UAE played key role in peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea
MOHAMMAD BIN ZAYED UNVEILED $3B IN FUNDING DURING HIS JUNE VISIT TO ADDIS ABABA
When the leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea embraced in Asmara last month, promising to end the two-decade-old state of war between their two countries, it looked like a sudden breakthrough.
But the rapprochement was, in fact, the culmination of a year of back-channel talks, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
One of the drivers behind that process was the US, which has been a major player in the Horn of Africa for decades. Another was the role played by the UAE.
The US has been conducting shuttle diplomacy for more than a year, according to regional diplomats. In 2017, Eritrean officials visited Washington twice and again once this year, leaving messages that the Americans passed to Ethiopian officials.
In late April this year, Donald Yamamoto, then the top US official on Africa, met Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in Asmara the first visit by a US official of that rank in more than a decade before meeting Abiy in the Ethiopian capital.
With the promise of financial support from the Gulf and with Washington’s backing, Abiy made his move.
“Neither Ethiopia nor Eritrea benefit from a stalemate,” he said on June 6, a day after his ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), announced it would implement a peace deal with Eritrea dating back to 2000.
Nine days later, His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, visited Addis Ababa with a delegation of senior officials. He announced a $3 billion (Dh11.01 billion) support package, made up of a $1 billion deposit in Ethiopia’s central bank and a pledge of $2 billion in investments. Ethiopian officials said the deposit, plus an offer from Saudi Arabia of a year’s supply of fuel with payment delayed for 12 months, helped ease a foreign exchange crisis that had caused shortages of medicine and a slowdown in manufacturing.
“[The UAE’s] good relationship with both parties helped with re-establishing the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea and we see that as a positive thing,” Sa’ad Ali Shire, Foreign Minister in the semiautonomous state of Somaliland told Reuters.
It’s been a long time coming. Ethiopia and Eritrea are linked by blood and history. An Eritrean secessionist movement helped overthrow a military regime in Addis Ababa in 1991 and the new Ethiopian government then gave Eritrea its independence.
For a few years the two countries coexisted peacefully.
But in 1998, the two went to to war after a border dispute.
Two years of brutal fighting left at least 80,000 dead. A shaky ceasefire followed.
It was the appointment of Abiy that really encouraged Eritrea, Ethiopian officials, politicians and diplomats in the region say.
When Isaias, the Eritrean leader, accepted the olive branch, he praised Abiy and welcomed the TPLF’s weakening grip on power.
When Abiy and Isaias embraced last month, some in Africa likened the moment to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A few weeks later the two leaders travelled to Abu Dhabi.