On one of the wonderful days that Asmara is famous for in the fall, specifically on September 6, 2018, a meeting room in the Eritrean capital contained three men who no one would have imagined gathering in one place.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister sat at the table Abiy Ahmed And the Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki And the Somali president Mohamed Abdullah FarmajoTo declare a tripartite alliance between their countries.
The announcement was a regional turning point, as the previous two decades witnessed major events that formed a map of alliances that placed Ethiopia and Somalia in a long-term confrontation with Asmara, which led to the imposition of international sanctions on Eritrea in 2009 under the pretext of creating an element of instability in the region by supporting Somali militants, which is what Asmara has always done. He denied it, while the American-backed Ethiopian effort to besiege Eritrea and turn it into what Professor Michael Woldemariam described as a “pariah state” continues.
The state of neither war nor peace between Asmara and Addis Ababa, which lasted for 18 years following the war between the two countries (1998-2000), turned the Horn of Africa into an arena for proxy conflicts in which each party deliberately supported the opponents of its opponents, and the border between the two countries turned into a time bomb about to explode, as happened in Border skirmishes between them in the summer of 2016.
Abiy Ahmed as president
In light of this extremely hostile environment, the arrival of Dr. Abiy Ahmed to the position of Prime Minister in Ethiopia in May 2018 was the start of the wheel of dramatic changes that included the region with a wave of reconciliations between Ethiopia and Eritrea and between the latter and Somalia.
All of this was part of a regional vision searching for a new path for relations between the three parties on the basis of political cooperation and economic integration, which led some researchers to consider Ahmed “the greatest supporter of unifying the Horn of Africa.”
This alliance was born a legitimate offspring and a representative of the spirit of optimism that flooded the Horn of Africa at the time. The Asmara meeting (2018) and the subsequent tripartite summits, the most important of which was the Bahir Dar summit in Ethiopia (2020), developed a joint action plan focusing on the two main and intertwined goals of consolidating peace, stability and security, as well as promoting development. Economic and social, and supporting joint efforts to enhance effective regional cooperation.
The positive repercussions of these developments on the stability of the region accelerated and culminated in the Eritrean contribution to the reconciliations between the Ethiopian government and its opponents supported by Asmara, which was accompanied by the lifting of UN sanctions on Eritrea in November 2018, with the support and demands of all parties. Addis Ababa AndMogadishu.
Regional ambitions
A paper published by the German Institute for World and Area Studies states that Ethiopia, the largest economy in the Horn of Africa, had a direct interest in strengthening transport links with its neighbors and using their ports in a way that relieves it of the burden of its dependence on the port of Djibouti for 95% of its imports and exports.
This alliance will also enable Addis Ababa to create a common market through which it can export locally manufactured goods in addition to electrical energy from the Renaissance Dam.
In return, both Eritrea and Somalia will benefit from the development of transportation network infrastructure and maritime facilities and the revenues generated from opening their ports to Ethiopian trade.
Mogadishu aspired to the coalition turning it into a “global transport hub competing with other players in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea,” as described by Ambassador Ahmed Abdel Salam Aden, Executive Director of the Century Center for Effective Governance and Policy Development.
On the political level, and given the approaching elections in Somalia and Ethiopia at the time, the birth of this alliance strengthened the reputation of Farmaajo and Abiy Ahmed as leaders at the regional level, after the circle of political opposition to the Ethiopian Prime Minister expanded to include influential parties within the Oromo ethnic group itself, headed by leaders who enjoy broad popularity as a core. Mohammed.
While the emerging alliance met the Somali president’s need for regional support that would enable him to confront the powerful Somali states, and to seek the help of his new allies to deter neighbors, especially Kenya, from interfering in Somali affairs, and to stop the supposed Eritrean support for radical militants.
On the other hand, the new entity represented an opportunity for Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to restore the lands under the authority of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and it was also a gateway to strengthening the relationship with Addis Ababa on the basis of their common hostility to the Tigray Front.
The alliance gave Afwerki, known for his ambition to lead the region, an opportunity to gain influence at the level of the Horn of Africa, and to besiege Djibouti, which has been in a border dispute with Asmara since the limited war between them in 2008.
Alliance files
Although the coalition declaration included a wide range of areas of joint activity, the most important imprints it left behind were reflected in two main files: centralization of governance, and the Tigray war, in which the role of the founding visions of the coalition in influencing the nature of political life and the balances between the active political forces emerged, and in Its leaders exchanged support against their local opponents.
Centralism has been proposed as an alternative philosophy of governance in the two federal states in the Somali region and Ethiopia, unlike Eritrea, which is governed by a very strict central system.
The Somalis chose what the researcher on African affairs, Al-Shafi’i Abtadon, described as “tribal federalism” as a system of government in the 2012 constitution as a political combination that guarantees the continuation of Somalia as a state on the one hand and recognizes on the other hand the regional entities that imposed their existence in light of the civil war as federal states.
While ethnic federalism was approved in Ethiopia as a way to manage Ethiopian diversity by dividing the country into states with broad powers based on ethnicity and language, thus preventing the disintegration of the country that suffers from several layers of interlocking conflicts.
Federalism was a realistic attempt to solve the crisis in the two countries, but it was not a magic solution, as the dispute over powers and resources emerged between the center and the states in Somalia, and the nationalist spirit also grew and escalated in a way that threatened ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia, so the search for a new form of government was one of the features that brought both the president closer together. Somali Farmaajo and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The central government
In light of this reality, a paper issued by the Institute for Security Studies notes the emergence of a new Ethiopian approach based on supporting the central government in the face of the federal states, in a complete reversal of the Ethiopian approach that had been followed before. Farmaajo used Ethiopian forces to prevent the victory of candidate Mukhtar Robow in the presidential elections in Southwestern Somalia state, which ended in bloody confrontations between the two parties in December 2018.
Abiy Ahmed articulated a vision for centralized governance through his book published in October 2019, entitled “Destructive,” meaning synergy. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front was its biggest critic, and this disagreement between the two parties interacted to become a bloody conflict in the Tigray War (2020-2022).
A paper published by the Egyptian Institute for Studies in 2021 describes the course of this war as “the clearest example of the complex political-military entanglements in the tripartite alliance,” as Eritrean forces played a decisive role in Abiy Ahmed’s declaration of victory over Tigray.
A UN report also confirmed the participation of Somali forces who were receiving training in Eritrea in the battle in the Tigray region alongside the Eritrean army, which was denied by the Somali government.
The Triple Alliance… Where to?
The alliance was considered an important step in the path of promoting peace and integration, but it also revealed severe shortcomings, as the official demarcation of the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains suspended, with a complete freeze on economic openness between the two countries.
On the other hand, the alliance contributed to creating new fault lines and exacerbating existing tensions at many levels, as Ethiopian support for Somali President Farmajo’s efforts towards centralizing power led to escalation of tension between him and powerful state governors, which almost reached the brink of armed confrontations more than once, while The Tigray war led to catastrophic repercussions and exposed Ethiopia to the risk of collapse and fragmentation.
On the other hand, the exclusive nature of the alliance fueled the suspicion of other parties that found themselves excluded from it, as Djibouti saw it as a serious threat to its interests, with Ethiopia heading towards the Somali and Eritrean ports.
The coalition policies also negatively affected the degree of regional cohesion, as Addis Ababa’s support for Farmaajo increased the intensity of the Ethiopian-Kenyan rivalry in Somalia, and the forces of the two countries present within the African peace mission in Somalia reached the brink of clash in March 2020, in light of Nairobi’s support for the governor of Jubaland state, Ahmed Madobe, in confronting the president. Somali.
Tigray war
It represented a war Tigray The peak of coordination between the coalition parties, and within it carried the seeds of the first severe tremors that stood in its way, in a remarkable historical irony, as the Pretoria Agreement to Cessation of Hostilities (November 2022) between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Addis Ababa led to the tension in the latter’s relations with Eritrea, which had a position on reconciliation. In its larger neighbour.
The hidden crisis between Asmara and Addis Ababa expanded with the emergence of Ethiopian demands for a sovereign sea port on the Red Sea, which raised concerns among its coastal neighbors. Eritrea strengthened its forces on the southern front for fear of a possible Ethiopian invasion of the southern port of Assab.
The sudden Ethiopian step to sign a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, under which Addis Ababa is considering recognizing the independence of Somaliland while the latter grants it a sea port and a military base, sparked massive Somali anger and ignited tension that is still escalating regionally.
The acceleration of these developments revealed deep rifts of mistrust between the three partners and their lack of a strategy and mechanisms that would enable them to resolve and overcome internal differences according to the promised integrative methodology, casting a heavy shadow of doubt about the possibility of the sustainability of this alliance in the future, as the region moves towards new alignments that include both Eritrea and Somalia. Facing Ethiopia, in what is almost a complete regression to before 2018, as if history is repeating itself in the Horn of Africa with the players changing positions.
