The Horn of Africa is on the brink of chronic conflict.. What does Ethiopia want in the Red Sea?

Mogadishu then took an additional step by signing a military cooperation agreement with Cairo in August, in addition to Egypt’s pledge to contribute military forces for the first time to the African Union Mission to Support and Stabilize Somalia (AMISOM), which is scheduled to begin operating in January 2025. Egyptian military aid has already arrived in Somali territory, which has angered Addis Ababa, which has pledged through Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed not to allow its sovereignty to be violated and to humiliate anyone who dares to threaten it.

The Asbab website for geostrategic affairs says that Addis Ababa sees the need to have a sea outlet, commercial and military, to enhance Ethiopia's role as a dominant regional power; to reposition it as an influential military player in navigation in the strategic Bab al-Mandab. The port in general also contributes to reducing transportation costs, and allows for the establishment of a logistical, industrial and commercial infrastructure that will boost the economy. Therefore, the Ethiopian ruling elites believe that the country was wronged when it was deprived of sea connectivity.

Ethiopia is the most populous country in the Horn of Africa with about 129 million people, has the largest and most equipped army, has natural resources and vast arable land, has relations with major powers such as the United States, the European Union, China and Russia, and is home to the headquarters of the African Union.

That is, it has all the factors of regional superiority over its neighbors, but it suffers from being a landlocked country since Eritrea seceded from it in 1991. It also faces internal rebellions, ethnic conflicts, and high levels of poverty. It hopes to address these challenges through an ambitious development project that unites Ethiopians behind Abiy Ahmed.

The Ethiopian border is located 60 km from the coast, and Addis Ababa depends on import and export trade from four ports, two of which are far from the center of Ethiopia, which increases transportation costs. These are Port Sudan in Sudan, which was affected by the repercussions of the war in Sudan, and the port of Mombasa in Kenya. While the port of Berbera in Somaliland has an advantage in terms of location due to its proximity to Ethiopian territory, it needs to develop its infrastructure and the road network connecting it to Ethiopia.

The fourth port is the port of Djibouti, which receives about 90% of Ethiopian trade, and costs Addis Ababa fees ranging between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars annually, in addition to the threat of mortgaging Ethiopian trade in favor of a sea outlet in one country, which makes Ethiopia take Djibouti’s interests into consideration in its external movements, in addition to its sensitivity to any political disturbances or fluctuations that may occur in Djibouti in the future.

In terms of security, Addis Ababa believes that the loss of its own sea outlet has limited its army to land and air forces without possessing effective naval forces. It also deprives it of navigation in the oceans and benefiting from maritime commons, in addition to subjecting its import of sensitive military and security equipment to Djibouti’s approval, which weakens sovereignty and makes Ethiopia restricted and withdrawn into itself.

Ethiopia seeks to avoid repeating its experience with Eritrean ports. As part of the agreement on the secession of Eritrea, Addis Ababa obtained the right to use the port of Assab without paying customs duties, and through it 75% of Ethiopia's foreign trade passed. However, with the outbreak of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000, Ethiopia stopped using the port of Assab, and Ethiopia resorted to using the port of Djibouti, starting in 2002.

This has led the two countries into repeated disputes over transit fees and taxes, while China has helped solve logistical problems by providing loans to build the 750-kilometre electric railway between Ethiopia and Djibouti, reducing the travel time by road to Addis Ababa from three days to about 12 hours.

With the population of Ethiopia increasing, and the country under a new ambitious leadership represented by Abiy Ahmed, Addis Ababa has begun efforts to diversify its options, secure new sea outlets that can be used without paying fees, and to avoid excessive reliance on a single access point for trade and vital supplies, and to build naval forces that can operate in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the western Indian Ocean, which increases Ethiopia’s power cards to confront countries such as Egypt, as this will allow it to influence navigation in the Suez Canal, in addition to controlling the flow rate of Nile water through the Renaissance Dam.

Ethiopia found its calling in the port of Berbera, as it is geographically close, and is located in northeastern Ethiopia near areas inhabited by Ethiopians of Somali and Oromo ethnicity, which allows the state to strengthen its presence in those areas, and provides job opportunities and development projects that allow the central government to tighten its grip on those areas that witness repeated unrest.

Ethiopia's recognition of the secession of "Somaliland".. What has changed?

Ethiopia has gone through about four changes in government systems in the last half century, the most recent of which was the arrival of Abiy Ahmed to the seat of Prime Minister in 2018, ending the control of the Tigrayan ethnic group over the government, which had continued since 1991 after the overthrow of the Mengistu regime.

Somaliland unilaterally declared its secession from Somalia in 1991, but Ethiopia avoided recognizing it during the reign of Meles Zenawi, who served as president of Ethiopia from 1991 to 1995 and then as prime minister until his death in 2012.

His successor, Hailemariam Desalegn (2012-2018), maintained the same approach, because taking such a step would represent a political and legal disturbance to Ethiopia at the regional and international levels, and would highlight it as a party involved in the fragmentation of Somalia, and would establish the principle of recognizing regions that declare their unilateral secession, which Ethiopia itself may be exposed to in the future in light of its composition of different ethnicities, many of which are engaged in armed conflicts against the central government.

Another objective obstacle to thinking about benefiting from the Somaliland coast was that the port of Berbera needed major development and a new road network to connect it to Ethiopia. This meant that the project required external support including huge investments and foreign technical expertise, which was not available at the time due to the reluctance of foreign companies to engage in projects that involved political, legal and security risks. Therefore, Addis Ababa was content with establishing diplomatic relations with Somaliland, as it opened an unofficial consulate in Hargeisa, a step that other countries, including Türkiye, have taken.

The Emirati role

Asbab website says that a change occurred in the Ethiopian position with the entry of the UAE into the line; after the Arab coalition launched its war in Yemen in 2015, the UAE used Djibouti as a support center for operations in southern Yemen, then Abu Dhabi disagreed with Djibouti, and the government of Djibouti proceeded to expel the UAE from the country, including expelling the Dubai Ports Company from managing the Doraleh Port on the pretext of involvement in bribery and corruption.

Abu Dhabi resorted to Eritrea, and leased the port of Assab from it to support its military operations in Yemen, which represented a failure of Ethiopia's efforts to isolate Eritrea, the arch-rival that supports rebel groups inside Ethiopia.

Later, Ethiopia asked the kings of Europe, especially Portugal in the fifteenth century, to cooperate with it in diverting the course of the Nile or blocking it from Egypt in order to weaken it, in order to serve Ethiopia’s goals at that time of controlling trade in the Red Sea, which has become increasingly important in the present era with the discovery of oil and gas, as its waters are used to ship energy exports from the Gulf to Europe.

During the Solomonic dynasty in the 16th century, Ethiopia cooperated with Portugal and Spain in confronting the Ottoman alliance with the Somali sultanates, with the aim of seizing the port of Assab from the Somalis. Likewise, in the 19th century, Emperor Tedros sought to form an alliance with Britain and France against the Ottomans and the Egyptians with the aim of controlling the ports of the Horn of Africa, but his efforts were unsuccessful due to London and Paris’ support for the Ottoman Empire at the time in the Crimean War (1853-1856) against the Russians.

In the twentieth century, Ethiopia enjoyed a special relationship with "Israel", which adopted the "periphery doctrine", according to which Tel Aviv was keen to build relations with non-Arab countries in the regional periphery to overcome its isolation, and exploited Addis Ababa's feeling of encirclement by its Muslim neighbors, and its concern about the influence of Egyptian President Abdel Nasser in Somalia and Djibouti, to turn Ethiopia into a base for Israeli covert operations in the African continent, especially gathering information on Egyptian activities in the Horn of Africa and Bab al-Mandab. "Israel" still maintains its close relations with Ethiopia.

Thus, Ethiopian access to the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait will facilitate Tel Aviv to carry out more naval activities against the Houthis on the Yemeni side, and against the Iranian naval presence in the region.

Addis Ababa sees, according to a document by the Ethiopian Institute of Foreign Affairs ( IFA) ,), the Red Sea and the Nile Basin determine the balance of power in northeastern Africa, and stress the existence of a historical feeling of being besieged by its Arab and Muslim neighbors, which limited its presence to the plateaus and highlands and prevented it from the sea coasts. Therefore, the issue of the sea outlet plays a pivotal role in the existence of the state, its sovereignty, ensuring its security, and in its access to global markets and implementing its development plans.

To achieve this, the document calls for implementing steps to impose a fait accompli and then legitimize it later under legal pretexts. It gives examples of the United States’ recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights during the Trump era, and the recognition of Kosovo’s independence despite Serbian opposition. In other words, the step of moving forward to recognize the independence of Somaliland in exchange for a naval base and port is a priority for Addis Ababa, and it deals with it using the approach of “imposing a fait accompli,” which is the approach it successfully adopted in the Renaissance Dam file.

Rising tension in the Red Sea

Ethiopian national security experts believe that their country's borders should start from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. This will lead to a clash with the interests of many other parties in the Horn of Africa, starting with Djibouti, which will lose its revenues from trade in Ethiopian goods, and Eritrea, whose balance of power with Ethiopia will be disturbed as the latter has a sea outlet, in addition to Somalia, which sees the Ethiopian move as an attack on its sovereignty and a fragmentation of its territorial integrity, and Sudan, which fears Abiy Ahmed's expansionist ambitions and his close relationship with the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, "Hemeti", all the way to Egypt, which no longer has any doubt that Ethiopia is working to encircle it from the south, and Turkey, which has strategic interests in Somalia in parallel with its investments in Ethiopia.

Djibouti tried to calm the Ethiopian impetus by offering to grant Ethiopia full management of the Tajoura port in Djibouti, located 100 km from the Ethiopian border, which Addis Ababa did not react to negatively or positively, because it is an offer that prevents it from building a naval military base.

Ankara also tried to mediate by hosting rounds of talks between Ethiopia and Somalia under the auspices of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, but the talks did not result in any breakthrough in the Ethiopian-Somali dispute.

But the Djibouti proposal is unlikely to be enough to contain the escalating rivalry in the Horn of Africa, because Ethiopia is not currently facing a problem related to the stability of freight transport routes, but rather the priority of the project to rebuild the country’s military naval force, as a necessity to assert influence in the Horn of Africa, which puts Addis Ababa in confrontation with Cairo and Mogadishu, which view Abiy Ahmed’s moves as hostile steps to impose his country’s hegemony over the interests of its neighbors.

Future Scenarios: The Horn of Africa on the Brink of Chronic Conflict

The Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland is likely to turn into a hotbed of chronic conflict. Ethiopian arms shipments have begun to arrive in Hargeisa and Puntland to support their separatist tendencies against Mogadishu. Turkish mediation attempts between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu have failed to change either side’s positions. Abiy Ahmed is continuing his attempts to impose a fait accompli policy, while his regional surroundings are harmed by that policy, and he has begun to coordinate between them to confront Ethiopian ambitions.

Unless internal changes occur in Ethiopia, tensions in the Horn of Africa are expected to increase, especially with the start of the deployment of Egyptian forces working within the new African Union mission, and Cairo’s continued sending of military support shipments to Mogadishu.