MOGADISHU, Somalia
Somalia accused Ethiopia of
smuggling weapons on Tuesday amid fears that arms going into the conflict-riven
Horn of Africa nation could end up in the hands of Islamist militants.Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, Taye Atske Selassie Amde hold a joint press conference after their meeting in Ankara, Turkiye on August 13, 2024.
The neighbours traded barbs a
day after an Egyptian warship unloaded heavy weaponry in Somalia’s capital
Mogadishu, the second shipment since a security pact in August.
Landlocked Ethiopia, which has
thousands of troops in Somalia to fight al Qaeda-linked insurgents, has fallen
out with the Mogadishu government over its plans to build a port in the
breakaway region of Somaliland in exchange for possible recognition of its
sovereignty.
The spat has drawn Somalia
closer to Egypt, which has quarrelled with Ethiopia for years over Addis
Ababa’s construction of a vast hydro dam on the Nile River.
Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs
Minister Taye Atske Selassie said he was concerned arms from “external forces
would further exacerbate the fragile security and would end up in the hands of
terrorists in Somalia,” Ethiopia News Agency reported.
Responding, Somalia’s Foreign
Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi told Reuters: “Ethiopia’s motivation behind these
defamatory statements is its attempt to conceal the illegal smuggling of
weapons across the Somali borders, which are falling into the hands of civilians
and terrorists.”
He gave no evidence for the
accusation, but added that Ethiopia was trying to divert attention from
violations of Somalia’s sovereignty. Last week, Somalia accused Ethiopia of
shipping arms to the semi-autonomous state of Puntland.
Somalia has threatened to
expel Ethiopia’s troops by the end of the year if the port deal was not
scrapped.
The U.N. Security Council
lifted a more than three-decade arms embargo on Somalia in December.
Rashid Abdi, an analyst with
the Sahan Research think-tank, said the potential for weapons landing in the
wrong hands, such as al Shabaab militants, was high. “Al Shabaab is a major
beneficiary and in 2023 harvested massive quantities of weapons by conducting
raids on enemy (bases),” he said.
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