Opinion
Sovereignty à la Carte: Ethiopia, Somaliland, and the Politics of Selective Principle
December 28, 2025
By Ghidewon Abay Asmerom
https://redseabeacon.com/sovereignty-a- ... principle/
Introduction
Few principles have been more central to Africa’s postcolonial political order, than the sanctity of inherited borders. Enshrined in continental doctrine after independence, territorial integrity was never merely a legal abstraction. It was a moral settlement, forged to prevent the continent from sliding into perpetual conflict driven by revisionist claims and power asymmetries. In recent days, that principle has returned sharply to the foreground following Israel’s unilateral recognition of Somaliland, an act widely condemned across Africa and the broader region as a violation of international law and African norms.¹
Yet the clarity of that reaction has also exposed a deeper contradiction in the Horn of Africa. While invoking sovereignty and legality to denounce Israel’s move, some Ethiopian voices have sought to redirect attention away from Ethiopia’s own conduct toward Somalia and Somaliland. What has emerged is a politics of selective principle, in which sovereignty is defended or discounted according to immediate strategic convenience. Ethiopia’s posture on Somaliland reflects not legal consistency but treaty amnesia, historical erasure, and a troubling willingness to instrumentalize African norms while hollowing them out in practice.
Selective Outrage and Strategic Deflection
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland prompted an unusually unified response. Somalia condemned the move as a direct assault on its sovereignty. The African Union Commission rejected any recognition of Somaliland. IGAD, the Arab League, the Gulf Council, and the Council of Islamic States echoed these objections; warning that unilateral recognition violates foundational principles of international and African order.² This response did not arise from ignorance of Somaliland’s internal history or from denial of its relative stability. It arose from an understanding that external endorsement of secession without the consent of the parent state destabilizes Africa’s fragile legal order.
That consensus, however, has been swiftly repurposed by certain Ethiopian quarters. Rather than engaging the substance of the regional objection, they have framed the moment as a moral indictment of Eritrea. This maneuver is not a defense of Somalia or African norms. It is a strategic deflection designed to obscure Ethiopia’s own actions, most notably its January 2024 memorandum of understanding with Somaliland authorities. That agreement, which explicitly linked access to Somaliland’s coastline with prospective diplomatic recognition, pushed the Horn of Africa toward open confrontation.³ What is presented as principled legal reasoning collapses under scrutiny once history, treaty law, and Africa’s own constitutional framework are taken seriously.
Silence, Projection, and Strategic Calculation
For six decades, African stability has rested on a hard-won consensus: inherited colonial borders are inviolable. Codified by the Organization of African Unity and reaffirmed in the African Union Constitutive Act, this doctrine served as a bulwark against irredentism and border wars.⁴ Ethiopia understands this framework, intimately. It has consistently invoked colonial treaties to defend its own territorial integrity, including in demands involving Somali populations within the Ethiopian Somali Region.
Yet when ports become the prize, that doctrine suddenly weakens. Berbera in January 2024, and increasingly Zeila in subsequent discourse, reveal a pattern in which borders are treated as sacred when they protect Ethiopian sovereignty and negotiable when they constrain Ethiopian ambitions. This is not legal reinterpretation. It is selective memory.
Somaliland’s claim, whether accepted or rejected, rests on a clear historical fact. The former British Somaliland Protectorate was a distinct colonial entity that attained independence on 26 June 1960 and entered a voluntary union with Italian Somaliland days later. Ethiopia is well aware of this history. Nevertheless, in January 2024 it chose to negotiate with a non-recognized authority over coastline and naval access without the consent of Mogadishu, while tying that access to the prospect of diplomatic recognition.⁵ Somalia rejected the arrangement as illegal, and its parliament formally nullified it.⁶
This was not an abstract policy discussion. Ethiopia is a neighboring power and a state with forces operating on Somali soil. Negotiating access to Somali territory outside Somalia’s sovereign authority, constitutes a direct violation of international law and African norms. Attempts to equate this act with recognition decisions by distant third parties, rest on a false equivalence. Ethiopia was not merely commenting on Somaliland’s status. It was actively reshaping the Horn’s security geography in its own favor.
The contradiction deepens when Ethiopia’n’s Prosperity Party political surrogates accuse Eritrea of “
silence” in response to Israel’s recognition, while Ethiopia itself has issued no public condemnation. Addis Ababa’s silence has been conspicuous and widely interpreted as strategic. Ethiopia has long eyed Somaliland as a place from which to grab land without consequence and regardless of its legal status, and the Berbera corridor has taken a central place in Ethiopian trade and security planning. Recognition strengthens the durability of Ethiopian arrangements and reduces political risk surrounding long-term logistics and basing ambitions.
This means silence in this context, is not neutrality. It is calculated approval. To denounce Eritrea’s restraint, while maintaining one’s own silence is not moral consistency. It is projection.
The Making of Somaliland and The Long Shadow of Intervention
That projection is particularly striking, given Ethiopia’s direct historical entanglement in the events that culminated in Somaliland’s current status. The Somali National Movement (SNM), rooted in the Isaaq clan of northern Somalia, emerged in the early 1980s and operated for years from bases inside Ethiopia, conducting guerrilla warfare against the Siad Barre regime with Addis Ababa’s knowledge and tolerance.⁷ This was not incidental hospitality. It reflected a long-standing Ethiopian strategy of managing Somali politics through proxy warfare in order to weaken the Somali state while preserving Ethiopian leverage.
When Ethiopia abruptly reversed course and signed the 1988 accord with
Mengistu Haile Mariam, committing both states to cease support for insurgent movements, the result was not de-escalation. It was acceleration.⁸ Facing the imminent loss of Ethiopian rear bases, the SNM launched large-scale offensives in the north. The Barre regime responded with a brutal counterinsurgency, that devastated urban centers and hastened state collapse.⁹ By May 1991, after consolidating control over the territory of the former British Somaliland Protectorate, the SNM declared the 1960 union void and proclaimed the Republic of Somaliland.¹⁰
Ethiopia’s narrative further omits its sustained footprint in Somali instability. The Ethiopia–Somalia conflict is rooted in colonial boundary-making, post-independence wars, and decades of reciprocal proxy warfare.¹¹ In the post-1991 era, Ethiopian interventions in Somalia culminated in the 2006 invasion that dismantled the Islamic Courts Union and contributed to the rise of al-Shabaab.¹²
Against this record, Ethiopia’s self-presentation as a misunderstood stabilizer lacks credibility. Five decades of intervention and security management have produced chronic fragmentation, rather than Somali sovereignty. Reviving discredited allegations against Eritrea from a sanctions era whose findings were later revised, does not constitute analysis. It constitutes narrative laundering.
Accusations of Eritrean silence must be read in this broader context. Eritrea did not issue a public statement, in January 2024. Instead, it engaged in quiet diplomacy during President
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s visit from 8 to 10 January. Silence here reflected discipline, not evasion. Eritrea’s position has been consistent: Somalia’s future must be determined by Somalis without external engineering or proxy manipulation.
The deeper driver of Ethiopia’s conduct lies elsewhere. Ethiopia’s geography has not changed, but the pressures surrounding it have intensified. Nile Basin tensions, and internal political crises have elevated its landlocked status from inconvenience to perceived entitlement.¹³ Rather than pursuing lawful regional frameworks, Ethiopia has opted for unilateral shortcuts and redirected scrutiny outward when challenged.
Conclusion
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is destabilizing because it seeks to finalize a contested territorial question through unilateral external endorsement, in defiance of the UN Charter and African norms.¹⁴ Ethiopia’s January 2024 agreement with Somaliland is destabilizing for a parallel reason. It treats Somali sovereignty as conditional, when Ethiopian anxiety rises. One cannot credibly condemn the former while excusing the latter.
Africa’s border doctrine endured because it was applied consistently, even when inconvenient. The moment states treat it as optional, valid when it protects them and negotiable when it constrains them, the Horn of Africa risks a return to force disguised as diplomacy. This is not a question of Eritrean inconsistency. It is a question of Ethiopian duplicity.
Somalia, battered by decades of external manipulation, deserves neither partition through recognition nor barter through memorandum, least of all by a neighbor determined to convert strategic pressure into sovereign entitlement.
Endnotes
1. African Union Commission,
The AUC Chairperson Rejects Any Recognition of Somaliland, December 26, 2025.
2. Reuters, “Israel Recognises Somaliland, Somalia’s Breakaway Region, as Independent State,” December 26, 2025; Associated Press, “More Countries Reject Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland,” December 27, 2025; PBS NewsHour, “African Regional Bodies Reject Somaliland’s Recognition,” December 27, 2025.
3. Reuters, “Ethiopia Signs Pact to Use Somaliland’s Red Sea Port,” January 1, 2024.
4. African Union,
Constitutive Act of the African Union (Addis Ababa, 2000).
5. Associated Press, “Ethiopia and a Breakaway Somali Region Sign a Deal Giving Ethiopia Sea Access,” January 1, 2024.
6. Reuters, “Somalia President Signs Law Nullifying Ethiopia–Somaliland Port Deal,” January 6, 2024.
7. Central Intelligence Agency,
Somalia: Opposition Groups and External Support, CIA-RDP87T00289R000100460001-8; Mark Bradbury,
Background to the Somali War (Oxford: Oxfam, 1994), 83–90; Ioan M. Lewis,
Understanding Somalia and Somaliland (London: Hurst, 2008), 74–78.
8. Gebru Tareke,
The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 214–219.
9. Africa Watch,
Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People (New York, 1990); Lewis,
Understanding Somalia and Somaliland, 78–82.
10. International Crisis Group,
Somaliland: Time for African Union Leadership, Africa Report no. 110 (2006), 4–7; Mark Bradbury,
Becoming Somaliland (Oxford: James Currey, 2008), 59–66.
11. Mark Bradbury,
Background to the Somali War.
12. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, “From Al-Itihaad to Al-Shabaab,”
Third World Quarterly (2018);
Council on Foreign Relations, “Al-Shabaab,” December 6, 2022.
13. ACLED, “Ethiopia’s Quest for Sea Access,” January 2024; Reuters, “Somalia Rejects Port Deal Between Ethiopia and Somaliland,” January 2, 2024.
14. United Nations,
Charter of the United Nations, art. 2(4).
Bibliography
• African Union.
Constitutive Act of the African Union. Addis Ababa, 2000.
• African Union Commission.
The AUC Chairperson Rejects Any Recognition of Somaliland. December 26, 2025.
• Africa Watch.
Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People. New York, 1990.
• ACLED. “Ethiopia’s Quest for Sea Access.” January 2024.
• Bradbury, Mark.
Background to the Somali War. Oxford: Oxfam, 1994.
• Bradbury, Mark.
Becoming Somaliland. Oxford: James Currey, 2008.
• Central Intelligence Agency.
Somalia: Opposition Groups and External Support. CIA-RDP87T00289R000100460001-8.
• Ingiriis, Mohamed Haji. “From Al-Itihaad to Al-Shabaab.”
Third World Quarterly (2018).
• Lewis, Ioan M.
Understanding Somalia and Somaliland. London: Hurst, 2008.
• Reuters. Various reports, January 2024.
• United Nations.
Charter of the United Nations. New York, 1945.
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