Last August, the African Union Peace and Security Council approved the proposal for the formation of the new AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), set to replace the African Union Transitional Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) as of Jan. 1, 2025, established in 2022 to replace in turn the previous African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which began in 2007 to support the country’s stabilization process after the long interlude of civil war and Islamist radicalism.
The final approval of the mission is to be determined by the UN Security Council by Nov. 15, confirming its composition (11,146 military, 85 civilian and 680 police officers), its time horizon (five years) and sanctioning its mandate and operational modalities, which will be more defined in nature and with more specific functions in favor of Somali security forces.
The priority of the new mission will be to increase the operational capacity of the Somali military with a specific mandate – not present in previous ones – to also protect the civilian population in the face of the presence of an immediate threat from al Shabaab jihadist.
The AUSSOM mission, however, is about to get underway in the context of a phase characterized by new regional tensions that threaten to undermine its effectiveness, once again turning the Horn of Africa into a fault zone of the many unresolved conflicts that crisscross the north-central regions of the African continent.
Among these, especially those dividing Somalia and Ethiopia, on the one hand, and Egypt and Ethiopia, on the other, could significantly affect the new mission’s ability to benefit country stability. The first of these crises was generated by the memorandum signed last January between the government of Ethiopia and the government of Somaliland – over which Somalia claims full sovereignty – and which would appear to provide for the possibility of granting the former the use for a period of 50 years of a naval base in exchange for the latter’s recognition of independence. A memorandum that has generated the ire of the Somali federal government and triggered a new phase of tension between the two countries. The second crisis, on the other hand, is the one dividing Egypt and Ethiopia on the merits of the issue related to the development and management of the Renaissance Dam (GERD), which the Addis Ababa government has built on the Blue Nile in the Benishangul Gomuz region, and which Egypt considers an existential threat to its national security, especially in the absence of an agreement that could regulate the management of the facility’s water flows.
Ethiopia, which used to participate in the AMISOM and ATMIS missions, may thus not participate in the new AUSSOM mission, while Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre categorically ruled it out on August 22, saying that in the absence of a formal step toward the cancellation of the memorandum with Somaliland, participation of Ethiopian forces in the new mission is unthinkable.
On the contrary, Egypt promptly took advantage of this, offering the African Union its own military contribution to the new mission in early August, then inviting Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed to Cairo the following August 14, with whom it signed a bilateral military cooperation agreement, the details of which were not disclosed but which was in addition to the offer of support from the AUSSOM mission.
In this context, Egypt reportedly assured that it would send a total of about 10,000 military personnel to Somalia, half of them to be included in the framework of the AUSSOM mission and the other half as part of a bilateral security agreement between the two countries, as part of an independent mission.
The first officers of this independent component thus arrived in Somalia last August 27, aboard two C-130 transport aircraft of the Egyptian Air Force, which unloaded personnel, equipment and assets destined to be deployed in the Hiran region, the Hirshabelle, the Southwestern Federated States and the Galmudug.
A deployment that, when fully deployed, will turn Egypt into Somalia’s main military partner, but one that risks distorting the nature of military support for Somali stability and the fight against al Shabaab formations, instead fueling a new and potentially serious crisis with Ethiopia, which has already expressed its concerns and denounced the arrival of the Egyptian military as an attempt to exploit Somalia to destabilize the region.
As a result, the government in Addis Ababa reiterated its call for intervention and mediation to the African Union and the United Nations, while in contrast, Egypt sent a letter to the UN Security Council on Sept. 2 denouncing the unilateral start of the fifth phase of filling the reservoir of the GERD dam, claiming that it would take all necessary measures to ensure Egyptian national security. A clear reference to the deployment of its military units in Somalia, with which it was announced the next day that joint military exercises will be held by September.
