Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The media has been quick to associate Qatar’s decision to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the disputed Djibouti-Eritrea border with the Gulf crisis. This connection was most likely made because Qatar’s decision came only days after both Djibouti and Eritrea announced that they are siding with Saudi Arabia in the diplomatic rift and downgraded their diplomatic relations with Qatar.
The withdrawal of troops, if understood as a knee-jerk reaction, contrasts markedly with how Qatar has been operating since the start of the crisis. Qatar has not reciprocated the harsh, punitive moves of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a tit-for-tat spiral of vindictiveness. Nor has it reacted to countries which have reduced diplomatic relations, such as Jordan, by taking retaliatory measures against its thousands of nationals working in Qatar.
While Qatar Airways offices have been sealed off in Abu Dhabi and its senior staff harassed, no such measures have been taken by Doha. Furthermore, while food supplies through Saudi Arabia and the UAE were cut, Qatar continues to supply the latter with around 57 million cubic metres of gas daily. This shows that Qatar continues to play the long game by taking the moral high ground – a strategy that looks to have paid off given the number of international diplomatic capitals that have refused to cave into the intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to vilify Qatar.
Given what we know about how Qatar has operated during the crisis, the explanation that the troop withdrawal is purely a knee-jerk reaction to the downgrading of diplomatic ties does not add up. Doubtlessly, with downgraded relations, Qatar finds itself in a difficult position as a mediator and peacekeeper between the two nations. No mediator can operate effectively with reduced representation, both on a practical and reputational level. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the decision has been made in a retaliatory manner. Rather, there are three less evident reasons for why the decision to withdraw has been on the cards for some time and why it is now impossible for anyone in Qatar to advocate for maintaining the peacekeeping force.
The potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis.
First of all, a fundamental principle of conflict mediation is that any third party must maintain a credible threat to walk away if the conflicting parties are not committed to reaching a negotiated settlement. Qatari troops have, for the past seven years, been stationed in the dusty uninhabited border region between the two East African countries to monitor the implementation of the terms of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar in June 2010.
Despite consistent attempts to turn the ceasefire into a peace agreement, little progress has been made. A minor breakthrough was achieved in March 2016 when, in a deal mediated by Qatar, Eritrea released four prisoners from Djibouti’s armed forces who were captured in June 2008 during border clashes. However, in the past year, the Eritrean negotiating team has disengaged from the mediation process despite the United Nations Security Council mandated-arms embargo on Eritrea being re-approved in November 2016, demanding that Eritrea release all missing prisoners and allow UN monitors to enter the country.
The two states, particularly Eritrea, have not heeded calls for border demarcation and have gone into denial by refusing to refer to the border conflict as a serious issue. The presence of the Qatari peacekeepers had allowed both parties to grow accustomed to the status quo of a mutually beneficial stalemate.
Second, Djibouti and Eritrea consistently engage in a geostrategic game of shifting alliances. When Qatar entered the fray, the Djibouti-Eritrea border dispute was a minor conflict with very few international actors showing an appetite for mediation. Since then Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has expanded to become the largest US military base in the region, China has also entered Djibouti, while, in April 2015, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea signed a security cooperation agreement and the UAE is currently completing the construction of a military base north of the port city of Assab in Eritrea from where its armed forces have been operating in the military campaign in Yemen. This particular corner of the Horn of Africa is by now far too crowded for a small nation like Qatar to justify its military presence as a buffer.
Third, maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari troops in a remote area is a costly and largely thankless endeavour. While the withdrawal was doubtlessly hastened by the changes in diplomatic relations with Eritrea and Djibouti, this has more to do with the infiltration of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia into Eritrea. This military presence clearly renders Qatari troops stationed thousands of miles away in an isolated area a soft target for direct or indirect retaliation. Moreover, 500 troops represent a significant investment of military manpower for an armed forces of around 12,000 during the most urgent crisis the country has faced in its history.
With Eritrea moving its forces into the contested Dumeira Mountain and Dumeira Islands, the temperature of the conflict has been increased and the situation is now more explosive than ever before, for all actors involved. The rapid development of the situation demonstrates the important stabilising role that Qatar had played under the radar for many years.
Moreover, the potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. This should serve as a cautionary note for the potential of escalation in other places where Qatari assistance has been keeping the lid on conflict, in particular, the Gaza Strip, where as a result of the increased isolation of Qatar by its Gulf neighbours we may see the end of the single most important donor to the reconstruction of the besieged territory to date. This should focus the minds of world leaders on the need to resolve the Gulf crisis amicably as soon as possible.
Professor Sultan Barakat is the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York.
Dr Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
“This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther,” Chinese paper says
Djibouti has become host to several foreign military powers
(CNN)China has dispatched troops to Djibouti in advance of formally establishing the country’s first overseas military base.
Two Chinese Navy warships left the port of Zhanjiang on Tuesday, taking an undisclosed number of military personnel on the journey across the Indian Ocean.
An editorial Wednesday in the state-run Global Times stressed the importance of the new Djibouti facility — in the strategically located Horn of Africa — to the Chinese military.
“Certainly this is the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas base and we will base troops there. It’s not a commercial resupply point… This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther, so it means a lot,” said the paper.
The Global Times said the main role of the base would be to support Chinese warships operating in the region in anti-piracy and humanitarian operations.
“It’s not about seeking to control the world,” said the editorial.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy troops march in Djibouti’s independence day parade on June 27, marking 40 years since the end of French rule in the Horn of Africa country.
Chinese military presence
At a regular press briefing Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang described the base as part of ongoing efforts to help bring peace and security to the region.
“China has been deploying naval ships to waters off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden to conduct escorting missions since 2008,” said Geng. “The completion and operation of the base will help China better fulfill its international obligations in conducting escorting missions and humanitarian assistance … It will also help promote economic and social development in Djibouti.”
China has expanded its military ties across Africa in recent years. According to a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), cooperation with Africa on peace and security is now an “explicit part of Beijing’s foreign policy.”
In 2015 Chinese President Xi Jinping committed 8,000 troops to the UN peacekeeping standby force — one fifth of the 40,000 total troops committed by 50 nations — China also pledged $100 million to the African Union standby force and $1 billion to establish the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund.
More than 2,500 Chinese combat-ready soldiers and police officers are now deployed in blue-helmet missions across the African continent, with the largest deployments in South Sudan (1,051), Liberia (666), and Mali (402), according to the ECFR.
“Blue-helmet deployments give the PLA a chance to build up field experience abroad — and to help secure Chinese economic interests in places such as South Sudan,” said the ECFR report.
Africa is home to an estimated one million Chinese nationals, with many employed in infrastructure projects backed by the Chinese government.
“China’s involvement in African security is a product of a wider transformation of China’s national defense policy. It is taking on a global outlook … and incorporating new concepts such as the protection of overseas interests and open seas protection,” said the report.
US ‘strategic interests’
China joins the US, France and Japan, among others, with permanent bases in Djibouti, a former French colony with a population of less than one million residents.
Though small in both population and size, Djibouti’s position on the tip of the Horn of Africa offers strategic access to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The strait, which is only 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, connects the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.
One of the world’s most important sea lanes, millions of barrels of oil and petroleum products pass through the strait daily, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
US Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, stressed Djibouti’s location during a visit to the US Camp Lemonnier garrison there earlier this year.
“This particular piece of geography is very, very important to our strategic interests,” Waldhauser said in joint appearance with US Defense Secretary James Mattis.
The US military has some 4,000 troops at Camp Lemonnier, a 100-acre base for which it signed a 10-year, $630 million lease in 2014, according to media reports.
Elsewhere in Djibouti, the US military operates the Chabelley Airfield, from which the Pentagon stages drone airstrikes, likely into Somalia and across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into Yemen, according to the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. The Pentagon is investing millions in the base, and satellite photos show several construction projects, the center reported last year.
US Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys prepare to land at a landing zone during training conducted in Djibouti on January 10.
‘Get-rich-quick scheme’
Japan, which has seen tense relations with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, has established what it calls an “activity facility” to support its anti-piracy efforts there.
A spokesperson for the Japan Self Defense Forces said 170 troops are at its 30-acre facility in Djibouti.
Lease terms would not be released, but Japan will spend about $9 million to operate the facility this fiscal year, the spokesperson said.
Edward Paice, director of the London-based Africa Research Institute, said a base in Djibouti makes a lot of sense for China, just as it does for Japan or the US.
“It (China) has cited its desire to play a greater role in peacekeeping, and it has combat troops in both South Sudan and Mali. It’s logical that it needs an actual base somewhere in Africa, which is really no different from the Americans saying that they need Camp Lemonnier as a headquarters for operations in Africa, whether in peacekeeping or counterterror or whatever,” Paice said on The Cipher Brief website.
Picture taken on May 5, 2015, shows work in progress on the new railway tracks linking Djibouti with Addis Ababa.
Paice points out that China made a substantial investment in Djibouti — about $500 million, according to reports — to build the Djibouti portion of a rail line to the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.
“It’s a confluence of these factors — trade, military, and stability in the host country’s government” that brought China to Djibouti, Paice said.
Meanwhile, for Djibouti, it’s all about money, Paice said. “This is a fantastic get-rich-quick scheme — to rent bits of desert to foreign powers. It’s as simple as that.”
CNN’s Serenitie Wang, Daisy Lee and Junko Ogura contributed to this report.
Maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari armed troops in a remote area was a costly and largely thankless endeavour write Barakat and Milton [AP]by Sultan Barakat
Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The media has been quick to associate Qatar’s decision to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the disputed Djibouti-Eritrea border with the Gulf crisis. This connection was most likely made because Qatar’s decision came only days after both Djibouti and Eritrea announced that they are siding with Saudi Arabia in the diplomatic rift and downgraded their diplomatic relations with Qatar.
The withdrawal of troops, if understood as a knee-jerk reaction, contrasts markedly with how Qatar has been operating since the start of the crisis. Qatar has not reciprocated the harsh, punitive moves of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a tit-for-tat spiral of vindictiveness. Nor has it reacted to countries which have reduced diplomatic relations, such as Jordan, by taking retaliatory measures against its thousands of nationals working in Qatar.
While Qatar Airways offices have been sealed off in Abu Dhabi and its senior staff harassed, no such measures have been taken by Doha. Furthermore, while food supplies through Saudi Arabia and the UAE were cut, Qatar continues to supply the latter with around 57 million cubic metres of gas daily. This shows that Qatar continues to play the long game by taking the moral high ground – a strategy that looks to have paid off given the number of international diplomatic capitals that have refused to cave into the intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to vilify Qatar.
Given what we know about how Qatar has operated during the crisis, the explanation that the troop withdrawal is purely a knee-jerk reaction to the downgrading of diplomatic ties does not add up. Doubtlessly, with downgraded relations, Qatar finds itself in a difficult position as a mediator and peacekeeper between the two nations. No mediator can operate effectively with reduced representation, both on a practical and reputational level. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the decision has been made in a retaliatory manner. Rather, there are three less evident reasons for why the decision to withdraw has been on the cards for some time and why it is now impossible for anyone in Qatar to advocate for maintaining the peacekeeping force.
The potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis.
First of all, a fundamental principle of conflict mediation is that any third party must maintain a credible threat to walk away if the conflicting parties are not committed to reaching a negotiated settlement. Qatari troops have, for the past seven years, been stationed in the dusty uninhabited border region between the two East African countries to monitor the implementation of the terms of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar in June 2010.
Despite consistent attempts to turn the ceasefire into a peace agreement, little progress has been made. A minor breakthrough was achieved in March 2016 when, in a deal mediated by Qatar, Eritrea released four prisoners from Djibouti’s armed forces who were captured in June 2008 during border clashes. However, in the past year, the Eritrean negotiating team has disengaged from the mediation process despite the United Nations Security Council mandated-arms embargo on Eritrea being re-approved in November 2016, demanding that Eritrea release all missing prisoners and allow UN monitors to enter the country.
The two states, particularly Eritrea, have not heeded calls for border demarcation and have gone into denial by refusing to refer to the border conflict as a serious issue. The presence of the Qatari peacekeepers had allowed both parties to grow accustomed to the status quo of a mutually beneficial stalemate.
Second, Djibouti and Eritrea consistently engage in a geostrategic game of shifting alliances. When Qatar entered the fray, the Djibouti-Eritrea border dispute was a minor conflict with very few international actors showing an appetite for mediation. Since then Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has expanded to become the largest US military base in the region, China has also entered Djibouti, while, in April 2015, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea signed a security cooperation agreement and the UAE is currently completing the construction of a military base north of the port city of Assab in Eritrea from where its armed forces have been operating in the military campaign in Yemen. This particular corner of the Horn of Africa is by now far too crowded for a small nation like Qatar to justify its military presence as a buffer.
Third, maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari troops in a remote area is a costly and largely thankless endeavour. While the withdrawal was doubtlessly hastened by the changes in diplomatic relations with Eritrea and Djibouti, this has more to do with the infiltration of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia into Eritrea. This military presence clearly renders Qatari troops stationed thousands of miles away in an isolated area a soft target for direct or indirect retaliation. Moreover, 500 troops represent a significant investment of military manpower for an armed forces of around 12,000 during the most urgent crisis the country has faced in its history.
With Eritrea moving its forces into the contested Dumeira Mountain and Dumeira Islands, the temperature of the conflict has been increased and the situation is now more explosive than ever before, for all actors involved. The rapid development of the situation demonstrates the important stabilising role that Qatar had played under the radar for many years.
Moreover, the potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. This should serve as a cautionary note for the potential of escalation in other places where Qatari assistance has been keeping the lid on conflict, in particular, the Gaza Strip, where as a result of the increased isolation of Qatar by its Gulf neighbours we may see the end of the single most important donor to the reconstruction of the besieged territory to date. This should focus the minds of world leaders on the need to resolve the Gulf crisis amicably as soon as possible.
Professor Sultan Barakat is the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York.
Dr Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
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.
China and Saudi Arabia are building military bases next door to US AFRICOM in Djibouti—and bringing the consequences of American withdrawal from the region into stark relief.
Djibouti, a resource-poor nation of 14,300 square miles and 875,000 people in the Horn of Africa, rarely makes international headlines. But between its relative stability and strategic location—20 miles across from war-consumed Yemen and in destroyer range of the pirate-infested western edge of the Indian Ocean—it is now one of the more important security beachheads in the develohttp://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Braude/e/B001KDV64Kping world. Its location also matters greatly to global commerce and energy, due to its vicinity to the Mandeb Strait and the Suez-Aden canal, which sees ten percent of the world’s oil exports and 20 percent of its commercial exports annually.[1] Since November 2002, the country has been home to Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. Expeditionary base—the only American base on the African continent—along with other bases belonging to its French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese allies. (The United States maintains numerous small outposts and airfields in Africa, but officially regards Lemonnier as its only full-scale military base on the continent.)
But now there are two new kids on the block: On January 21st, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry announced an agreement with Djibouti to host its first-ever base beyond the South China Sea, and construction commenced days later.[2] Though Beijing called the installation a “logistics and fast evacuation base,” the Asian power’s “near-abroad” rivals, such as Taiwan, opined that it is more likely the beginning of a new, aggressive military buildup to rival the United States. Six weeks later, Saudi Arabia declared that it too would construct a base in Djibouti,[3]apparently as part of its newly assertive policy of countering Iranian proxies politically and militarily throughout the region.[4]
Both new players have made substantial economic and soft power investments in the country to boot. Since 2015, Beijing has poured over $14 billion into infrastructure development.[5] Saudi Arabia, itself a prominent donor to Djibouti’s public works, has spent generously on social welfare projects for the country’s poor; built housing, schools and mosques for its swelling Yemeni refugee population; and dispatched teachers and preachers from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, long a pillar for the promulgation of Saudi-backed interpretations of Islam. Augmenting Saudi aid, moreover, has been further spending by some of its Arab military allies. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have poured millions into charitable work over the past few months—and the UAE in particular is working to spur economic development along the lines of the “Dubai model.” Even cash-poor North Sudan, newly returned to the Saudi orbit after a years-long alliance with Iran, began construction of a hospital in Djibouti in early February.
Neither the timing nor the confluence of these projects is mere coincidence. America’s diminishing global military footprint has begun to affect the calculation of allies and rivals alike, and the outsized role Djibouti is poised to play in its neighborhood presents a case in point of the consequences. An examination of the changing role the country plays in American, Chinese, and Arab security policy offers a glimpse into potential conflicts as well as opportunities arising from the shift—and some steps Americans can take to prepare for both.
The American Posture
As the only American base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier serves a vital function for US AFRICOM. Housing 4,000 military and civilian personnel, it is the nerve center of six drone launching stations across the continent, which have attacked targets as far-flung as Al-Shabab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Yemeni-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. Special Forces, the CIA, and Air Force surveillance craft converge to process and pool intelligence at the camp. It also serves as headquarters to Task Force 48-4, a counterterrorism unit that targets militants in East Africa and Yemen.[6] Special Forces rely on it too: In 2012, when Navy SEALs rescued American and Danish hostages from Somalia, they brought them to safety in Camp Lemonnier.[7] And as a springboard for American-led anti-piracy operations, Camp Lemonnier helps the U.S. maintain its role as the primary guarantor of mercantile security in the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The significance of the base grows only greater amid regional conflagration: The U.S. has been using it to meet its pledge of technical and intelligence assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.
In 2014, the U.S. signed a new 20-year lease on the base with the Djiboutian government, and committed over $1.4 billion to modernize it in the years to come.[8] This significant expenditure bucks the overall trend of diminishing American military commitments overseas. For example, President Obama has announced plans to reduce the number of active naval vessels to 1917 numbers, possibly including aircraft carriers.[9]
As the segments below will show, America’s status in the country stands to be affected by the activities of the Chinese and Saudi bases. It may also be affected by the two countries’ soft power deployments, each aiming to influence the cultural and political fiber of the country and, by extension, the policies of its government. America’s own soft power commitments have been minimal: the U.S. supplies $3 million worth of food aid annually through USAID as part of the U.N. World Food Program, runs modest health and education projects, and netted only $152 million in trade in 2015.[10] Nor is there any concerted effort to enter the public discussion in Djibouti in the service of American goals or values.
The Chinese Posture
By contrast to the U.S., China has never previously established a base beyond its “near abroad.” Thus the Djibouti project, however modest, fuels the perception that China’s military footprint is growing. Sending such a message may itself be among Beijing’s goals. David Shedd, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told us that “[The Chinese] want to signal to the world that they have a worldwide presence. Part of the mission is simply defined as being seen. That in and of itself is defined as an interest.”[11]
With respect to its potential operational significance, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says, “Facilities will mainly be used for logistical support and personnel recuperation of the Chinese armed forces conducting such missions as maritime escort in the Gulf of Aden and waters off the Somali coast, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance.” It would also enable fast evacuation for any of the million Chinese citizens now living in the Middle East and Africa should they require it.[12]The need to prepare for such eventualities became clear to China in the bloody aftermath of the Arab Spring: It evacuated 35,680 nationals employed mainly in Libya’s oil industry, and 629 more from Yemen soon thereafter.[13] During the Libya evacuation, China had only one frigate available in the vicinity, so most of the evacuees had to be flown out of the country on chartered commercial planes.
But from Washington to Taipei, observers suspect that the project is more ambitious than the Chinese let on. In an interview on the national news network Taiwan Today, political analyst Lai Yueqian said, “[The base] can be used to pin down the United States and any U.S.-led organizations, and if [the U.S.] wants to intervene against China’s interests, they will have to think carefully, because China will use their military to protect their citizens and their property.”[14] In the following clip, Yueqian elaborates on this analysis, bespeaking Taiwanese concerns about the base:
Yueqian’s assessment, shared by most Chinese “near-abroad” allies of the United States, is also the view of prominent members of the political class in Washington. At a December hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs in which rumors about the base were discussed, Senator Chris Coons (R-De.) stated in relation to the Djibouti base, “[The US has to be] vigilant in the face of China’s growing ambitions.”[15]
Beijing’s outlook toward nearby North Africa and the Middle East differs with American policies. As Taiwan’s Lai Yueqian described in the video above, the U.S.- and NATO-led military intervention in Libya angered China. At the U.N. Security Council, Beijing subsequently blocked attempts to engineer a Western military intervention in Syria. With respect to the region-wide conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, America’s tradition of siding with Saudi Arabia — or, for that matter, its more recent tendency to tilt toward Iran — may conflict with Chinese policies: Guided by the need to quench its substantial thirst for oil, Beijing mostly seeks to avoid irking either oil-rich nation. A new military base in boating range of North Africa as well as the Arabian peninsula promises to bolster any Chinese political stance—however modestly—with a measure of force. The base, to be located near the small port city of Obock on the northern coast of Djibouti, lies 20 miles closer than Lemonnier to the conflict in Yemen, to which Washington has committed resources in support of Saudi Arabia’s war with the Houthis.
But China’s strategic goals cannot be explained solely in terms of a perceived reaction to Western policies. According to Beijing’s most recent defense policy paper, released in May 2015, “China’s armed forces will work harder to create a favorable strategic posture with more emphasis on the employment of military forces and means.”[16] This formulation is widely believed to allude to China’s “String of Pearls” and “One Belt, One Road” initiatives. “String of Pearls” is a metaphor for an envisioned network of naval ports of call, predominantly along the Indian Ocean, to secure sea lanes of transit, commerce, and communication from mainland China to Sudan. The “One Belt, One Road” initiative seeks to strengthen Chinese exports through commercial land and sea roads, largely along the historic “silk road,” straddling Europe and the Middle East. The Djibouti base would be vital in ensuring the success of the latter goal, since most of China’s $1 billion in daily exports to Europe traverse the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.[17] With respect to the former plan, Toshi Yoshihara, Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the U.S. Naval War College, has been mapping the intersection of Chinese naval and commercial ventures across the Pacific region. Arrayed together, he told us, they “certainly do look like a string of pearls.”[18] Djibouti, home to both the nascent base and extensive Chinese economic investment, would clearly amount to a new pearl on the string (see Figure 1).[19]
Are Chinese and American pursuits in the vicinity of Djibouti necessarily a zero-sum game? Some of China’s stated goals do not conflict with American aspirations, and to the contrary, may benefit both superpowers as well as their allies: Both the growing Chinese capacity to evacuate citizens from war-torn areas and its further enhancement of anti-piracy operations are each a “public good.” On the other hand, a different term in Beijing’s political vocabulary raises more disturbing possibilities. In our conversation with FPRI Senior Fellow June Teufel Dreyer, she stressed the principle of “All Under Heaven”—rooted in Chinese imperial history—which places Chinese central authority at the epicenter of a tributary system of dominance over lesser powers. Some analysts of China see the country’s recent installation of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets on Woody Island in the South China Sea as a manifestation of this supremacist tendency.[20] One might ask whether the construction of a Djibouti base reflects the extension of “All Under Heaven” beyond China’s traditional orbit.
At a time of rapid Chinese construction of aircraft and aircraft carriers and more serious competition with American military industries, the base in Djibouti could indeed reflect a Chinese aspiration to eventually meet and surpass the United States as a military and economic power in the area. In January 2016, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted a 72-hour exercise involving thousands of marines and the navy special operations regiment in the Gobi Desert in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The area’s topography and climate resemble much of North Africa and the Sahel.[21] Between “All Under Heaven” and China’s stated goal of housing up to 10,000 Chinese servicemen in Djibouti, such exercises offer ample basis for concern.[22]
Beijing’s hard power initiative in Djibouti is meanwhile accompanied by its soft power initiatives to build ties with state and society alike. The $14 billion in Chinese support for infrastructure development, widely publicized in Djibouti, has generated enormous goodwill with the population. Far exceeding U.S. spending, the injection is also an investment in the government of President Isma’il Omar Guelleh. There are also cultural ventures, such as the new Confucius Institute in Djibouti City, which Beijing typically uses to cultivate personal ties and “assets” within the society.[23] Add to all this China’s $1.1 billion in trade in 2014—roughly ten times that of the United States.[24] As Chinese influence grows in Djibouti, its ability to influence the government’s foreign policy and security strategies promises to grow along with it.
The Saudi Posture
From a Saudi perspective, stationing troops in Djibouti is both a defensive and a potential offensive measure in its pan-regional conflict with Iran, with particular bearing on the nearby war in Yemen. The defensive aspect was on display in mid-February, when Saudi intelligence officials, tracking the flow of munitions from Iran to its Houthi proxy militia in Yemen, discovered that the Islamic Republic was using Djibouti as a waystation. A ship en route to Yemen carrying encrypted military communication equipment and other hardware had originated in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The Kingdom intercepted it en route, and recognized the importance of strengthening its capacity to act in and around Djibouti.[25] In terms of “offense,” Ben Ho Wan Beng, a military analyst in Singapore, speculates that given the Houthi presence in western Yemen, Riyadh could use the base to “open up a new front against the Houthis, who [would] then face the prospect of being attacked from another axis.”[26]
By contrast to the U.S. and its Japanese and Western allies, for which the establishment of a base in Djibouti is a matter of paying rent on a discrete strip of land, Saudis view their own barrack walls as permeable. Djibouti is an Arab League member state, bound to its brethren by ties of blood, culture, and faith. It has also joined the 34-member, Saudi-led “Islamic coalition” against Iran-sponsored terror announced by Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in December.[27]Thus from Riyadh’s perspective, all of Djibouti is a kind of “base”—and the Kingdom feels it has a right to weigh in on any of the country’s non-Arab military installations. It was hardly a coincidence when the Djiboutian government recently rejected a Russian proposal to establish its own base in the country: Moscow, a staunch ally to the Iran-backed Assad regime in Damascus, would have been at best unhelpful to Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war.
Saudi soft power activity in the country serves to intensify this bond. One of the state-backed organizations spearheading it is the Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The group historically served as a primary exporter of Islamist preaching across the globe—a mission that enabled both Salafi jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood to politicize and radicalize Muslim communities. But the Kingdom more recently purged the organization of jihadist preachers, and streamlined WAMY’s religious line to follow “Salafi traditionalism,” which holds that only the head of state has the right to declare “jihad.” Moreover, clerical elites who traditionally controlled the group now share authority with stalwarts of the government—call them “lay leaders”—who have their own direct line to the royal family. In Djibouti, WAMY funds and staffs health and human services for the indigenous population, and tends to the needs of Yemeni refugees. Other goals determined by the state appear to take precedence over preaching: provide disaster and poverty relief; back the government of President Isma’il Omar Guelleh; instill an ethos of Djiboutian nationalism that insulates the population from trans-state ideologies; build person-to-person relationships between Saudis and Djiboutians; engineer support for the Kingdom’s specific regional objectives. Some of these goals are subtly on display in the following excerpt from a March 21, 2016 report by WAMY on its Djibouti bureau:
To be sure, the positive aspects of WAMY’s programs should not diminish the concern that Salafi missionary activity may still promote a profoundly sectarian worldview in Djibouti, casting the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict in existential, rather than political, terms.
As to the presence of 30,000-and-counting Yemeni refugees in Djibouti, Saudis view it as both a humanitarian concern and a strategic opportunity. Twenty-five years ago, in the aftermath of the “Gulf War” to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia established a refugee camp in the northern town of Rafha to host 33,000 Iraqis fleeing persecution by Saddam. The installation served Riyadh and some of its international allies as an intelligence listening post—hundreds of Iraqis were debriefed about the situation inside the country—and as a platform for cultivating Iraqi assets.[28] Though the Yemeni and gulf wars are far from analogous, the presence of a substantial number of newly departed Yemeni civilians in a safe environment far from the battlefield presents the opportunity to tap a similar wealth of information and human networks.
In deepening their security and intelligence presence in Djibouti at a time of unease between Riyadh and Washington, they will be keen to explore potential security partnerships with China. As recently as 2014, Beijing sought to forge joint counterterrorism training programs with the Yemeni government that Saudi Arabia is now fighting to reinstall.[29] More recently, Beijing made a rare break with its policy of neutrality between Iran and Saudi Arabia to express support for the Saudi position in Yemen. In January 2016, King Salman hosted a landmark visit to Riyadh by Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with high-level meetings between senior security and intelligence officials of both countries. The strengthening of these ties may serve to lessen Saudi reliance on American support.[30]
The importance of Djibouti has become a popular topic of discussion throughout the Saudi-allied Arab world. Prominent voices in Egypt, for example, are talking about building a base there too, while other Gulf allies are ramping up their own soft power projects in the country. The following video montage begins with a clip from Tawfiq Okasha—an eccentric, ultranationalist Egyptian pundit known for his fondness of Israel—in which he makes the case for a Djibouti base. In perhaps a sign of the times, he bolsters his argument by saying that Djiboutians are one of the lost tribes of Israel, and therefore “good people.”
Grappling with New U.S. Challenges
In a February letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Representatives Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) raised alarms about China’s rising influence in Djibouti: “[We are] worried that our own strategic interests around the Horn of Africa, specifically our critical counter-terrorism operations, will be impacted by China’s growing strategic influence in the region.” Recognizing Beijing’s soft power gains, they castigated the Djibouti leadership for its “cozy relationship with China,” and dubbed the government of Ismail Omar Guelleh a “corrupt and repressive regime.” Guelleh is indeed a human rights violator, and the lawmakers’ criticism have been echoed repeatedly by the White House in recent months. Doing so has of course done little to improve Washington’s relationship with Guelleh: Judging from the angry reaction in Djiboutian state media, he reads the American denunciations as support for his political opponents. When Djibouti holds its presidential elections on April 8, the incumbent’s likely victory will bring the government another step closer to China—and a step away from the United States.
America’s shifting circumstances in Djibouti—and, by extension, the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia—are a symptom of its broader political and military withdrawal from conflicts in which longtime Asian and Arab allies have a stake. The situation also reflects the weakness of Washington’s commitment and capacity to wield soft power in politically contested foreign environments. It will ultimately be difficult for Washington to address the concerns about Djibouti raised by American lawmakers and Taiwanese analyst Lai Yueqian without restoring its support for longtime allies in the Middle and Far East, as well as deploying American soft power alongside military might. To be sure, the U.S. should welcome efforts by China to help protect civilians from the region’s tumult and secure the sea lanes for international trade. But it should also be prepared for a formidable new presence in the area capable of challenging American objectives politically and militarily.
Meanwhile, the growing presence of Saudi Arabia alongside China in the country promises to strengthen security ties between Riyadh and Beijing, potentially at Washington’s expense. It is but one example of the increasing interplay between China and the Arab world, for which it behooves Americans to prepare. A first step toward doing so is to address an American gap in studying the phenomenon. From government to think tanks and the academy, Arab affairs specialists have long been institutionally separated from their counterparts in Asian affairs. As the leaders, peoples, and armies of these diverse environments begin to intermingle, the Americans who study and engage them must do the same.
Joseph Braude and Tyler Jiang originally published this article as an E-Note at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
[1] Ben Ho Wan Beng, “The Strategic Attractions of Djibouti,” The National Interest, March 18, 2016.
[2] Hong Lei, “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei’s Regular Press Conference on January 21, 2016,” January 21, 2016.
[3] Habib Toumi, “Saudi Arabia ‘to open military base in Djibouti’ Djibouti keen to expand ties and cooperation with Saudi Arabia,”Gulf News Saudi Arabia, March 8, 2016.
[4] Hasan al-Mustafa, “Al-Diblomasiya al-Sa’udiya Tub’id Iran ‘An al-Qarn al-Ifriqi” (Saudi Diplomacy Ejects Iran from the Horn of Africa). Al-Arabiya, October 21, 2015.
[5] Dana Sanchez, “China Financing Most of Djibouti’s $14.4 Billion In Planned Infrastructure Projects,” AFK Insider, June 11, 2010.
[6] Nick Turse, “The US military’s best-kept secret,” The Nation, November 17, 2015.
[7] BBC News, “Somalia: Western Hostages Freed in US Military Raid.” BBC News, January 25, 2012.
[8] Josh Wood, “Djibouti, a Safe Harbour in the Troubled Horn of Africa,” The National, June 2, 2015.
[9] Colin Hanna and J.D. Gordon, “Obama naval Doctrine: Anchors Away?” The Hill, March 3, 2014. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/199570-obama-naval-doctrine-anchors-away
[10] United States Census Bureau, “Trade in Goods with Djibouti,” accessed 3/27/2016. USAID, “Food Assistance Fact Sheet – Djibouti,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[12] Ankit Panda, “Confirmed: Construction Begins on China’s First Overseas Military Base in Djibouti,” The Diplomat, February 29, 2016.
[13] CCTV, “35,860 Chinese nationals in Libya evacuated:FM,” CCTV.com, 3/3/2011.
[14] Entering Taiwan – Taiwan Today, “China to Build Military Base in Djibouti,” Filmed [December 2015], YouTube video, Posted [December 2015]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZVfEGj0Gh4.
[15] Geoffrey Aronson, “China to open its first naval base in Africa,” Aljazeera, December 22, 2015.
[16] The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s Military Strategy,” en.people.cn, May 26, 2015. http://en.people.cn/n/2015/0526/c90785-8897779.html
[17] European Commission, “Countries and regions: China,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[18] Interview with Toshi Yoshihara, March 9th, 2016.
[19] Ross Rustici and Christopher D. Yung, with Scott Devary and Jenny Lin, “‘Not an Idea We Have to Shun: Chinese Overseas Basing Requirements in the 21st Century,” (National Defense University, October 2014,) 29.
[20] Ray Sanchez and Barbara Starr, “U.S. Says China deploys fighter jets to disputed South China Sea Island,” CNN, February 23, 2016.
[21] Shang Wenbin, Liang Jingfeng, and Li Youtao, “Chinese Marines, Special Forces Training in Gobi Desert,” Military Training International, January 19, 2016.
[22] Daily Pioneer, “China’s military might, now for Africa to see,” Daily Pioneer, February 11, 2016.
[23] Joseph Braude, “Radio Beijing in the Middle East,” The American Interest, January 20, 2014.
[24] World Bank, “World Integrated Trade Solution,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[25] Abd al-Rahman ‘Atiya, “I’tiradh Safina Iraniya min Miyah al-Yemen” (Interception of an Iranian Ship from the Waters of Yemen). Al-Hayat, February 14, 2016.
[26] Beng, “The Strategic Attractions of Djibouti.”
[27] “Al-Sa’udiya Tu’lin Ta’sis Tahaluf Yadhum 34 Dawla li-‘Muharabat al-Irhab’” (Saudi Arabia Announces Establishment of a Coalition of 34 States to ‘Fight Terrorism’). BBC Arabic, December 15, 2015.
[28] Interview with Rafha camp administrative officials, Rafha, Saudi Arabia, January 2003.
[29] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi: China and Arab Countries Should Carry Out Counter-Terrorism Cooperation,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, June 4, 2014.
[30] Ben Blanchard, Edited Simon Cameron-Moore and Paul Tait, “China offers support for Yemen government as Xi visits Saudi Arabia,” Reuters, January 20, 2016.
China and Saudi Arabia are building military bases next door to US AFRICOM in Djibouti—and bringing the consequences of American withdrawal from the region into stark relief.
Djibouti, a resource-poor nation of 14,300 square miles and 875,000 people in the Horn of Africa, rarely makes international headlines. But between its relative stability and strategic location—20 miles across from war-consumed Yemen and in destroyer range of the pirate-infested western edge of the Indian Ocean—it is now one of the more important security beachheads in the develohttp://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Braude/e/B001KDV64Kping world. Its location also matters greatly to global commerce and energy, due to its vicinity to the Mandeb Strait and the Suez-Aden canal, which sees ten percent of the world’s oil exports and 20 percent of its commercial exports annually.[1] Since November 2002, the country has been home to Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. Expeditionary base—the only American base on the African continent—along with other bases belonging to its French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese allies. (The United States maintains numerous small outposts and airfields in Africa, but officially regards Lemonnier as its only full-scale military base on the continent.)
But now there are two new kids on the block: On January 21st, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry announced an agreement with Djibouti to host its first-ever base beyond the South China Sea, and construction commenced days later.[2] Though Beijing called the installation a “logistics and fast evacuation base,” the Asian power’s “near-abroad” rivals, such as Taiwan, opined that it is more likely the beginning of a new, aggressive military buildup to rival the United States. Six weeks later, Saudi Arabia declared that it too would construct a base in Djibouti,[3]apparently as part of its newly assertive policy of countering Iranian proxies politically and militarily throughout the region.[4]
Both new players have made substantial economic and soft power investments in the country to boot. Since 2015, Beijing has poured over $14 billion into infrastructure development.[5] Saudi Arabia, itself a prominent donor to Djibouti’s public works, has spent generously on social welfare projects for the country’s poor; built housing, schools and mosques for its swelling Yemeni refugee population; and dispatched teachers and preachers from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, long a pillar for the promulgation of Saudi-backed interpretations of Islam. Augmenting Saudi aid, moreover, has been further spending by some of its Arab military allies. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have poured millions into charitable work over the past few months—and the UAE in particular is working to spur economic development along the lines of the “Dubai model.” Even cash-poor North Sudan, newly returned to the Saudi orbit after a years-long alliance with Iran, began construction of a hospital in Djibouti in early February.
Neither the timing nor the confluence of these projects is mere coincidence. America’s diminishing global military footprint has begun to affect the calculation of allies and rivals alike, and the outsized role Djibouti is poised to play in its neighborhood presents a case in point of the consequences. An examination of the changing role the country plays in American, Chinese, and Arab security policy offers a glimpse into potential conflicts as well as opportunities arising from the shift—and some steps Americans can take to prepare for both.
The American Posture
As the only American base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier serves a vital function for US AFRICOM. Housing 4,000 military and civilian personnel, it is the nerve center of six drone launching stations across the continent, which have attacked targets as far-flung as Al-Shabab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Yemeni-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. Special Forces, the CIA, and Air Force surveillance craft converge to process and pool intelligence at the camp. It also serves as headquarters to Task Force 48-4, a counterterrorism unit that targets militants in East Africa and Yemen.[6] Special Forces rely on it too: In 2012, when Navy SEALs rescued American and Danish hostages from Somalia, they brought them to safety in Camp Lemonnier.[7] And as a springboard for American-led anti-piracy operations, Camp Lemonnier helps the U.S. maintain its role as the primary guarantor of mercantile security in the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The significance of the base grows only greater amid regional conflagration: The U.S. has been using it to meet its pledge of technical and intelligence assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.
In 2014, the U.S. signed a new 20-year lease on the base with the Djiboutian government, and committed over $1.4 billion to modernize it in the years to come.[8] This significant expenditure bucks the overall trend of diminishing American military commitments overseas. For example, President Obama has announced plans to reduce the number of active naval vessels to 1917 numbers, possibly including aircraft carriers.[9]
As the segments below will show, America’s status in the country stands to be affected by the activities of the Chinese and Saudi bases. It may also be affected by the two countries’ soft power deployments, each aiming to influence the cultural and political fiber of the country and, by extension, the policies of its government. America’s own soft power commitments have been minimal: the U.S. supplies $3 million worth of food aid annually through USAID as part of the U.N. World Food Program, runs modest health and education projects, and netted only $152 million in trade in 2015.[10] Nor is there any concerted effort to enter the public discussion in Djibouti in the service of American goals or values.
The Chinese Posture
By contrast to the U.S., China has never previously established a base beyond its “near abroad.” Thus the Djibouti project, however modest, fuels the perception that China’s military footprint is growing. Sending such a message may itself be among Beijing’s goals. David Shedd, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told us that “[The Chinese] want to signal to the world that they have a worldwide presence. Part of the mission is simply defined as being seen. That in and of itself is defined as an interest.”[11]
With respect to its potential operational significance, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says, “Facilities will mainly be used for logistical support and personnel recuperation of the Chinese armed forces conducting such missions as maritime escort in the Gulf of Aden and waters off the Somali coast, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance.” It would also enable fast evacuation for any of the million Chinese citizens now living in the Middle East and Africa should they require it.[12]The need to prepare for such eventualities became clear to China in the bloody aftermath of the Arab Spring: It evacuated 35,680 nationals employed mainly in Libya’s oil industry, and 629 more from Yemen soon thereafter.[13] During the Libya evacuation, China had only one frigate available in the vicinity, so most of the evacuees had to be flown out of the country on chartered commercial planes.
But from Washington to Taipei, observers suspect that the project is more ambitious than the Chinese let on. In an interview on the national news network Taiwan Today, political analyst Lai Yueqian said, “[The base] can be used to pin down the United States and any U.S.-led organizations, and if [the U.S.] wants to intervene against China’s interests, they will have to think carefully, because China will use their military to protect their citizens and their property.”[14] In the following clip, Yueqian elaborates on this analysis, bespeaking Taiwanese concerns about the base:
Yueqian’s assessment, shared by most Chinese “near-abroad” allies of the United States, is also the view of prominent members of the political class in Washington. At a December hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs in which rumors about the base were discussed, Senator Chris Coons (R-De.) stated in relation to the Djibouti base, “[The US has to be] vigilant in the face of China’s growing ambitions.”[15]
Beijing’s outlook toward nearby North Africa and the Middle East differs with American policies. As Taiwan’s Lai Yueqian described in the video above, the U.S.- and NATO-led military intervention in Libya angered China. At the U.N. Security Council, Beijing subsequently blocked attempts to engineer a Western military intervention in Syria. With respect to the region-wide conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, America’s tradition of siding with Saudi Arabia — or, for that matter, its more recent tendency to tilt toward Iran — may conflict with Chinese policies: Guided by the need to quench its substantial thirst for oil, Beijing mostly seeks to avoid irking either oil-rich nation. A new military base in boating range of North Africa as well as the Arabian peninsula promises to bolster any Chinese political stance—however modestly—with a measure of force. The base, to be located near the small port city of Obock on the northern coast of Djibouti, lies 20 miles closer than Lemonnier to the conflict in Yemen, to which Washington has committed resources in support of Saudi Arabia’s war with the Houthis.
But China’s strategic goals cannot be explained solely in terms of a perceived reaction to Western policies. According to Beijing’s most recent defense policy paper, released in May 2015, “China’s armed forces will work harder to create a favorable strategic posture with more emphasis on the employment of military forces and means.”[16] This formulation is widely believed to allude to China’s “String of Pearls” and “One Belt, One Road” initiatives. “String of Pearls” is a metaphor for an envisioned network of naval ports of call, predominantly along the Indian Ocean, to secure sea lanes of transit, commerce, and communication from mainland China to Sudan. The “One Belt, One Road” initiative seeks to strengthen Chinese exports through commercial land and sea roads, largely along the historic “silk road,” straddling Europe and the Middle East. The Djibouti base would be vital in ensuring the success of the latter goal, since most of China’s $1 billion in daily exports to Europe traverse the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.[17] With respect to the former plan, Toshi Yoshihara, Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the U.S. Naval War College, has been mapping the intersection of Chinese naval and commercial ventures across the Pacific region. Arrayed together, he told us, they “certainly do look like a string of pearls.”[18] Djibouti, home to both the nascent base and extensive Chinese economic investment, would clearly amount to a new pearl on the string (see Figure 1).[19]
Are Chinese and American pursuits in the vicinity of Djibouti necessarily a zero-sum game? Some of China’s stated goals do not conflict with American aspirations, and to the contrary, may benefit both superpowers as well as their allies: Both the growing Chinese capacity to evacuate citizens from war-torn areas and its further enhancement of anti-piracy operations are each a “public good.” On the other hand, a different term in Beijing’s political vocabulary raises more disturbing possibilities. In our conversation with FPRI Senior Fellow June Teufel Dreyer, she stressed the principle of “All Under Heaven”—rooted in Chinese imperial history—which places Chinese central authority at the epicenter of a tributary system of dominance over lesser powers. Some analysts of China see the country’s recent installation of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets on Woody Island in the South China Sea as a manifestation of this supremacist tendency.[20] One might ask whether the construction of a Djibouti base reflects the extension of “All Under Heaven” beyond China’s traditional orbit.
At a time of rapid Chinese construction of aircraft and aircraft carriers and more serious competition with American military industries, the base in Djibouti could indeed reflect a Chinese aspiration to eventually meet and surpass the United States as a military and economic power in the area. In January 2016, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted a 72-hour exercise involving thousands of marines and the navy special operations regiment in the Gobi Desert in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The area’s topography and climate resemble much of North Africa and the Sahel.[21] Between “All Under Heaven” and China’s stated goal of housing up to 10,000 Chinese servicemen in Djibouti, such exercises offer ample basis for concern.[22]
Beijing’s hard power initiative in Djibouti is meanwhile accompanied by its soft power initiatives to build ties with state and society alike. The $14 billion in Chinese support for infrastructure development, widely publicized in Djibouti, has generated enormous goodwill with the population. Far exceeding U.S. spending, the injection is also an investment in the government of President Isma’il Omar Guelleh. There are also cultural ventures, such as the new Confucius Institute in Djibouti City, which Beijing typically uses to cultivate personal ties and “assets” within the society.[23] Add to all this China’s $1.1 billion in trade in 2014—roughly ten times that of the United States.[24] As Chinese influence grows in Djibouti, its ability to influence the government’s foreign policy and security strategies promises to grow along with it.
The Saudi Posture
From a Saudi perspective, stationing troops in Djibouti is both a defensive and a potential offensive measure in its pan-regional conflict with Iran, with particular bearing on the nearby war in Yemen. The defensive aspect was on display in mid-February, when Saudi intelligence officials, tracking the flow of munitions from Iran to its Houthi proxy militia in Yemen, discovered that the Islamic Republic was using Djibouti as a waystation. A ship en route to Yemen carrying encrypted military communication equipment and other hardware had originated in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The Kingdom intercepted it en route, and recognized the importance of strengthening its capacity to act in and around Djibouti.[25] In terms of “offense,” Ben Ho Wan Beng, a military analyst in Singapore, speculates that given the Houthi presence in western Yemen, Riyadh could use the base to “open up a new front against the Houthis, who [would] then face the prospect of being attacked from another axis.”[26]
By contrast to the U.S. and its Japanese and Western allies, for which the establishment of a base in Djibouti is a matter of paying rent on a discrete strip of land, Saudis view their own barrack walls as permeable. Djibouti is an Arab League member state, bound to its brethren by ties of blood, culture, and faith. It has also joined the 34-member, Saudi-led “Islamic coalition” against Iran-sponsored terror announced by Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in December.[27]Thus from Riyadh’s perspective, all of Djibouti is a kind of “base”—and the Kingdom feels it has a right to weigh in on any of the country’s non-Arab military installations. It was hardly a coincidence when the Djiboutian government recently rejected a Russian proposal to establish its own base in the country: Moscow, a staunch ally to the Iran-backed Assad regime in Damascus, would have been at best unhelpful to Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war.
Saudi soft power activity in the country serves to intensify this bond. One of the state-backed organizations spearheading it is the Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The group historically served as a primary exporter of Islamist preaching across the globe—a mission that enabled both Salafi jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood to politicize and radicalize Muslim communities. But the Kingdom more recently purged the organization of jihadist preachers, and streamlined WAMY’s religious line to follow “Salafi traditionalism,” which holds that only the head of state has the right to declare “jihad.” Moreover, clerical elites who traditionally controlled the group now share authority with stalwarts of the government—call them “lay leaders”—who have their own direct line to the royal family. In Djibouti, WAMY funds and staffs health and human services for the indigenous population, and tends to the needs of Yemeni refugees. Other goals determined by the state appear to take precedence over preaching: provide disaster and poverty relief; back the government of President Isma’il Omar Guelleh; instill an ethos of Djiboutian nationalism that insulates the population from trans-state ideologies; build person-to-person relationships between Saudis and Djiboutians; engineer support for the Kingdom’s specific regional objectives. Some of these goals are subtly on display in the following excerpt from a March 21, 2016 report by WAMY on its Djibouti bureau:
To be sure, the positive aspects of WAMY’s programs should not diminish the concern that Salafi missionary activity may still promote a profoundly sectarian worldview in Djibouti, casting the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict in existential, rather than political, terms.
As to the presence of 30,000-and-counting Yemeni refugees in Djibouti, Saudis view it as both a humanitarian concern and a strategic opportunity. Twenty-five years ago, in the aftermath of the “Gulf War” to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia established a refugee camp in the northern town of Rafha to host 33,000 Iraqis fleeing persecution by Saddam. The installation served Riyadh and some of its international allies as an intelligence listening post—hundreds of Iraqis were debriefed about the situation inside the country—and as a platform for cultivating Iraqi assets.[28] Though the Yemeni and gulf wars are far from analogous, the presence of a substantial number of newly departed Yemeni civilians in a safe environment far from the battlefield presents the opportunity to tap a similar wealth of information and human networks.
In deepening their security and intelligence presence in Djibouti at a time of unease between Riyadh and Washington, they will be keen to explore potential security partnerships with China. As recently as 2014, Beijing sought to forge joint counterterrorism training programs with the Yemeni government that Saudi Arabia is now fighting to reinstall.[29] More recently, Beijing made a rare break with its policy of neutrality between Iran and Saudi Arabia to express support for the Saudi position in Yemen. In January 2016, King Salman hosted a landmark visit to Riyadh by Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with high-level meetings between senior security and intelligence officials of both countries. The strengthening of these ties may serve to lessen Saudi reliance on American support.[30]
The importance of Djibouti has become a popular topic of discussion throughout the Saudi-allied Arab world. Prominent voices in Egypt, for example, are talking about building a base there too, while other Gulf allies are ramping up their own soft power projects in the country. The following video montage begins with a clip from Tawfiq Okasha—an eccentric, ultranationalist Egyptian pundit known for his fondness of Israel—in which he makes the case for a Djibouti base. In perhaps a sign of the times, he bolsters his argument by saying that Djiboutians are one of the lost tribes of Israel, and therefore “good people.”
Grappling with New U.S. Challenges
In a February letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Representatives Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) raised alarms about China’s rising influence in Djibouti: “[We are] worried that our own strategic interests around the Horn of Africa, specifically our critical counter-terrorism operations, will be impacted by China’s growing strategic influence in the region.” Recognizing Beijing’s soft power gains, they castigated the Djibouti leadership for its “cozy relationship with China,” and dubbed the government of Ismail Omar Guelleh a “corrupt and repressive regime.” Guelleh is indeed a human rights violator, and the lawmakers’ criticism have been echoed repeatedly by the White House in recent months. Doing so has of course done little to improve Washington’s relationship with Guelleh: Judging from the angry reaction in Djiboutian state media, he reads the American denunciations as support for his political opponents. When Djibouti holds its presidential elections on April 8, the incumbent’s likely victory will bring the government another step closer to China—and a step away from the United States.
America’s shifting circumstances in Djibouti—and, by extension, the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia—are a symptom of its broader political and military withdrawal from conflicts in which longtime Asian and Arab allies have a stake. The situation also reflects the weakness of Washington’s commitment and capacity to wield soft power in politically contested foreign environments. It will ultimately be difficult for Washington to address the concerns about Djibouti raised by American lawmakers and Taiwanese analyst Lai Yueqian without restoring its support for longtime allies in the Middle and Far East, as well as deploying American soft power alongside military might. To be sure, the U.S. should welcome efforts by China to help protect civilians from the region’s tumult and secure the sea lanes for international trade. But it should also be prepared for a formidable new presence in the area capable of challenging American objectives politically and militarily.
Meanwhile, the growing presence of Saudi Arabia alongside China in the country promises to strengthen security ties between Riyadh and Beijing, potentially at Washington’s expense. It is but one example of the increasing interplay between China and the Arab world, for which it behooves Americans to prepare. A first step toward doing so is to address an American gap in studying the phenomenon. From government to think tanks and the academy, Arab affairs specialists have long been institutionally separated from their counterparts in Asian affairs. As the leaders, peoples, and armies of these diverse environments begin to intermingle, the Americans who study and engage them must do the same.
Joseph Braude and Tyler Jiang originally published this article as an E-Note at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
[1] Ben Ho Wan Beng, “The Strategic Attractions of Djibouti,” The National Interest, March 18, 2016.
[2] Hong Lei, “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei’s Regular Press Conference on January 21, 2016,” January 21, 2016.
[3] Habib Toumi, “Saudi Arabia ‘to open military base in Djibouti’ Djibouti keen to expand ties and cooperation with Saudi Arabia,”Gulf News Saudi Arabia, March 8, 2016.
[4] Hasan al-Mustafa, “Al-Diblomasiya al-Sa’udiya Tub’id Iran ‘An al-Qarn al-Ifriqi” (Saudi Diplomacy Ejects Iran from the Horn of Africa). Al-Arabiya, October 21, 2015.
[5] Dana Sanchez, “China Financing Most of Djibouti’s $14.4 Billion In Planned Infrastructure Projects,” AFK Insider, June 11, 2010.
[6] Nick Turse, “The US military’s best-kept secret,” The Nation, November 17, 2015.
[7] BBC News, “Somalia: Western Hostages Freed in US Military Raid.” BBC News, January 25, 2012.
[8] Josh Wood, “Djibouti, a Safe Harbour in the Troubled Horn of Africa,” The National, June 2, 2015.
[9] Colin Hanna and J.D. Gordon, “Obama naval Doctrine: Anchors Away?” The Hill, March 3, 2014. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/199570-obama-naval-doctrine-anchors-away
[10] United States Census Bureau, “Trade in Goods with Djibouti,” accessed 3/27/2016. USAID, “Food Assistance Fact Sheet – Djibouti,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[12] Ankit Panda, “Confirmed: Construction Begins on China’s First Overseas Military Base in Djibouti,” The Diplomat, February 29, 2016.
[13] CCTV, “35,860 Chinese nationals in Libya evacuated:FM,” CCTV.com, 3/3/2011.
[14] Entering Taiwan – Taiwan Today, “China to Build Military Base in Djibouti,” Filmed [December 2015], YouTube video, Posted [December 2015]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZVfEGj0Gh4.
[15] Geoffrey Aronson, “China to open its first naval base in Africa,” Aljazeera, December 22, 2015.
[16] The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s Military Strategy,” en.people.cn, May 26, 2015. http://en.people.cn/n/2015/0526/c90785-8897779.html
[17] European Commission, “Countries and regions: China,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[18] Interview with Toshi Yoshihara, March 9th, 2016.
[19] Ross Rustici and Christopher D. Yung, with Scott Devary and Jenny Lin, “‘Not an Idea We Have to Shun: Chinese Overseas Basing Requirements in the 21st Century,” (National Defense University, October 2014,) 29.
[20] Ray Sanchez and Barbara Starr, “U.S. Says China deploys fighter jets to disputed South China Sea Island,” CNN, February 23, 2016.
[21] Shang Wenbin, Liang Jingfeng, and Li Youtao, “Chinese Marines, Special Forces Training in Gobi Desert,” Military Training International, January 19, 2016.
[22] Daily Pioneer, “China’s military might, now for Africa to see,” Daily Pioneer, February 11, 2016.
[23] Joseph Braude, “Radio Beijing in the Middle East,” The American Interest, January 20, 2014.
[24] World Bank, “World Integrated Trade Solution,” accessed 3/27/2016.
[25] Abd al-Rahman ‘Atiya, “I’tiradh Safina Iraniya min Miyah al-Yemen” (Interception of an Iranian Ship from the Waters of Yemen). Al-Hayat, February 14, 2016.
[26] Beng, “The Strategic Attractions of Djibouti.”
[27] “Al-Sa’udiya Tu’lin Ta’sis Tahaluf Yadhum 34 Dawla li-‘Muharabat al-Irhab’” (Saudi Arabia Announces Establishment of a Coalition of 34 States to ‘Fight Terrorism’). BBC Arabic, December 15, 2015.
[28] Interview with Rafha camp administrative officials, Rafha, Saudi Arabia, January 2003.
[29] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi: China and Arab Countries Should Carry Out Counter-Terrorism Cooperation,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, June 4, 2014.
[30] Ben Blanchard, Edited Simon Cameron-Moore and Paul Tait, “China offers support for Yemen government as Xi visits Saudi Arabia,” Reuters, January 20, 2016.
By Paul Burkhardt, Bloomberg The 550-kilometer line will import fuel from Djibouti coast Venture estimated at $1.55 billion; construction by 2018 Ethiopia and Djibouti signed an agreement for a $1.55 billion fuel pipeline with developers Mining, Oil & Gas Services and Blackstone Group LP-backed Black Rhino Group. The two countries in the Horn of Africa
By Paul Burkhardt, Bloomberg The 550-kilometer line will import fuel from Djibouti coast Venture estimated at $1.55 billion; construction by 2018 Ethiopia and Djibouti signed an agreement for a $1.55 billion fuel pipeline with developers Mining, Oil & Gas Services and Blackstone Group LP-backed Black Rhino Group. The two countries in the Horn of Africa
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Defense Ministry on Thursday declined to confirm a report that it was in talks for a military base in Horn of Africa country Djibouti, though it said all countries had an interest in regional peace and stability. In May, Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh told Agence France-Presse of the talks, adding
![Maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari armed troops in a remote area was a costly and largely thankless endeavour write Barakat and Milton [AP]](https://i2.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2017/6/18/d8ce2c80b14a4699b66636e497e8d611_18.jpg?w=100%25 "Why did Qatar leave the Djibouti-Eritrea border?")
