Uneasy Neighbors: The Regional Impact of Ethiopia’s Expansionist Ambitions
Ethiopia is seeking greater access to the Red Sea, but in doing so, it is repeating past behaviours that have destabilised the region.
Yohannes WoldemariamDecember 2, 2024
In its renewed campaign for access to the Red Sea, Ethiopia is threatening to further destabilise the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia already has port access for trade via Berbera in Somaliland as well as via Djibouti. If the country wants greater access, its neighbours would line up to compete to provide it in a mutually beneficial give-and-take arrangement. What is spooking Ethiopia’s neighbours, however, is the country’s quest for a naval base and the expansionist mindset and hostile force that are accompanying that drive.
The news of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Ethiopia and Somaliland has precipitated a regional political crisis because it includes recognition of Somaliland independence. The MoU is separate from the Berbera port deal and gives Ethiopia access to the Red Sea at Lugaya, close to the border with Djibouti. Somaliland has been de facto running its own affairs since 1991 and lobbying for independence from Somalia. This should be treated sympathetically especially because Somaliland has been comparatively democratic compared to the rest of the Horn of Africa. But does Ethiopia need to go as far as sanctioning a partition? It is for the people of Somalia and Somaliland to decide.
Ethiopian intervention is particularly threatening to its neighbours when one considers the region’s history since the Second World War. Ethiopia has made a habit of chipping away territories from neighbouring countries. Its leadership senses Somaliland is vulnerable. Somaliland may be about to jump up the political agenda after the election of Donald Tump as US president. The country has long been on the radar of the Heritage Foundation’s Vision 2025 as a way of countering Chinese influence in the Horn of Africa.
Aklilu Habte-Wold, who later became the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, criss-crossed the world in the 1940s lobbying countries for the incorporation of Eritrea into Ethiopia. In 1942, soon after Eritrea was occupied by the British, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Yilma Deressa wrote a letter to then US President Roosevelt stating his case why Ethiopia deserved Eritrean ports. He argued: “[t]he people in what is now called Eritrea are ethnically and culturally akin to the Ethiopian people, and in time past, that territory was a province of Ethiopia called Hamassen. In 1940, during the attack on Eritrea from the Sudanese border, our British allies, by pamphlets dropped from airplanes, promised the people of Hamassen union with Ethiopia as a reward for deserting from their Italian conquerors.”
After WWII, Ethiopia incorporated Eritrea into its federation. It unsuccessfully tried to do the same with Somaliland, although it did succeed in incorporating the Ogaden region of south-eastern Ethiopia following British withdrawal in 1948.
Ethiopia sent troops to the Korean War so as to position itself favourably with the United States and bribed the US with a military base in Asmara, which was vital as a listening station during the Cold War.
Ethiopia then fought a 30-year (1961–1991) genocidal war against Eritreans when they tried to extricate themselves from the annexation.
Ethiopian elites have again reverted to the “We are the same people” mantra as a rationale for their territorial ambitions. This ignores the principle of self-determination and the 1963 decision by African leaders that redrawing the borders of the continent was unwise and a recipe for chronic instability.
The current situation
Regional Arab rivalry and the new scramble for influence in Africa are being played out in unison with Ethiopia’s expansionist tendencies. The UAE has been particularly aggressive and has enabled Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to pursue dangerous expansionist ambitions. On the other side, an alignment of Eritrea, Egypt, Somalia and Sudan is emerging to counter this Ethiopian threat. Egypt’s motive is to put pressure on Ethiopia to gain leverage in its long-running dispute over the Nile waters.
Ethiopia claims that it needs to be a Red Sea power to sustain its security and drive its economy. But there are hardly any naval security services that Ethiopia can provide that the world powers stationed in Djibouti cannot already provide. In fact, the so-called security for Ethiopia is seen as insecurity for its neighbours.
Ethiopia is a country at war with itself and chronically plagued by insurrections from sub-national groups. The use of the Ethiopian military as a “peacekeeping force” in Somalia remains expedient but politically unwise considering the historical context. Ethiopia has sent peacekeepers to Somalia and South Sudan to bolster its control over neighbouring countries. Somalia is now demanding that Ethiopian troops leave Somalia but Ethiopia is refusing to do so, citing security concerns. Complicating the situation further, Egypt has recently sent military equipment and troops to Somalia.
The Somaliland situation which Abiy Ahmed is exacerbating is a Pandora’s box of serious repercussions for Ethiopia itself, a country with a huge population that is shattering along ethnic fault lines. When considering and debating this issue, it is paramount to be cognisant of the special hazards of being a neighbour to Ethiopia, with its renewed ambition of re-establishing an empire.