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Eritrea - Somalia Relations

Eritrea reportedly provided weapons and military advice to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), with a view to forming an anti-Ethiopian government in Somalia. After a rapid advance throughout the country, the ICU captured Mogadishu in June 2006. In July 2006, and in response to these developments, Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to protect the Somalian Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that had taken refuge in Baidoa, and eventually reinstalled it in Mogadishu as of December of the same year.

After ICU forces were defeated by Ethiopian troops, Eritrea continued to support the various Islamist organizations that emerged following ICU’s breakdown. In 2007, Eritrea withdrew from the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), in protest for what it perceived as the organization’s support for Ethiopian interventions in Somalia. In August 2009, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (EECC) delivered its final awards regarding international law violations during the 1998-2000 border war. The Claims Commission awarded Eritrea $161 million for damages caused by Ethiopia with an additional $2 million for individual claims. Ethiopia was awarded $174 million for damages caused by Eritrea. Eritrea cited interference which impaired the administration of justice and challenged the plausibility of evidence but announced it accepts the award of the Claims Commission without equivocation.

Eritrea’s refusal to withdraw its troops from Ras Doumeira and allow a United Nations fact-finding mission to enter its territory, as well as its involvement in the conflict in Somalia, led the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Eritrea and on 23 December 2009, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1907 imposing an arms embargo on Eritrea, travel bans and the freezing of the assets of some of the country's political and military officials. Resolution 1907 also extended the mandate of the United Nations Monitoring Group for Somalia created in 2002 to monitor Eritrea’s compliance with the new set of sanctions.

In July 2011, the Monitoring Group presented its first report, which provided evidence of Eritrea’s continued support to Ethiopian rebel groups and Islamist organizations in Somalia, as well as an attempt from the Eritrean intelligence services to organise a car bomb attack at the January 2011 AU Summit. Critically the Monitoring Group second report in 2012, found evidence of continued Eritrean support for Al-Shabaab and other dissident armed groups, of violations against the arms embargo and of collecting the Rehabilitation tax, all of which is contrary to the Security Council resolution.

In December 2011 the Ethiopian Government advocated for the United Nations Security Council to tighten its sanctions due to Eritrea’s continued support to the Al-Shabaab Islamist group in Somalia. In March 2012, Ethiopian forces carried out attacks inside Eritrea on alleged bases of the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF). Ethiopia claimed that it acted in reprisal for the kidnapping and assassination of a group of European tourists in January 2011 in the Ethiopian Afar region. Eritrea declared that it would not retaliate.

By 2014 the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea found no evidence of Eritrean support to Al Shabaab during the course of its present mandate. The Monitoring Group did not, however, rule out the possibility that Eritrea may be providing some assistance to elements within Al-Shabaab without detection, but it was the overall assessment of the Monitoring Group that Eritrea was a marginal actor in Somalia, and increased public scrutiny by the international community had made any direct support to Al-Shabaab much riskier.