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Opinion

Abiy Ahmed’s Isolation Is Self-Inflicted: How a Chain of Short-Term Gambits Backfired

By Mesob Journal Staff••05 min read
Abiy Ahmed’s Isolation Is Self-Inflicted: How a Chain of Short-Term Gambits Backfired
Composite: Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed

Abiy Ahmed’s Isolation Is Self-Inflicted: How a Chain of Short-Term Gambits Backfired

There’s a pattern to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s statecraft: grab for the nearest lever, declare victory, and deal with the blowback later. That cycle—tactical bargains unmoored from strategy—has now boxed Ethiopia into a lonely corner, with frayed fronts on every border and distrust at home. The tragedy is that none of this was inevitable.

The opening move: a narrow peace for a larger war

Start with the facts. The 2002 Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) gridlined the frontier and did so “final and binding.” Ethiopia resisted implementation for nearly two decades.

In July 2018, Abiy flew to Asmara and signed the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship. It was a necessary reset, but also a calculated one: his premiership was embryonic, federal levers were weak, and the TPLF still dominated the security–bureaucratic core he said was holding him “hostage.” Peace with Eritrea—long committed to implementing the EEBC—was the fastest route to dislodge the TPLF and stabilize his throne.

When the TPLF tried to topple him, a coalition of Ethiopian federal forces, Eritrean support, and allied militias broke the thrust of the rebellion and drove it to a negotiated end in late 2022. The Pretoria (Cessation of Hostilities) Agreement halted the war, demobilized Tigrayan forces under AU oversight, and reopened a path for reconstruction. That’s the benign reading. The harsher one—held by many of Abiy’s erstwhile allies—is that he took the win, then sidelined those who made it possible.

Abandoning allies, breeding insurgency

Nothing captured that perception more than Abiy’s post-Pretoria posture toward the Amhara-based Fano formations. They had bled against the TPLF. They expected security guarantees in return. Instead, Addis Ababa pressed disarmament and attempted to recentralize by force. Predictably, the Fano insurgency metastasized into Ethiopia’s largest internal security crisis after Tigray, with rights bodies documenting waves of civilian harm and mass displacement by the Abiy regime. That is the cost of transactional politics: allies today, adversaries tomorrow. 

The Somaliland MoU: a diversion that detonated

January 2024 brought Abiy’s most audacious gambit: an MoU with Somaliland trading potential diplomatic recognition for port access and a base on the Gulf of Aden. It looked like a quick fix for a landlocked giant. It also detonated a regional storm.

Mogadishu called the deal “null and void,” recalled its ambassador, and vowed to defend Somali sovereignty “by any legal means.” Cairo seized the opening, signing a defense pact with Somalia in August 2024 and—according to multiple reports—moving arms and assistance to Mogadishu under new security protocols. In other words: Abiy’s shortcut did not buy him a shoreline; it brought Egypt to his eastern doorstep and fused the GERD dispute with Somali sovereignty politics. That’s bad strategy by any measure. 

Analysts across Europe and Africa clocked the same trendline: the Ethiopia–Somalia row, layered atop the Nile standoff, created a new triangle of tension in which Egypt and Somalia began coordinating to counter Addis Ababa. Even when Ankara-mediated “technical talks” resumed in early 2025, the trust deficit lingered. 

Sudan: a western front you can’t wish away

To the west, Sudan’s civil war added combustible risk. Khartoum has accused the UAE of arming the RSF; it went so far as to drag Abu Dhabi before the International Court of Justice this year. Whatever one’s view of those claims, the war is no abstraction: arms smuggling, refugee flows, and militia spillover are already shaking Ethiopia’s frontier. In October 2025, Sudan’s interim leadership and Eritrea deepened security coordination—one more sign that Abiy’s room for maneuver is shrinking, not expanding. 

The Red Sea refrain—and its consequences

Abiy’s rhetoric on the Red Sea has shifted from wistful to provocative. He has told parliament the issue is “legal, historical, geographical and economic,” insisted Ethiopia “will not remain landlocked,” and he called for international mediation to secure access. Mediation? That is tacit acknowledgement that force won’t fly and diplomacy has been mishandled. Meanwhile, his own speeches—suggesting it shouldn’t take “30 years” to “get it back”—have alarmed every littoral state from Massawa to Cairo. 

Eritrea’s position has been consistent: the EEBC is binding; sovereignty is non-negotiable; neighbors are welcome to do commerce through lawful, contractual port arrangements—like every other landlocked country on earth. That’s not “expansionism by patience”; it’s international law. 

How the board looks today

  • North/East (Red Sea–Somalia): The Somaliland MoU isolated Addis diplomatically, gave Somalia and Egypt a shared cause, and invited external security footprints along Ethiopia’s eastern flank. Even if the MoU is quietly shelved, the damage is done: trust is lower, scrutiny is higher. 
  • West (Sudan): A grinding war next door, accusations of foreign arming, and new Asmara–Port Sudan coordination. Ethiopia’s frontier is more brittle in 2025 than it was in 2023. 
  • Center (Domestic): The Fano insurgency is no longer a brushfire; it’s a structural challenge to federal authority in Amhara. You do not bomb your way back to legitimacy. You rebuild it. 

What this means for Eritrea—and for the region

Eritrea didn’t ask for any of this noise. Asmara’s doctrine has been straightforward for decades: secure borders, lawful trade, zero tolerance for irredentism, and strategic non-alignment. That’s why the 2018 peace took root—because it anchored itself in the EEBC and the Algiers framework, not in the whims of leaders. When Abiy tried to turn the Red Sea into a domestic pressure valve, he ran into that bedrock.

Could Eritrea “tip” Ethiopia’s balance by backing whichever anti-center force is ascendant? Of course it could—manyactors could. But that is not the stability the Horn of Africa demands. The sober point is simpler: Abiy’s isolation is the product of his own shortcuts. If he keeps reaching for theatrics—MoUs for headlines, speeches for dopamine—the map will close around him without Asmara lifting a finger.

Is Abiy reckless or calculating?

The record suggests a leader who confuses motion for progress. He toppled one pillar (the TPLF), then kicked away two more (Fano and Mogadishu), and now leans on speeches about invading a sea that doesn’t belong to him - Eritrean Sea. It’s serial improvisation with a country’s fate.

And Eritrea? Stay the course: law over theatrics, borders over bluster, and Red Sea security anchored in the states that actually live on it. That’s how you outlast noise.

#Ethiopia#Eritrea#Sudan#Somalia#Djibouti#Africa#Horn of Africa#Egypt
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