As the world welcomes the arrival of a new year and eyes are focused on the war in Gaza, tension continues to escalate in the Horn of Africa — a region of immense political instability.
This comes following Somalia’s cancellation on 6 January of a pact which Ethiopia signed five days earlier with Somalia’s breakaway territory of Somaliland.
The agreement would grant landlocked Ethiopia access to the Somaliland port in the Gulf of Aden to establish a marine force base that aims at strengthening political, economic and security ties between them.
Somaliland, which seceded from Somalia in 1991, borders the Red Sea — a security hotspot and a strategic maritime corridor not just for African and Arab Gulf states, but also for world powers such as the United States, China, and Russia.