Tag Archives: djibouti

Source: Horn of Africa Simple Map

Part 1 was published yesterday.

DJIBOUTI

This small but strategic former French colony sits at the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, overlooking the narrow Straights of Mandeb. It is famously home to a port serving Ethiopia and hosting the huge multi-agency Camp Lemonnier base for the US and in part the UK, with 4000 staff. However over the last 15 years Chinese companies have dominated and they also have a large Red Sea military base there, a short drive from Lemonnier, allegedly staffing up to 10,000 personnel.

Proposals for a bridge between Djibouti and Yemen, enriching this poverty-stricken area, have been many times scuppered by conflict. The Chinese take over of port facilities prompted DP World (Dubai, UAE) to develop the Berbera port in Somaliland, and potentially the small Bosaso Port in Puntland.

SOMALIA

After achieving independence in 1960 from Britain (Somaliland) and Italy (Puntland, South-Central Somalia), Somalia has been riven with conflict, especially since the collapse of the ‘unified’ government in 1991. There has been no stable government since, although Somaliland has been somewhat less in turmoil. A local movement emerged to settle local disputes, the Islamic Courts Union, but after 9/11 in the US this was seen as problematic.

With Western encouragement Ethiopia invaded in 2006, but were repelled in 2009 by a nationalist tribal movement, Al Shabab, which still controls much of ‘South-Central’ today, despite monthly US bombing. Right wing factions in the US have lobbied for recognition of Somaliland after 2009, but this came to nothing until December 2025 when Israel recognised Somaliland as a separate country, gaining a series of beneficial concessions. This had added to tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with the latter ‘less enthusiastic’ about such recognition, notably concerned about the possibility of Israeli bases both at the north and south ends of the Red Sea, inter alia.

ETHIOPIA

Apart from the Afar and Somalia regions in the East, Ethiopia is a landlocked, fertile, mountainous country, reliant on Djibouti for external trade. The country is divided into regions based on different ethnicities and their languages, which has led to ethnic-based internal conflict in the post-Italian-colonial-era, hindering development. Nearly two thirds are either Omoro or Amhara. One in eight Ethiopians is either Tigrayan or Somalian with affiliations to Eritrea and Somalia respectively.