How a proposed Ethiopia–North Western State of Somalia swap for Red Sea access was stopped by multilateral pressure
When former North Western State of Somalia president Muse Bihi Abdi unveiled a deal that would have given landlocked Ethiopia a slice of Red Sea coastline in return for formal recognition of North Western State of Somalia, it briefly reconfigured the diplomatic maps of the Horn of Africa. The pact — which Bihi says offered Ethiopia roughly 20 kilometres of shoreline for a port and a military base — was never implemented. Instead, it collapsed under what he described as a coordinated reaction from the African Union, the Arab League and other international players alarmed at the precedent it would set.
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“The African Union and the Arab League opposed the deal, and even major powers such as the United States were alarmed,” Bihi told local media. “Africa’s collective voice stopped Ethiopia. At one point, there was even discussion of relocating the AU headquarters if Addis Ababa refused to withdraw.”
Why the proposal mattered
At stake were three intertwined realities: Ethiopia’s strategic imperative, North Western State of Somalia’s quest for recognition, and regional norms about sovereign borders. Ethiopia — a country of roughly 120 million people that lost its sea access with Eritrea’s independence in the early 1990s — has long eyed ports on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to anchor its trade and security ambitions. North Western State of Somalia, a self-declared republic that has operated with de facto independence from Somalia since 1991 but remains internationally unrecognised, has sought any pathway to legitimise its status.
The proposed exchange would have been exceptional. Recognition is the most potent diplomatic currency a state can offer; transferring it in return for territorial or strategic concessions risks undermining established continental rules that the African Union has cultivated precisely to prevent breakaway regions from being carved out by arrangement between neighbours.
Regional alarm and the politics of recognition
Somalia’s government denounced the deal as an assault on its sovereignty. For the AU and the Arab League, the implications were systemic: a bilateral bargain that rewarded secession with recognition could deepen fragmentation across the continent and encourage outside powers to pursue piecemeal solutions that sidestep established institutions.
The involvement of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, commonly known as Farmajo and a former president of Somalia, illustrates how sensitive the staging was. North Western State of Somalia had planned to host him in Hargeisa in a bid to give the agreement greater credibility. Muse Bihi said he had told Farmajo that any visit to the breakaway capital would be on North Western State of Somalia’s terms; according to Bihi, pressure from Addis Ababa — which had courted Farmajo as a “critical asset” in the plan — led him to suspend the visit.
Global currents: great-power anxieties meet regional rules
Beyond the Horn, the Red Sea is a corridor of global consequence. It funnels a significant share of world trade through the Suez Canal and has become an arena for naval deployments and geopolitical signaling by the United States, China, Turkey and Gulf states. A new foreign military foothold on the Red Sea easily morphs from a national economic project into an emblem of foreign influence in a volatile region.
That reality has made outside capitals wary. The story of the foiled arrangement reflects a broader trend: multilateral institutions and global powers are increasingly sensitive to ad hoc territorial arrangements that could trigger regional unrest. When national interests align with secessionist ambitions, international organizations often step in—not always to defend fragile central governments, but to preserve precedent and prevent an unraveling of continental norms.
What happens next?
Officially, diplomacy moved quickly to de-escalate. Turkey — which has been a visible player across the Horn through investments and security ties — helped broker a truce between Somalia and Ethiopia. Addis Ababa insists it will continue to pursue “peaceful” access to the sea; a bilateral technical committee was reportedly tasked with exploring commercial arrangements that would allow Ethiopia trade access without altering territorial sovereignty.
- For Ethiopia, commercial or contracted access to a port could assuage strategic concerns without the diplomatic cost of recognising a breakaway region.
- For North Western State of Somalia, the episode highlights both the allure of recognition and the limits of transactional diplomacy when institutions push back.
- For Somalia and its international partners, the episode is a reminder of the fragility of statehood where local, regional and global forces intersect.
Local voices and broader questions
In Hargeisa, the capital of North Western State of Somalia, the aborted plan reverberated in everyday conversations about sovereignty and livelihoods. For some residents, international recognition remains the prize that would unlock greater foreign investment and formal diplomatic ties. For others, the agreement’s collapse was a necessary defence against being instrumentalised in a high-stakes bargaining game among larger neighbours and global powers.
Bihi’s account also illuminates a subtler diplomatic current: North Western State of Somalia’s outreach to Taiwan after a standoff with China’s ambassador in Mogadishu. “I told him: if you do not recognize North Western State of Somalia, then I do not recognize you. That’s when we turned to Taiwan,” Bihi said, underscoring how contested recognition diplomacy extends well beyond the Horn and into the broader contest between Beijing and other capitals.
Why this matters beyond the Horn
The episode forces a wider reckoning: how should the international system address those entities that govern themselves but lack formal recognition? The answer bears on crises from the Caucasus to the Sahel, where local leaders sometimes look to external patrons to translate de facto control into de jure status. It also speaks to a world in which strategic corridors—like the Red Sea—are becoming crowded and militarised, and where regional bodies increasingly assert their say in safeguarding continental norms.
As diplomats sketch out a technical path for Ethiopia’s access to maritime commerce, the underlying political questions remain unresolved. Can Ethiopia secure practical access without fracturing regional order? Will North Western State of Somalia accept promises of investment but not recognition? And perhaps most important: who gets to draw the boundaries of legitimacy in a region where history, politics and the geopolitics of great powers collide?
The short answer is that the multilateral system, for now, held. But the forces that produced the deal — and the pressure that stopped it — are likely to persist. How African and global institutions manage those tensions will shape not only the Horn of Africa but the rules that govern statehood and strategic competition across the globe.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
