Turkey mediates deal between Somalia and Ethiopia

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed have agreed to get into technical talks over landlocked Ethiopia getting a port facility in Somalia, which could be operated jointly by the two countries.

The talks between the two leaders was hosted by Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was a joint statement declaring the future project that Somalia and Ethiopia had agreed on. Erdogan said that the statement was future-oriented and not about the past.

Somalia and Ethiopia were at loggerheads when Ethiopia wanted to lease a port in Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia. Somaliland has been functioning on its own since 1991, but Somalia has not accepted its separate status. Ethiopia gaining a port there through an international agreement would have conferred legitimacy to Somaliland.

Somalia did not like the prospect, and it had threatened to expel Ethiopian troops stationed in Somalia to fight militants. Somalia was planning to move closer to Egypt, which was not on good terms with Ethiopia because of the latter’s plan to build a dam over the Nile near the source.

Egypt and others fear that the dam would affect the flow of water at the lower end, and it would affect the Aswan Dam built over the Nile in Egypt. Ethiopia has been assuring that this would not happen. The Somalia-Egypt get-together would have polarised the region, and increased the tensions. Turkey did not want to lose its extended sphere of influence in Somalia.

Turkey has been playing the role of the mediator in the region of Horn of Africa and it has been offering technical and economic assistance to Somalia. Turkey is also interested in access to Somalia’s ports as it is an important international maritime route.

For more than 20 years, the sea off the coast of Somalia has been dominated by pirates, disrupting movement of ships and merchandise. The waters have been monitored by the navies of the United States and also India for some time now. There have been instances of ships being seized and ransom demanded, but the frequency of disruptions has gone down.

This only goes to show that internal instability in the countries of the region and neighbourhood rivalries encourage outlaws to take control. The Turkey-mediated agreement between Somalia and Ethiopia will send out a clear signal that sovereign governments in the region are in control, and there is no scope for disruptive activities of the pirates.

The importance of maritime routes does not get the attention it deserves. Most of the merchandise movements between countries and continents are on the sea-routes, and the Indian Ocean maritime routes from South China Sea to that of Horn of Africa at the far western end of the Indian Ocean are crucial. So any agreement at the ports of call on this long route is a welcome development. The cooperation between states becomes an important issue.

The agreement that has been reached between Somalia and Ethiopia could be a harbinger of better neighbourly relations in a crucial region. And this should indeed be the model for other regions as well. National rivalries could spoil the prospects of wellbeing of all the countries. Europeans had learnt it after two drastic world wars and the death of millions, and they set up the ambitious European Union (EU).

The EU is not functioning as smoothly as it was expected but it does prevent wars over economic issues. In Africa, it is the inter-state rivalries that have become an obstacle to economic development, and even political stability. The Ethiopia-Somalia agreement could serve as a good example of cooperation.