Ceasefire Friction, Horn of Africa Tensions and Regional Political Shifts

Off Leash update 16 March

UKRAINE •Pres. Putin elaborated on the conditions Russia would demand in order to agree to the 30-day ceasefire the U.S. proposed (and Ukraine tentatively agreed to already). •Putin clearly feels that Russia has the upper hand in the war and doesn't need to rush into a truce, since the conditions he laid out ranged from challenging to impossible. For example, he would refuse Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk region safe passage back to Ukraine and force them "to simply surrender" instead. •Pres. Zelensky complained that Putin had set so many pre-conditions "that nothing will work out at all” or that “it will not work out for as long as possible.” •However, despite attaching onerous demands to the proposal, Putin hasn't explicitly rejected it and he continues to engage mediators - including Pres. Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince MBS - to discuss it.

ETHIOPIA •The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) resumed its insurgency against the regional government after two years of uneasy peace. •TPLF forces captured several towns in Tigray, and the local governor - a former TPLF member who was thrown out of the party last year - appealed to the central government in Addis Ababa to intervene, raising the risk that this week's eruption could spark a new civil war. •Worse still, other countries seem to be taking sides, elevating the odds that it could become a regional war. Eritrea appears to be aligning itself on the TPLF's side - as do Saudi Arabia and Egypt (though the latter two are more likely to send weapons than troops) - while Ethiopia's central government is mobilizing weaponry towards Eritrea and has the UAE's backing.

GAZA •Pres. Trump's post-war plan for Gaza called for Gaza's population of two million (pre-war) to be resettled to an unspecified "beautiful area." Now AP has shed some light on where that could be: AP reported that U.S. and Israeli envoys pitched at least three East African governments - Sudan, Somalia, and Somaliland - on the idea of accepting resettled Gazans. •Sudanese officials said they "immediately rebuffed" the proposal - despite rich incentives the U.S. dangled with it (which included military support for the army's war with the Rapid Support Forces and post-war reconstruction funding). •Somali and Somalilander officials said they hadn't been approached yet and are not actively considering the idea.

MOZAMBIQUE •The U.S. Export-Import Bank re-approved a $5 billion loan for TotalEnergies's liquefied-natural gas project in northern Mozambique, overcoming a key hurdle for resuming construction. Total still needs to confirm the remaining ~$15 billion it needs for the project, which will likely delay the plant's start of operations until at least 2029.

SYRIA •Syria's interim president, Ahmed al Sharaa, signed a temporary constitution establishing a framework for the country's permanent constitution. •The temporary document was drafted in less than two weeks, and it leans heavily on Syria's former constitution, which was suspended in January. Like the previous edition, this one stipulates that Syrian presidents must be Muslim and Islamic law will be not just "a main source" of jurisprudence (as in the former text), but "the main source." •Those two points offended Syria's Kurds, who complained that the document and the committee that drafted it had "ignor[ed] Syria’s pluralistic nature and its identity as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state."