Gedo has long served as a useful barometer for the health of relations between Nairobi, Mogadishu, and Addis. Straddling the tri-border Mandera Triangle, the Mareehaan-dominated region of Jubaland has been a key staging post for Al-Shabaab's continued infiltration into Kenya and Ethiopia for years. And as such, both Nairobi and Addis have a vested stake in Jubaland as a security buffer zone against the jihadists, developing close ties with key political actors within Gedo and the southern Federal Member State-- which they helped co-establish in 2013. Over a decade later, with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud back at the helm in Mogadishu, the focus has returned to Gedo, as he has resorted to a well-known destabilising playbook by attempting —and failing —to wrest the Mareehaan into Villa Somalia's orbit. But amid the government's months-long campaign to destabilise Gedo, including seizing Garbahaarey and Luuq from control of Jubaland to carve out Darood tents for its rigged elections, Addis has remained silent-- until now.
Over the weekend, Somalia's federal government and Ethiopia finally agreed to the composition and deployment of Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) in Somalia, both bilaterally and under the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) auspices. In a signing ceremony in Mogadishu on Saturday, Ethiopia's spy chief, Redwan Hussein, and ENDF Chief of Staff Berhanu Jula signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with their Somali counterparts, which is expected to regulate the operational mandate of Ethiopian forces moving forward.