Why Ethiopia Adopted Al-Shabaab’s Strategy to Destabilise Somalia

[Deeq A.]

Abiy Ahmed has taken a leaf from Al-Shabaab’s book to destabilise Somalia. He is a spoiler who deserves to be reined in.

Mogadishu (PP Editorial) —Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, repeatedly claimed that his country lost soldiers to protect the sovereignty of Somalia against Al-Shabaab. If this claim is true, why did Ethiopia adopt the strategy of Al-Shabaab to attempt to return Somalia to “the ungoverned spaces” era by disregarding the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia?

As a beneficiary of the Westphalian system, Ethiopia understands that respect for the sovereignty of a country is an obligation it must honour, not an obligation it can dispense with on a whim. The Government of Ethiopia and Al-Shabaab have one thing in common: both entities regard Somalia as a country without sovereignty.

In January 2024, when Abiy Ahmed signed an illegal maritime Memorandum of Understanding with Muse Bihi Abdi, the President of the Somaliland administration, a secessionist entity, Ethiopia violated a cardinal tenet in the African Union Charter on the territorial integrity of member states.

Recently, in response to the defence pact between Somalia and Egypt, the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia, Taye Atske Selassie, said that “Ethiopia had not forgotten the invasion of Ethiopia by Somalia in 1977.” Ironically, it is Ethiopia that in 2024 is violating the territorial integrity and political independence of Somalia by attempting to annex a coastal district and questioning the right of Somalia to enter a defence pact with Egypt. Somalia supported the Ethiopian position on the GERD and in principle agreed to Abiy’s now ill-reputed Horn of Africa Economic Integration.

In 2014, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud authorised the deployment of Ethiopian troops as peacekeepers in Somalia outside AMISOM (now ATMIS) without repealing the 2008 agreement between the former Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia that paved the way for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia. Ethiopia misinterpreted all those diplomatic moves to enhance bilateral relations as weakness on the part of Somalia.

Abiy Ahmed is waging two wars inside Ethiopia – in the Amhara and Oromia regions, after the Tigray War of 2020-2022. His political survival is uppermost in his mind, not the peaceful co-existence of the Somali and Ethiopian people. That is why he opted for taking a leaf from Al-Shabaab’s book to destabilise Somalia. He is a spoiler who deserves to be reined in.

© Puntland Post, 2024

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