Between Ethiopia and Egypt: Somalia, the Proxy Pawn

EDITORIAL | In the theater of geopolitics, where nations are both actors and spectators, Somalia has once again found itself not on the stage of strategic calculus — but on the board as a pawn, to be moved by forces far more coordinated than its own. The scene is set between Ethiopia and Egypt, ancient rivals now engaged in a modern contest over the most fundamental element of civilization: water.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), near completion as of July 2025, is not merely a structure of concrete and turbines. It is a statement of sovereignty by a rising Ethiopia — an upstream assertion in a downstream-dominated narrative. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, by inaugurating the dam’s second turbine in 2022, signaled not just national pride, but regional recalibration.

Egypt, ever reliant on the Nile’s uninterrupted flow, reads GERD not as a dam but a damning precedent. That upstream nations might dictate terms to those below is, for Cairo, an existential threat masked as infrastructure. What follows, therefore, is not debate but maneuvering — not diplomacy but deterrence.

And in the midst of it all: Somalia.

Somalia’s unfortunate distinction is not its position but its posture — reactive rather than strategic, hesitant rather than principled. In the absence of a mature foreign policy framework, Villa Somalia has wandered into a regional dispute with neither compass nor map. Cairo beckons with military cooperation and historical flattery; Addis Ababa counters with regional deals and bilateral influence. And Somalia, its own internal coherence frayed, attempts the dangerous act of balancing while blindfolded.

Somalia’s head of state, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, recently stood in Cairo, smiling alongside Egyptian officials — a photo op pregnant with geopolitical meaning. It is not difficult to interpret this as a signal, if not a commitment, in the shadow of Ethiopia’s ambitions. But then again, Somalia’s signals are often ambiguous, not because they are diplomatic, but because they are unformed.

Meanwhile, the domestic cost of these entanglements is mounting. The Ethiopian-Somaliland port access agreement — done with thin regard for Mogadishu’s position — has sent shockwaves through the South, where Federal Member States feel both bypassed and threatened. The Nile may be far from Kismayo or Baidoa, but its ripples reach all corners of the Horn.

The problem, of course, is not the dam. It is the damning realization that Somalia is once again being instrumentalized — not for what it asserts, but for what it allows.

Somalia’s foreign policy, if it is to deserve the term, must pivot away from emotional alignments and toward reasoned nonalignment. It must recall that federalism is not just a domestic arrangement but a demand for policy coherence across regions. No proxy war, however veiled in development language or wrapped in old alliances, should lure Somalia away from its core priorities: sovereignty, stability, and strategic neutrality.

GERD represents more than a regional dispute — it is a test of statecraft across the Nile Basin. Ethiopia demands control; Egypt insists on continuity. Both are rational actors in pursuit of national interest. But Somalia must ask: What is ours?

Surely not to be the middle ground for others to wage their ambitions. Surely not to mortgage national cohesion for momentary alliances. Somalia, long divided and too often deceived, must reject its role as proxy and reclaim its agency as a principled actor.

If not now — when the stakes are hydrological, diplomatic, and generational — then when?

As the Nile flows, so must wisdom. Somalia must stand not between Ethiopia and Egypt — but above the fray, on higher ground carved by interest, not interference.

GAROWE ONLINE