This Might Be a Bigger Story in the Region than Gaza

It's a quiet story, but it is an important one, and one that breaks over 60 years of precedent.

In exchange for port access, Ethiopia has become the first UN member state to recognize Somaliland. (The Republic of China [Taiwan] recognizes them, but they are not a UN member state.)

It has done so in exchange for port access that it lost following the independence of Eritrea in 1993.

This is a very big deal, because this is a significant break with a 70 year consensus in Africa that the colonial boundaries are to be maintained.  (Eritrea was not a part of Ethiopia until after WWII, and annexed as a sort of a gift from the US and UK)

Obviously, there was the creation of South Sudan in 2011, but this is different for two reasons:

• The separation of Sudan and South Sudan was largely an artifact of intervention of forces from outside Africa, which was largely the result of the genocidal excesses of the Khartoum regime.
• This is the second time that we have seen the secession of a region of a country from its colonial borders, and as such, it not constitutes a precedent.

Given the ethnic tensions throughout Africa as a result of the artificial and arbitrary borders inflicted by the colonial powers. it seems to me that we may start seeing a lot more in the way of aggressive secessionist movements in Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Many centuries ago, chroniclers conjured what was in antiquity called Ethiopia as a realm at the heart of global trade. The treasures of Rome and India all flowed through its ports along the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Merchants and pilgrims made their way to the Middle East and Mediterranean world via its caravan routes and docks. A 6th-century Byzantine historian described a kingdom with a vast fleet of wooden boats. The ancient Greeks even named the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of miles away from the Ethiopian highlands, the Ethiopian Sea.

But modern-day Ethiopia is famously landlocked. Apart from a few decades in the 20th century when Ethiopia had annexed neighboring Eritrea, Africa’s second-most populous nation has never had a coastline. It maintains a meager, mostly riverine navy and pays tiny Djibouti some $1.5 billion a year for the privilege of accessing its ports and coastal infrastructure.

That’s why Abiy Ahmed, the ambitious Ethiopian prime minister, has long harbored visions of reaching the sea. He has groused against his country’s “geographic prison” and summoned the legacy of seafaring medieval empires as one the contemporary Ethiopian state must redeem. Ethiopia’s profound economic woes and constant internecine conflicts have not dented Abiy’s desires for maritime access — indeed, they may fuel them.

And last week, in what was a geopolitical bombshell in the Horn of Africa, Abiy appeared to achieve his goal. Alongside Muse Bihi Abdi, president of the self-declared breakaway Republic of Somaliland, Abiy announced that the two parties had reached a memorandum of understanding that would see Somaliland lease to Ethiopia some 12 miles of its coastline by the port of Berbera. In return, the autonomous entity that exists within the internationally recognized territory of Somalia may win something altogether more valuable: diplomatic recognition from Addis Ababa.


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But, apart from solidarity ties with the self-ruling island of Taiwan, Somaliland has not been recognized by any U.N. member state — and certainly any major regional power in Africa. The autonomous region’s officials expect this deal, should it come to fruition, may trigger a meaningful shift.

“Their hope is that where Ethiopia goes, the rest of Africa will follow: the African Union is based in Addis Ababa,” explained the Economist. “Abiy also enjoys strong relations with the United Arab Emirates. Some foreign diplomats suspect the UAE, which is also close to Somalia’s government, may have played a part in brokering the deal.”

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Somalia, though, is outraged. The country’s ambassador in Addis Ababa was recalled. Protests and rallies against the developments have been held in Mogadishu. On Saturday, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the country’s president, signed a bill that symbolically nullified the agreement between Ethiopia and Somaliland, since the latter exists within Somalia’s internationally-recognized borders. “This law is an illustration of our commitment to safeguard our unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity as per international law,” he said.

Somalia is not really a functioning state, which is why Somaliland has been able to maintain its de facto independence for decades, but this still marks a huge sea change in African national boundaries, and I would expect to see some significant secessionist moves by provinces and regions in other African nations in the next few years.