By Ismail H. Warsame

Mukhtar Ainashe is right to demand a coherent Somali foreign policy. In his recent essay on Substack, he argues that diplomacy conducted through disconnected visits, conflicting signals and short-term political arrangements cannot substitute for a national strategy. He is correct. But his description of Somalia and Egypt as brotherly nations bound by “unbreakable” ties deserves the same scrutiny he applies to relations with Ethiopia.

The history is real. Its meaning, however, must be tested against conduct, above all when Somalis faced catastrophe. Friendship is easy to proclaim at a presidential reception. Its practical value shows when people fleeing war arrive at a border.

Interests, not sentiment

Egypt’s engagement with Somalia has long been shaped by two concerns: the security of its Nile waters and its rivalry with Ethiopia. Brotherhood belongs to the diplomatic vocabulary. Strategic calculation explains much of the substance.

That pattern has not faded. In August 2024, as Mogadishu protested Ethiopia’s memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, Cairo signed a defense cooperation protocol with Somalia, shipped weapons to Mogadishu and offered troops for the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). A 2024 analysis by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) found that Egypt’s conduct in the Horn can be explained by its long-standing Nile dispute with Ethiopia, and that Cairo began intervening in the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict partly to put pressure on Addis Ababa. Somalia had legitimate reasons to seek partners. But Egypt’s timing reflected its own dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam at least as much as any concern for Somali sovereignty. swp-berlin

The distinction matters. Egypt’s interest in containing Ethiopia does not automatically coincide with Somalia’s interest in peace, institutional recovery and stable relations with its neighbors. A country that becomes the front line of someone else’s rivalry pays costs its patron does not. Cooperation can serve both nations, but Somali leaders must establish where their interests converge and where they diverge.

Mediation with a thumb on the scale

Egypt’s record as a peacemaker in Somalia reflects the same calculation. Ethiopia, mandated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to lead the peace process, hosted negotiations at Sodere in December 1996 and January 1997 that brought 26 factions together in the National Salvation Council. The Sodere group planned a national reconciliation conference in Bosaso for Nov. 1, 1997. Instead, Hussein Aidid and his supporters traveled to Cairo to meet Ali Mahdi and other leaders. The talks there began Nov. 12, and on Dec. 22, 1997, with Aidid and Ali Mahdi as co-chairs, the participants signed the Cairo Declaration. That sequence comes from the U.N. secretary-general’s August 1999 report on Somalia (S/1999/882). refworldun

The Cairo process divided Somalis rather than reconciling them. Col. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Gen. Aden Abdullahi Nur “Gabyow” refused to sign, and Ethiopia accused Egypt of hijacking the Sodere process. The national reconciliation conference that Cairo scheduled for Baidoa in February 1998 never took place. When it failed, Aidid, Ali Mahdi and Osman “Atto” returned to Mogadishu and set about building an administration for the Benadir region, with the backing of Egypt’s special envoy for Somalia. Cairo’s diplomacy, in other words, revolved around Mogadishu’s faction leaders. The northeast went the other way: in July 1998, a constitutional conference in Garowe elected Abdullahi Yusuf president of the newly declared Puntland State. S 1999 882 ES +2

The regional verdict on such competing initiatives was harsh. In March 1998, IGAD’s Council of Ministers attributed the lack of progress in Somalia partly to the proliferation of parallel initiatives. Djibouti’s then-president, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, called for an end to Somali leaders’ “political tourism,” in which they visited foreign capitals to sign documents they later ignored. un

The pattern continued after Arta. The Transitional National Government formed in Djibouti in 2000 saw its authority challenged by leaders in the south and by the northern administrations in Puntland and Somaliland. Arab capitals nonetheless rallied behind it, and the humanitarian news agency IRIN reported at the time that Libya, Egypt and Yemen were prepared to send forces to support interim president Abdiqassim Salad Hassan. unmissionsthenewhumanitarian

Ethiopia’s mediation was hardly disinterested either. But Cairo’s motive has been stated plainly by outside observers. David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, wrote in 2003 that Egypt supports Somali unity and a strong Somali state because such a state can counterbalance Ethiopia, noting that 86% of the water reaching Egypt’s Aswan Dam originates in Ethiopia. A mediator that consistently favors one center of power over the regions is not a neutral broker. Cairo’s preferred outcome has been a strong Mogadishu, not a negotiated settlement among Somalia’s constituent parts. globalsecurity

Refuge as the test

The refugee record demands an honest accounting. Egypt did host Somalis during the civil war; the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, counted about 3,500 at the start of 1998. It would be inaccurate to say Egypt admitted none. But a few thousand people across years of state collapse, while neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia absorbed hundreds of thousands, establishes presence, not open access or adequate protection.

Scholarship on Somalis in Cairo bears this out. Egypt is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, but by placing reservations on four of its articles, it withdrew significant rights from refugees on its territory: employment, permanent residence and access to state education. Mulki Al-Sharmani, who has studied Somali refugees in Cairo since the late 1990s, describes Egypt as “a host society that is both closed and open to refugees.” aucegyptaucegypt

I recall that at the height of the civil war, some Western governments advised their citizens of Somali origin against traveling to Egypt unless they held Western passports. I have not yet located the original advisories and offer this as personal recollection rather than established fact. If confirmed, it would expose a painful contradiction: Somali identity, supposedly a bond of brotherhood, offered less assurance at an Egyptian border than a Western passport.

Gaza offers a contemporary test of the gap between declared solidarity and the protection of people. Egypt has mediated ceasefire talks and admitted Palestinians escaping the war. Human Rights Watch reports that about 110,000 people left Gaza for Egypt between October 2023 and May 2024, when Israel seized and closed the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. Any assessment of Rafah must account for Israeli control; Egypt cannot fairly be portrayed as having admitted nobody or as holding sole power to reopen the crossing.

Yet Cairo’s own conduct remains open to criticism. Amnesty International has documented the arrest of Egyptians who peacefully expressed solidarity with Palestinians, as well as the detention and deportation of foreign activists who tried to join the Global March to Gaza in June 2025. A government that invokes Palestinian brotherhood while suppressing peaceful solidarity invites questions about the substance of that commitment.

Egypt’s rejection of permanent Palestinian displacement rests on defensible ground: expulsion could cost Palestinians their homeland, and Palestinians themselves reject such proposals. Cairo also cites its own national security. But opposing permanent displacement does not settle the separate humanitarian question of voluntary temporary refuge, medical evacuation and enforceable guarantees of return.

Somali interests first

The lesson for Somalia is straightforward. Egypt pursues Egyptian interests. Ethiopia pursues Ethiopian interests. Somali diplomacy must begin with Somali interests, measured by sovereignty, public safety, institutional development and accountability to citizens.

Ainashe’s call for strategic direction is persuasive. His assumption of an unquestionable Egyptian partnership weakens it. Visiting both Cairo and Addis Ababa is not, by itself, evidence of incoherence. The decisive questions are what commitments were made, whether they are compatible and what they will cost Somalia.

Historical friendship deserves recognition. Dependable partnership requires evidence. Somalia cannot afford a foreign policy in which declarations of brotherhood replace scrutiny, or in which another country’s rivalry becomes its national agenda.

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Works cited

Mulki Al-Sharmani, “African Refugees: Ambivalent Status and Diasporic Struggles in Cairo,” in Diane Singerman, ed., Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity (American University in Cairo Press, 2009).

Mulki Al-Sharmani, “Livelihood and Identity Constructions of Somali Refugees in Cairo,” Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Working Paper No. 2 (American University in Cairo, 2003).

David H. Shinn, “The Horn of Africa: How Does Somaliland Fit?” paper delivered March 2003.

Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, “Escalation Risks in the Horn of Africa: Threats from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Somalia Exacerbate Local Conflicts,” SWP Comment 2024/C 50.

United Nations Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in Somalia,” S/1999/882, Aug. 16, 1999.