Issue No. 650

A tale of two summits 

Last week, Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud travelled to Addis Ababa for the 37th African Union (AU) Summit and to attend sideline meetings with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the East African Community (EAC) officials. While Villa Somalia has insisted on no dialogue with Addis until Ethiopia withdraws from the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland, the pan-African and regional forums offered an opportunity for respective allies to coax the two towards possible talks. Instead, the heightened rhetoric has climbed further still after a dispute surrounding the Somali president's security detail.

On Saturday, 17 February, President Hassan Sheikh, at a press conference in Addis, furiously relayed the dispute over whether the detail could be armed or not. Accusing the Ethiopian government of further "provocation," he laid into the administration, accusing it of "preparing the ground" for the annexation of Somaliland. The spokesperson for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, however, rejected the assertion, saying that the country's delegation was denied entry as its security detail was carrying weapons. The incident has been seized upon by Villa Somalia as another example of Ethiopia's disregard for Mogadishu and being used to stoke the domestic nationalist sentiments trained on Addis.
 
HSM's early exit from the AU summit was also a sign of the waned influence of the multilateral bodies in bringing conflicting parties together. And, utterly overshadowed by the security deal argument, no state media outlet even mentioned whether the president met with his EAC counterparts or officials.
 
Still, the prospect of joining the regional trade bloc inches ahead in a seminal year for Somalia. On 12 February, Somalia's parliamentary lower house overwhelmingly voted in favour of the EAC treaty, paving the way for accession in the coming months following procedural formalities. With the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) joining in July 2022, the EAC continues to expand across East Africa and the Great Lakes. The EAC's leadership are openly ambitious about other countries joining, too, particularly Ethiopia and Djibouti.
 
While the bilateral relations are fractious among several of the EAC members, particularly Rwanda and the DRC, the economic benefits of joining the regional bloc are potentially considerable. Somalia's inclusion brings a vast coastline, the longest on mainland Africa, into the regional bloc. Though the stability off Somalia's shores is facing turmoil amidst Yemen's Houthi rebels targeting transiting vessels and an uptick in Puntland piracy, the coastline is nevertheless an attractive prospect. Huge fishing potential remains untapped by Somalia and other African nations; instead, it is routinely abused by foreign trawling vessels that attack smaller ships.
 
Through the EAC Customs Union, Somalia may also benefit from a reduction in tariffs and paperwork on cross-border trade. Since the collapse of the Said Barre regime in 1991, and the subsequent collapse of the state, legal and taxable cross-border trade with Somalia's neighbouring countries essentially collapsed. Somalia's porous borders are heavily policed on either side by respective Kenyan and Ethiopian deployments. They have not been able to prevent, however, the infiltration of Al-Shabaab into communities in Mandera in Kenya, for example. Meanwhile, a UK-funded Kenya-Somalia-Ethiopia project that would have reopened the borders was quietly paused amidst an uptick in attacks on Kenya by Al-Shabaab in mid-2023.
 
The 'Deris Wanaag' programme aligns with another EAC requirement-- visa-free travel within the region. This is causing Somalia's immediate neighbours to baulk somewhat at the idea of Somalia-based insurgents travelling freely within East Africa. An unregulated influx of economic migrants into wealthier nations like Kenya and Tanzania is also a real possibility. Illicit trade of goods, as well as weapons, remains a concern for other EAC countries even though Somalia is now in the final stages of joining. Whether these treaty elements are implemented will have to be seen.
 
Other parts of the EAC, too, raise more questions and possibilities for Somalia's administration. Criteria under Article 3 of the EAC Treaty for admission stipulates that all new countries must adhere to the principles of good governance, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and social justice. After decades of civil war and violent extremism, Somalia understandably ranks low on all these requirements. Any democratic progress has been far from linear, but the tabling of sweeping constitutional changes in the country's bicameral parliament without due process is a step back from consensus-based politics.
 
Related to the issue of ongoing, potentially destabilising electoral reform is whether the EAC might step in to support Somalia's security challenges to some degree. With the ongoing withdrawal of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) and the badly stalled offensive in central Somalia, there are increasing talks about Somalia's post-ATMIS security infrastructure. In a recent interview, Somalia's National Security Advisor Hassan Moalim said that plans for a post-ATMIS force of several thousand multinational soldiers are underway. It is yet to be seen under whose auspices any new multinational peacekeeping forces would serve and who might fund any new body that is expected to protect critical infrastructure in key urban centres.
 
The EAC has signalled a capacity to assume some security responsibilities, deploying several thousand troops to eastern DRC in November 2022. But their deployment was highly controversial and ended in failure, unable to quell rising violence and accused of collusion with the M23 rebels by DRC President Felix Tshisekedi. By the end of 2023, the vast majority of EAC Regional Forces had withdrawn. While less fragmented than eastern DRC, this deployment, even if the forces were to forgo frontline engagement with Al-Shabaab, would be immensely complex in a post-ATMIS Somalia.
 
HSM's curtailed trip to Addis does not bode well for the communique issued by the AU that urged Ethiopia and Somalia to come together. The EAC has far less sway than the premier pan-African multilateral, particularly with Ethiopia absent from the bloc, Somalia is still in the midst of joining. EAC accession was widely celebrated by Villa Somalia last year before the MoU captured its full attention, having been a significant ambition of HSM's previous administration. Holding Mogadishu to the promises it has made on democracy and good governance may not be high on the agenda of the EAC, but ensuring it continues with slow and stable reform is in the regional bloc's self-interest as well.
 
By the Somali Wire team