Dozens of troops are headed to help fight al-Shabab. (Somali women military soldiers march during celebrations marking the 57th anniversary since the force was founded in Mogadishu, Somalia, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh))
The end of his first 100 days as US president near, Donald Trump has changed gears when it comes his position on military intervention. As he was enjoying the “most beautiful” chocolate cake with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, he told the Chinese president that the US had fired missiles at a Syrian airfield, following Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people.
On April 13, the US dropped the “Mother Of All Bombs” (MOAB) on Afghanistan: The largest bomb it has used since World War II hit an ISIL tunnel complex. On the same day, as the tension between the US and North Korea escalated, NBC reported that Trump may be ready to launch strikes, prompting requests of caution from China and Russia.
Meanwhile, the US is sending a “small number” of F-35A aircraft to Europe, as part of a “long-planned” training deployment.
And that’s not all: the US has announced April 14 that, for the first time since 1994, it’s deploying “dozens” of regular troops in Somalia to help the ongoing fight against al-Shabab, al-Qaeda’s jihadist ally. They are to provide training and support to the Somali National Army and the African Union mission on the ground, Voice of America reported. The US troops will enhance what has been America’s small presence (three to 50 people) in the country to facilitate the military relationship between Somalia.
The mission is scheduled to continue until the end of September.
This is the first time the US has sent regular forces to Somalia since March 1994, after special forces that were part a peacekeeping mission aimed at enforcing a ceasefire during the Somalian civil war were ensnared in a 15-hour-long battle in Mogadishu. Eighteen Americans were killed in the incident, memorialized in Black Hawk Down, prompting then president Bill Clinton to order a US withdrawal.
1956 Operation Redwing bombing at Enewetak Atoll. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Field Office)
If Kim Jong Un launches a nuclear weapon there’s an extensive plan in place thanks to the CIA, the military and former President Jimmy Carter.
Newly declassified documents from Carter’s administration revealed Presidential Directive 58, the plan for how the United States moves forward, according to Foreign Policy magazine. Under President Ronald Reagan, the directive was amended slightly.
The strategies behind the end of the world stem from a single man: emergency preparedness and disaster response expert Ray Derby. In Europe, Derby worked with NATO to craft evacuation drills for non-combat troops. He led the government-wide work to prepare for a nuclear, biological or chemical threat. The nuclear bases around the United States have Derby to thank for their plans as well.
During the Carter administration, the plan for nuclear war was Federal Emergency Plan D, which required each agency to design, develop and build its own underground facility, FP reported. The thought was that in the event of an emergency, the agencies of the government could still function from a bunker. Most didn’t take it seriously and as such, most agency personnel didn’t know whether they were part of the team that was supposed to head to the bunker or not.
To make more people take it seriously meant getting the military involved — something the military had no interest in. They assumed martial law would have to be instituted in the event of a nuclear incident but the military would also be tasked with the military response from the United States. Neither the military nor political leaders wanted to talk about the plans openly, forcing them to be devised in secret.
If “the bomb” was en route, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would order 60 officials to a special facility build into Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia. Other locations are near Hagerstown, Maryland, and Martinsburg, West Virginia. The FBI would be relocated to the Marine base near Quantico, Virginia. The State Department would be sent to Front Royal, Virginia. The rest would be hidden at colleges inside or near the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Having a rendezvous spot was only half the battle, however. The military didn’t have enough helicopters to carry more than a third of those assigned. Everyone was given an alternative idea for how to get to Mount Weather. However, most leaders scoffed at the idea that nuclear war would ever happen and even if it did, the former Soviet Union knew about Mount Weather. They even purchased land around it to monitor what was going on at the site.
Carter became the first president since John F. Kennedy to take civil defense seriously, FP said. Many fallout shelters were decaying and agencies had spent years ignoring assignments for readiness. The budget was increased and a whole new policy was developed. The goal was to have 80 percent of the population survive by spending less than $250 million each year. That’s when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created.
FEMA became responsible for stocking the bunker with supplies and ensuring that a functioning government can operate. At the same time, the White House was tasked with ensuring there were mechanisms in place for a presidential successor to function militarily during and after nuclear missiles land. The Secret Service enacted their own plan for getting the president out or securing the successor in the event that the president was killed. One declassified memo from the White House urged daily communication between the Pentagon and the president at Mount Weather. Then it confessed that after an incident of “uncoordinated sabotage” facilities wouldn’t provide enough protection and survivors probably wouldn’t live long and could become a target themselves.
Fixed command posts didn’t seem like it would work and mobile ones would require getting the president or a successor to an emergency escape aircraft. Doing so also required a plan for finding the successor if the president is incapacitated. So, the White House tried to make it a little more flexible and focused on three major concepts: survivability, connectivity and supportability.
So, the devised a “presidential successor support team” that would be pre-positioned or pre-deployed during emergencies to the presidential successors. Each team would have requirements to authenticate the new president and the further actions continue to be classified. FP was able to hear some specifics that reveal what might be the first use of a “tracking chip” in the successor cards that would be “amplified by radio frequency repeaters.” They could be collected by FEMA to find locations.
The team was also tasked with helping the successor to carry out functions, talk to other teams, talk to the Pentagon and help execute the nuclear war plan. They’d also be required to “receive intelligence and damage assessments” and talk to local and state governments. Essentially, each team must be able to function as its own government.
All of the other documents that outline specifics are still classified but Carter issued at least 29 other directives. It’s unclear how Congress would be reestablished or if troops would be drafted.
SIMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Ethiopia — Thousands of Ethiopian wolves once roamed much of this country’s mountainous north but their number has fallen dramatically as farmers encroach on their habitat and introduce domestic dogs that carry rabies.
Only 120 wolves are estimated to remain in this national park and they are elusive, usually seen shortly after sunrise or just before sunset.ves
“They are almost at the brink of extinction. So my vision is to increase their number significantly,” said Getachew Assefam, coordinator of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program.
The movement of people move in search of fertile land in the highlands has put pressure on the park. Across the country less than 500 Ethiopian wolves remain in a few mountain enclaves, the Britain-based Born Free Foundation says.
Efforts are underway to move most of the settlers out of this national park in the hope of saving the remaining wolves. The local community currently uses more than two-thirds of the park’s area for grazing, agriculture and settlement, according to the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority.
The wildlife authority said 38 villages with a total of 3,000 people are living within the park’s boundaries.
Gichi village in the heart of the park had more than 418 households before the resettlement program began three years ago. Now there are none. Now the government is focusing on settlers in other areas.
The relocated settlers “are all now living in a better condition,” said the park’s chief warden, Maru Biadgelegn.
But some farmers said the compensation they received for the move is not enough.
Requests by The Associated Press to gain access to the resettlement area were denied. In a recent meeting, residents rejected the government’s compensation offer to resettle the remaining farmers.
“I believe we can come to an agreement on this in the future,” said one park resident, Zezo Adugna.
SIMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Ethiopia — Thousands of Ethiopian wolves once roamed much of this country’s mountainous north but their number has fallen dramatically as farmers encroach on their habitat and introduce domestic dogs that carry rabies.
Only 120 wolves are estimated to remain in this national park and they are elusive, usually seen shortly after sunrise or just before sunset.ves
“They are almost at the brink of extinction. So my vision is to increase their number significantly,” said Getachew Assefam, coordinator of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program.
The movement of people move in search of fertile land in the highlands has put pressure on the park. Across the country less than 500 Ethiopian wolves remain in a few mountain enclaves, the Britain-based Born Free Foundation says.
Efforts are underway to move most of the settlers out of this national park in the hope of saving the remaining wolves. The local community currently uses more than two-thirds of the park’s area for grazing, agriculture and settlement, according to the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority.
The wildlife authority said 38 villages with a total of 3,000 people are living within the park’s boundaries.
Gichi village in the heart of the park had more than 418 households before the resettlement program began three years ago. Now there are none. Now the government is focusing on settlers in other areas.
The relocated settlers “are all now living in a better condition,” said the park’s chief warden, Maru Biadgelegn.
But some farmers said the compensation they received for the move is not enough.
Requests by The Associated Press to gain access to the resettlement area were denied. In a recent meeting, residents rejected the government’s compensation offer to resettle the remaining farmers.
“I believe we can come to an agreement on this in the future,” said one park resident, Zezo Adugna.
The United States launched a military strike Thursday on an airbase in Syria, multiple U.S. officials have confirmed, launching more than 50 missiles at an air base in the country.
The officials say the airstrike, which targeted Shayrat Air Base in Homs Province where a chemical attack was initiated earlier in the week, struck multiple targets with tomahawk missiles launched between 8:40 and 8:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, from destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea.
On Tuesday, a chemical weapon attack on a Syrian town killed at least 86 civilians. Blame for the assault has landed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite the Syrian government’s condemnation of the attack and insistence that rebels fighting in the country’s civil war were at fault. The Turkish Health Ministry later determined that Sarin was used in the attack, based upon autopsies of some of the victims.
A U.S. official said that radar spotted a Syrian military fixed-wing aircraft dropping chemical weapons bombs earlier in the week and that airstrike appeared to intentionally seek out an underground hospital operated by a rebel group.
“There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN security council,” Trump said Thursday night. “Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically.”
A U.S. official said that Russia, which has troops on the ground in Syria, was notified of the airstrikes in advance.
About 30 minutes before the U.S. strikes were reported, Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy representative to the United Nations told reporters in New York that Russia was receiving signals of an attack being prepared and warned that people were not asking about possible consequences, Interfax reported.
“For you journalists it’s not a secret, and for us working on the diplomatic front, it’s not a secret that all these discussions in the Security Council are leaking out against the background of real clamor about preparations for a military operation,” Safronkov said. “We are also receiving direct signals on this theme that such a military operation is being prepared.”
Safronkov continued, “Moreover, what surprises most of all is that now is asking themselves the question about possible consequences.”
US launches military strike on Syria airbase (ABC News)
From his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida where he is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump called on allies to join the U.S. in ending the violence in Syria.
“Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” said Trump.
Earlier in the week, with video of victims being hosed down with water as they writhed in pain made its way across the world, President Trump denounced the act in strong terms while also placing some of the culpability on his predecessor Barack Obama.
“These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday. “President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.”
On Wednesday, the National Security Council met to discuss the situation in Syria, but Trump had not yet made a decision about military action, according to a U.S. official who added that he would be presented with “an entire range” of options.
Speaking with reporters on Air Force One Thursday en route to Florida, Trump addressed the situation in response to questions of whether Assad should remain in power.
“I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity,” said Trump. “He’s there and I guess he’s running things, so something should happen.”
In Florida, awaiting the president’s arrival, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the country is “considering an appropriate response for [the] chemical weapons attack,” and cast doubt on Assad’s position as the country’s leader moving forward.
“Assad’s role in the future is uncertain clearly and with the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people,” said Tillerson. The comments were a reversal from remarks Tillerson gave in Turkey last week when he said the U.S. would not insist upon Assad’s removal.
“The longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people,” said Tillerson. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. said after the chemical attack that he believed the expression of Tillerson’s stance could have been read by Assad “that it is no longer a priority of the United States to have you removed from power,” and granted the Syrian leader “an incentive to act with impunity.”
The Syrian civil war started in 2011 as pro-democracy protests swept the country in the wake of the region’s Arab Spring. An attempted crackdown on protesters fueled groups fighting back against the government and demonstrations turned violent. Eventually, a group of rebels — including Syrian military defectors — organized to fight the Assad regime.
The Syrian government is in control of a significant portion of the country, but the situation has become increasingly complicated with the emergence of ISIS as the terrorist group moves into the country. The U.S. and a global coalition against ISIS have previously launched strikes targeted against the group and Al-Qaeda.
In March, 400 Marines and Army Rangers were sent to Syria to provide support to U.S.-backed rebels fighting ISIS in the country. That group brought the total number of American forces in Syria to 900, according to U.S. officials.
This story is breaking. Please check back for updates
”Africa is currently experiencing another form of slavery through Pentecostalism.
We are now mentally lazy and our ability to reason scientifically has been incapacitated.
The African pastor won’t talk about Usain Bolt or Serena Williams. The African Pastor won’t talk about Steve Jobs or the young people in Silicon Valley reshaping our world.
They won’t talk about young American scientists spending endless hours in search of a cure to a disease that’s predominantly in the Tropical African Region.
The African pastor won’t talk about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ben Okri. In every corner of the world, there exist young men and women who have defied all odds and become successful through hard work, creativity and dedication….
The African pastor won’t talk about them, neither will he ask his members to emulate the spirit of these individuals.
He would rather talk about sister Agatha who got a job she *WAS NOT THE MOST QUALIFIED FOR*because she prayed and fasted in line with their church programme or brother John a millionaire because he used all his salary as a seed in the church, or Papa Miracle who he laid his hands on and 3 of his children got admission in the university, or Mama Esther paid her tithe and her business started growing everywhere across the nation with no business plan, just boom, everywhere.
This has led to a new breed of mentally lazy young people who now see God as a rewarder of mediocrity.
To the African pastor, the only way to prosper is by paying your tithe and ‘ seeds in the church. So they will never talk about those, who have through hard work and dedication placed themselves on the world map.
No…..the African God only blesses the first 30 people that rush to the alter to drop $100 as seed.
The African God abhors hard work and creative thinking, he only gives to those who sow seeds and offerings…..and those who shout: “I am a millionaire” every morning and do nothing the rest of the day.
You want the Almighty to come down and help you use the talent He gave you and bless you because you are going to church to shout: “Daddy I receive it”, these are all jokers.
Can someone tell these jokers that irrespective of your creed, faith or religion, blessings and favours follow you once you start using your talent and become useful to your society?
The Bible tells the story of the Talents.
Use it. Blessing is already bestowed upon us. When we use it positively, we ask the Lord to bless it. The Bible says His Grace is sufficient for us.
The Western world and Asians are excelling and dominating the world.
Let no Imam or Pastor manipulate our minds while they themselves drown in amassing wealth and luxurious splendour, while our people are living in abject poverty.
Be Wise. Worship of God is from the heart. But study, work hard and always watch & pray! May God Almighty bless us all, in Jesus’ name!!”
”Africa is currently experiencing another form of slavery through Pentecostalism.
We are now mentally lazy and our ability to reason scientifically has been incapacitated.
The African pastor won’t talk about Usain Bolt or Serena Williams. The African Pastor won’t talk about Steve Jobs or the young people in Silicon Valley reshaping our world.
They won’t talk about young American scientists spending endless hours in search of a cure to a disease that’s predominantly in the Tropical African Region.
The African pastor won’t talk about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ben Okri. In every corner of the world, there exist young men and women who have defied all odds and become successful through hard work, creativity and dedication….
The African pastor won’t talk about them, neither will he ask his members to emulate the spirit of these individuals.
He would rather talk about sister Agatha who got a job she *WAS NOT THE MOST QUALIFIED FOR*because she prayed and fasted in line with their church programme or brother John a millionaire because he used all his salary as a seed in the church, or Papa Miracle who he laid his hands on and 3 of his children got admission in the university, or Mama Esther paid her tithe and her business started growing everywhere across the nation with no business plan, just boom, everywhere.
This has led to a new breed of mentally lazy young people who now see God as a rewarder of mediocrity.
To the African pastor, the only way to prosper is by paying your tithe and ‘ seeds in the church. So they will never talk about those, who have through hard work and dedication placed themselves on the world map.
No…..the African God only blesses the first 30 people that rush to the alter to drop $100 as seed.
The African God abhors hard work and creative thinking, he only gives to those who sow seeds and offerings…..and those who shout: “I am a millionaire” every morning and do nothing the rest of the day.
You want the Almighty to come down and help you use the talent He gave you and bless you because you are going to church to shout: “Daddy I receive it”, these are all jokers.
Can someone tell these jokers that irrespective of your creed, faith or religion, blessings and favours follow you once you start using your talent and become useful to your society?
The Bible tells the story of the Talents.
Use it. Blessing is already bestowed upon us. When we use it positively, we ask the Lord to bless it. The Bible says His Grace is sufficient for us.
The Western world and Asians are excelling and dominating the world.
Let no Imam or Pastor manipulate our minds while they themselves drown in amassing wealth and luxurious splendour, while our people are living in abject poverty.
Be Wise. Worship of God is from the heart. But study, work hard and always watch & pray! May God Almighty bless us all, in Jesus’ name!!”
A container ship in the distance, seen from the shore of Berbera port, Somaliland.
By Jason Patinkin for The Messenger
With a sea breeze to his back, Ali Farah Negeye greets the lunch crowd at the Al Xayat restaurant in the Somaliland port city of Berbera. For the last fifteen years, he’s served lemonade and fried barracuda to a steady stream of regulars, who debate the topics of the day while watching fishing skiffs motor past the half-sunken hulls of ruined cargo ships. In the last year or so, though, Negeye says he’s seen new arrivals at the restaurant, mostly from other parts of Somaliland or its diaspora, but also a trickle of investors and tourists from the United Arab Emirates. “I can feel more customers,” Negeye says, as he relaxes following the afternoon rush. “People are understanding day after day the importance of Berbera.”
This is a welcome change for Negeye. For the last quarter century, there’s been little interest in Berbera, despite being along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. In 1991, Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia after a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands of people. As Mogadishu fell into the anarchy from which it has yet to escape, Somaliland plodded along on its own, enjoying peace as it built a nascent democracy. While Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti are stuck in the tight grip of autocratic regimes, and Somalia and the Sudans suffer endless wars, Somaliland in its isolation has earned a reputation for relatively successful democracy and stability.
Negeye’s new customers signal that foreigners are taking a closer took at Somaliland again, and the government in the capital Hargeisa is responding. In the last six months, Somaliland’s authorities have entered into two long-term deals with the UAE to expand Berbera’s port and build a military base. The two projects, if completed, would bring nearly 700 million dollars in investment and might overhaul Somaliland’s economy.
But the deals bring considerable risks, too. Somaliland’s location along Red Sea shipping routes is also the crossroads of the Horn of Africa and the Middle East – the two most war-ridden regions on Earth. The two deals thrust Somaliland into a number of overlapping, high stakes political and economic rivalries involving the UAE, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other nations. Transforming Somaliland into a coveted piece of this regional chess board thus threatens to undermine the unique progress the breakaway state has made over the last 26 years.
“If you do try to play this role in international geopolitics, it’s a very risky game,” says Harry Verhoeven, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. “The rewards are of course very lucrative and that’s why you want to play the game, but getting it wrong can be potentially devastating.”
“Inviting interference”
Somaliland’s strategic importance has been known for centuries, evident in the architecture left behind by the various empires and fortune-seekers who passed through the city over the years. Up a small hill from the port, the minaret of a 19th-century Egyptian-Turkish mosque juts above the crumbling walls of former British colonial mansions and officers’ clubs. In the old city, storefronts originally built by Yemeni Jews and Indian traders now house teashops and private homes. The port itself is a product of modern imperialism: the Soviets built the current site in the 1970s, before the Americans took it over in the 1980s when Somalia switched its allegiance on the Cold War proxy battlefield.
The deals with the UAE could help return Berbera to its former prominence. The $442 million, 30-year port deal with Dubai Ports World (DPWorld), passed by Somaliland’s parliament in August 2016, would boost annual container capacity twenty-fold. Somaliland’s government estimates the deal will result in thousands of construction and service jobs, as well as millions of dollars a year in government revenue through profit sharing.
In Berbera, many in the business class looks forward to the port’s development. “People are expecting impact in a good way because the port will get investment,” says Negeye. “If we get a good investment for the port I expect that the business and the movement of the city will increase.”
Underpinning the port’s success is trade with landlocked Ethiopia, Somaliland’s closest ally and with 90 million people by far its largest neighbor. Currently, Ethiopia has access to only one modern seaport in Djibouti, and Somaliland hopes to capture some of that market share. To that end, Somaliland’s government says UAE will spend $250 million to build a highway between Berbera and Ethiopia and upgrade Berbera’s Russian-built airport, which boasts one of the longest runways in Africa but has largely fallen out of use, in lieu of paying rent for the military base, whose lease is for 25 years.
“It will be a huge gain for Somaliland,” Osman Abdillahi, Somaliland’s Minister of Information, says of the projects. “It will be a win-win for everybody.”
Yet for the UAE, for whom $700 million is a relatively small amount, Berbera’s allure is hardly economic. Instead, the port and military base appear part of a wider strategy by Arab Gulf nations including the UAE to establish a dominant presence in the Horn of Africa through construction of ports and military bases, training of armed groups, and payoffs of petrodollars to friendly Sunni governments. According to Verhoeven, this rapid investment in the Horn isn’t about trade, but about setting up a shield against Iran and its Shia allies.
“There really is this very strong belief in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that Iran is hellbent on encircling them and toppling Gulf monarchies,” Verhoeven tells The Messenger. “The first layer of Gulf engagement with the Horn of Africa is this incredibly important proxy war with Iran. This is very much evident in Sudan, but also in a place like Eritrea and places like Somaliland and Somalia.”
So far, the UAE has a port and military base in Assab in Eritrea, from where it launches attacks on Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels as part of the Saudi-led coalition. UAE has another base in Mogadishu, where UAE and Qatar are said to have poured money into recent elections, and whose government has voiced support for the coalition. UAE’s military has trained the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) into one of the most professional Somali armed groups, while DP World – the same UAE port company now in Berbera – plans to revamp the Puntland port of Bosasso. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, plans to build its own military base in Djibouti. Further north, Gulf states have pumped dollars into Sudan, reestablishing ties with the African nation which previously had been allied to Iran. Khartoum now contributes forces to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen as well, and has hosted joint exercises with Saudi Arabia’s air force.
For some observers, the Gulf’s military interest in the Horn is alarming, and its arrival in Somaliland marks a dangerous new phase. “One of the reasons Somaliland survived and Somalia didn’t from 1991 is because Somalia was interfered by everyone. Somaliland wasn’t,” Guleid Ahmed Jama, chairman of the Hargeisa-based Human Rights Centre, told The Messenger. “We were very suspicious of interference. Now we are inviting interference.”
“Dangerous places”
A woman stands in the doorway of her home in the middle of a block of colonial era buildings.
One oft-cited fear is that a military partnership with the UAE could end Somaliland’s neutrality in the civil war in Yemen, which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Berbera. Thousands of Yemeni refugees have crossed to Somaliland to escapethat war, and their presence is a daily reminder in Somaliland of the consequences of being sucked into the Sunni-Shia power struggle that has destabilized the Middle East. Yet Somalilanders don’t need foreigners to teach them about the dangers of war.
“Whenever I hear about those military [coming to Berbera], I remember the air force that was killing the people,” says Hinda Osman, a Berbera resident, referring to indiscriminate bombings by Mogadishu during the civil war. Osman’s home in Berbera, a dilapidated colonial mansion which her family shares with a half dozen others, still bears bullet holes sustained from that conflict. When the war ended in 1991, refugee families like hers returned to Berbera and set up camp in whichever war-battered buildings still stood. They’ve lived as squatters ever since, but at least they’ve enjoyed peace, and they’re not willing to risk that any time soon. “If the UAE has a military base here, they will plan to attack from here to Yemen, and then in return, Yemen will also attack us.”
Hussein A. Bulhan, founder of Hargeisa’s Frantz Fanon University and a prominent Somaliland public intellectual, also strongly questions the merits of the UAE base, highlighting the risk of being drawn into the Sunni-Shia power struggle.
“Why does Dubai want a military base in this area? The only obvious thing right now is the war going on in Yemen and close access to that,” he says. “I don’t think it makes sense for us to be involved in a war in the region … I think it would be better that Somaliland becomes more of the island of peace it has been for a while.”
So far it’s unclear whether Somaliland has given UAE permission to launch operations on Yemen from Berbera. Before the signing of the deal, Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Saad Shire told The Messenger that specific point was still under negotiation. Since the signing, he has not answered repeated queries on this point, and the full text of the deal has not been released. Regardless, Shire dismissed concerns that Somaliland would be sucked into a wider regional war.
“Somaliland isn’t really interested or is not aimed to get involved in any war or any conflict in the region or beyond,” he said. “We are just using Berbera’s strategic location to advance our interests, which are really nothing more than development.”
An old building in Berbera, showing signs of wear.
But a military deal with one of the belligerents in the Yemen war hardly looks neutral, and Somaliland’s information minister Abdillahi admits they support through official recognition Yemen’s Saudi-backed government over the Houthis. Still, Abdillahi contends the presence of UAE’s military in Berbera will actually strengthen Somaliland’s security, rather than erode it, including through UAE training of Somaliland’s naval and land forces. A recent resurgence of piracy is another reason for Somaliland to take extra precautions as it aims to make Berbera into a hub.
“With the Berbera port and its free zone coming into reality, we need someone to protect our seacoast. We have 850 kilometers, and that has a lot of dangerous places including what’s happening in Yemen, including a lot of pirates,” Abdillahi told The Messenger. “We have been doing all we can to protect, [but] we need their equipment, we need their knowledge. It’s imperative that we have someone who has got more resources than we have.”
Whether UAE base will be a bulwark or not, Somalilanders have already found themselves under fire as a result of the Yemen war. Earlier this month, an Apache helicopter believed to be from the Saudi-led coalition of which UAE is part, attacked a boat of Somali refugees off Yemen’s coast, killing dozens including Somalilanders. Somalia’s government in Mogadishu swiftly condemned the attack and demanded an investigation by the coalition, but Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Shire, who was in Abu Dhabi at the time for negotiations on the military base, was more cautious. When The Messenger asked how the attack would impact Somaliland’s relations with the Gulf and the UAE agreements, he demurred.
“I suppose this is under investigations, so really I cannot say,” he said. “We caution all parties to make sure that civilians are not affected in the conflict.”
Balancing act
The current port of Berbera, due for a USD 442 million upgrade
Whether or not the UAE base pulls Somaliland further into Gulf conflicts, the Arab-Iranian competition is only one regional power struggle which Somaliland will have to navigate following the Berbera deals. Perhaps an even greater worry than the Yemen war is that a UAE military base could upset Somaliland’s closest ally, Ethiopia. Though access to a second port would surely please Addis Ababa, the Gulf’s growing presence in the Horn also looks a lot like encirclement of the so-called “Christian Kingdom.” The fact the UAE has close military relationships with Ethiopia’s arch-rivals Eritrea and Egypt further raises alarm for Addis Ababa.
“In Berbera what you’re looking at is obviously from the Ethiopian standpoint concerning,” says Verhoeven. “The worry is that UAE in particular has been snatching up a number of ports in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean area, and certainly substantially increasing its equipment and its military presence. There’s an incredible amount of skepticism about that, especially because Ethiopian and UAE relations are not particularly good.”
Summary of regional dynamics around Somaliland. Black markers indicate key ports.
Upsetting Ethiopia is hardly in Somaliland’s national interest. Ethiopia is a main trading partner for Somaliland and the only country which accepts Somaliland passports. Ethiopia provides crucial diplomatic support to the breakaway state, including by hosting a large mission from Hargeisa in Addis Ababa, which gives the Somaliland government a platform to lobby the African Union and wider international community. Hargeisa and Addis Ababa also collaborate on security operations, particularly on immigration, and Somalilanders travel to Ethiopia for health care and education. But support from Ethiopia, itself a low-income country dealing with its own political upheavals, only goes so far.
“Somaliland’s government may be trying to send a signal to Addis not to take them for granted, and say, ‘look we might have other partners other than you who are willing to support us and provide us with a lot more cash than you can,’ ” says Verhoeven. “There are obviously important risks to this strategy namely that you end up disappointing the people who are so far the most loyal allies of your country.”
Foreign Minister Shire denied that Ethiopia had any concerns over the UAE deals. He added that Ethiopia recently has been brought on board in the port deal, and will have a 19% stake in the port itself, taking 5% of the total from Somaliland’s originally agreed-upon shares, and 14% of the total from DPWorld. That leaves DPWorld with a majority stake of 51% and Somaliland with just 30%, compared to 35% in the original agreement. Shire said this change to the deal was done for purely economic reasons.
The alliance with UAE draws Somaliland into other regional rivalries as well. The Gulf states have their own competition, with UAE and Qatar vying for equal footing with Saudi Arabia, and for supremacy in the Horn. Internally, clan tensions, and a struggle between Sufism and Salafism – stoked by Saudi influence in particular – continue to fester. The UAE’s investments also up the stakes of Hargeisa’s secession standoff with Mogadishu.
With all of these interests from regional heavy hitters, the question is how tiny Somaliland can balance its various, at-times conflicting allegiances. It’s certinaly not impossible: neighboring Djibouti’s leaders have successfully welcomed France, the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom either operate or are building military bases in the port-nation. But Bulhan contends that Somaliland’s leaders are not nearly as savvy as Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guellah, pointing out that a succession of administrations in Hargeisa have all failed over the last twenty five years to gain recognition from a single country. And that lack of recognition in itself opens up Somaliland to greater risk.
“Somaliland because of its non-recognition, isolation, smaller state, is alway more vulnerable to more powerful states,” he says, specifically emphasizing Somaliland’s minority shareholder status in the port deal. “It’s not going to be a question of equity.”
Should UAE break or tamper with the deals, with its military in Berbera, Somaliland may have little recourse to accountability. Even restauranteur Negeye, an enthusiastic supporter of the port, is wary of the military base for this reason. Berbera residents have other concerns too. Numerous women, including Osman, told The Messenger they feared the arrival of foreign soldiers after hearing reports that African Union peacekeepers in southern Somalia raped local women there. (Somaliland’s information minister told The Messenger that UAE troops will not have immunity from prosecution).
But even Djibouti, with its nationhood and strong leadership, has suffered from hosting wealthy foreign militaries. Backed by the largest armies on Earth, President Guellah has entrenched his autocratic rule, tightening his grip on power over the last eighteen years. In Somaliland, there’s a similar potential for an erosion of open government, simply because the sums of money on offer are so large from Hargeisa’s perspective. The port deal, according to a summary distributed to parliament last August, includes an up front payment of 10 million dollars to the government, big money in Somaliland considering its 2016 budget was under 300 million dollars.
“The very fact that you have such neighbors with deep pockets has a very similar effect to say the sudden a discovery of oil. All of a sudden there is a huge inflow of cash, many of it of course unregistered, into the political system, so that raises the stakes of the game,” says Verhoeven. “Capturing the presidency or a ministerial portfolio has just become a lot more lucrative and potentially powerful than it was before, but it also gives far greater power to those who are already in positions of authority, and to buy their way to stay into power and consolidating their grip on it, and in that sense it can potentially be quite destabilizing.”
Indeed, in Somaliland, it appears the democratic backslide has already begun.
“The government’s behavior has changed”
Fishermen unload their catch onshore, Berbera, Somaliland
Berbera-based journalist Mubaarik Nirig has been arrested twice in the last two years. He would have been arrested a third time, after interviewing locals opposed to the DP World Port deal, if he hadn’t received a tip that police had a warrant with his name on it. He went into hiding until things cooled down. “Before [the deals] we never had this repressive attitude toward journalists,” he told The Messenger. “Of course there were little disagreements with the local government, small issues, but the national government and the arrests really has started with these two issues.”
The statistics bear this out. Jama, the human rights activist, says the majority of arrests related to freedom of speech in 2015 and 2016 were connected to the port deal. At least four journalists have been arrested this year so far, two of whom in connection with reporting or criticism of the port and military base. None of the arrests have been upheld in courts, but Abdillahi, the information minister has bluntly vowed to arrest other journalists who “threaten national security.”
The free speech crackdown reflects a wider lack of transparency and intolerance of dissent regarding the two projects. Parliament approved terms of the deals without seeing the full text of the agreements. In the case of the port, lawmakers received a detailed summary, but the final deal has never been made public. The revelation that the government has brought Ethiopia on board indicates the port deal remains mutable even after parliamentary approval, but there’s little public information of how it is being changed.
The deal for the military base is even more opaque. Parliament approved the basic terms’ of the deal without debate in a chaotic session in which opposing lawmakers were thrown out. The deal itself was believed to be the work of a small coterie of individuals close to the president, including his son-in-law who serves as Somaliland’s representative to the UAE and the Minister for the Presidency. And the fact that the talks were completed in the last year of the current administration further fuel suspicions of underhandedness.
“It’s not democratic. They talk about parliamentarians having made a decision, but they’re not even legitimate to be here,” says Bulhan, referring to the fact that Somaliland’s parliamentarians have sat in office for over a decade without re-election. “The democracy is degenerating out of these desperations.”
There was no substantive local consultation over the two projects, either. Even supporters of the port, like Yusuf Abdillahi Gulled, the director of Fair Fishing, an organization that promotes small-scale fishermen in Berbera, say bypassing locals was a mistake. “It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where all the people in the local communities come up, asked questions, proposed ideas,” he told The Messenger last August, shortly after parliament approved of the port deal. “For illiterate people which is the majority of our people, they cannot understand how things are, so they need to be confronted and have a meeting with them and tell them this investment will help their lives.”
With the lack of open discussion and transparency on the terms of the two UAE deals, negative rumors have flourished, stoked by local politicians who have seen their patronage networks upended with DPWorld’s arrival. There are widely held beliefs among Berbera residents that the land for the military base was purchased for just 1.2 million dollars and that DPWorld will conduct mass layoffs of port workers as they implement automation. Officials could probably assuage such fears with explanation and outreach — mass job cuts haven’t played out so far, for instance. Instead, the government has met local outcry with outright repression.
In August, troops deployed in Berbera’s streets when demonstrators planned to protest the sudden removal of the port manager. The demonstrators then cancelled their action. Later, the governor in Berbera banned public meetings from being held without prior government approval. Two weeks after DPWorld assumed control of the port, police arrested striking port workers complaining about pay. Days later, Somaliland’s National Security Minister banned all meetings to discuss the UAE military base.
“Essentially, the government’s behavior has changed,” says Nirig.
‘De facto’ recognition
View from Al Xayat restaurant in the Somaliland port city of Berbera.
From his top floor office on Frantz Fanon University’s Hargeisa campus, Bulhan downplays the recent turmoil surrounding the UAE deals. He takes the longer view: Somaliland’s citizens were the ones who built the country after the war, he says, and they will carry on regardless of their leaders. He says that the government’s backslide on rights and transparency, though disappointing, is not surprising. Twenty five years of stability and fragile democracy has not resulted in recognition from the region or the west, so Hargeisa is looking elsewhere, despite the risks.
“I’ve been here for 21 years, and I see a society being rebuilt from total ruin,” he says. “It did a remarkable thing, but then these things are not sustainable in the long term [without recognition].”
Somaliland’s government seems to agree. Abdillahi, the information minister, makes clear that the hope for recognition is one reasons they’re looking to the Gulf. “We believe that if UAE has invested a billion dollars or more in Somaliland that’s a game changer for the international community,” he says. “They have their tentacles reaching a lot of different places, like an octopus, and we believe within that reach Somaliland will benefit in the long run, including recognition.”
Foreign Minister Shire is even more bullish: “I think the fact that we signed agreements with countries is itself a sign of recognition,” he said. “Somaliland is a de facto country.”
It’s an argument that doesn’t sway everyone in Berbera. Unless recognition is part of the deal, many residents told The Messenger, they have no reason to believe UAE will bestow it. But after a quarter century of isolation, it’s clear that Somaliland’s government is diving headfirst into the uncharted waters of increased foreign engagement anyway.
Back at Al-Xayat restaurant, Negeye gazes upon the ruins and potential in Berbera’s harbor. “Berbera will become an international place where all the world will come,” he says. What that will mean for the people of Somaliland remains an open question.
A container ship in the distance, seen from the shore of Berbera port, Somaliland.
By Jason Patinkin for The Messenger
With a sea breeze to his back, Ali Farah Negeye greets the lunch crowd at the Al Xayat restaurant in the Somaliland port city of Berbera. For the last fifteen years, he’s served lemonade and fried barracuda to a steady stream of regulars, who debate the topics of the day while watching fishing skiffs motor past the half-sunken hulls of ruined cargo ships. In the last year or so, though, Negeye says he’s seen new arrivals at the restaurant, mostly from other parts of Somaliland or its diaspora, but also a trickle of investors and tourists from the United Arab Emirates. “I can feel more customers,” Negeye says, as he relaxes following the afternoon rush. “People are understanding day after day the importance of Berbera.”
This is a welcome change for Negeye. For the last quarter century, there’s been little interest in Berbera, despite being along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. In 1991, Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia after a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands of people. As Mogadishu fell into the anarchy from which it has yet to escape, Somaliland plodded along on its own, enjoying peace as it built a nascent democracy. While Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti are stuck in the tight grip of autocratic regimes, and Somalia and the Sudans suffer endless wars, Somaliland in its isolation has earned a reputation for relatively successful democracy and stability.
Negeye’s new customers signal that foreigners are taking a closer took at Somaliland again, and the government in the capital Hargeisa is responding. In the last six months, Somaliland’s authorities have entered into two long-term deals with the UAE to expand Berbera’s port and build a military base. The two projects, if completed, would bring nearly 700 million dollars in investment and might overhaul Somaliland’s economy.
But the deals bring considerable risks, too. Somaliland’s location along Red Sea shipping routes is also the crossroads of the Horn of Africa and the Middle East – the two most war-ridden regions on Earth. The two deals thrust Somaliland into a number of overlapping, high stakes political and economic rivalries involving the UAE, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other nations. Transforming Somaliland into a coveted piece of this regional chess board thus threatens to undermine the unique progress the breakaway state has made over the last 26 years.
“If you do try to play this role in international geopolitics, it’s a very risky game,” says Harry Verhoeven, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. “The rewards are of course very lucrative and that’s why you want to play the game, but getting it wrong can be potentially devastating.”
“Inviting interference”
Somaliland’s strategic importance has been known for centuries, evident in the architecture left behind by the various empires and fortune-seekers who passed through the city over the years. Up a small hill from the port, the minaret of a 19th-century Egyptian-Turkish mosque juts above the crumbling walls of former British colonial mansions and officers’ clubs. In the old city, storefronts originally built by Yemeni Jews and Indian traders now house teashops and private homes. The port itself is a product of modern imperialism: the Soviets built the current site in the 1970s, before the Americans took it over in the 1980s when Somalia switched its allegiance on the Cold War proxy battlefield.
The deals with the UAE could help return Berbera to its former prominence. The $442 million, 30-year port deal with Dubai Ports World (DPWorld), passed by Somaliland’s parliament in August 2016, would boost annual container capacity twenty-fold. Somaliland’s government estimates the deal will result in thousands of construction and service jobs, as well as millions of dollars a year in government revenue through profit sharing.
In Berbera, many in the business class looks forward to the port’s development. “People are expecting impact in a good way because the port will get investment,” says Negeye. “If we get a good investment for the port I expect that the business and the movement of the city will increase.”
Underpinning the port’s success is trade with landlocked Ethiopia, Somaliland’s closest ally and with 90 million people by far its largest neighbor. Currently, Ethiopia has access to only one modern seaport in Djibouti, and Somaliland hopes to capture some of that market share. To that end, Somaliland’s government says UAE will spend $250 million to build a highway between Berbera and Ethiopia and upgrade Berbera’s Russian-built airport, which boasts one of the longest runways in Africa but has largely fallen out of use, in lieu of paying rent for the military base, whose lease is for 25 years.
“It will be a huge gain for Somaliland,” Osman Abdillahi, Somaliland’s Minister of Information, says of the projects. “It will be a win-win for everybody.”
Yet for the UAE, for whom $700 million is a relatively small amount, Berbera’s allure is hardly economic. Instead, the port and military base appear part of a wider strategy by Arab Gulf nations including the UAE to establish a dominant presence in the Horn of Africa through construction of ports and military bases, training of armed groups, and payoffs of petrodollars to friendly Sunni governments. According to Verhoeven, this rapid investment in the Horn isn’t about trade, but about setting up a shield against Iran and its Shia allies.
“There really is this very strong belief in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that Iran is hellbent on encircling them and toppling Gulf monarchies,” Verhoeven tells The Messenger. “The first layer of Gulf engagement with the Horn of Africa is this incredibly important proxy war with Iran. This is very much evident in Sudan, but also in a place like Eritrea and places like Somaliland and Somalia.”
So far, the UAE has a port and military base in Assab in Eritrea, from where it launches attacks on Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels as part of the Saudi-led coalition. UAE has another base in Mogadishu, where UAE and Qatar are said to have poured money into recent elections, and whose government has voiced support for the coalition. UAE’s military has trained the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) into one of the most professional Somali armed groups, while DP World – the same UAE port company now in Berbera – plans to revamp the Puntland port of Bosasso. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, plans to build its own military base in Djibouti. Further north, Gulf states have pumped dollars into Sudan, reestablishing ties with the African nation which previously had been allied to Iran. Khartoum now contributes forces to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen as well, and has hosted joint exercises with Saudi Arabia’s air force.
For some observers, the Gulf’s military interest in the Horn is alarming, and its arrival in Somaliland marks a dangerous new phase. “One of the reasons Somaliland survived and Somalia didn’t from 1991 is because Somalia was interfered by everyone. Somaliland wasn’t,” Guleid Ahmed Jama, chairman of the Hargeisa-based Human Rights Centre, told The Messenger. “We were very suspicious of interference. Now we are inviting interference.”
“Dangerous places”
A woman stands in the doorway of her home in the middle of a block of colonial era buildings.
One oft-cited fear is that a military partnership with the UAE could end Somaliland’s neutrality in the civil war in Yemen, which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Berbera. Thousands of Yemeni refugees have crossed to Somaliland to escapethat war, and their presence is a daily reminder in Somaliland of the consequences of being sucked into the Sunni-Shia power struggle that has destabilized the Middle East. Yet Somalilanders don’t need foreigners to teach them about the dangers of war.
“Whenever I hear about those military [coming to Berbera], I remember the air force that was killing the people,” says Hinda Osman, a Berbera resident, referring to indiscriminate bombings by Mogadishu during the civil war. Osman’s home in Berbera, a dilapidated colonial mansion which her family shares with a half dozen others, still bears bullet holes sustained from that conflict. When the war ended in 1991, refugee families like hers returned to Berbera and set up camp in whichever war-battered buildings still stood. They’ve lived as squatters ever since, but at least they’ve enjoyed peace, and they’re not willing to risk that any time soon. “If the UAE has a military base here, they will plan to attack from here to Yemen, and then in return, Yemen will also attack us.”
Hussein A. Bulhan, founder of Hargeisa’s Frantz Fanon University and a prominent Somaliland public intellectual, also strongly questions the merits of the UAE base, highlighting the risk of being drawn into the Sunni-Shia power struggle.
“Why does Dubai want a military base in this area? The only obvious thing right now is the war going on in Yemen and close access to that,” he says. “I don’t think it makes sense for us to be involved in a war in the region … I think it would be better that Somaliland becomes more of the island of peace it has been for a while.”
So far it’s unclear whether Somaliland has given UAE permission to launch operations on Yemen from Berbera. Before the signing of the deal, Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Saad Shire told The Messenger that specific point was still under negotiation. Since the signing, he has not answered repeated queries on this point, and the full text of the deal has not been released. Regardless, Shire dismissed concerns that Somaliland would be sucked into a wider regional war.
“Somaliland isn’t really interested or is not aimed to get involved in any war or any conflict in the region or beyond,” he said. “We are just using Berbera’s strategic location to advance our interests, which are really nothing more than development.”
An old building in Berbera, showing signs of wear.
But a military deal with one of the belligerents in the Yemen war hardly looks neutral, and Somaliland’s information minister Abdillahi admits they support through official recognition Yemen’s Saudi-backed government over the Houthis. Still, Abdillahi contends the presence of UAE’s military in Berbera will actually strengthen Somaliland’s security, rather than erode it, including through UAE training of Somaliland’s naval and land forces. A recent resurgence of piracy is another reason for Somaliland to take extra precautions as it aims to make Berbera into a hub.
“With the Berbera port and its free zone coming into reality, we need someone to protect our seacoast. We have 850 kilometers, and that has a lot of dangerous places including what’s happening in Yemen, including a lot of pirates,” Abdillahi told The Messenger. “We have been doing all we can to protect, [but] we need their equipment, we need their knowledge. It’s imperative that we have someone who has got more resources than we have.”
Whether UAE base will be a bulwark or not, Somalilanders have already found themselves under fire as a result of the Yemen war. Earlier this month, an Apache helicopter believed to be from the Saudi-led coalition of which UAE is part, attacked a boat of Somali refugees off Yemen’s coast, killing dozens including Somalilanders. Somalia’s government in Mogadishu swiftly condemned the attack and demanded an investigation by the coalition, but Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Shire, who was in Abu Dhabi at the time for negotiations on the military base, was more cautious. When The Messenger asked how the attack would impact Somaliland’s relations with the Gulf and the UAE agreements, he demurred.
“I suppose this is under investigations, so really I cannot say,” he said. “We caution all parties to make sure that civilians are not affected in the conflict.”
Balancing act
The current port of Berbera, due for a USD 442 million upgrade
Whether or not the UAE base pulls Somaliland further into Gulf conflicts, the Arab-Iranian competition is only one regional power struggle which Somaliland will have to navigate following the Berbera deals. Perhaps an even greater worry than the Yemen war is that a UAE military base could upset Somaliland’s closest ally, Ethiopia. Though access to a second port would surely please Addis Ababa, the Gulf’s growing presence in the Horn also looks a lot like encirclement of the so-called “Christian Kingdom.” The fact the UAE has close military relationships with Ethiopia’s arch-rivals Eritrea and Egypt further raises alarm for Addis Ababa.
“In Berbera what you’re looking at is obviously from the Ethiopian standpoint concerning,” says Verhoeven. “The worry is that UAE in particular has been snatching up a number of ports in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean area, and certainly substantially increasing its equipment and its military presence. There’s an incredible amount of skepticism about that, especially because Ethiopian and UAE relations are not particularly good.”
Summary of regional dynamics around Somaliland. Black markers indicate key ports.
Upsetting Ethiopia is hardly in Somaliland’s national interest. Ethiopia is a main trading partner for Somaliland and the only country which accepts Somaliland passports. Ethiopia provides crucial diplomatic support to the breakaway state, including by hosting a large mission from Hargeisa in Addis Ababa, which gives the Somaliland government a platform to lobby the African Union and wider international community. Hargeisa and Addis Ababa also collaborate on security operations, particularly on immigration, and Somalilanders travel to Ethiopia for health care and education. But support from Ethiopia, itself a low-income country dealing with its own political upheavals, only goes so far.
“Somaliland’s government may be trying to send a signal to Addis not to take them for granted, and say, ‘look we might have other partners other than you who are willing to support us and provide us with a lot more cash than you can,’ ” says Verhoeven. “There are obviously important risks to this strategy namely that you end up disappointing the people who are so far the most loyal allies of your country.”
Foreign Minister Shire denied that Ethiopia had any concerns over the UAE deals. He added that Ethiopia recently has been brought on board in the port deal, and will have a 19% stake in the port itself, taking 5% of the total from Somaliland’s originally agreed-upon shares, and 14% of the total from DPWorld. That leaves DPWorld with a majority stake of 51% and Somaliland with just 30%, compared to 35% in the original agreement. Shire said this change to the deal was done for purely economic reasons.
The alliance with UAE draws Somaliland into other regional rivalries as well. The Gulf states have their own competition, with UAE and Qatar vying for equal footing with Saudi Arabia, and for supremacy in the Horn. Internally, clan tensions, and a struggle between Sufism and Salafism – stoked by Saudi influence in particular – continue to fester. The UAE’s investments also up the stakes of Hargeisa’s secession standoff with Mogadishu.
With all of these interests from regional heavy hitters, the question is how tiny Somaliland can balance its various, at-times conflicting allegiances. It’s certinaly not impossible: neighboring Djibouti’s leaders have successfully welcomed France, the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom either operate or are building military bases in the port-nation. But Bulhan contends that Somaliland’s leaders are not nearly as savvy as Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guellah, pointing out that a succession of administrations in Hargeisa have all failed over the last twenty five years to gain recognition from a single country. And that lack of recognition in itself opens up Somaliland to greater risk.
“Somaliland because of its non-recognition, isolation, smaller state, is alway more vulnerable to more powerful states,” he says, specifically emphasizing Somaliland’s minority shareholder status in the port deal. “It’s not going to be a question of equity.”
Should UAE break or tamper with the deals, with its military in Berbera, Somaliland may have little recourse to accountability. Even restauranteur Negeye, an enthusiastic supporter of the port, is wary of the military base for this reason. Berbera residents have other concerns too. Numerous women, including Osman, told The Messenger they feared the arrival of foreign soldiers after hearing reports that African Union peacekeepers in southern Somalia raped local women there. (Somaliland’s information minister told The Messenger that UAE troops will not have immunity from prosecution).
But even Djibouti, with its nationhood and strong leadership, has suffered from hosting wealthy foreign militaries. Backed by the largest armies on Earth, President Guellah has entrenched his autocratic rule, tightening his grip on power over the last eighteen years. In Somaliland, there’s a similar potential for an erosion of open government, simply because the sums of money on offer are so large from Hargeisa’s perspective. The port deal, according to a summary distributed to parliament last August, includes an up front payment of 10 million dollars to the government, big money in Somaliland considering its 2016 budget was under 300 million dollars.
“The very fact that you have such neighbors with deep pockets has a very similar effect to say the sudden a discovery of oil. All of a sudden there is a huge inflow of cash, many of it of course unregistered, into the political system, so that raises the stakes of the game,” says Verhoeven. “Capturing the presidency or a ministerial portfolio has just become a lot more lucrative and potentially powerful than it was before, but it also gives far greater power to those who are already in positions of authority, and to buy their way to stay into power and consolidating their grip on it, and in that sense it can potentially be quite destabilizing.”
Indeed, in Somaliland, it appears the democratic backslide has already begun.
“The government’s behavior has changed”
Fishermen unload their catch onshore, Berbera, Somaliland
Berbera-based journalist Mubaarik Nirig has been arrested twice in the last two years. He would have been arrested a third time, after interviewing locals opposed to the DP World Port deal, if he hadn’t received a tip that police had a warrant with his name on it. He went into hiding until things cooled down. “Before [the deals] we never had this repressive attitude toward journalists,” he told The Messenger. “Of course there were little disagreements with the local government, small issues, but the national government and the arrests really has started with these two issues.”
The statistics bear this out. Jama, the human rights activist, says the majority of arrests related to freedom of speech in 2015 and 2016 were connected to the port deal. At least four journalists have been arrested this year so far, two of whom in connection with reporting or criticism of the port and military base. None of the arrests have been upheld in courts, but Abdillahi, the information minister has bluntly vowed to arrest other journalists who “threaten national security.”
The free speech crackdown reflects a wider lack of transparency and intolerance of dissent regarding the two projects. Parliament approved terms of the deals without seeing the full text of the agreements. In the case of the port, lawmakers received a detailed summary, but the final deal has never been made public. The revelation that the government has brought Ethiopia on board indicates the port deal remains mutable even after parliamentary approval, but there’s little public information of how it is being changed.
The deal for the military base is even more opaque. Parliament approved the basic terms’ of the deal without debate in a chaotic session in which opposing lawmakers were thrown out. The deal itself was believed to be the work of a small coterie of individuals close to the president, including his son-in-law who serves as Somaliland’s representative to the UAE and the Minister for the Presidency. And the fact that the talks were completed in the last year of the current administration further fuel suspicions of underhandedness.
“It’s not democratic. They talk about parliamentarians having made a decision, but they’re not even legitimate to be here,” says Bulhan, referring to the fact that Somaliland’s parliamentarians have sat in office for over a decade without re-election. “The democracy is degenerating out of these desperations.”
There was no substantive local consultation over the two projects, either. Even supporters of the port, like Yusuf Abdillahi Gulled, the director of Fair Fishing, an organization that promotes small-scale fishermen in Berbera, say bypassing locals was a mistake. “It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where all the people in the local communities come up, asked questions, proposed ideas,” he told The Messenger last August, shortly after parliament approved of the port deal. “For illiterate people which is the majority of our people, they cannot understand how things are, so they need to be confronted and have a meeting with them and tell them this investment will help their lives.”
With the lack of open discussion and transparency on the terms of the two UAE deals, negative rumors have flourished, stoked by local politicians who have seen their patronage networks upended with DPWorld’s arrival. There are widely held beliefs among Berbera residents that the land for the military base was purchased for just 1.2 million dollars and that DPWorld will conduct mass layoffs of port workers as they implement automation. Officials could probably assuage such fears with explanation and outreach — mass job cuts haven’t played out so far, for instance. Instead, the government has met local outcry with outright repression.
In August, troops deployed in Berbera’s streets when demonstrators planned to protest the sudden removal of the port manager. The demonstrators then cancelled their action. Later, the governor in Berbera banned public meetings from being held without prior government approval. Two weeks after DPWorld assumed control of the port, police arrested striking port workers complaining about pay. Days later, Somaliland’s National Security Minister banned all meetings to discuss the UAE military base.
“Essentially, the government’s behavior has changed,” says Nirig.
‘De facto’ recognition
View from Al Xayat restaurant in the Somaliland port city of Berbera.
From his top floor office on Frantz Fanon University’s Hargeisa campus, Bulhan downplays the recent turmoil surrounding the UAE deals. He takes the longer view: Somaliland’s citizens were the ones who built the country after the war, he says, and they will carry on regardless of their leaders. He says that the government’s backslide on rights and transparency, though disappointing, is not surprising. Twenty five years of stability and fragile democracy has not resulted in recognition from the region or the west, so Hargeisa is looking elsewhere, despite the risks.
“I’ve been here for 21 years, and I see a society being rebuilt from total ruin,” he says. “It did a remarkable thing, but then these things are not sustainable in the long term [without recognition].”
Somaliland’s government seems to agree. Abdillahi, the information minister, makes clear that the hope for recognition is one reasons they’re looking to the Gulf. “We believe that if UAE has invested a billion dollars or more in Somaliland that’s a game changer for the international community,” he says. “They have their tentacles reaching a lot of different places, like an octopus, and we believe within that reach Somaliland will benefit in the long run, including recognition.”
Foreign Minister Shire is even more bullish: “I think the fact that we signed agreements with countries is itself a sign of recognition,” he said. “Somaliland is a de facto country.”
It’s an argument that doesn’t sway everyone in Berbera. Unless recognition is part of the deal, many residents told The Messenger, they have no reason to believe UAE will bestow it. But after a quarter century of isolation, it’s clear that Somaliland’s government is diving headfirst into the uncharted waters of increased foreign engagement anyway.
Back at Al-Xayat restaurant, Negeye gazes upon the ruins and potential in Berbera’s harbor. “Berbera will become an international place where all the world will come,” he says. What that will mean for the people of Somaliland remains an open question.
1956 Operation Redwing bombing at Enewetak Atoll. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Field Office)
Michael Atsbeha | AP
