Issue No. 50

The Rise of the BRICS and Egypt-Ethiopia Tensions

The past fortnight has seen tensions across the Horn of Africa escalate at an alarming rate. The geopolitical competitors of Ethiopia and Egypt are facing off over the proposed deployment of Egyptian troops to Somalia, with the danger of yet another internationalised conflict erupting in the Horn rising. Other countries are quietly assembling behind their respective allies. So far, this has largely broken down along the Saudi-Emirati schism that is playing out across the increasingly anarchic 'Red Sea Arena.' The current crisis can also be understood in the context of the interconnected rise of the BRICS, a paralysed multi-lateral system, and a regional order in flux.
 
As is the case in the Sudanese conflict, Egypt and Ethiopia fall on opposing sides of the Saudi-Emirati divide across the Red Sea. Despite the reports of a UAE bailout earlier this year, Cairo remains aligned with Saudi Arabia, particularly over Israel's invasion of Gaza and their mutual support for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the ongoing civil war. Others, to greater and lesser extents, are also aligned with Riyadh, including Eritrea and Djibouti. Within the Saudi orbit, not all relations between these actors are equal or peaceable, but most enjoy Riyadh’s largesse and investment, which has come in the form of major port deals in Djibouti and mining extraction licenses in Eritrea. By extension, the Abu Dhabi-oriented actors, particularly Ethiopia, Somaliland, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and Chad, make up the other flank of the schism. Within Somalia, the Emiratis also enjoy a close relationship with the Jubaland and Puntland administrations.
 
Both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, among others, perceive the littoral states on the Red Sea as an extension of their security and political spheres of interest. The zero-sum game to deny their competitors access, previously Qatar and Iran, has seen a neo-colonial scramble for natural resources in the Horn as well as a securitisation of the Red Sea countries. Today, on either side of the Red Sea, armed conflict, mass displacement, and food insecurity are becoming the norm-- not the exception. Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan, among others, are all grappling with intersecting and compounding security, humanitarian and governance crises, which have eroded government presence in the peripheries. Consequently, unstable and irrational regimes have become answerable to their Gulf patrons, who care little for democracy and have driven a renewed focus on a distorted 'sovereignty' that is centred on extracting international and domestic rents.
 
What is also notable about the latest political crisis engulfing the Horn is that both Ethiopia and Egypt are members of the insurgent BRICS bloc. On 1 January, Egypt, Iran, the UAE, and Ethiopia officially joined the group, while Saudi Arabia and Argentina were also invited. The bloc is far from ideologically united, but they share an interest in de-dollarisation, the undermining of the supremacy of the US currency, and a shared vision of illiberal international relations. Iran and Russia want to undermine US hegemony and 'sanctions-bust,' while China seeks to erode, not entirely dismantle, the USD. Most member states are concerned not about the massive displacement and food crises roiling the Horn or issues of democracy and governance but about strategic investments in critical resources such as agricultural land and water.
 
The petro-monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have invested USD billions in shoring up their vulnerability to the climate crisis and food insecurity by buying up vast tracts of land across the Horn, particularly in Sudan. In particular, Abu Dhabi, or more accurately, Dubai, has monopolised the largely informal Sahelian gold trade-- one of the principal resources that underpins currency. And it was only a matter of time before Turkey, though a NATO member, sought to join BRICS, as announced on 2 September. For several years, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan administration has been operating with a kind of BRICS rationale, balancing a relationship with Russia and the West while pursuing strategic relationships with countries like Ethiopia and Somalia.
 
The ongoing 9th Forum on China–Africa Cooperation in Beijing also points to where we can expect regimes to align if Ethiopia, Egypt, and Somalia end up clashing, through proxies or otherwise. Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM), his Eritrean counterpart Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed were all present in the Chinese capital. Since his return to office in 2022, HSM and Afwerki have struck up a close alliance, with the former travelling half a dozen times to Asmara, including soon after the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was announced on 1 January 2024.
 
In Beijing, HSM and Afwerki met again alongside their foreign ministers and proclaimed their support for each other once more. Eritrea is firmly in the Cairo/ Mogadishu camp, supportive of any agenda that might destabilise or undermine its southern neighbour. The calamitous partnership between Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is long gone, collapsing in the aftermath of the war on Tigray. The former allies are now facing off in Ethiopia's Amhara region, with Asmara providing clandestine military support to select Fano militias, with which it forged close ties during the ethnic cleansing of Western Tigray. Proxy forces have long been a feature of armed conflict in the Horn of Africa, but an increasingly militarily assertive Gulf has also warped this dynamic.
 
The BRICS is not a multi-lateral designed to soothe internal conflict or establish a new vision of governance and security. Though Egypt and Ethiopia are both member-states, do not expect the organisation to step in to facilitate dialogue. ‘Pax Americana’ was always something of a misnomer, underwritten by immense military and economic force, but the next iteration of the regional and global order does not promise to offer greater stability or equitable governance. Tensions are rising once more in the Horn, with few easy off-ramps and plenty of room for miscalculation.

by the Horn Edition team