Wednesday September 11, 2024
The decision is set to worsen relations between the two countries, which have already cooled following the controversial memorandum of understanding signed by the Ethiopian government and Somaliland authorities for access to the Red Sea.
Ethiopian troops have seized key airports in Somalia’s Gedo region, including Luq, Dolow and Bardere, in a bid to prevent the possible airlift of Egyptian troops to the area, intended to replace Ethiopian forces manning dozens of bases in the Southwest, Jubaland and Hirshabelle states. The airports, the Somali Guardian newspaper reports, are the only access points to towns in the Gedo region, since the main roads are controlled by the jihadist group Al Shabaab. The Ethiopian intervention is therefore seen as a strategic move to disrupt the planned deployment of Egyptian troops.
The decision is set to worsen relations between Ethiopia and Somalia, which have already cooled after the controversial memorandum of understanding signed by the Ethiopian government and the Somaliland authorities for access to the Red Sea. Further heightening tensions was the recent defense agreement signed between Somalia and Egypt that provides for the deployment of 5 Egyptian troops as part of the new African Union Stabilization and Support Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), which will replace the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), with another 5 to be deployed under a separate bilateral agreement.
Under the agreement, Egyptian military aircraft landed in Mogadishu on August 27, delivering military equipment and disembarking officers bound for the Hiran region in the central state of Hirshabelle, as well as the Southwest and Galmudug regional states. The Somali government has warned that Ethiopian troops must leave the country by next year, but the withdrawal remains uncertain given the entrenched presence of Ethiopian forces in regions such as Gedo, Hiran, Bai and Bakol.
Tensions are further exacerbated by the ongoing dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt over the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Ethiopia is building on the main tributary of the Nile River and which Cairo opposes as discriminatory against it. Indicative of the tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia and the diplomatic frostiness between the two countries is the fact that, according to sources cited by the newspaper “Garowe Online”, the Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud he reportedly refused to meet the Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed in Beijing, where both participated last week in the ninth edition of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac), on the sidelines of which both leaders held bilateral talks with several African and international leaders.
According to the same sources, the mediation of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current High Representative of the African Union for the Horn of Africa, was in vain. This is the second time that Mohamud has refused to meet Ahmed. Previously, the Kenyan president William Rutho had tried to bring the two leaders to Nairobi, but even then the efforts had been in vain.