posturing and boosting rhetoric. The structure of the Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia alliance marks a crucial shift in the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa. As Ethiopia persists in asserting itself as a regional power, its neighbours are aiming to counterbalance Addis Ababa through diplomatic and military norms.
