Photograph: Google Satellite
The Governments of the United States of America, the State of Qatar, the Republic of Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom met in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday for the seventh meeting of the Somalia Quint.
The Quint states have expressed their support for Somalia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in their joint statement released yesterday.
The representatives of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) have also participated in the meeting.
The states have agreed to support the security forces and defence institutions of Somalia, including improving “coordination of international training to facilitate more effective near-term operations”.
The Quint states have also agreed to make their eighth meeting in Mogadishu.
A diplomatic tension in the horn
The diplomatic tension between Ethiopia and Somalia has intensified since PM Abiy Ahmed signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the president of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, Muse Bihi Abdi on the 1st of January 2024 in Addis Ababa to access from and to the sea of Somaliland and to lease a 20km parts of its coastline for 50 years to build a naval base.
Somaliland, a former colony of Britain, has been a self-governing region of Somalia for more than three decades. However, its claim of independence is not recognized by Mogadishu’s government or any foreign government.
Somalia sees the MoU as an act of “aggression” and denounced the deal as a “violation of Somalia’s sovereignty”, accused Ethiopia in the Security Council of “unlawfully crossings into Somalia’s borders,” and entered into a bilateral military pact with Turkey and Egypt.
Somalia signed the Defense and Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with Turkey in February 2024 in the name of “fighting terrorism”, signed between Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler and his Somali counterpart, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur in Ankara.
Ankara and Mogadishu have also signed an oil and gas cooperation deal in March that allows the Turkish Armed Forces to be a partner in Somalia’s maritime zone for the coming ten years and enables Turkey to receive 30 per cent of revenue from Somalia’s exclusive economic zone.
Similarly, Egypt and Somalia signed a defence agreement in mid-August 2024.
Somalia said Ethiopian troops would not be part of the AU force from next January and keens Ethiopia to withdraw about 5-7,000 soldiers stationed in several regions under separate bilateral agreements, according to a BBC report.
