To foil Ethiopia’s sea access scheme, Somali govt must dismantle the treasonous entity in Hargeisa and abolish the federal system

By The Editorial Board

The Ethiopian government’s Jan. 1 announcement that it signed a memorandum of understanding with a disaffected Somali clan to set up a navy base along the Red Sea coastlines must be resisted by all means. Few things are as sacred for Somalia as its identity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, the very issues Ethiopia’s successive governments have been violating for many decades.

It’s about time Somalis reined in the expansionist regime in Ethiopia.

The international community — especially the US, the European Union, Russia, China and Ethiopia’s patron, the United Arab Emirates — must not stand by and allow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, an increasingly chaos agent, to plunge the Horn of Africa into a devastating religious conflict. In fact, Ethiopia’s former Emperor Menelik II, had couched his country’s quest for sea access in religious terms.

“Having lacked sufficient strength and having received no help from Christian Powers, our frontier on the sea coast fell into the power of the Muslim-man,” Menelik falsely claimed in a 1891 letter to Britain, Italy, France, Russia and Germany.

The US, the European Union and China were right to stand with Somalia and express their support for its sovereignty and territorial integrity, but they need to go further and urgently dispatch envoys to Addis Ababa to strongly warn Abiy against sinking the region into an abyss of new war.

The world still has a chance before the first shot is fired.

It’s in Ethiopia’s interest to live peacefully with its neighbors. Already a hodgepodge of more than 80 ethnic groups who viciously hate each other, Ethiopia is not in a position to effectively launch war on a foreign country and win, even with fragile Somalia.

Late Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia, which was stronger than Abiy’s, miserably failed to subjugate Somalia, which is blessed with brave nationalists who have always aborted their enemies’ ambitions.

The Abiy-instigated row hasn’t yet tipped into military confrontation, but it is certain that should Ethiopia go ahead with its madcap plan, its 2006 invasion will be a child’s play and a united Ethiopia would be history.

“Taking his country into a fight over access to a port would bury it,” said Bloomberg news agency in its newsletter on the African continent.

What happened in Addis Ababa on Jan. 1 was a theater of the absurd. It’s illegal, irrational, irresponsible, flight of fantasy and, above all, dangerous. A Ph.D holder, like Abiy, should have known better and behaved accordingly.

Ethiopia’s engagement with Muse Bihi, the so–called president of Somaliland, a clan entity that has no legal foundation internationally, has only revealed how reckless and delusional Abiy is. A man whose troops are serving in Somalia as peacekeepers shouldn’t have aspired to illegally seize Somali territory. Nor should a self-respecting leader of a functioning country have stooped to a level of signing an understanding with the ring leader of a rebellious entity that has been holding its people hostage since 1991.

Like everyone else in the region and beyond, Abiy’s behavior has disappointed this board.

Abiy’s advent in 2018 was welcomed as a breath of fresh air, both locally and internationally. He started off well by rolling back the repressive policies of the previous administration that abused Ethiopians’ rights and went to war with its neighbors, particularly Eritrea and Somalia.

Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for “his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.” He publicly made clear that his Ethiopia was not interested in interfering in its neighbors’ internal politics and that his focus would be on strengthening his country’s unity and cooperating with its neighbors, a strategy he vividly elaborated in his book “Medemer“. Buoyed by the change in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia decided to form an alliance with Abiy.

In recent years, however, Abiy has changed, turning from a peacemaker to a regional troublemaker. He actively supported rebels fighting Sudan’s government, antagonized Eritrea, even hinting at invading it in a possible bid to seize its Red Sea port of Assab. He started interfering in Somalia’s internal affairs. The once promising tripartite alliance of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia now lies in ruins. Ironically, Somalia and Eritrea are now on the cusp of creating a united front against Ethiopia, as both nations feel threatened by Abiy’s bellicose rhetoric.

The illegal MOU shows a man who lives in cloud-cuckoo-land, far detached from both the reality of his sinking country and the troubled Horn of Africa. He naively called the MOU “historic.”

Abiy, who is in the middle of ferocious rebellions by Ethiopia’s two largest tribes, who represent more than a half of the country’s population of 120 million, shouldn’t be allowed to open a new war front for his country.

Ideally, Abiy should have fixed his country’s internal fissures, stopped being putty in the UAE’s hands and never claimed that the Red Sea is Ethiopia’s “natural boundary,” as he did last year when he quoted Ras Alula, a 19th Century Ethiopian general. Also, he should have accepted his terrible blunder and issued an apology to Somalia to convey a peace message to his other neighbors and to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, Abiy, who seems to be taking after his predecessors with his obsession over sea access, is yet to acknowledge the harm his MOU with nonexistent country has done to his reputation and to his country, where the African Union has its headquarters. Indeed, Abiy came off badly. His neighbors now see him as a rogue leader who suffers from delusions of grandeur.

Somalis are in particular alarmed, not only those in Somalia proper, but Somalis from everywhere on the globe, especially those in the occupied regions in Ethiopia and Kenya. Abiy’s escapade threatens the Somali race everywhere. Somalis have hardly imagined that Abiy, whose Oromo ethnic group, endured abuses under Ethiopia’s successive regimes would want to emulate the tormentors of his people and copy their expansionist policies.

Abiy’s dealing with Hargeisa should be the jolt we needed to wake up from our slumber and open our eyes to which country Ethiopia is: a mortal enemy. The Somali public must rally against the Ethiopian aggression and never forget Ethiopia’s age-old hostility toward the Somali nation or its occupation of a Somali territory.

There’s very little chance for Somalia and Ethiopia to live peacefully as long as Ethiopia’s leaders are eying up Somalia’s sea.

The two countries had already fought several wars, most notably the Ogaden war in 1977 and have not genuinely reconciled. Despite the false claims of good neighborliness, Ethiopians and Somalis hate each other. In 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia, brutalized its citizens and occupied Mogadishu for two years until the heroic Somali resistance humiliated its forces and forced them to turn tail in the dark of the night in 2009.

As an occupier of a Somali region already, Ethiopia will never be a perfect neighbor. This fact must be rammed home and influence our interaction with Addis Ababa’s current ruler and its future ones.

The Somali government’s response must be thoughtful, forceful, strategic and unsparing – all while preparing for the worst: A real military confrontation.

For years, Ethiopia has been doing a test run of its ambition to destroy Somalia or at least get access to the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean. It has trained a navy force when it had no sea. It has strengthened ties with the sell-outs in our country. It had, with the help of Kenya, engineered the anti-Somali federal system in 2004. Ethiopia, especially under the Tigrayan rule, armed al Shabab mafia to prolong the country’s insecurity and weaken the Somali nation.

Ethiopia’s former Foreign Minister, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — who’s now the Director General of the World Health Organization — even dared to brazenly ask Somali officials in a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, to remove the five-pointed star of unity from their national flag.

In 2019, the Ethiopia’s ministry of foreign affairs posted an offensive map (later taken down) on its website that showed Somalia as a part of Ethiopia. Just days after that uproar, the Ethiopian ministry listed two Somali regions under the category of independent countries where Addis Ababa has full diplomatic missions. Garowe and Hargeisa appeared alongside Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa and (curiously) Somalia.

In its blatant disregard for Somalia’s sovereignty, Ethiopia has established ties with secessionists in Hargeisa and sent an ambassador to a part of our country. In 2017, Ethiopia entered into a deal with the UAE’s DP World to acquire a 19 percent share in the port of Berbera, which Addis Ababa was illegally using since 2005. The Ethiopian Airline also started to fly to Hargeisa years before it commenced its flights to the nation’s capital, Mogadishu.

In short, Ethiopia has done almost everything to undermine the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but sadly Somalia’s post-civil war governments have been too tolerant and didn’t stand up to Ethiopia’s hostile behaviors.

That must end.

The Somali public, including those in the northwestern region, must aggressively fight against Ethiopia’s expansionist policies and actions.

Addis Ababa’s MOU with the Hargeisa-based rebel group is a declaration of war on Somalia and Somali leaders should get serious about Ethiopia and its mischievous move.

President Hassan, Prime Minister Hamza and other regional leaders have so far taken commendable steps, issuing strongly worded statements and reaching out to friendly nations around the world. The two houses passed a bill nullifying the MOU and President Hassan quickly signed it.

“This law is an illustration of our commitment to safeguard our unity, sovereignty & territorial integrity as per international law,” said the president in a message on X, formerly Twitter.

But, the government’s decision to recall Somalia’s ambassador to Addis Ababa fell short of the public’s expectations and is far below the actions required to respond to such a weighty matter.

The government must, at the minimum, have kicked out the Ethiopian ambassador, frozen all agreements with the Ethiopian government, asked the African Union to urgently withdraw and replace Ethiopian forces in the country, ordered illegal Ethiopian immigrants out and banned the Ethiopian Airlines from Somalia’s airspace.

Ethiopia must know that there are dire consequences for its illogical and insulting MOU.

A moment like this – when the very sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country is being threatened — all options must be on the table. The dispute with Ethiopia is not merely about Addis Ababa’s desire for land and sea, but is about its attack on everything Somali.

As a nation surrounded by non-Muslim countries, the Somali government must seek the support of the wider Muslim world and helpful Arab countries. (Mr. President, please stay away from the UAE with a ten-foot pole.)

Domestically, the Hassan-Hamza administration should take urgent practical steps to address the internal weaknesses our enemies are taking advantage of, such as the federal system, illegal foreign forces dotting the country, quislings in our midst and suspect foreign agencies at Halene. Somalia shouldn’t be a country where criminals can easily set up shop, nor should it be a patchwork of regions misruled by corrupt, unpatriotic and self-seeking individuals.

Somalia can’t effectively fight a foreign aggression when it’s a shell of a country that has no effective control over its land, sea, air and people. Let’s call our army Somali Defense Force.

We have to unite and resolve our country’s domestic ills. An internal cohesion and unity are paramount to confront evil external forces.

Ethiopia’s aggression should serve as a moment of reflection and retrospection for the nation. Our leaders must ask hard questions about the country’s state of affairs. We’ve to urgently start political and legal processes to abolish the federal system that balkanized the Somali nation into mini-clan states that are susceptible to foreign interference.

We have been burying our hands in the sand for more than three decades until chickens have come home to roost. We deluded ourselves when we acted as if we lived in a peaceful neighborhood and forgot that both Ethiopia and Kenya invaded our country, while Djibouti’s president never tired of trying to divide us along clan lines.

Well before the Abiy-Bihi MOU, the writing was on the wall.

Last year, Abiy said he would use every means to get for his country an access to the sea, repeating the mantra of Ethiopia’s past leaders.

In 1878, Menelik wrote a letter to England, Italy, France and Germany, claiming that Ethiopia’s “road to the coast, to Zeila [Somali], Tajura [Djibouti] and Aden [Yemen] is at present closed by the Muslims.”

“They prevent my receiving into my country provisions, arms, agricultural implements, artisans or even messengers of the Gospel,” he said in the letter. “Will you kindly raise your powerful voice in order that I may have this way opened to me, for I desire to inaugurate in my country European civilisation, intelligence and arts.”

In his letters to foreign leaders, Menelik always invoked his religion, at one time voicing his hope that Ethiopia “will never be trampled to the ground by the children of Mohammed.”

Abiy’s words that Ethiopia will try to get a seaport access by force, if necessary, echo Menelik’s pleas to the Europeans.

“At present we do not intend to regain our sea frontier by force,” Menelik wrote in a 1891 letter sent to Britain, Italy, Russia, France and Germany, “but we trust that the Christian Power, guided by our Saviour, will restore to us our sea-coast line, at any rate, certain points on the coast.”

The Somali government should turn this crisis into an opportunity to teach Ethiopia an unforgettable and lasting lesson and at the same do everything to bring to an end the illegal entity that calls itself “Somaliland.”

The rebels in Hargeisa, who support the Shabab mafia, must be decisively dealt with and its dismantlement made a national priority. Tellingly, the first leader of the mafia was from that region. All concessions must be canned and international organizations operating in that region ordered out.

Somalia’s recent governments played nice with Hargeisa. They allowed it to have its own currency, cut deals with foreign countries and companies and shop for international recognition. They didn’t protest the UK’s decision to send a consular to Hargeisa, ignoring that Hargeisa’s treasonous rebellion was the brainchild of UK.

President Hassan is not himself without blame. In fact, his missteps have brought us to this worrisome stage. He has been too pacifist in a world where nations earn their respect and power is everything. His misguided motto of “Somalia at peace with itself and with the world” only helped whet the appetite of the enemies of Somalia.

Since last year, when unionists in Las Anod drove secessionist militias from their region, the Hargeisa entity has been teetering on the brink of collapse. But President Hassan – mainly out of clannish consideration and after a prodding from Djibouti’s president – did little to finish off Somaliland.

In a dark moment in the nation’s history in 2012, President Hassan disgraced himself and Somalia when he first met with a Hargeisa leader in London and unwittingly lent legitimacy to a clan entity, a move that partly boosted the secessionists’ foreign-backed cause.

It’s galling that the MOU came just days after President Hassan met with Bihi in Djibouti.

Now that Bihi has crossed all national red lines, the Somali government must crack the whip and cease its appeasement on Hargeisa. It has to play hardball with those who want to dismember our country. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the actions of traitors in our midst.

Ethiopia and the rebels in the north have been undermining the Somali state well before the 1991 implosion of the country’s central government. Ethiopia trained and armed the Somali National Movement that fought the national government in the 1980s.

The evil nexus between Addis Ababa and Hargeisa must destroyed. It’s in our national interest to not allow Ethiopia to use our own people to further its malicious agenda.

A crisis like this defines the leadership skills of a leader. The president, the prime minister and speakers of the two houses of parliament must lead the public in foiling the Ethiopian scheme to occupy a new Somali territory. They must lead from the front. And Somali citizens must — as they always did — line up behind their national government’s efforts to protect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

For the time being, let’s chant in unison “with our soul, with our blood, we will die for Somalia” — and keep an eye out for the next move by duplicitous Abiy.