On 14 August, the President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, signed a defence agreement in Cairo which reportedly confirmed Egypt’s participation in the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The new mission, the AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) is scheduled to launch at the start of the new year and will replace the previous AU-led mission in Somalia, the AU Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). This repositioning of Somalia and Egypt, which will bring with it the exit of Ethiopian forces from Somalia for the first time in a decade, is the latest in a slew of recent posturing among regional players.

Specifically, the agreement comes amid a ratcheting up of tensions in the Horn of Africa centred around two key Ethiopia-linked developments: (i) Ethiopia’s unilateral construction and filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), an ongoing mega-infrastructure project on the Blue Nile River which began in 2011 and is in its final phase; and (ii) Ethiopia’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland, the breakaway region which seceded from Somalia in 1991, which will grant land-locked Ethiopia access to 20 km of Somaliland’s northern coastline, reportedly in exchange for Ethiopia’s recognition of Somaliland as an independent country. The GERD project is the epicentre of intense national debate in Egypt as the Blue Nile sources approximately 85 percent of the Nile’s flow to Egypt, with claims that the GERD, and by corollary Ethiopia, could jeopardise Egypt’s access to its lifeline waters. Meanwhile, President Hassan Sheikh has repeatedly stated that the MoU between Ethiopia and Somaliland undermines the territorial integrity of Somalia. These developments squarely place Ethiopia in the crosshairs of both Egypt and Somalia, and, as a result, the recent military preparations under AUSSOM not only reflect a convenient marriage of interests between Egypt and Somalia, but also an escalation in these states’ attempts to pressurise Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed.

On the path to war?

The possibility of inter-state war between Somalia and Egypt on one side and Ethiopia on the other as a result of these tensions, is, however, limited. Ethiopia for one, is facing a flurry of domestic challenges, most notably marked by ongoing civil war between the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and Fano, the ethno-nationalist militia in Amhara. Constraints on the ENDF’s resources are further compounded by the ongoing insurgency since 2019 in the Oromia region, led by the Oromo Liberation Army. These internal battles, coupled with Ethiopia’s chronic debt position, restrict the ENDF’s capacity for all-out war with its neighbours. And, while Ethiopia’s domestic constraints suggest that the country lacks the appetite to open a new front for war, Egypt and Somalia are also ill-placed for conflict: Egypt is in the midst of a serious economic crisis, and Somalia remains locked in its resource-intensive ongoing war against Al Shabaab.

Nevertheless, both Egypt and Somalia have signalled their intentions to co-opt the support of the Ethiopian government’s historical adversaries and opposition, both internal and external, in pursuit of their aims. On 12 September, for example, the Somali Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that Somalia was “open” to supporting rebels and other opposition groups to the Ethiopian government should the MoU be executed. Later, on 13 September, the Head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, met with Isaias Afwerki, the President of Eritrea, during which they reinforced their support for Somalia’s territorial integrity and the security of the Red Sea amid discussions over the possibility of a military agreement. Meanwhile, on 16 September, Egypt also reportedly discussed its role as a potential mediator between Eritrea and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

To what end?

These developments suggest that increased support for paramilitary groups in Ethiopia may be the most likely outcome of the military mobilisation taking place in Somalia, with the aim of compounding domestic problems for the Ethiopian government, and thus weakening its bargaining position in respective diplomatic talks with Egypt and Somalia. In the absence of such pressure, previous attempts at diplomacy between Egypt and Ethiopia have failed to bear fruit – renewed rounds of negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and neighbouring Sudan over the GERD collapsed in August; similarly, talks between Somalia and Ethiopia over the MoU, mediated by Turkey, were postponed indefinitely on 15 September. Instead, for Somalia and Egypt at least, bolstering the ENDF’s domestic adversaries could prove effective given the already weakened position that the Ethiopian government occupies at home and the number of opposing and operational paramilitary actors and militia active in the heavily militarised country. That said, Somalia and Egypt will need to walk the fine line between simply increasing the pressure and driving a proxy war in the Horn.