The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia issued a clear and principled press statement on 5 October addressing the El-Alamein Joint Declaration signed the day before by the leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia. Although the declaration makes no direct reference to Ethiopia, its four core positions engage matters of established Ethiopian interest and responsibility. The text affirms support for Sudan’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity. It rejects any recognition of Somaliland as inconsistent with the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia. It asserts that governance of the Red Sea remains the exclusive preserve of littoral states. It further rejects unilateral measures affecting the Nile while invoking international law on transboundary rivers. Ethiopia’s statement responds by grounding regional discussion in the enduring geographic and historical facts that define the Horn, affirming the country’s legitimate role in both the management of the Nile and the security architecture of the Red Sea.

The declaration’s language on transboundary rivers rejects unilateral measures affecting shared water resources. This formulation originates in Egyptian policy designed to maintain control over Nile utilization. The Ethiopian statement responds by recording that the highlands of Ethiopia generate approximately eighty-five percent of the Nile’s total flow through the Abay River. Any workable arrangement for managing these waters must therefore incorporate Ethiopia’s right to develop resources originating within its territory. Between 1929 and 1959 Egypt secured bilateral agreements with Sudan that allocated the bulk of the water and asserted a veto over upstream projects. Those agreements excluded Ethiopia and later served as the basis for systematic opposition to international financing of Ethiopian infrastructure. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam proceeded solely through domestic bonds and public contributions, establishing a non-consumptive hydroelectric facility that ended the prior pattern of external blockage. Continued insistence on zero-sum control of the river ignores the established principle of equitable and reasonable utilization that underpins modern basin cooperation.

Egyptian policy toward Ethiopia has followed a consistent pattern of containment since the mid-twentieth century. From the 1950s onward Cairo provided organizational space, media platforms, and political sanctuary for Eritrean separatist groups, including the Eritrean Liberation Front whose formation was announced in the Egyptian capital in 1960. The practical effect was to divert Ethiopian military and fiscal resources into prolonged internal conflict, reducing the capacity available for major development works on the Blue Nile. Contemporary Egyptian activity extends this approach through bilateral defense agreements, joint exercises, and intelligence arrangements with states that border Ethiopia. The same government that invokes sovereignty to oppose Ethiopian maritime access has for decades supported mechanisms that weaken Ethiopian internal cohesion.

The declaration asserts that responsibility for Red Sea security belongs exclusively to littoral states. The Ethiopian statement rejects this boundary by noting that the country’s nearest border lies approximately thirty miles from the Red Sea coast and that Ethiopia’s population exceeds one hundred twenty million. As the largest economy and primary source of commercial traffic in the region, Ethiopia generates the bulk of demand for ports serving the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Exclusion of this stakeholder from maritime security arrangements leaves the framework without the demographic weight and logistical capacity needed to secure approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb. The littoral states currently lack the combined naval assets, internal coherence, and sustained logistics required for independent enforcement. A security structure organized around political exclusion rather than geographic and economic integration therefore contains built-in enforcement shortfalls.

Eritrea and Sudan introduce further inconsistencies into the sovereignty claims advanced at El-Alamein. Eritrean statements routinely affirm the inviolability of borders and non-interference. Operational practice after the November 2022 Pretoria Agreement has included continued military presence in Ethiopian border areas and efforts to establish unilateral buffer zones inside Ethiopian territory. In the current conflict that erupted in late September 2026, Ethiopian federal authorities and regional leaders have reported that Eritrean troops are actively fighting alongside the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and other members of the seven-group coalition known as the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival against the federal government.

An Afar regional official told Al Jazeera that Eritrean forces were participating in fighting in that region, while Ethiopia’s army chief publicly accused Eritrea of providing backing to the rebel alliance. These reports, documented by the International Crisis Group in its September 2026 CrisisWatch update on Eritrea, underscore the contradiction between Asmara’s formal sovereignty rhetoric and its operational conduct. A government whose forces are reported to be engaged inside Ethiopian territory alongside groups seeking to overthrow the federal administration possesses limited standing to enforce territorial norms on others.

Sudan’s record along the shared border with Ethiopia reveals a clear inconsistency with the sovereignty principles advanced at El-Alamein. In November 2020, while Ethiopian forces were concentrated on northern operations, the Sudanese Armed Forces advanced into the fertile Al Fashaga triangle and occupied areas long cultivated by Ethiopian farmers under the soft-border arrangements maintained through the 1972 exchange of notes and subsequent practical understandings. Sudanese units rapidly consolidated control over agricultural lands previously farmed by Ethiopian communities, expelling residents and altering the long-standing status quo that had preserved local livelihoods while formal demarcation remained unresolved.

Ethiopia responded through diplomatic channels and continued advocacy for peaceful, African-led mechanisms under IGAD and the African Union rather than reciprocal military advances into Sudanese territory. The contrast is instructive. Sudan elected to exploit a moment of Ethiopian internal focus to alter facts on the ground by force, while Ethiopia has consistently channelled border disagreements into negotiation and regional mediation frameworks. This unilateral territorial action by Sudan undercuts the summit’s claims of principled support for sovereignty and institutional unity.

The same tension becomes even more consequential in Somalia, where the declaration invokes sovereignty and institutional unity while overlooking Ethiopia’s longstanding role in sustaining both. The declaration’s treatment of Somalia therefore presents the clearest divergence between its stated principles and the regional realities that have shaped their survival. Somalia’s ability to preserve its federal institutions and territorial integrity has for more than two decades depended in significant part on Ethiopian security involvement. External military support has sustained the Federal Government of Somalia since the early 2000s, with Ethiopian forces playing a particularly persistent role in the country’s most contested areas.

Under AMISOM and later ATMIS, Ethiopian deployments concentrated in Bay, Bakool and Gedo, sectors where other contingents were often less active. These forces absorbed sustained combat losses while maintaining the territorial and logistical links on which the federal government depended. Ethiopian policy consequently treated the survival of a functioning Somali state as directly connected to Ethiopia’s own border security. Somalia’s participation in a regional declaration centred on sovereignty while excluding one of the states that has repeatedly borne the operational burden of protecting that sovereignty therefore exposes a central contradiction in the framework.

The transition from ATMIS to AUSSOM on 1 January 2025 further demonstrated the importance of operational continuity. Al-Shabaab launched a coordinated offensive in February 2025 across Hiiraan, Middle Shabelle, Lower Shabelle and parts of South West State, reversing important territorial gains made during the 2022–2023 government offensive through sustained attrition and the restoration of rural control. Ethiopian units remaining under AUSSOM and bilateral arrangements continued to hold forward positions, conduct joint operations with Somali forces and defend logistical corridors around Baidoa and other strategically important areas.

This continuity matters to the argument of the El-Alamein declaration because the security of the Somali state cannot be separated from the actors that have actually maintained its territorial and institutional resilience. Political efforts in Mogadishu to limit or restructure Ethiopian participation therefore unfolded alongside the security responsibilities those forces continued to perform. The resulting tension illustrates the broader problem exposed by Ethiopia’s 5 October statement. Regional arrangements can formally invoke institutional unity and sovereignty, yet their effectiveness still depends on cooperation with Ethiopia where the security burden is greatest.

The subsequent expansion of Egyptian participation within AUSSOM adds a further complication. Egypt brings military capacity and can contribute to Somalia’s security, but its strategic relationship with Mogadishu has developed alongside the Egypt-Ethiopia dispute over the Nile and wider competition over Ethiopia’s regional position. The arrival of another external military actor whose strategic interests intersect with Ethiopia’s introduces a broader geopolitical dimension into a theatre whose immediate security challenge remains Al-Shabaab.

Ethiopia’s long operational presence, established intelligence relationships and direct security interests in Somalia give it a different strategic stake from states entering the theatre primarily through bilateral partnerships. The issue is therefore not whether Somalia should diversify its security partnerships. It is whether a regional framework built around Somali sovereignty and security can function coherently while politically marginalizing a neighbouring state that has repeatedly contributed forces, logistics and territorial knowledge to the preservation of that same sovereignty. Somalia’s signature at El-Alamein thus reinforces, rather than resolves, the contradiction identified by Ethiopia’s statement.

Taken together, the El-Alamein declaration unites four states around the single objective of limiting Ethiopian influence while offering limited shared capacity for implementation. The signatories lack integrated economies, interoperable military forces, and internal stability sufficient to sustain the regional claims they advance. The practical challenges facing the Horn, including insurgency, maritime insecurity, and state fragility, require arrangements that incorporate the region’s largest demographic and economic actor. Frameworks organized solely around exclusion omit the geographic and commercial realities that determine security outcomes.

By Bezawit Eshetu, Researcher, Horn Review