The U.S. military has conducted its first offensive airstrike against the jihadist fundamentalist group al-Shabaab in Somalia, targeting the group under the new authorities given by the Trump administration in March that allows offensive airstrikes.
“On June 11, at approximately 2 a.m. eastern daylight time, the Department of Defense conducted a strike operation against al-Shabaab in Somalia,” said Dana White, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson in a statement.
“The operation occurred approximately 185 miles southwest of Mogadishu,” White said. “The U.S. conducted this operation in coordination with its regional partners as a direct response to al-Shabaab actions, including recent attacks on Somali forces.”
White explained that the airstrike was carried out under the new authorities approved by President Trump in March, which “allows the U.S. Department of Defense to conduct legal action against al-Shabaab within a geographically-defined area of active hostilities in support of partner force in Somalia.”
“We remain committed to working with our Somali partners and allies to systematically dismantle al-Shabaab, and help achieve stability and security throughout the region,” said White.
According to a statement from U.S. Africa Command (Africom) the airstrike targeted “an al-Shabab command and logistics node at a camp located approximately 185 miles southwest of Mogadishu in a stronghold for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab organization.”
Africom assessed that eight al-Shabaab militants were killed in the strike.
“U.S. forces will use all effective and appropriate methods to protect Americans, including partnered military counter-terror operations with AMISOM and Somali National Army (SNA) forces; precision strikes against terrorists, their training camps and safe havens; and hunting and tracking members of this al-Qaeda affiliate throughout Somalia, the region and around the world,” said the Africom statement.
Until the new authorities were granted in March, the U.S. military could only carry out air strikes against al-Shabaab in self-defense situations when Somali troops and their U.S. advisers came under fire.
The U.S. military has previously conducted counter-terrorism missions and airstrikes in Somalia targeting al-Shabaab leaders, but those missions have been carried out under the different authorities targeting al-Qaeda.
Al-Shabaab has been an al-Qaeda affiliate since 2012. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by a number of nations, including the United States and United Kingdom.
In March, the southern portion of Somalia was temporarily designated by Trump as an “active area of hostilities” for 180 days, according to a U.S. official. The designation applies to active combat zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, parts of Libya, parts of Yemen and now Somalia.
The U.S. military is permitted to conduct airstrikes in these designated combat zones if there is “a reasonable certainty” that no civilians will be hurt. This is less stringent than the “near certainty” standard issued by former U.S. president Barack Obama in 2013 as a Presidential Policy Guidance that is still applied elsewhere. That standard requires high-level, interagency vetting of proposed airstrikes. The target must pose a direct threat to Americans.
A U.S. official stressed in March that the U.S. military will not be able to make unilateral decisions for airstrikes. Rather, strikes will be done in consultation with the government of Somalia and the African Union military force in Somalia.
There are about 50 U.S. military personnel in Somalia advising and assisting the Somali military in its fight against al-Shabaab.
In May, Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken became the first U.S. military service member to be killed in Somalia since 1993 when the Somali unit he was advising came under attack during a mission.
In its statement, Africom noted that al-Shabaab has used safe havens in southern and central Somalia to plot and direct terror attacks, steal humanitarian aid, and shelter other terrorists. It cited three incidents over the last eight months where large groups of al-Shabaab fighters overran three AMISOM bases seizing heavy weaponry at the bases.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited the Middle East and Africa to “reaffirm key U.S. military alliances” and engage with strategic partners.” Mattis only visited the tiny nation of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa where the U.S. maintains its largest military base. Ethiopia was conspicuously absent from the “strategic partner” lineup.
In September 2014, Barack Obamaunderscored the vital importance of Ethiopia in the U.S. war on terrorism. He noted that cooperation with Ethiopia “is making a difference” and that the “partnerships that we have formed with countries like Ethiopia are going to be critical to our overall efforts to defeat terrorism.”
In July 2015, during his state visit, Obama called Ethiopia an “outstanding partner” in the fight against terrorism in the Horn and a “key partner” in resolving the crises in South Sudan. He praised Ethiopia for being “a major contributor to U.N. peacekeeping efforts”, and for its unique role in “contribut(ing) more (peacekeeping) troops than any other country in Africa.”
The Mattis visit to Djibouti comes as the U.S. intensifies its military pressure on al-Shabaab, the terrorist group in Somalia with ties to al-Qaeda, which has been fighting for over a decade to establish an Islamic state and force out African Union peacekeeping troops.
Late last month, President Trump ordered airstrikes against al-Shabaab and approved a Department of Defense proposal “to provide additional precision fires” to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali security forces.
U.S. military command for Africa (AFRICOM) announced last week that a contingent from the 101st Airborne Division has been deployed in Somalia, the first since 1994, to assist the Somali government with logistical and training support.
In 2017, there have been no public statements by the Trump administration on Ethiopia’s frontline role in the fight against terrorism. There has been no mentioned Ethiopia as ally or “strategic partner”, and no acknowledgment of Ethiopia’s role in maintaining regional stability. There has been no hint of re-opening the U.S. drone base, closed down in January 2016, used to surveil and launch strikes on al-Shabaab. Mattis’ Djibouti visit, conspicuously avoiding Ethiopia, could suggest that the Trump Administration may not view Ethiopia as an indispensable counterterrorism partner in the Horn.
The only palpable evidence of any link between the ruling regime in Ethiopia and the Trump administration appears to be vague assurances by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in February asserting, “Ethiopia is one of the strategic allies of the US in the region in peace and security and the relationship will continue under the new Trump administration.” In 2007, Inhofe zealously opposed legislation designed to promote democracy and human rights in Ethiopia.
In January, the Ethiopian regime showed its deep concern over potential changes in U.S. policy under the Trump administration by hiring SGR Government Relations, Lobbying (Washington, D.C) at a cost of $150,000 per month (for a total contract price of $1.8 million). In my letter to Trump, I argued that it made no sense for a regime whose population, some 20 million of them, is facing dire famine to spend nearly $2 million on lobbying.
Is the Trump administration signaling that Ethiopia is not a “key partner” or “critical to our overall efforts to defeat terrorism” in the Horn region?
One of the four questions on Africa the Trump transition team posed to the State Department in January may offer a glimpse into Trump’s Horn policy: “We’ve been fighting al-Shabaab for a decade, why haven’t we won?” This manifestly simple question is pregnant with profundity.
When the regime in Ethiopia invaded Somalia in January 2007, then-leader Meles Zenawi declared that it could “take a week or a maximum of two weeks” to wipe out the Islamists, “stay there for a few days to help the transitional government in preserving stability then pull out our troops.” The “Islamists” were “wiped out,” only to be replaced by the murderous al-Shabaab.
Ethiopian troops left Somalia in January 2009 leaving a good part of that country tightly in the hands of al-Shabaab and sundry other Islamist insurgents.
In 2014, 4,300 Ethiopian troops returned to Somalia as part of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). In the summer of 2016, Ethiopia began to withdraw some 3,000 non-AMISOM soldiers out of south-central Somalia following mass uprising against the ruling regime in various part of Ethiopia. Al-Shabaab swiftly recaptured and consolidated its control over a number of towns held by the departing Ethiopian and AU soldiers. Despite military pressure, al-Shabaab continues to attack AU bases and carry out suicide bombings.
The cost of fighting al-Shabaab has increased from an annual $300 million in 2009 to $900 million in 2016. The African Union (AU), which has 22,000 troops deployed in Somalia drawn from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti, is scheduled to complete its mission by 2020.
President-elect Trump accused Obama of “losing the war on terrorism” and pledged to “bomb the hell out of ISIS” and other terrorist groups and armies. On April 14, Trump authorized dropping the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal on ISIS targets in Afghanistan. Is al-Shabaab next?
The Trump administration would be wise to delink its counterterrorism strategy from the Ethiopian regime, which barely clings to power by a state of emergency decree. Ethiopia’s involvement in the domestic affairs of Somalia has made the military and political situation in Somalia worse, and resulted in documented large-scale war crimes and human rights violations. Ethiopia’s involvement is arguably the principal galvanizing cause for the radicalization of large numbers of Somali youth flocking into the of al-Shabaab and other militant Islamic groups.
The Ethiopian regime has long been a beneficiary of U.S. aid largesse for its counterterrorism cooperation. But Ethiopia’s counterterrorism role has been more self-serving. If not, “We’ve been fighting al-Shabaab (with the full support of Ethiopia) for a decade, why haven’t we won?”
Alemayehu (Al) Mariam is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, a constitutional lawyer and Senior Editor of the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies.
Dozens of troops are headed to help fight al-Shabab. (Somali women military soldiers march during celebrations marking the 57th anniversary since the force was founded in Mogadishu, Somalia, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh))
The end of his first 100 days as US president near, Donald Trump has changed gears when it comes his position on military intervention. As he was enjoying the “most beautiful” chocolate cake with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, he told the Chinese president that the US had fired missiles at a Syrian airfield, following Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people.
On April 13, the US dropped the “Mother Of All Bombs” (MOAB) on Afghanistan: The largest bomb it has used since World War II hit an ISIL tunnel complex. On the same day, as the tension between the US and North Korea escalated, NBC reported that Trump may be ready to launch strikes, prompting requests of caution from China and Russia.
Meanwhile, the US is sending a “small number” of F-35A aircraft to Europe, as part of a “long-planned” training deployment.
And that’s not all: the US has announced April 14 that, for the first time since 1994, it’s deploying “dozens” of regular troops in Somalia to help the ongoing fight against al-Shabab, al-Qaeda’s jihadist ally. They are to provide training and support to the Somali National Army and the African Union mission on the ground, Voice of America reported. The US troops will enhance what has been America’s small presence (three to 50 people) in the country to facilitate the military relationship between Somalia.
The mission is scheduled to continue until the end of September.
This is the first time the US has sent regular forces to Somalia since March 1994, after special forces that were part a peacekeeping mission aimed at enforcing a ceasefire during the Somalian civil war were ensnared in a 15-hour-long battle in Mogadishu. Eighteen Americans were killed in the incident, memorialized in Black Hawk Down, prompting then president Bill Clinton to order a US withdrawal.
Dozens of troops are headed to help fight al-Shabab. (Somali women military soldiers march during celebrations marking the 57th anniversary since the force was founded in Mogadishu, Somalia, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh))
The end of his first 100 days as US president near, Donald Trump has changed gears when it comes his position on military intervention. As he was enjoying the “most beautiful” chocolate cake with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, he told the Chinese president that the US had fired missiles at a Syrian airfield, following Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people.
On April 13, the US dropped the “Mother Of All Bombs” (MOAB) on Afghanistan: The largest bomb it has used since World War II hit an ISIL tunnel complex. On the same day, as the tension between the US and North Korea escalated, NBC reported that Trump may be ready to launch strikes, prompting requests of caution from China and Russia.
Meanwhile, the US is sending a “small number” of F-35A aircraft to Europe, as part of a “long-planned” training deployment.
And that’s not all: the US has announced April 14 that, for the first time since 1994, it’s deploying “dozens” of regular troops in Somalia to help the ongoing fight against al-Shabab, al-Qaeda’s jihadist ally. They are to provide training and support to the Somali National Army and the African Union mission on the ground, Voice of America reported. The US troops will enhance what has been America’s small presence (three to 50 people) in the country to facilitate the military relationship between Somalia.
The mission is scheduled to continue until the end of September.
This is the first time the US has sent regular forces to Somalia since March 1994, after special forces that were part a peacekeeping mission aimed at enforcing a ceasefire during the Somalian civil war were ensnared in a 15-hour-long battle in Mogadishu. Eighteen Americans were killed in the incident, memorialized in Black Hawk Down, prompting then president Bill Clinton to order a US withdrawal.
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.
Military aircraft fly in formation as fireworks explode at the International Defense Exhibition and Conference, known by the acronym IDEX, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017. (Jon Gambrell/Associated Press)
By Jon Gambrell | AP
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Fighter jets screaming overhead and theatrical explosions marked the opening of an arms show Sunday in Abu Dhabi, as a bullet-scarred Emirati armored personnel carrier served as a reminder of the country’s ongoing military campaign in Yemen.
The Emirates announced over $1.2 billion in arms deals at the opening of the biennial International Defense Exhibition and Conference, known by the acronym IDEX. It and other Gulf nations, buoyed by rising oil prices and suspicious of nearby Iran, are likely to spend even more in the weeks and months ahead.
“The need for new equipment for modernized systems is still there and it is increasing,” said Charles Forrester, a senior defense industry analyst at IHS Jane’s. “Countries are beginning to deploy their own operations in … Iraq and Yemen and so they need to find ways to deploy and protect their people, as well as achieve their missions.”
Two of the UAE’s most-powerful rulers, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, attended the event Sunday. During the military demonstration, they flanked Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the world’s the only sitting head of state facing genocide charges at the International Criminal Court.
Al-Bashir attended the 2015 IDEX arms show, but this year’s trip comes after U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order in the waning days of his administration to permanently revoke a broad range of American sanctions on Sudan after a six-month waiting period.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was also in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, was not seen at the demonstration. Brig. Gen. Rashid al-Shamsi, an IDEX spokesman, said he didn’t know if Mattis attended.
Al-Shamsi announced over $1.2 billion in deals, the lion’s share coming from the $544 million purchase of 400 armored personnel carriers from a local manufacturer. Raytheon Co., based in Waltham, Massachusetts, announced a deal with the UAE navy for missiles to arm its Baynunah-class corvettes.
Many of the other contracts dealt with resupplying ammunition for the UAE, which is taking part in the Saudi-led campaign against Shiite rebels and their allies in Yemen. The war, which has killed over 10,000 civilians, began in September 2014, and the Gulf Arab nations entered the conflict in March 2015. It shows no signs of ending soon.
Iran remains a worry for Gulf Arab nations after world powers agreed to lift sanctions in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.
“In Yemen, … it’s a conventional war, of course, but it is one where you have to deal with armored vehicles and airpower as well,” Forrester said. “With the Iranian threat, it is the case of missile defense systems, radars to help track these situations.”
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Over the past two years, Egypt spent billions to upgrade its navy, buying helicopter carriers from France, frigates from Russia and submarines from Germany. Photo by AHMED XIV/Wikimedia
CAIRO, Egypt — By establishing a naval force in the Red Sea, Egypt aims for more than protecting navigation in the Suez Canal, a vital waterway for international trade, military experts said.
“The force will be the backbone of Egypt’s new Red Sea strategy,” former Assistant Defense Minister Hossam Suweilam said. “There is a marked surge of unrest in the southern entrance to the Red Sea, which needs an aggressive policy.”
The new force utilizes recently acquired naval equipment, including a French-made multifunction helicopter carrier.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the new force would help his country protect its coast. Defense Minister Sedki Sobhi said the force would help Egypt impose control on its territorial waters in the Red Sea.
Cash-strapped Egypt spent billions of dollars to upgrade its navy over the past two years. It bought two helicopter carriers from France, frigates from Russia and submarines from Germany. Cairo does this for a purpose, military experts said.
In 2015, Egypt spent almost $8 billion to dig a parallel channel to shorten transit time in the Suez Canal. It also dug tunnels under the canal to deliver water and ease the movement of people and goods to and from Sinai.
These huge investments are only part of Egypt’s vision for the Suez Canal region, one that cannot be implemented without proper security in the Red Sea, experts said.
Egypt wants to turn the banks of the canal into an investment magnet where vast industrial zones, huge logistics areas and extensive service facilities are planned. Egypt plans to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to the region. In 2015, revenues from the Suez Canal totaled $5.2 billion, which did a lot to buoy Egypt’s struggling economy.
Analysts in Cairo said Sisi does not squander the limited funds available at the central bank with a purpose in mind.
Last April 8, Sisi ordered Prime Minister Sherif Ismail to sign a maritime border demarcation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal includes the handover of two disputed Red Sea islands to Riyadh. Egyptians now debate whether the islands are Saudi.
Absent from the conversation, however, are the reasons Sisi insists to demarcate the maritime border with the Saudis. He has said Egypt cannot explore its territorial waters for oil without defining its sea boundaries.
He mentioned a similar agreement with Greece and Cyprus. A few months after Egypt signed the agreement with both states, Italian state-owned petroleum company Eni announced the discovery of the East Mediterranean’s largest natural gas field off Egypt’s coast.
There is a strong probability of Egypt’s territorial Red Sea waters containing wealth so huge that Sisi is ready to risk angering his people with the maritime border demarcation deal with Saudi Arabia.
“Such a potential wealth is badly in need of a military power to protect it,” said Nasr Salem, a lecturer at Nasser Military Academy, the army’s strategic and military science institute. “We cannot leave the billions of dollars we spend on investments in the Red Sea without protection.”
Parliament is to debate the deal soon. Analysts expect that after deal approval, Egypt would offer concessions to international oil firms to explore Red Sea territorial waters.
Fear for these investments and potential wealth lies, meanwhile, more southward, near the coast of restive Yemen where the Houthi militia controls key port cities near the Bab el Mandeb strait, political experts said. The Houthis have threatened Red Sea navigation many times.
The establishment of the new Egyptian naval fleet comes after pro-Saudi forces in Yemen failed to capture the country’s port cities.
The fear in Egypt is that the Houthis can threaten traffic in the strait, which would deal an irreversible blow to the Suez Canal.
Close to 4 million barrels of oil pass through the Bab el Mandeb strait en route to markets in Europe and the United States every day, most of which is moved through the Suez Canal, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.
A disruption of traffic at the strait would be catastrophic to Egypt and the world.
“This is exactly why Egypt takes the security of this area very seriously,” said Mohamed Kamal, a political science professor at Cairo University. “Whoever controls the southern entrance to the Red Sea will control the Suez Canal and Egypt cannot leave this control in the hands of anybody else.”
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — South Sudan’s ambassador to Ethiopia is dismissing reports that relations are strained between the two countries after President Salva Kiir visited Egypt and met with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo earlier this month.
South Sudan’s Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union, James Pitia Morgan, made the remarks after some Ethiopian and South Sudanese media outlets reported that South Sudan and Egypt signed what they called a “dirty deal” to arm Ethiopian opposition groups based in South Sudan who aim to sabotage the big dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River.
Egypt has long felt that the massive dam Ethiopia is currently building will decrease its share of Nile waters, despite Ethiopia’s assurances that it won’t. This raised tensions between the two countries and the Ethiopian Prime Minister recently charged that “some elements within the Egyptian government” are supporting the unrest in his country.
Despite the tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt, South Sudan wants to have good relations with both, said Morgan.
Tewolde Mulugeta, spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, agreed with the ambassador’s remarks saying that South Sudan and Ethiopia enjoy good relations.
Ethiopia currently hosts close to 300,000 South Sudanese refugees, most of whom fled after conflict broke out in the world’s newest nation in December 2013, according to U.N estimates.
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