What is this alliance that Somalia is part of that is isolating Ethiopia?
Somalia’s entry into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden security architecture matters because the forum that now shapes rules of the sea lanes was conceived without Ethiopia—Africa’s second-most-populous state and the region’s dominant land power.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt midwifed the Council/Forum of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden states in 2019–2020; its eight members are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia.
The design is simple: put all littoral states under one tent to coordinate on piracy, maritime crime, environmental risks, and—when politics intrudes—who gets a say over choke points like Bab el-Mandeb and access to Suez.
In practice, that tent is pitched on a shoreline from which Ethiopia is absent.
For Cairo and Riyadh, a standing venue confers agenda-setting power. Egypt treats the Red Sea as strategic depth for Suez revenue and as leverage in its wider contest with Ethiopia over the GERD.
Saudi Arabia sees maritime stability as an extension of Vision 2030 and as a buffer against missile, drone, and proxy threats transiting Yemen.
Neither wants the forum to become a military alliance—there is no mutual-defense clause, no integrated command—but both want it to be the clearinghouse where norms are set, partners invited, and outside navies coordinated.
When Houthi attacks drove insurance rates sky-high and diverted traffic around the Cape, the logic of a coastal caucus only hardened.
Where does that leave Ethiopia? Excluded from a body that touches the arteries of its economy. Over 90 percent of Ethiopia’s trade moves through Djibouti; any tightening of security protocols, inspection regimes, or pilotage and fee arrangements will be discussed first by forum members.
Add the political overlay: Sudan’s turmoil, Eritrea’s transactional diplomacy, Djibouti’s base politics, and Somalia’s re-anchoring in Gulf security debates.
None of these capitals is eager to outsource their Red Sea voice to a landlocked neighbor that is also a hydro-hegemon on the Nile.
From Addis Ababa’s vantage point, “isolation” is less a formal cordon and more a gradual, rules-of-the-road process that happens in rooms Ethiopia doesn’t enter.
Somalia’s role is pivotal. By taking a seat, Mogadishu gains access, training, and funding streams tied to maritime domain awareness, coast-guard capacity, and counter-trafficking—all priorities donors will underwrite as Red Sea insecurity spills into global freight prices.
That alignment gives Somalia diplomatic ballast with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and—intentionally or not—narrows Ethiopia’s ability to leverage bilateral ties with littoral neighbors on port access and logistics.
The optics are potent: one of Ethiopia’s main regional rivals (Egypt) co-chairs a forum in which another rival (Eritrea) and Ethiopia’s lifeline (Djibouti) sit alongside Somalia.
Still, this is not NATO at sea. The forum has no binding defense guarantees, no standing forces, and its members often diverge: Sudan’s factions, Yemen’s fragmentation, Eritrea’s strategic autonomy, Djibouti’s multi-base balancing, and Somalia’s mixed Gulf-Turkey ties.
That fragmentation both limits the forum’s coercive potential and creates diplomatic surface area Ethiopia can exploit.
Rules will be made, but enforcement will remain a patchwork of national coast guards, ad-hoc coalitions (EU NAVFOR, CMF, national task forces), and great-power naval deployments.
The bottom line: the Red Sea forum is a coordination device dominated by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not a treaty alliance aimed explicitly at Ethiopia.
But in a region where procedures become precedents and precedents become pressure, exclusion carries a cost. Ethiopia isn’t being “encircled”; it is being out-organized.
The remedy is not saber-rattling over ports or rhetoric about “returning to the sea,” but methodical diplomacy, corridor diversification, and technical excellence that make Ethiopia too central to the Red Sea economy to ignore.
