HORN OF AFRICA AND THE RED SEA: LABORATORIES FOR VERIFICATION OF MIDDLE EAST ALLIANCES

Mogadishu demands the withdrawal of AU Ethiopian troops and breaks all agreements with the UAE. The middle powers rise, and regional alliances for geopolitical dominance in the area. The Abraham Accords trap, the ongoing agreement between Israel, Ethiopia, and the UAE, and the rift between Abu Dhabi and Riyāḍ mark the new geopolitical climate.

By Glauco D’Agostino

Regional Instability and State Destabilisations

Worrying instability continues to undermine the precarious balance of power in the Horn of Africa, adding to existing crises, unprecedented concerns for regional leaders and further suffering for their populations. The ongoing shift in regional alliances governing the relations among local states is causing tensions within the region and new forms of hybrid warfare or covert rule.

The latest example is the further destabilisation of Somalia, exacerbated by Israel’s sovereignty recognition of the Somaliland state, which proclaimed its independence from the Somali Democratic Republic 35 years ago. Mogadishu’s response was immediate, with the institutional repudiation of the Israeli act and the inauguration of the new federated North Eastern State, wedged between Puntland and the Somaliland breakaway territory.[1] President of the Republic Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, together with the Ambassadors of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, China and Sudan and high-level delegations from Djibouti and the Sudanese Armed Forces, attended the January 16^th ceremony in the capital city, Las Anod.[2]

Mogadishu also called for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops sent by the African Union, and it broke all agreements with the United Arab Emirates, which it holds responsible for inciting the federated states’ secession from the motherland.[3]

These presences and exclusions indicate a new geopolitical climate in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, with significant shifts in alliances among the involved players.

Geographically, the Horn of Africa encompasses the territories of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, covering an area of ​​nearly 2 million sq. km and home to approximately 140 million inhabitants. From a regional perspective, the area includes at least Sudan and the western coast states of the Arabian Peninsula, namely Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which, along with the other countries mentioned, aspire to strategic control of the Bāb al-Mandeb Strait fulcrum (figure below). Obviously, from a broader geopolitical perspective, the stage also extended to the entire Middle East, where almost all countries are engaged in diplomatic activity, aimed not only at economic aid but also at influencing the receiving institutional actors. Added to these are the interventionist states of the Western democratic alliance, which, since the rhetoric abuse of national interest justifies everything, exercise veritable maritime and land domination under the pretext of counter terrorism and piracy.

All this activism is part of a complex geo-anthropological environment, composed of people of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, often at odds with one another and marked by a troubled colonial history. Even after national independence, this history has defined borders that are difficult to control and permeable to the natural interdependencies of homogeneous communities separated by artificial border barriers.

Conversely, more recently, external interests have focused on destabilising existing states. The attempt underway in Somalia has a precedent in the fragmentation of Sudan, which, despite coups and bloody civil wars, had maintained its unity. The 2019 secession of South Sudan, immediately recognised by its instigators, including Israel, the United States, and Germany, unfortunately did not lead to the desired peace in the South either. Instead, it contributed to the destabilisation of the Republic of Sudan, which is still in the throes of conflict between the Sovereignty Council and the UAE-backed paramilitary organisation Rapid Support Forces.

The same can be said for the ongoing unrest that has plagued Ethiopia since 2020, first with the Tigray war and then the ongoing insurrection by the Fano militia in the Amhara National Regional State. This depiction concerns the exogenous incitement of internal conflicts, as it must be complemented by the subtle incitement to clashes between nations, which have not been lacking in the area, starting with the following:

• Ethiopia and Sudan, with the al-Fashaga conflict involving Ethiopian Amhara militias and the Sudanese state between 2020 and 2022;
• Ethiopia and Eritrea, at war between 1998 and 2000, a result of the 1991 Eritrean independence, with the ensuing Second Danakil ʿĀfār Uprising until 2018;
• Somalia and Kenya, which have been disputing for 63 years over the delimitation of maritime spaces, despite the 2021 U.N. International Court of Justice’s ruling on the merits.

Despite these border clashes, it must also be recognised that to date there have been no serious direct clashes between national governments, and that in the last 35 years, only two secessions (Eritrea and South Sudan) have been successful. This is also due to the July 1964 Cairo Resolution of the Organisation of African Unity, which commits all member states “to respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.”[4] Naturally, Somalia, which had a predominantly ethnic Somali majority in the Ethiopian Ogadēn region, then refused to accept the resolution, which inevitably led to a deterioration in relations between the two countries ever since. The paradox is that since 2007, the African Union has entrusted the Somalia stabilisation to Ethiopian troops, which had invaded it the previous year, and Kenyan troops, a country with a long-standing and bitter border dispute, as already mentioned.

Regional Alliances

In this already complicated context, the question of regional alliances arises, currently conditioned by Israel’s tangible presence in the Horn of Africa geopolitical landscape. It is worth considering at least three issues that could impact the region’s internal and external political structures:

• Mogadishu’s relations with Ankara and Dōḥa;
• Addis Ababa’s options towards neighbouring countries;
• The Gulf countries’ attitude towards Tel Aviv.

Somalia has enjoyed sustained support from Türkiye in development cooperation since 2011.[5] The 2024 ten-year military cooperation agreement for the modernisation of the Somali Armed Forces, particularly the Navy,[6] followed the opening of the Turkish military base Camp TURKSOM in Mogadishu in 2017.[7] But Türkiye also expressed support for Somalia through the agreement to explore and extract hydrocarbon reserves in Somalia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, as well as for the Somali government’s fight against al-Shabāb.

Somalia’s demand for security and protection from Ankara was naturally driven by its military distinction as a NATO member with the second-largest standing military force in terms of active personnel[8] and the 10^th strongest navy in the world.[9] But the trust Mogadishu has placed in Ankara depends significantly on the assessment of its diplomatic capacity for mediation and building international relations.

Until 2024, as highlighted by a study of the Osservatorio Turchia of the Italian think tank Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSPI), Erdoğan’s Türkiye maintained a cautious geopolitical strategy based on collaboration with the Horn of Africa countries, as well as with the Gulf States and Egypt. It developed military and commercial cooperation with Ethiopia, supporting the Addis Ababa government during the insurgency crises in Tigray and the Amhara State; it also maintained good relations with Somaliland, playing a valuable mediating role between Hargeysa and Mogadishu; and it signed agreements with Djibouti for the education and training of local soldiers.^[10]

Somalia has considered the UAE’s aid and investment in Somaliland and the federated State of Puntland’s alignment with the Abu Dhabi-Riyāḍ axis to be contrary to international law.[11] This is by virtue of its federal institutional structure, inaugurated in 2012 with the birth of the Federal Republic of Somalia, heir to the Transitional Federal Government (established in Kenya with the support of Ethiopia, the U.S. and the U.N.’s approval), which had ruled the country for the previous eight years.

What is happening in the Horn of Africa in 2024 that could undermine an unstable equilibrium, yet ultimately tolerated by regional powers?

The January 2024 Ethiopia-Somaliland MoU would allow the landlocked country to use one of its ports and even pave the way for access to the Red Sea for a leased military base.[12] This would be the port of Berbera, an infrastructure on the Gulf of Aden that the Persian Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., have financed together with Port Sudan, also considering the Red Sea a strategic territory.[13] The alleged Addis Ababa compensation to Hargeysa would have been the Somaliland diplomatic recognition (Chome, 2026). Not only the Arab League, of which Somalia is a member, but also Türkiye, the E.U., the U.S., and China have disapproved of the agreement, precisely based on the importance of Somalia’s unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.[14]

It would seem that the port of Berbera control and Somaliland recognition involve all the key stakeholders, both within and outside the Horn of Africa, mentioned in the previous paragraph. Adding to this are two Middle Eastern giants, Israel and Egypt. Let’s fill the gap right away.

Israel’s Role and the Saudi-UAE Rift

Tel Aviv, by recognising Hargeysa, is suspected of having followed the same Addis Ababa path, focusing on establishing its own outpost in Berbera. In response, Ankara and Mogadishu, whose good relations we have already described, reportedly agreed to set up a Turkish military base in Lāsqoray, overlooking the Gulf of Aden and located not in Somaliland, but, from Mogadishu’s point of view, in the new Somali North Eastern State.[15] This explains the meaning of the January 16^th ceremony in the North Eastern capital, mentioned on the first page of this analysis.

Egypt, which places great strategic importance on controlling traffic in the Red Sea (the gateway to the Suez Canal), responded politically to the reckless Ethiopia-Somaliland agreement by promoting the trilateral regional alliance with Eritrea and Somalia in October 2024[16] and reiterating the following April that the Red Sea governance is the sole responsibility of the coastal states. This alliance also suggests an understanding with other Muslim-majority countries originally included, such as Türkiye and Qatar (allies of Somalia), the Islamic Republic of Iran (which maintains good relations with Eritrea) and the Saudi Kingdom (which, along with Egypt and Qatar, supports the Sudanese Armed Forces) (Chome, 2026).

The most striking rift is occurring precisely in the Arab-Muslim world. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had marched together when they decided to suspend Qatar from the Gulf Cooperation Council, and we mentioned the significant associate investments in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden ports, as a counter to the Ankara-Dōḥa geopolitical axis. Given the normalisation of diplomatic relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords in 2020, Abu Dhabi’s stance in the Red Sea geopolitical area proved to be aimed far more at accommodating Tel Aviv’s positions than at regulation. Its anti-Somali role in Somaliland and its support for the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, an anti-government paramilitary organisation, raise suspicions of incitement to secession in many other areas of Northeast Africa and the Red Sea region, causing a now evident rift with Riyāḍ.

The situation in Yemen fits into this context because the UAE, in compliance with the Abraham Accords, supports the military and political organisation Southern Transitional Council (STC), which, until last January, was part of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), the U.N.-recognised executive body.[17] The anti-constitutional independence positions the group claimed in Southern Yemen, and the resulting military initiatives in this direction were met by the joint Saudi-led forces of the PLC and the Hadhramaut Tribal Alliance counter-offensive, given that since December, STC troops had been deployed in that border region with Saudi Arabia.[18]

Perhaps it’s unfair to say so, but the posture the UAE has been adopting since 2022 attests to Israel’s proxy role in Yemen, where Tel Aviv counts among its most determined adversaries the ʿAbd al-Malik Badr-led Ḥūthis, allies of Tehrān. But in doing so, Abu Dhabi challenges the influence Riyāḍ claims over the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea region, as an alternative to that of the Jewish state. This is truly an unprecedented crisis, and although it has been announced for years, it has never reached this depth. Can it still be said that the Abraham Accords bring peace?

The Military Presence of Exogenous Countries 

The military exogenous presence of countries in the Horn of Africa before 2009 was always limited to two NATO countries: France and the United States. Today, this presence is much more pronounced, especially in Djibouti (a photo below), the former French colony until independence in 1977, which has emerged as a true cluster of foreign military bases. Over time, military infrastructure from various other countries has been established in this small, Muslim-majority state:

• Japan. The first large-scale overseas military base operated by the Japan Self-Defence Forces has been present there since 2011;[19]
• Italy. The Amedeo Guillet military support base has been operating since 2013, monitoring commercial traffic and combating piracy in the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean;[20]
• People’s Republic of China. The People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas military base was formally inaugurated in 2017,[21] located along the routes of China’s Maritime Silk Road, which aims to interconnect Asian, African and European ports.[22]

Furthermore, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is negotiating the creation of a military base in Djibouti under a 92-year lease.[23]

Other important foreign military facilities are located in the Horn of Africa. The main ones are located in the following areas:

• Mogadishu. The aforementioned Turkish military base, Camp TURKSOM, has been operating there since 2017, and F-16s have been deployed since February to strengthen Somalia’s air power;[24]
• Lower Shabelle. Baledogle Airfield, the Somali Armed Forces’ largest military airbase, is also used by the U.S. Air Force and the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM);
• Assab, Eritrea. The port built in 2015 by the UAE served as its logistics base during the war in Yemen, though since 2021 it has reduced its military functions.[25]

It is true, however, that maritime geopolitics on the Red Sea is exercised not only through military bases, but also through industrial and trade investment in strategic locations:

• Türkiye. The Port of Mogadishu has been managed since 2014 by the Turkish multinational Albayrak Group, specialising in port investments, transportation, and logistics.[26] In Sudan, Türkiye has signed agreements for a 99-year lease of the Suakin Island, located near the Saudi coast and once an important naval base for the Ottoman Empire.[27]
• UAE. The United Arab Emirates, through DP World, its Dubai-based global port management company, has finalised port development deals in Somalia, Somaliland, and Eritrea, with a deal pending in Sudan due to the ongoing civil war. In particular, DP World manages the Port of Bosaso in Puntland, Somalia, under the P&O brand of the acquired British company, and participates in the shareholding of the aforementioned Port of Berbera, for which it has received a 30-year concession. In Sudan, the preliminary agreement AD Ports Group of Abu Dhabi signed in 2022 to build and operate the Port of Abu Amama was annulled by the Sudanese government due to the UAE’s support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2025).
• Kuwait. The Emirate is negotiating an agreement with Somalia to manage the Port of Barāwe, in the federated South West State (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2025).
• People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong-based China Merchants Port has been the operator of the Port of Djibouti since 2018, pursuant to a presidential decree revoking the concession held by Dubai-based DP World.[28]

The Rise of Middle Powers in the International Context

The problem is Israel; there’s no point in beating around the bush. It’s not an ideological prejudice, but a geopolitical observation. It’s pointless to raise an ethical question about whether Tel Aviv’s behaviour is right or wrong, or whether the daily, slow extermination of a defenceless people is acceptable. We’d be off, since the Nuremberg trials, which gave rise to the new post-WWII international law, left the victors’ crimes unpunished. Geopolitics hardly made room for ethics when the European powers (today we would call them Western) were carrying out the colonial Scramble for Africa, and the same powers (plus the United States) were occupying China on the eve of World War I. But these are obsolete topics which Western schools of international relations prefer to avoid, focusing on the events of the day. It’s better to entrust international crises analysis to the influencers shaping public opinion, judging which perpetrators adhere to human rights principles and which do not.

Perhaps the era of hypocrisy, with the late entry into the 21^st century, is now behind us. Trump and Netanyahu are its current symbols, but certainly not its architects. The tendency to condemn individual statesmen as solely responsible for the ongoing atrocities is an ideological screen aimed at obscuring the past and the long-term processes rooted in the power politics produced by states, not necessarily by individual statesmen temporarily at the helm of governments. In short, questions of national geopolitics, regardless of ideological concerns.

Thus, Donald Trump is the continuator, with different methods, of George Bush Jr.’s Washington policy aimed at limiting, through the Iraqi invasion, Iran’s geopolitical expansion and, with the Afghanistan subjugation, the growing Chinese dominance in Central Asia. And Binyamin Netanyahu is not much different from his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, in his policy of anti-Islamic provocation, promoting Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and serving the expansion of Israeli influence in Lebanon and Syria. This is about geopolitics, not ideology. It’s about Zionism, not religion.

What does the Horn of Africa have to do with these Asian and Middle Eastern issues?

A quote from a controversial figure, Moḥamed ‘Abdullāhī Moḥamed, President of Somalia between 2017 and 2022, described during the Bush era the perspective of a Somali-American citizen who later rose to the highest office in his homeland: “The Somali people have been victim of colonialism, dictatorship, and warlord thugs … Now, they are at the crossroad of two extremist ideologies: George W. Bush’s Christian ideology on one hand, and Islamic radicalism on the other, which want to wage a holy war on each other not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Somalia as well. Sadly, the people who ultimately suffer most form the majority: they do not subscribe to these radical ideologies.”[29]

A true synthesis of the history not only of Somalia but of the entire Horn of Africa, projected into the reality of the 21^st century, which is still in its infancy.

Today, the Horn of Africa, like other regions of the world, is suffering the transition to a new world order in the making, but certainly no longer dependent on a single global power, now evidently in decline and increasingly locked in (along with its entourage of protectorates) in a desperate attempt to recover. Warnings for years from supranational institutions such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have been underestimated by the Western oligarchs who support Washington and are now seeking a personal rather than collective way out.

The ungenerous attacks on the U.N. for its inefficiency and the more appropriate ones on financial institutions such as the Washington-based International Monetary Fund and the World Bank painted a picture of collapse, and, as responsible for the fallout, those entities require radical reform.[30] Perhaps it is not yet clear that the new world order consists of those directions. But the White House continues to misunderstand, advocating not a reform of those institutions, but rather a unilateral replacement based on the privatisation of global political management. The clear evidence is the cunning invention of the Board of Peace, a monocratic association chaired for life by American citizen Donald Trump and personally led by him, not the U.S. government, as misleading analysts often specify.

The rise of middle powers coincides with the inevitability of rebirth and renewal of international governing institutions, phenomena that have always occurred throughout history. The myth of Shiva is ever-present. And, in any case, the transition trouble is not painless.

Trump’s new strategy for American recovery — “America first,” to be clear — entails re-examining the meaning of alliances and holding those adhering to them accountable. Despite resistance from the Garbatella’s girls, “The West as we knew it no longer exists,” as the uppish Christian Democrat President of the European Commission, Ursula Albrecht, said last year, yet.[31] “The world is in a new era of variable geometry,” Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned a few months ago.[32] “We are moving into a new era of amplified middle power diplomacy,” Labour MP Penelope Ying-Yen Wong, Australia’s Malaysian-born Foreign Minister, captured the point.[33] Last but not least, Christian Democrat German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated at the Munich Security Conference a few days ago: “The international order based on rights and rules is currently being destroyed.”[34]

The Red Sea, and with it the Horn of Africa, is not only the centre of a century-long struggle for control of international trade but also a testing ground for alliances among regional powers competing for geopolitical dominance in the area. While the great powers now compete on continental and oceanic levels (Washington over the Americas, Moscow over Europe and the Arctic, Beijing over the Asia-Pacific and beyond), the middle powers have realised that old military alliances have melted away like snow in the sun and new geostrategic spaces have opened up for their prospects.

Why does Israel recognise the Somaliland sovereignty at this very moment, 35 years after Hargeysa’s self-proclaimed declaration of independence?

Tel Aviv’s unashamed bombing of Beirut, southern Syria, Tehrān, and Ṣan‘ā’ whenever and however it wants, as well as its arrogance in the attempts to annex the West Bank, have convinced it that no significant counterweight will stand up to these peoples for the time being; much less the Arab world, which has now fallen into the Abraham Accords trap.

Thus, Riyāḍ finally understands that Tel Aviv’s unchallenged prominence in the Middle East requires its projection into more ambitious shores, such as the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. It grasps that the Abraham Accords, which itself is still invited to join, entail subordination to Zionist expansionist ambitions, as appears to be the case with Abu Dhabi’s unscrupulous policies. It looks back on the mistake of having allowed Sudan to be destabilised and fractured, opening the door to the ongoing agreement among Israel, Ethiopia, and the UAE. It realises the crumbling of alliances that seemed so solid until recently, because they consolidated on the ideological basis of the Muslim Brothers’ aversion.

Even as-Sīsī’s Egypt, which had crushed the Muslim Brotherhood at home, is unlocking opportunities for strategic alignment in the Horn of Africa with “Sultan” Erdoğan’s Türkiye and Amīr Shaykh ath-Thānī’s Qatar, launching the Tripartite Agreement with Eritrea and Somalia.

If the analyst is allowed to simplify in terms of strategic alignments, an Israel-UAE axis supporting South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somaliland appears to be forming, opposed to the Saudi Arabia-Egypt-Türkiye-Qatar axis backing Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea. All are friends of Washington.

Meanwhile, Djibouti is prospering, and Beijing, for now, is looking on. Except that, while Trump announces he will increase tariffs on all countries worldwide, Xi Jinping will repeal them on imports from 53 African countries, starting next May 1^st, in the Year of the Fire Horse.

Perhaps the new world order will bring further changes and surprises. We will see.

 

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Yibeltal, Kalkidan. “Ethiopia signs agreement with Somaliland paving way to sea access,” January 2^nd, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67858566.

***

[1] Nuri Aden, “Somali president attends inauguration of Northeast state leader in Las Anod,” January 17^th, 2026, https://www.trtafrika.com/english/article/bc01368f2f09.

[2] Ngala Chome, “The Horn and the Gulf: How a New Geopolitical Confluence is Emerging,” January 21^st, 2026, https://africanarguments.org/2026/01/the-horn-and-the-gulf-how-a-new-geopolitical-confluence-is-emerging/

[3] Faisal Ali, “Somalia cancels all agreements with UAE over alleged sovereignty violations,” January 12^th, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/12/somalia-cancels-all-agreements-with-uae-over-alleged-sovereignty-violations.

^[4] Organization of African Unity, Secretariat, “Resolutions Adopted by the First Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Cairo, UAR, from 17 to 21 July 1964,” AHG/Res. 16(I) Border Disputes among African States, https://au.int/sites/default/files/decisions/9514-1964_ahg_res_1-24_i_e.pdf.

^[5] Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, “Türkiye – Somalia alliance will guarantee stability in the Horn of Africa,” March 3^rd, 2024, Anadolu Ajansı, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-turkiye-somalia-alliance-will-guarantee-stability-in-the-horn-of-africa/3148891.

^[6] Harun Maruf, “Somalia Approves Defense Agreement With Turkey,” Voice of America, February 21^st, 2024, https://www.voanews.com/a/somalia-approves-defense-agreement-with-turkey-/7496758.html.

^[7]  Abdirahman Hussein and Orhan Coskun, “Turkey opens military base in Mogadishu to train Somali soldiers,” October 1^st, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-turkey-military/turkey-opens-military-base-in-mogadishu-to-train-somali-soldiers-idUSKCN1C50JH/?il=0.

^[8] Vidya Amalia Rimayanti, “Top 10 NATO Countries with the Largest Armed Forces,” December 13^th, 2024, https://en.tempo.co/read/1952401/top-10-nato-countries-with-the-largest-armed-forces#:~:text=US%20News%20and%20Statista%20mentioned,power%20index%20concluded%20at%200.2917.

^[9] World Directory of Modern Military Warships (WDMMW), “Global Naval Powers Ranking (2026),” https://www.wdmmw.org/ranking.php#:~:text=1,TvR:%2033.7.

^[10] Elem Eyrice Tepeciklioğlu, “Navigating regional dynamics: the Maritime Deal between Türkiye and Somalia,” Osservatorio Turchia CeSPI, Brief n. 59, March 2024, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.cespi.it/sites/default/files/osservatori/allegati/brief_59_turkiye-somalia.pdf.

^[11] Hisham Aidi, “Geo-Politics in the Horn of Africa,” January 21^st, 2020, Policy Center for the New South, https://www.policycenter.ma/publications/geo-politics-horn-africa?page=1.

^[12] Kalkidan Yibeltal, “Ethiopia signs agreement with Somaliland paving way to sea access,” January 2^nd, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67858566.

^[13] Erestu Legese Beyene, “The Geopolitics of Ports: Re-evaluating Economic Interdependence in the Horn of Africa,” November 8^th, 2025, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/11/08/the-geopolitics-of-ports-re-evaluating-economic-interdependence-in-the-horn-of-africa/

^[14] Ali Bakir, “How Ethiopia’s Red Sea deal could impact Israel, Egypt, and the UAE,” January 22^nd, 2024, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-israel-egypt-and-uae-view-ethiopias-red-sea-deal.

^[15] Ragip Soylu, “Israel-Turkey rivalry moves to the Horn of Africa,” December 29^th, 2025, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-turkey-rivalry-moves-horn-africa.

^[16] Mohamed ELDoh, “The Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia Alliance: A Strategic Counterbalance to Ethiopia,” October 23^rd, 2024, https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the-egypt-eritrea-somalia-alliance-a-strategic-counterbalance-to-ethiopia/#:~:text=Egypt%20and%20Somalia%20have%20already%20signed%20a,after%20Somali%20President%20Hassan%20Sheikh%20Mohamud%20visited.

^[17] The New Arab, “Yemen presidential body sacks last UAE-backed member,” January 15^th, 2026, https://www.newarab.com/news/yemen-presidential-body-sacks-last-uae-backed-member.

^[18] Al Jazeera, “Saudi-backed forces move on Aden as Yemen secessionist leader vanishes,” January 7^th, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/7/saudi-led-coalition-strikes-yemen-says-stc-leader-al-zubaidi-has-fled.

^[19] Neptune P2P Group, “Japan eyes first overseas SDF long-term base in Djibouti,” n.d., https://neptunep2pgroup.com/blog/japan-eyes-first-overseas-sdf-long-term-base-djibouti/

^[20] Vincenzo Sinapi, “Operativa la base italiana a Gibuti”, October 27^th, 2013, https://www.analisidifesa.it/2013/10/operativa-la-base-italiana-a-gibuti/

^[21] Michael Perry, “China formally opens first overseas military base in Djibouti,” August 1^st, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-djibouti-idUSKBN1AH3E3/

^[22] Usman Ali, Mohammad Nawaz Bhatti, and Adnan Nawaz, “A Geo-Strategic Importance of Djibouti: Presence of Foreign Military Bases,” June 10^th, 2025, Social Sciences Spectrum, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392914327_A_geo-strategic_importance_of_Djibouti_Presence_of_foreign_military_bases.

^[23] Africa Center for Strategic Studies, “Mapping Gulf State Actors’ Expanding Engagements in East Africa,” July 8^th, 2025, https://africacenter.org/spotlight/gulf-state-actors-east-africa/#1751997918084-8b81cc35-858e.

^[24] Hürriyet Daily News, “Türkiye’s Somalia footprint grows as F-16 deployment confirmed,” February 6^th, 2026, https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkiyes-somalia-footprint-grows-as-f-16-deployment-confirmed-218657.

^[25] Jon Gambrell, “UAE dismantles Eritrea base as it pulls back after Yemen war,” February 18^th, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/eritrea-dubai-only-on-ap-united-arab-emirates-east-africa-088f41c7d54d6a397398b2a825f5e45a.

^[26] Diplomat, “Somalia hands over Mogadishu seaport to Turkish company,” September 21^st, 2014, Diplomat News Network, https://web.archive.org/web/20141001054403/http://diplomat.so/2014/09/21/somalia-hands-over-mogadishu-seaport-to-turkish-company/

^[27] Christina Lin, “Neo-Ottoman Turkey’s ‘String of Pearls’,” October 14^th, 2019, Asia Times, https://web.archive.org/web/20191022034956/https://www.asiatimes.com/

^[28] May Darwich and Jutta Bakonyi, “Port infrastructures and the making of historical time in the Horn of Africa: Narratives of urban modernity in Djibouti and Somaliland,” in Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, Volume 159, ed. Pengjun Zhao (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier, April 2025). doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.105781.

^[29] Taylor Gee, “How an American Bureaucrat Became President of Somalia,” February 19^th, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/how-an-american-bureaucrat-became-president-of-somalia-214798/

^[30] Glauco D’Agostino, “The new Asian geopolitics in the wake of the Silk Road and Marco Polo’s feats,” February 10^th, 2025, Geopolitica. Revistă de Geografie Politică, Geopolitică şi Geostrategie, nr. 105 (4/2024): (Bucureşti: Top Form), https://www.geopolitic.ro/2025/02/nr-4-105-2024-principiul-dominoului/

^[31] Jorge Liboreiro, “’The West as we knew it no longer exists,’ von der Leyen says amid Trump tensions,” April 16^th, 2025, https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/16/the-west-as-we-knew-it-no-longer-exists-von-der-leyen-says-amid-trump-tensions.

^[32] Mark Carney, “The world is in a new age of variable geometry, says Mark Carney,” November 12^th, 2025, https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2025/11/12/the-world-is-in-a-new-age-of-variable-geometry-says-mark-carney?giftId=NDU1ZmUzMjAtNWU3OS00NWM0LWE1ZjAtNDJmMjkyOWNlMDVi&utm_campaign=gifted_article.

^[33] Stewart Patrick, “The Middle Power Moment,” January 20^th, 2026, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/01/the-middle-power-moment?lang=en&utm_source=carnegieemail&utm_medium=email&utm_c%E2%80%A6.

^[34] The New York Times, “Live Updates: German Leader Says International Order ‘No Longer Exists’,” February 13^th, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/13/world/munich-security-conference.