How Mogadishu Elites View the Exclusion of Ethiopia from ATMIS in Somalia

[Deeq A.]

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud worked hard to accommodate Ethiopia’s interests, convinced that no aspiring Somali politician can attain political goals without relying on Ethiopia in one way or another.

Mogadishu (PP Commentary) — In Halgan iyo Hagardaamo, published in 2012, the former President of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, argued that Ethiopia has an existential phobia about the reconstitution of the Somali state. His theory, developed in 1982 when Ethiopia captured Galdogob and Ballanbaale and claimed to have annexed the two districts in violation of the African Union — a clear indication that the former Soviet Union fanned inter-country conflict in Africa — did not sound plausible.

The signing of the maritime Memorandum of Understanding between Muse Bihi Abdi, President of the Somaliland administration, and Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, in January 2024 furnished the late Somali president’s theory with plausibility. Why did Ethiopia sign a maritime MoU with a Somali secessionist administration several weeks after the Defence Minister of Somalia signed a defence pact with his Ethiopian counterpart in Addis Ababa?

Abiy Ahmed is a political novice who has imperial dreams.

Without repealing the defence pact with Ethiopia, the Federal Government of Somalia excluded Ethiopia from ATMIS forces in Somalia. This reflects the extent to which Abiy Ahmed remains a political novice, still imbibing imperial dreams that briefly enabled Ethiopia to become a hegemon in East Africa. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud worked hard to accommodate Ethiopia’s interests, convinced that no aspiring Somali politician can attain political goals without relying on Ethiopia in one way or another.

Meles Zenawi fell out with Abdullahi Yusuf after 2007.

During his first term in office, his  government signed a bilateral agreement with Ethiopia in 2014 to deploy Ethiopian defence forces as peacekeepers outside the mandate of ATMIS (then AMISOM). This move violated the agreement between the former Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, which had resulted in the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia in 2009.

In his memoir Halgan iyo Hagardaamo the former President of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed argued that Ethiopia has an existential phobia about the reconstitution of the Somali state.

The alliance Somalia formed with Egypt and Eritrea this year, coupled with the awarding of offshore oil exploration rights to Türkiye, indicates that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud instrumentalises agreements for personal political goals. Villa Somalia, the presidency, controls the bicameral legislature, predisposing federal institutions to become political tools for Damuljadid, President Mohamud’s clique, to consolidate his political network in Mogadishu.

The Mufti of the Federal Government of Somalia, Sheikh Ali Wajis, recently told an interviewer that “anyone who opposes the Federal Government of Somalia is committing sedition, and the Government must use the new peacekeeping forces to disarm clans.” He added that Spain dealt with a renegade region and that “the Federal Government of Somalia must do the same to renegade Somali regions.” For the some Mogadishu elites, the exclusion of Ethiopian troops from ATMIS is an opportunity to centralise power in Mogadishu for the benefit of clans who view Somalia’s capital as a stronghold they conquered in 1991.

© Puntland Post, 2024

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