Introduction
The nature of intrastate and interstate security in the Horn of Africa has been undergoing continuous and rapid reorientation involving old and new ambitions. A recent round of controversies was triggered by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Somaliland and Ethiopia in January 2024, granting Ethiopia access to the Red Sea and inviting another layer of conflict over Somaliland’s statehood. In the MoU, Ethiopia offers political recognition to Somaliland in exchange for 19 kilometers of its coastline, seeking to secure its trade and security interests by establishing a presence at the Port of Berbera, a situation that has angered the Federal Republic of Somalia. Following a year-long verbal skirmish, Ethiopia and Somalia started a formal dialogue initiated by Turkey in December 2024. However, the time since December 2024 has revealed various unsettling realities that require attention from regional actors. Such realities include the Nile, the de facto state of Somaliland, fair access to the sea for landlocked states, the instrumentalization of peace support operations and, underlying all, deep insecurities that invite the involvement of regional and extra-regional actors directly and through proxy.
The Nile, Statehood, Security Cooperation, and PSOs
The president of Somalia and his cabinet deemed the MoU directly conflicting with Somalia’s interest in Somaliland, describing the move by Ethiopia as “disappointing and biased” and vowing to “defend its territory by any legal means.” Following the MoU, Somalia sought military cooperation with regional partners like Eritrea and Egypt, as well as extra-regional partners, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Tanzania, to diversify defense alliances opposite Ethiopia, which reflects a soured relationship between the two nations. Consequently, Egypt and Eritrea pledged to provide security assistance to defend Somalia’s sovereignty and fight Al-Shabab, which seeks to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Somalia and has affected many sovereign borders in the Horn and East Africa alike. In defying this pledge and undermining Egypt’s and Eritrea’s positions and expectations, Ethiopia and Somalia entered the Ankara Agreement in December 2024, committing to start technical negotiations in February 2025. While this is an important Turkish initiative, it leaves the implications of previously state-entered agreements with other regional states and its negotiations up to speculation. Somalia’s alliance with Egypt and Eritrea instrumentalizes its complex political and hydro-political relations with Ethiopia while simultaneously making Somalia an object of proxy, reflective of regional trends. The President of Somalia also visited Eritrea and Egypt and affirmed his position regarding the Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia alliance even after the Ankara Agreement.
The complex relations between states have led to a series of transactions in the region, reducing security. Disagreements over Nile water between Ethiopia and Egypt quickly intertwined with Somaliland’s MoU with Ethiopia. The hydro-geopolitical conflict between the two reflects rising tensions rooted in Egypt’s desire to maintain colonial-era agreements, in which Britain acted on behalf of its colonial territories, Egypt and Sudan—specifically the 1929 and 1959 agreements—as well as agreements between Britain and Italy (1925) and Britain and Ethiopia (1902). The 1959 agreement allocated 66 percent of the Nile’s water to Egypt and 22 percent to Sudan, leaving the remainder for evaporation while excluding Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s revisionist decolonial approach is reflected in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile River, which has been under construction since 2011. Other Nile basin states have also supported the ‘equitable use’ principle, advocating a fair and reasonable right to use water resources based on present realities, as proposed through the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA).
The intersection of internal politics and external legitimacy is contingent on regional posture, making sub-regional alliances in the Horn particularly fragile. Egypt and Somalia’s cooperation has already materialized with Egypt’s shipment of military assistance through a bilateral arrangement, which Somaliland and Ethiopia perceive to be destabilizing given Egypt’s shipments in borderland areas. Somalia, before the Ankara agreement, strongly opposed Ethiopia’s potential involvement in the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), seeing Ethiopia as a spoiler of national unity. The year-long instability also revealed fragility within Somalia’s federal states, opposing Egypt’s deployment of troops. Somalia’s regional interior minister criticized the federal government’s agreement with Egypt, emphasizing the Nile as the goal for both Egypt and Ethiopia; he stated, “Egypt wants to turn us [Somalia] into a pawn in their broader struggle.” Tackling Al-Shabab is not the true motivation for the cooperation between Somalia and Egypt; Egypt is strategically positioning itself to coerce Ethiopia out of its hydro-development. These overlapping and quickly shifting positions in the region reflect the complex and fluid nature of geopolitics in the region.
Amid these shifting regional dynamics, Ethiopia may recognize Somaliland as a de jure state, committing a bold action that may gain diplomatic support from global, emerging, and regional powers, reshape the political economy of the Horn, and impact the Red Sea and Bab-el-Mandab regions. If recognized, Somaliland would become a geopolitical trade and security hub, partnering with different countries to address piracy and terrorism. Additionally, it offers Somaliland a chance to strengthen its democracy while providing Ethiopia an opportunity to grow as a coastal and naval power via lease arrangements.
The Nature of Interstate Confrontations in the Horn of Africa
Evidence suggests that interstate conflicts and internal instability in the Horn of Africa are often connected, where each manifest as disputes that are tangential to the true object of conflict, such as territorial and boundary contentions which often manifest in internationalized intrastate wars.
The boundary conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea over Badme (1998–2000) exemplified diverging political ideologies and regional ambitions between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). Similar trends could be identified in recurring local-level confrontations between Ethiopia and Sudan (1967, 1983, 2018, and 2020/21) over the unresolved Al-Fashaga border conflict and in the border and territorial conflicts between Ethiopia and Somalia (1964, 1977/78, 1982, and arguably 2006). While land claims are typically central to these disputes, the violence is often rooted in underlying political incompatibilities.
Since the mid-1990s internationalized intrastate wars have increased in the region, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Ethiopia’s most recent internal conflict between 2020 and 2022 involved external troops, with Ethiopian forces inadvertently inviting Eritrean forces by seeking refuge in Eritrea and Sudan, providing military assistance to Tigrayan troops since capturing land in Ethiopia. Larger regional involvement has been transpiring in Sudan since April 2023, with countries like Chad, the UAE, Iran, and even Russia playing decisive roles, providing military assistance and air bases to one of the armed groups.
The Nature of Interstate Alliances and Peace Deals in the Horn of Africa
Multilateral organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), have developed tools for traditional interstate conflicts where conflicting parties select “peaceful means of their own choice,” including negotiation and mediation, among other measures. The UN Security Council can also refer cases to the International Court of Justice, impose sanctions, or authorize military interventions with humanitarian justifications. Moreover, the AU can address certain aspects of intrastate conflicts, including unconstitutional changes of government. Other regional organizations, such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), play subsidiary roles in conflict resolution within the Horn of Africa. However, they often struggle to deploy key structural and procedural tools to prevent or manage conflicts involving regional and extra-regional actors due to complexities between aggressors, supporters, and their international networks.
Like security cooperation agreements, peace deals have also proven fragile, short-lived, and undefined. The terms of the current talks between Ethiopia and Somalia, besides Ethiopian troop deployment in AUSSOM, remain unclear on issues of port and Somaliland; similarly, each party disclosed different segments of the agreement of the initial MoU between Ethiopia and Somaliland. The peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018 appears to have collapsed following the internal war in Ethiopia, demonstrating how the success of interstate deals and peace deals are highly contingent on the internal dynamics of the states.
The specifics of “who gets what” in the alliance between Egypt, Eritrea, and Somalia are not clearly defined. Egypt’s dominance may position Eritrea and Somalia to be recipients of not only military and economic assistance but also directives regarding their actions in the region. In a recent interview, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Badr Abdelatty, stated that the mission in Somalia will support Somalia’s interests both internally and regionally, though it remains unclear whether this refers to Somaliland (self-declared autonomous region), Greater Somalia (an ambition to unite all Somalis in the Horn comprising sovereign borders of Horn countries, considered irredentism by neighboring countries) or Somalia alone. Egypt’s decision to deploy peacekeeping missions in Somalia beginning January 2025 seems overdue, with national political rhetoric indicating that the move is less about Somalia’s security and more about Egypt’s quest for legitimacy. Egypt and Ethiopia are responsible for assuring their people of their steadfast approach on the Nile; “State leaders tied their own hands in the negotiation process by adopting nationalist rhetoric to make domestic gains,” explains an article on GIGA Focus Africa. Nationalist narratives in Somalia, Somaliland, and Eritrea continue to shape their regional conduct.
Way Forward
To escape further destabilization in the Horn of Africa, the situation calls for preventive diplomacy. While nations may form alliances outside of platforms including the UN, AU, Nile Basin Initiative, BRICS, or the Arab League, these should not undermine existing multilateral peace efforts. These alliances ought to bolster the implementation of key initiatives such as the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) on the Nile and continued talks between Egypt and Ethiopia.
First, in the short run, multilateral institutions including the BRICS should mediate between their two newest members, Ethiopia and Egypt, nudging all involved in the Nile basin towards an empathetic move to the center. Egypt and Sudan should realize that agreements that make them decision makers in Nile based projects in lower riparian countries, depriving the latter of all rights, is prejudiced and impractical. Lower riparian countries should also understand the insecurity felt by Egypt regarding the possibilities of abandoning its colonial rights to negotiate new agreements that might not be tolerable. However, until addressed, this stalemate is forcing lower riparian to meet their needs, like the building of the GERD while Egypt is responding through proxy.
Second, the AU Peace and Security Council should be conflict sensitive when considering the role of PSOs in regional security, with support from think tanks offering regional analysis for AUSSOM immediately. The instrumentalization of PSOs for regional power play jeopardizes the stability of international peacekeeping. Such analysis should acknowledge the impact of the involvement of regional actors in PSOs in Somalia, the strategic significance of the composition of the troops, and the building of state institutions, particularly in the development of ‘good security sector’ in Somalia. In the long run, this analysis should inform the development of a strategic framework by the UN, AU, and IGAD to help them factor in complex geopolitical dynamics in the deployment and planning of exit strategies of PSOs.
Third, actions should be taken to resolve the Somalia-Somaliland impasse, leveraging frameworks such as the 2005 AU Fact-Finding Mission to Somaliland and considering Somaliland’s historical trajectory toward statehood. International and regional institutions lack the mechanisms to enforce and monitor the security and wellbeing of people living in unrecognized territories like Somaliland, posing great challenges to its people. Most importantly, like other structural challenges in the region, the uncertainty of the statehood of Somaliland can be manipulated to perpetuate the interests of others outside of the region.
Fourth, we recommend the inter-governmental authority in the region, IGAD, prioritize short-term plans such as mediation and conflict resolution capacities to address existing and emerging complexities in the region and forestall proxy tendencies in conflicts. In the long term, IGAD’s Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism should develop more robust analysis and scenarios on the involvement of external actors through proxy and establish preventive measures; the member states should envisage stronger regional integration in areas of politics, economy, infrastructure, and finance to ensure regional stability.
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Mercy Fekadu Mulugeta is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS), Addis Ababa University. She is the director of the ARUA Center of Excellence on Post-Conflict Societies.
Leulseged Girma is an independent researcher focusing on peace and security, geopolitics, political economy, community development, global governance, democratic governance, human rights, and humanitarian affairs.
Image Credit: AMISOM Public Information, CC0 1.0 Universal, via Wikimedia Commons.
