Egypt's involvement in Somalia signals new and precarious chapter in dispute with Ethiopia

When Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud visited Egypt last month, he handed his hosts a large file that laid out in detail the threat posed by Ethiopia and Al Shabab militants to his Horn of Africa nation.

Also in the file, The National has learnt, was a list of what his security forces needed to become a more agile counter-terrorism force. Ethiopian troops in Somalia, as part of an African Union peacekeeping force to fight Al Shabab, were doing little on the ground, complained the Somali leader. Somalia, he said, needed Egypt's help.

Frustrated by years of quarrelling with Ethiopia over his country's life-and-death share of the Nile waters, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi could not pass up on the opportunity to make Ethiopia sweat.

The two Arab League members signed a military co-operation agreement on August 14 and, less than two weeks later, Egyptian C-130 transport palnes flew arms, hardware and elite troops to Mogadishu.

The presence of Egyptian troops in Somalia, contend analysts, could persuade Ethiopia to show some flexibility and enter a legally-binding deal on the filling and operation of a giant Nile dam being built by Addis Ababa that Cairo sees as an existential threat to its share of the river's waters.

“It would not have been possible for a nation [Egypt] with so much history and rights to Nile waters to remain silent when faced with the absurdity that Ethiopia has shown us in recent years,” said Mustafa Al Fiqy, a retired career Egyptian diplomat and a prominent analyst.

“You have to show the other side that you have tools that exist although you may not necessarily use. Don't let them feel comfortable,” he counselled. “Our strategic patience when it comes to Ethiopia has run out.”

As well as its belief that the Ethiopian contingent on its territory has not been effective, Somalia is quarrelling with Ethiopia over a preliminary deal its landlocked neighbour signed this year with Somaliland to lease coastal land in exchange for possible recognition of its independence from Somalia.

Somalia called the Ethiopia-Somaliland deal an assault on its sovereignty and said it would block it by all means necessary. It has also threatened to send home the estimated 10,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia if the deal is not cancelled.

For its part, Egypt said it planned to apply to the African Union to be part of a new peacekeeping force in Somalia which, as the host nation, would approve. But it is not clear whether the Egyptian troops already on the ground in Somalia will serve as the nucleus of Cairo's peacekeeping contingent.

What is clear though is that Egyptian troops are now posted in proximity to Ethiopian forces in Somalia and across the border in Ethiopia itself.

There has been no official Egyptian announcement on the sending of arms and troops in Somalia although images of the Egyptian C-130 transport planes sitting on the tarmac at Mogadishu airport have been widely shared online together with those of the commandos.

Analysts whose views reflect those of the government have been trying to play down the significance of the Egyptian move or dismiss the potential of armed clashes with Ethiopian troops.

“Our objective is to raise the efficiency of the Somali armed forces. We are not there to fight a war,” said Samir Farrag, a retired army general who is now a prominent military analyst known to be close to the government.

“We are there to help the Somali army stand on its two feet, safeguard the nation's national security and control every inch of Somali territory.”

The move, however, angered Ethiopia, which warned that the volatile Horn of Africa was entering uncharted waters and, without mentioning Egypt by name, said the intervention of outside forces there would destabilise the region.

Egypt countered by complaining in a letter to the UN Security Council about what it called Ethiopia's unilateral policies over the Gerd.

“Egypt has negotiated in good faith [with Ethiopia] for 13 years. The negotiations have been halted after it became clear to everyone that Addis Ababa wanted them to continue indefinitely as a cover while it created a de facto situation on the ground,” the letter said.

Heightened tension between Egypt and Ethiopia would further destabilise the Horn of Africa, as well as the larger East Africa region, already shaken by a 16-month civil war in Sudan that has created a severe displacement crisis, with two million of the 10 million displaced having fled to neighbouring nations.

Attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, have contributed to the instability in the region, with world powers vying for a foothold in the strategic stretch of water and Egypt struggling to cope with a sharp reduction in its revenue from the Suez Canal, a man-made waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, as a result of the attacks.

“I don't think that the Egyptian move will necessarily set off a war in the Horn of Africa, but it's indicative of persistent tension there,” said Michael Hanna, a New York-based Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.

As a means to pressure Ethiopia into a more flexible approach towards the dam dispute, Egypt has over the past decade sought to forge closer relations with some of Ethiopia's neighbours as well as fellow Nile basin nations, lending them its expertise in a variety of fields and occasionally sending aid. Mr El Sisi has also travelled in sub-Saharan Africa more than any of his predecessors.

That strategy was also meant to counter the narrative Ethiopia has been spreading of Egypt selfishly taking the lion's share of the Nile waters without paying heed to the needs of less developed Nile basin nations.

Ethiopia views the dam as crucial to the impoverished nation’s development and has repeatedly sought to assure downstream Egypt and Sudan that they would not be impacted by it.

Egypt said it had not been effected by five annual fillings of the water reservoir behind the Gerd, but maintains that’s the case only because the rain over the Ethiopian highlands has been plentiful.

Egypt has, on the other hand, secured a military centre in Djibouti, a neighbour of Ethiopia that overlooks the southern entrance of the Red Sea. It has also struck an alliance with Eritrea, a traditional foe of Ethiopia whose secession from its larger neighbour in 1991 left the latter a landlocked nation.

Egypt also saw an opportunity to put pressure on Ethiopia just before the Tigray war erupted when a dormant Ethiopian-Sudanese border dispute turned violent, with scores killed from both sides in a series of clashes.

Egypt and Sudan rushed to sign a military co-operation agreement as Cairo pledged to come to the defence of its southern neighbour against any attack. Sudan and Ethiopia later agreed to settle their dispute through negotiations and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited Khartoum, where he received a warm welcome from Sudanese military leader Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan.