Issue No. 102

Apathy pervades the Djiboutian population. A week tomorrow, on April 10, the country will head to the polls, with President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh seeking a 6th— essentially uncontested — term in office. With his coronation inevitable, his family's dynastic rule over this rentier city-state will be extended once more. But in a region wracked by armed conflict and geopolitical contestation, the ageing Guelleh's capacity to manage the familial, ethnic, and regional fractures within and without grows ever more complicated. And Djibouti's apparent stability is no product of institutional strength, but rather an increasingly fractious balance of external rents and coercive control-- underpinned by geopolitical relevance.

In early 1987, the commander of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), John Garang, is reported to have issued a radio order, instructing his field officers to gather children to be dispatched to Ethiopia for military training. Garang's command conveyed the rebels' institutionalisation of a well-established practice of child soldiering; a dynamic that has been reproduced by virtually every major armed actor in Sudan-- and later South Sudan-- since independence. Today, as war has continued to ravage and metastasise across Sudan, few communities and children have been left untouched by the ruinous violence.

The battle for South West—and Somalia's political future—continues apace. With the brittle alliance between South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud having broken down spectacularly, the federal government is pouring in arms and forces to oust the Digil-Mirifle leader. Staring down the barrel of the formal opposition holding three Federal Member States and, with it, greater territory, population, and clan, Villa Somalia is looking to exploit intra-Digil-Mirifle grievances—and convince Addis—to keep its monopolistic electoral agenda alive. But this morning, Laftagareen announced a 9-member electoral committee to hastily steer his re-election, bringing the formal bifurcation of the Somali state ever closer.

The history of the contemporary Horn of Africa is littered with abandoned and abrogated peace agreements-- as well as a handful of successes. A petri dish (or Pandora's box) of issues related to sovereignty, inter- and intra-state conflict, and the nature of the state itself, the region has also been a laboratory for numerous forms of peacemaking and dealmaking. Yet in such a fractured regional order, 'peace' and 'conflict' should not be considered binaries, but rather as part of a sliding scale, where civilians may be targeted during the active fighting in South Sudan or suffer as part of a 'negative peace' in Tigray. Today, with predatory peace in South Sudan, Sudan, and perhaps now Tigray, having given way to renewed violence on a broad scale, what is the nature and future of peacemaking in the Horn of Africa?

The worm, it seems, has finally turned. After years serving as a prop for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's monocratic aspirations, Abdiaziz Laftagareen, the leader of South West State, has clapped back against Villa Somalia, accusing the federal government of – among other things - dividing the country, monopolising public resources, colluding with Al-Shabaab, and leading Somalia back into state failure.

Once on the US-designated terrorist sanctions list, it is unsurprisingly rather difficult to come off it. And with the US designating the 'Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood' as terrorists, elements of Khartoum's military government may now have the dubious honour of being on it twice. First time out in 1993, Khartoum was deemed a US State Sponsor of Terror in the wake of a raft of jihadist plots linked to the Islamist authorities in Sudan. Nearly three decades later, and only after Sudan's partial ascension to the Abraham Accords, the title and punishing sanctions were lifted for the civilian-military transitional government. Today, though the warring Sudan is no longer home to an Osama bin Laden or Carlos the Jackal, a US labelling of 'terrorist' has returned to Khartoum.

The Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch recounts that King Pyrrhus of Epirus, after defeating the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC, lamented, "One more such victory over the Romans and we are completely done for." After almost four torturous years, the same might be said for any more supposed 'victories' for the incumbent federal government of Somalia. To nobody's surprise, the constitutional 'review' process undertaken by Somalia's federal government was never about implementing direct democracy after all. It was, as widely anticipated, a thinly veiled power grab intended to centralise political power, eviscerate Somalia's federal system, and extend the term of the incumbent president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM). And so, at the 11th hour and with less than 70 days remaining in his term of office, HSM declared Somalia's new constitutional text 'complete' and signed it into 'law.'

At the end of February, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed departed on a rather unusual visit to Baku, Azerbaijan. Slated as a meeting between two emerging powers, a focus on trade and investment frameworks was particularly emphasised by Foreign Minister Gedion Timotheos. More importantly, of course, was the signing of a comprehensive defence agreement by the two countries on 27 February. Spanning drone technology, armoured vehicles, artillery shell production, and air defence, the new agreement builds upon a framework from November 2025, which also included reference to refurbishing T-72 tanks, electronic warfare, and military-industrial manufacturing. Though war has not yet returned to Tigray as many feared, Abiy's vision of a militarised domestic —and regional —posture no doubt requires more hardware.

Earlier this month, dozens of heads of state and government gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU). The theme of this summit prioritised water security and sanitation, discussing various ways to address these issues amid the unrelenting climate crisis. A worthy subject, no doubt, but the geopolitical backdrop of the summit remains unremittingly grim. Taking place in Addis —amid war looking ever more likely in Tigray —the gathering of leaders again served to uncomfortably emphasise the decline of the AU.