Issue No. 108

Tomorrow, 4 December, marks the 31st anniversary of the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopting Resolution 954, which set 31 March 1995 as the deadline for the final withdrawal of UN forces under the United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II). It was a sobering end to the calamitous military intervention in Somalia, with nearly every element of the sprawling, unenforceable mandate left unfulfilled. Flash forward three decades, and the future of today's regional military intervention in Somalia is now in severe doubt, with funding for the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) still unsourced and Al-Shabaab ascendant on the eve of 2026.

After well over two years of calamitous war, Ethiopia has appeared to have quietly broken from its 'independence' on Sudan's internationalised conflict. In recent weeks, satellite imagery has confirmed suspicions that an Emirati military training base is being developed in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region in the Mengi district. Rather than the Ethiopian military, however, the facility is believed to be intended to house Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters, the rampaging paramilitary forces in the Sudan war drawn from Darfur. And so, Ethiopia appears to be now willingly-- most likely at the behest of the UAE-- drawn into the morass of competing interests within the region and Gulf that is tearing apart Sudan.

On social media, videos and images of jubilant Jubaland Daraawiish forces celebrating have circulated of late, alongside claims that they were recorded in Jamaame town in Lower Juba. Somali news outlets have similarly declared that Jubaland troops-- backed by Danab special forces-- are now closing in on the town, one of the principal headquarters of Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia. With the broader security auspices across south-central Somalia remaining so grim, it has been gratefully seized upon as some progress against an ascendant Al-Shabaab. Yet much of this is just noise, obscuring the nature of the Kismaayo-directed security operations and airstrikes that have been ongoing since early September in Lower Juba.

In late September, Somaliland's coast guard intercepted a dhow ferrying contraband off the coast of Berbera, arresting two Somali nationals and three Yemenis in the process. But rather than the usual trafficking of arms or migrants through the Gulf of Aden, their cargo was instead 11 cheetah cubs seemingly destined for the Middle East. The animals had been packed into potato sacks, with two of the endangered species dying within 24 hours of being rescued. Tragically, the rescue of these cheetahs-- now in the care of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF)-- was no anomaly, but rather part of a much broader wildlife trafficking crisis.

The past weeks have seen a glut of international attention on Sudan. First, the gruesome and long-anticipated fall of El Fasher in North Darfur to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) at the end of October, precipitating, as all anticipated, reports of the most egregious human rights violations, including widespread massacres. At the same time, the renewed push for a ceasefire between the paramilitaries and the Sudanese army is generating widespread speculation that —for the first time since a few brief hours at the outbreak of the war in April 2023 —there may just be a window of opportunity to ease the suffering.

Today, Sudan's war represents the crux of a destructive schism in the Middle East that is playing out in the Horn of Africa, a geopolitical wrestle between principally the Emirates on one side and Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the other. But it is far from the first-- nor likely to be the last-- division within the Gulf that refracts across the Red Sea.

Last week, a dozen historical artefacts collected in the 1920s by then-German envoy to Ethiopia, Franz Weiss, were handed over to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University in a grand ceremony. Among the restituted collection are several items of cultural and historical significance, including two ceremonial crowns, alongside shields and paintings. Hailing their return and pledging to continue seeking the retrieval of other consequential artefacts, Addis's Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa stated that the objects would be accessible to the public and for academic study, calling it a "milestone in safeguarding Ethiopia's cultural heritage."

In July 1990, in the twilight months of Siyaad Barre's faltering junta, ugly scenes descended on a football match at Mogadishu Stadium. Crowds, furious at the state of the nation and the patent lies being told that day-- including that one of the teams hailed from devastated Bur'o in northwest Somalia— began to hurl stones towards the president, before his forces opened fire indiscriminately on the crowd, killing dozens. Last Thursday, discontent again bubbled over in the rebuilt stadium during government celebrations at a Teachers' Day event attended by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and a coterie of senior government individuals.

Ports matter on the Somali peninsula. More than any other single revenue source, they serve as the lifeblood of the administrations in Hargeisa, Garowe, Mogadishu, and Kismaayo. In the unravelling of the state in the early 1990s, administrations coalesced—and fighting raged—over control of the four ports of Berbera, Bosaaso, Mogadishu, and Kismaayo, establishing the radically uncentralised nature that persists in Somalia's political economy today. But three decades on, who accesses and operates these aortic ports reflects and refracts another of today's defining issues for the Horn of Africa: the rapacious geostrategic tussle among Middle Eastern countries along both sides of the Red Sea.