A defense minister from Ethiopia travels to Somalia as a show of peace

According to a senior official in Mogadishu, Ethiopia’s defense minister visited Somalia on Thursday. This was the first bilateral visit since ties soured a year ago over Ethiopia’s proposal to establish a naval station in a breakaway Somali province.

Aisha Mohammed Mussa, the Ethiopian defense minister, confirmed her visit to Somalia in a message to Reuters, but Somalia’s state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar, did not specify what she was there to discuss. A request for comment from Ethiopia’s government was not answered.

Mogadishu has threatened to withdraw Ethiopia’s up to 10,000 troops fighting Islamist terrorists from al Shabaab from Somalia unless Addis Ababa renounces an agreement it made with the breakaway Somaliland region a year ago.

In exchange for potential recognition of Somaliland’s independence, the preliminary agreement proposed for Somaliland to lease a portion of its coastline for a commercial port and Ethiopian naval station.

Since 1991, Somaliland has had practical autonomy; nonetheless, no other nation has acknowledged its independence. Mogadishu referred to its agreement with Ethiopia as an act of invasion and views it as an essential component of its territory.

Following discussions in Turkey, Somalia and Ethiopia decided on December 11 to cooperate in resolving the conflict and start technical negotiations by the end of February, following months of intensifying rhetoric and fruitless international mediation attempts.

Ethiopian troops are in Somalia on a bilateral basis and as part of an African Union peacekeeping mission. According to regional powers, the war against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate that has been conducting an insurgency since 2007, would be significantly weakened if they were to withdraw.

Concerns of further instability in the Horn of Africa have also been raised by the conflict, as Somalia has responded to the Somaliland agreement by strengthening its ties with Ethiopia’s longstanding adversaries, Egypt and Eritrea.