You drive through or along cities, mountains, villages, coastlines, random empty fields, and there they are. Concrete reminders of a regime that once feared the outside world so deeply it physically fortified itself against it.

The best way to explain the vibe in Albania is calm. Outside Tirana there were mostly older people, quiet towns, half-empty villages, unfinished buildings, decent roads, and long stretches where the country felt caught somewhere between post-communist transition and whatever comes next.

Tirana at night felt like a different country entirely. Once the sun went down, parts of the city turned into a parade of wealth. The streets around the downtown restaurants, bars and clubs filled with traffic. Except it was not ordinary traffic. It was luxury cars everywhere. Ferraris, BMWs, G-Wagons, Lamborghinis. Men in black suits driving slowly through the city like a moving display case of power and money. Which was strange, because Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe. The countryside I had just driven through felt closer to the developing world than to the EU. So where were the Ferraris coming from? You do not have to spend long in Albania before the same answer keeps surfacing.

Albania has long carried a reputation, fair or unfair, for organized crime. That reputation has shaped both the country’s international image and parts of its post-communist economy for decades.

There was also a lot of unfinished buildings scattered throughout the country. Outside the center of Tirana, you constantly pass half-built seemingly abandoned structures. Empty developments standing in strange places with no obvious purpose. I noticed it far more than almost anywhere else I have traveled.

Albanian is also an incredibly hard language to pick up as a foreigner. After a month there, I learned nothing beyond Thank you (Faleminderit), and one word I kept seeing everywhere: “Shitet,” meaning something like “for sale.” It was written across buildings, apartments, storefronts, empty lots, everywhere.

The explanations I heard for all the strange construction varied. Some said speculation, corruption, money laundering, construction bubbles, permits frozen midway through projects. Whatever the cause, the effect on the landscape is unmistakable.

And yet, despite all of it, Albania really is beautiful.

The mountains in the north, the coastline, the towns, the Ottoman history, the Mediterranean vibes, the cafes, the Italian influence, the roads through the south. It genuinely does feel like a hidden gem. Albania’s fascinating history was probably the main reason why I wanted to go there, but I cannot lie, the travel vlogs definitely had some influence too. When travelers and YouTubers began marketing it online as Europe’s underrated destination, I understood why. Next to Croatia or Greece, it still feels less consumed and less polished.

Which is one of the main reasons why global capital is arriving now.

Places like Albania only stay “hidden gems” temporarily. Eventually the algorithms find them. Then the investors arrive. Then the luxury developments. Then the branding campaigns. Then the prices rise. Then the country slowly reorganizes itself around tourism, real estate, and foreign demand. That is the stage Albania appears to be entering now.

When I was there, Tirana did not really feel like a major capital. It felt like a medium sized city, with one upscale center. Not really the luxury towers now associated with PM Rama’s new Tirana. The transformation has been fast. Albania is being rebranded right now in real time. A capital that only a few years ago still felt almost like a provincial capital is now being pushed into the language of luxury towers, foreign architecture, investor summits, and real estate speculation.

Nothing captures that speed and what’s happening in Albania in general more sharply than what is now planned for a small island off the southern coast. It may soon become a luxury resort backed by a man who sits at the center of American political power, Gulf sovereign wealth money, and the post Abraham Accords economic order.

The island is Sazan, it sits on the Strait of Otranto, right where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet. A strategic chokepoint which passed through Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and centuries of Ottoman control before being heavily fortified by Mussolini’s Italy during the Second World War. Under communist Albania, the island was transformed into one of the regime’s most secret military bases, covered with roughly 3,600 bunkers, underground command infrastructure, ammunition depots, bomb shelters, Soviet-installed naval infrastructure and roughly ten miles of fortified tunnels connecting military positions carved through the rock.

Now, decades later, the same island is being recommissioned as a luxury destination for globally mobile elites (or so they say).

that transformation is not accidental.

The public story of how Trump’s son in law and daughter, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump first became interested in Sazan almost sounds like travel content.

According to Ivanka, they were on a friend’s yacht in the Mediterranean, stopped for a swim, “found” the island, swam ashore, hiked around barefoot, and became fascinated by the place. Coming from her, it sounded like a story about discovery, beauty, architecture, conservation, and long-term vision. (It’s hard to imagine the “barefoot hike” was quite as spontaneous as it sounds or even possible, considering the island is filled with bunkers, tunnels, snakes, undetonated mines and abandoned military infrastructure.)

Kushner mentioned at the FII PRIORITY summit in Tirana, speaking by video call, that the yacht belonged to Nat Rothschild, which honestly tells you everything you need to know about the world this project is emerging from.

Kushner also mentioned that he first met Prime Minister Edi Rama aboard that same yacht in the summer of 2021 and came away impressed by Rama’s vision for transforming Albania. He explained that about a year later, while actively searching for investment opportunities in the Balkans, he remembered the trip, looked more seriously at Albania, and became especially interested after learning that a major international airport was already being developed near Vlorë. (This interview took place last May, a full year before Ivanka came out telling the barefoot-discovery version. Someone should have told her that her husband had already given away the real timeline.)

So now, the question is not whether Kushner and Ivanka liked the island. Albania is beautiful. Lots of people would. The question is how a swim and a supposed barefoot hike or some chance encounter at sea on a yacht with a Prime Minister of a nation, became a billion-dollar strategic investment on protected coastal land, with government backing, in one of the most sensitive environmental zones in the country.

Vacations do not usually end in reclassified national parkland.

who is jared kushner?

The project is tied to Jared Kushner, founder and managing partner of Affinity Partners, former White House senior adviser, and current United States Special Envoy for Peace Missions. Few individuals sit at the intersection of American political power, Gulf money, Israeli leadership, diplomacy, and global real estate the way Kushner does.

During Donald Trump’s first administration, Kushner helped oversee the Abraham Accords and the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. In Trump’s second administration, he has returned as one of the president’s most trusted diplomatic advisers, participating in negotiations involving Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, and broader Middle East peace efforts while simultaneously leading an investment firm backed by billions from Saudi, Qatari and Emirati sovereign wealth funds. This combination of political influence, diplomatic access, and financial capital is what makes the Albania project more than a simple real-estate deal.

The project represents the arrival of a specific type of globally connected capital into Albania, capital that moves through political relationships, sovereign wealth funds, elite investment networks, and personal connections stretching across Washington, Tel Aviv, London, Riyadh, Dubai, Doha and beyond.

The same post-Abraham Accords political world that promised prosperity through normalization and investment is now expressing itself physically and extending far beyond the Middle East itself.

Albania has maintained relations with Israel for decades, so this is not some sudden geopolitical realignment. But the country can still be used as an example of what happens when a Muslim-majority nation with good relations with Israel becomes attractive to this network of capital. Kushner arrives, and suddenly “development” follows.

To be precise about the footprint, this is really two separate developments. There is the roughly $1.6 billion “Sazan Island Touristic Resort,” granted strategic investor status by Albania’s Strategic Investment Committee on December 30, 2024. Sazan is currently uninhabited. Parts of the island remain under military control and it receives occasional tourists and guided visits.

Then there is the much larger mainland $4.7billion component near Zvërnec and the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape, north of the city of Vlorë. Unlike Sazan, this is not an empty island. The broader area includes villages, local residents, fishing communities, agricultural land, and growing tourism activity. It is also one of Albania’s most ecologically sensitive coastal regions, home to flamingos, pelicans, sea turtles, and hundreds of migratory bird species. This land was legally protected until the government decided it shouldn't be. In 2024, Albania amended its law on protected areas and redrew the boundaries, quietly lifting protection from the exact stretches now slated for development

The island is the headline because the symbolism is impossible to miss. A rich, politically connected American investor, with deep ties to Israel, trying to develop a private luxury resort on a bunker island. (At a time when the world is still processing the scandals tied to a certain wealthy and connected man and his private island.) But the coastline is where the real transformation is happening.

who is edi rama?

Rama presents himself as a modernizer. Before becoming prime minister in 2013, he was a painter and a professional basketball player, then mayor of Tirana, where he made his name ordering the city’s drab communist apartment blocks repainted in bright colors. He has always understood politics visually through image, surface, the look of a thing and as prime minister he scaled that instinct up from paint to concrete. He speaks the language of Davos and the investment-forum circuit. It’s always innovation, integration, growth. That seems to be what attracted Kushner to him. At the FII summit, Kushner said he was struck by Rama’s background as an artist and found it interesting to imagine what a country could look like when led and built by an artist, someone like Rama.

Tirana is the showcase. The low-rise communist city he started with is now studded with towers, many designed by international star architects he handpicks himself and gathers for festivals, almost like a curated collection rather than a market responding to need. A luxury-apartment market that barely existed a few years ago now sells units before they are built, largely to Albanians living abroad, at prices that have roughly tripled and even people inside the industry call it a bubble. Developers pitch the city as the next Monaco. The Albanian Riviera, meanwhile, is marketed online as Europe’s last hidden paradise.

To supporters, this is modernization and to many Albanians, understandably, the alternative to Rama feels worse. Young people were leaving anyway. If tourism, foreign capital, and luxury development can raise incomes and pull Albania closer to Western Europe, many are willing to accept the tradeoff.

But modernization for who?

Because there is a difference between building a sovereign economy and packaging a country for consumption. A sovereign economy develops productive power like industry, engineering, technology, energy, scientific capacity, manufacturing, food security, and pathways for citizens to build wealth themselves. A packaged economy sells experiences. It sells coastline. It sells cheap labor. It sells tourism. It sells “hidden gem” branding. It sells residency permits, passports and apartments to foreigners. It sells luxury access to outsiders. It sells the country itself as a platform. And eventually, the population becomes economically dependent on serving people wealthier than themselves.

Roughly 2.2 million Albanian citizens, nearly half of all Albanians, already live abroad, one of the highest emigration ratios on earth. Rama frames developments like this as a way to draw them home, to give the diaspora a reason to return and invest. Maybe. But the only time Albanians have come back in large numbers was during the 2008 crisis, when Greece and Italy cratered and going home briefly made more sense than staying. It was a return driven by the West's collapse, not Albania's success. The flow since has reversed back the other way.

A luxury resort priced for foreigners is not the thing that will reverse the reversal. Neither are the luxury apartments. The diaspora can buy them, and many do, as investments, but owning a flat in Tirana is not the same as moving back to it. The reason they left was that Albania could not offer the wages or the careers the West could. A holiday apartment does not change that. You can hold the keys to a place on the new skyline and still have to fly back to Germany to actually earn a living, because the economy underneath the towers still has no room for you. So the apartment becomes one more asset bought with money made abroad, which is just another problem, not a solution to anything.

there isn't much underneath the tourism.

Albania's economy is thin under the tourism. The sector now makes up roughly a quarter of it, and what holds up the rest is not the kind of thing that builds a country. There is no major industrial engine capable of carrying the economy. The economy leans on remittances sent home from abroad, alongside construction, some farming, mining, and low-wage service work, garment assembly stitched for Italian fashion brands, call centers answering phones for companies in Milan and Rome. It is an economy that mostly serves other people’s economies.

None of this is an argument against tourism, or against foreign investment. Tourism is not the problem. Depending on it is. In a healthy economy, tourism is a complement, it sits on top of something that actually produces and adds to it, rather than holding the whole thing up. And this has nothing to do with size. Slovenia is smaller than Albania and gets plenty of tourists, but it also kept its industry and makes pharmaceuticals and machinery. Estonia is tiny and built a technology economy from almost nothing. For both, the visitors are a bonus, not the foundation. Small countries can absolutely diversify. They just have to choose to.

Albania is leaning the other way. The sensible move from here would be to diversify, to build the productive base the country never really had, so tourism becomes one income stream among several instead of the whole bet. The Kushner model does the opposite. It doubles down on the one thing Albania already over-relies on, and spends the country's most valuable asset, its coastline, to make that dependence permanent.

And in a country leaning this hard on outside money and visitors, foreign approval starts to matter more than it should. The government chases rankings, investor conferences, travel lists, influencers, international branding. The country starts seeing itself through the eyes of outsiders, and at some point even the leadership begins behaving like a marketing department.

When the streamer IShowSpeed visited Albania, he met with Rama himself. No disrespect to Speed, he is massively influential online, but it is worth asking why the leader of a country is spending time meeting internet entertainers in the first place. The answer is that visibility has become economic strategy. Attention itself becomes infrastructure, virality is political because global perception directly affects investment, travel, and foreign money flows.

The country begins competing not only for capital, but for online relevance.

albania has experienced massive emigration for decades.

In 2025 alone, the country recorded a net migration loss of roughly 28,500 people, meaning more Albanians left permanently or for extended periods than returned or settled in the country. The population has now fallen to around 2.33 million.

The outflow disproportionately affects younger generations and includes educated professionals seeking opportunities elsewhere. The average age of the country is now 45. Huge numbers of young Albanians continue leaving for Germany, Italy, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe. Many skilled workers simply do not believe they can build stable futures at home.

The answer Rama offers to all of it is the same single word: Europe.

EU accession is the great project of his politics and he pursues it with something closer to devotion than strategy. “We are fanatics. We are not like the others. We are the fanatics of the EU faith,” he told Euronews. For Albania, he added, there is “no Plan B, there is no alternative, there’s nothing.”

There is no alternative, because Rama won't allow one to exist. Everything he chases is about how Albania looks from the outside. None of it touches what is actually driving people out: an economy with no real base and no careers that pay.

Rama approaches politics the way an artist approaches a canvas. The image comes first. The skyline. The branding. The spectacle. The way the country appears from a drone shot, an architecture render, an investment summit, a travel vlog. Meanwhile the country underneath the picture he is painting keeps emptying out.

protests began last month in the coastal villages slated for development,

Heavy machinery and barbed-wire fencing arrived at the site, and within weeks the anger had spread to the capital. Thousands gathered in Tirana, many outside Rama’s office, holding inflatable flamingoes, a reference to the threatened lagoon, and signs reading “CANCEL THE PROJECT,” “ALBANIA IS NOT FOR SALE,” and “I DON’T WANT ALBANIA LIKE DUBAI.”

A lot of foreigners, especially Americans, assume the backlash is about Trump and Kushner. It isn’t. Albania is one of the most pro-American countries in the world. Many Albanians see the United States as an ally, tied to NATO, to Kosovo, to the support that came after communism and during the Yugoslav wars. Anti-Americanism has never been a real force in Albanian politics.

What Albania does have is a long memory of being looted by its own political class. In the 1990s, pyramid schemes swallowed people’s savings and pushed the country into near-collapse. Since then, corruption, organized crime, patronage, rigged privatizations, and shady construction have been permanent features of public life.

So when Albanians see protected land reclassified, public access fenced off, politically connected investors welcomed, and billions promised through back channels, they recognize the pattern. A country that has been cheated before is being told, once again, to trust the people managing the deal. The anger is not that the buyers are American. It is that the state appears willing to reshape parts of the country around powerful outside capital first and ask the public to trust the process afterward.

And the model it is reshaping the country around has a name. Dubai runs on imported labor: a small, oil-rich citizenry that owns and is served, while the cooking, cleaning, building, and driving are done by millions of foreign workers kept on cheap, temporary, near-rightless terms. It is an ugly arrangement, but it holds together for one reason. Oil made the citizens rich enough to sit on top of it. Emiratis do not wait the tables. The lower-status labor is outsourced to people from somewhere else.

Albania is copying that arrangement without the part that makes people tolerate it. Be honest: most people, if given the choice, would probably take the Emirati deal. Set the ethics aside and the citizen sits at the top of an extraordinarily wealthy system. Oil wealth, subsidies, state benefits, high incomes, almost no taxes. The entire structure is designed so the Emirati citizen profits from the machine even if migrant labor carries much of it on its back.

But what exactly is Rama’s version offering Albanians? Even if everything works exactly as promised, Albania does not become Dubai. It becomes a poorer country reorganized around serving wealthier outsiders. The coastline fills with villas, resorts, marinas, and investment properties priced for rich foreigners, while the actual work falls either to Albanians themselves or to imported labor from even poorer countries.

Facing a labor shortage created by its own emigration, Albania has begun importing workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Egypt to fill its hotels and resorts.

This is how it works for a developing country stuck in the middle of the ladder. The rich countries at the top only receive; the poorest at the bottom only send. Everyone in between does both at once, exporting its people upward and importing cheaper hands from below to replace them. Albanians leave for Germany to do the work Germans have moved up from, and Filipinos and Bangladeshis arrive to do the work Albanians have left behind. Albania has settled comfortably into its rung instead of trying to move up it, and selling the coast to foreign capital is how you stay there for good.

Rama’s whole approach looks like a bet. Build a Dubai of Europe, a coastline glittering with Gulf money and Trump-branded resorts, and the spectacle speaks for itself. Make the result dazzling enough and Brussels has to let him in, the rezoning and the fast-tracking forgiven as the price of a success story. And if a deal of this magnitude goes through, the precedent is set: everything is for sale on these terms, as long as it can be called “investment.”

Don’t clean up how the deals get done, just make them shine so bright nobody looks too closely. The flaw in the plan was the partner. Rama has always loved a spectacle, and for years it worked. But this time he chose to make one with the most watched, most scrutinized family on earth, and a spectacle built around the Trumps is not one anybody looks away from.

rama has not responded like a leader trying to calm a country down.

He has responded like a man defending an investment pitch.

He has refused to halt the process, framing the project as a historic opportunity to push Albania into a higher class of Mediterranean tourism. In one interview, he argued that Albania is facing a “hybrid war,” claiming that bots, fake profiles, hostile outside forces, and anti-development actors are exploiting environmental concerns and Albania’s relationship with Israel to attack the project.

Notice what Rama reached for. Defending a project that critics attack on environmental, land, and corruption grounds, he volunteered a denial of something the Albanian protesters were not even saying, that this is a secret deal with Bibi Netanyahu to resettle Palestinians on the Albanian coast. He called the idea a “total fantasy.” Maybe it is. But nobody marching with inflatable flamingoes was asking about Palestinians.

That is a tell. When the people in the street are worried about a lagoon and a no-bid land reclassification, and the prime minister answers by swatting down something unrelated, he is showing you which connection he is most anxious about.

who is the new albania being built for?

Rama also insists there is no final project to cancel yet. "There is no project yet," he says, only "a vision and a plan." The final proposal, he told parliament, has not even been submitted, and the environmental study is not finished. According to him, the development is still being worked on by major international architecture studios and will eventually be presented publicly. He has described the goal as creating an exclusive and environmentally responsible destination, not simply pouring concrete over the coast.

But that is suspicious. If there is no final project, why has the political commitment already sounded so absolute? What exactly was he discussing with Jared Kushner on Nat Rothschild's yacht five years ago? And why does the playbook already look familiar? Because the same government built Vlorë airport by starting construction inside the protected Vjosa-Narta landscape in 2021 and then redrawing the boundary to cut the site out of the protected zone afterward. Conservationists who visited the coast in early May reported excavators already digging up the beach and trucks laying gravel. There is no project, Rama says, only the heavy machinery is already on the sand.

Defending the development, Rama said it was vital that Albania not receive “the stigma of being a country where investors are met with hostility,” adding that “there is absolutely no chance that the investment will stop as long as I am here.” That sentence reveals the hierarchy clearly. Investment first. Questions later.

(In a CNN interview about the project, Rama grew visibly irritated under questioning, at one point snapping “let me finish” and “what’s wrong with you?” at the host, defending the development as a misunderstood opportunity rather than engaging the actual concerns.)

you can tell that it is getting to him.

The protests have not died down. What began in two coastal villages is now well into its second week in the capital, and the chants have changed. The crowds outside Rama’s office are no longer only asking him just to cancel the project. They are asking him to go. And this is not the opposition’s doing, the traditional parties have been sidelined, the demonstrators are jeering Rama and his old rivals alike, a whole political class rejected at once. They have a name for it now, the Flamingo Revolution. That is the kind of anger a government cannot simply wait out.

So he keeps explaining himself, appearance after appearance, insisting it is all a misunderstanding. At one point, in a Euronews interview, he said the quiet part aloud. Asked about the resort, he began to describe it as an elite enclave built on land that belongs to the Albanian people, then stopped and corrected himself: the land, he said, "belongs to the investors." They had bought it. For a man who built his entire career on controlling the image, it was a remarkable thing to say to a country marching under the slogan that Albania is not for sale.

The pressure has come from every direction at once. SPAK, the anti-corruption prosecutors, opened an investigation into how the land was reclassified and froze the accounts of one of the companies that bought up the Zvërnec beachfront. No wrongdoing has been proven, and the inquiry is an examination of process, not a verdict.

But notice how Rama has positioned himself. He backs the investigation, but only one half of it. Freezing money headed to the local sellers under suspicion is "welcome," he says, but blocking the transaction itself is "arbitrary and negative," because "the investors are within their rights." In other words: investigate the middlemen, protect the deal. He is not trying to stop the probe. He is trying to aim it, away from the project and toward the people who sold the land, so that some corruption can be exposed and the resort can still go ahead.

Let’s be real, though, a domestic watchdog in a country with Albania’s record is not what keeps a man like Rama up at night. What rattled him came from the one direction he could not dismiss. Not the protesters, whom he waved away as a hybrid war. Not the prosecutors he has outlasted before. But Brussels. On June 9th, the European Commission warned that the project could breach EU environmental law and put Albania’s accession, the thing Rama calls his life’s work, at risk, telling Tirana to “act without delay.”

That same day, the government that had sworn the investment would never stop announced it was suspending the project pending an environmental review. The man who said there was “absolutely no chance” it would halt while he was in charge had blinked. And what made him blink was not his own people in the street, not the bad viral PR, It was the club he is desperate to join, telling him this deal might keep him out.

The crazy and funny thing is that the bet Rama made, was almost working. The deal was moving exactly the way it was supposed to: quietly. Strategic-investor status granted, the protected map redrawn, the whole thing labeled "investment" and going through just as planned.

What blew it open was Ivanka Trump, going on a podcast to describe how she and Jared had “discovered” the island, swum ashore, hiked it barefoot, fallen in love with the view, narrating the acquisition of a protected Albanian island as a charming holiday anecdote. That tone-deaf little story is what turned a quiet local deal into a global scandal. The whole world looked, and what it saw flattered no one.

Rama knows it, too. "If it was not Jared, they would not give a shit about what is happening in Albania," he complained to Politico. He meant it as a grievance, that the world only cares because a Trump is involved. But it is also a confession. And the bitter part is that he is right: nobody outside Albania was ever going to care about another murky Albanian land deal. Corruption in Albania is a local story. Jared and Ivanka is a global one. By attaching the island and the coast to them, Rama borrowed the world's attention, and the same attention that was supposed to make the project shine is what dragged it into the light. The partner who was meant to make it dazzling is the reason nobody looked away.

So the great image-maker is left managing the worst image of his career. He once painted Tirana’s grey communist blocks in bright colors to change how the country looked. He cannot paint over this. And the cruelest part, for a man this careful, is who exposed him in the end. Not an enemy. His own partners, too rich and too far from the ground to understand that narrating the purchase of a country as a barefoot swim was the one thing guaranteed to make the world watch.

That recovery narrative continued in stages. On February 1, a Sudan Airways flight from Port Sudan brought roughly 160 passengers to Khartoum, the first scheduled commercial flight since the war began, though still a domestic one. On April 28, a Kuwait Airways flight arrived from Kuwait with about 300 passengers, marking the first direct international commercial arrival in years. For the army-led government, these flights were proof that the capital was reconnecting to the country and then to the outside world.

The is why the drone strikes earlier this month are alarming, not because Khartoum airport had never been targeted before. It had. Not because the RSF had never used drones to disrupt the army’s recovery narrative. It had. The real shift is that Sudan is now accusing Ethiopia, which is a neighboring state and one of the Horn of Africa’s central powers, of serving as the launchpad.

On May 4, drones struck Khartoum airport, military areas and residential areas in Khartoum and Omdurman. The next day, Sudan formally accused Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates of involvement, claimed the drones had been launched from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport, described the assault as direct aggression, recalled its ambassador from Addis Ababa, and suspended airport operations for 72 hours. On May 6, Ethiopia rejected the accusations as baseless, the UAE called them unfounded propaganda, and Ethiopia counter-accused the SAF of arming TPLF “mercenaries”.

The UAE’s role in Sudan has been discussed for years. I’ve written about it. Sudanese officials, UN experts, rights groups, journalists, and analysts have all pointed in the same direction: the RSF’s war effort has not survived on local looting and battlefield improvisation alone. It has depended on external money, weapons, logistics, and regional access. The UAE denies arming the RSF, but the allegation is now central to how Sudan’s war is understood.

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The U.A.E.’s Covert Role in Sudan’s Civil War

While claiming neutrality, the United Arab Emirates quietly armed a militia accused of atrocities and profited from the conflict…

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Ethiopia is different. The UAE is a power operating at a distance. Ethiopia is Sudan’s neighbor and they share a long border. It has its own unresolved disputes with Khartoum over land, water, refugees, insurgent movements, and the balance of power in the region. If Sudan’s claim is accurate, then the war is no longer only a civil war with foreign sponsors. It is beginning to look like a proxy conflict involving two of the Horn of Africa/Red Sea’s largest states.

A formal Ethiopia-Sudan war is not inevitable. But the line between Sudan’s internal conflict and the region’s state rivalries is getting thinner.

I argued last May that Sudan had become a template for a new kind of empire. One that is less about formal colonies and more about logistics, ports, militias, drones, gold routes, airstrips, political clients, and deniable violence. That was the deeper story beneath the RSF’s war. Sudan was being pulled apart by a system that rewarded fragmentation. The latest accusation against Ethiopia fits directly into that system.

According to Sudan’s military spokesperson, the army has evidence of several drone attacks since March 1 originated from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport and involved UAE-supplied drones. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry denied the claim and, in turn, accused Sudan of supporting hostile forces, including Tigrayan rebels. The exchange reveals how both governments now see the battlefield.

From Addis Ababa’s perspective, Sudan’s war is a security problem on Ethiopia’s western flank. The SAF is aligned with Egypt, the country challenging Ethiopia over the GERD, and Eritrea, the country Abiy’s government increasingly sees as a hostile actor on its northern border. From the Ethiopian point of view, the fear is not imaginary: if the SAF consolidates power with Egyptian and Eritrean backing, Ethiopia could face pressure from the west and the north at the same time.

In February, I mapped the emerging regional alignment around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Sudan’s war: UAE, Ethiopia, Israel, Somaliland and the RSF on one side; Egypt, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan’s army on the other. Turkey sits awkwardly around this alignment: close to Somalia, increasingly active in Sudan, and too independent to fit neatly into either camp.

That was not a neat alliance system. These states do not all agree with one another. Some barely trust one another. But their interests were beginning to line up around the same pressure points like the Nile, the Red Sea, Bab Al Mandeb Strait, Sudan’s future, Somaliland, Ethiopia’s rise, Egypt’s anxiety, Eritrea’s fear of Ethiopian expansion, and the UAE’s desire to control strategic corridors from the Gulf to Africa.

The drone accusation makes that alignment harder to dismiss. If the attacks did originate from Ethiopian territory, then the UAE-Ethiopia-RSF axis becomes a possible operational reality. Drones do not fly themselves across borders. They require launch sites, permissions, air corridors, intelligence, fuel, technicians, or at minimum a state unwilling or unable to stop its territory from being used. That leaves two possible explanations, and neither is reassuring.

Either Ethiopia actively allowed its territory to be used in attacks on Sudan, or it is too weak, fragmented, or compromised to prevent foreign-backed military activity from operating through its own airports. One explanation points to policy. The other points to loss of control. Either explanation would put Addis Ababa under serious scrutiny.

There is another reason this matters. Sudan and Ethiopia are not minor conflicts sitting at the edge of the international system. They are two of the worst war zones of the last few years. The Tigray war killed vast numbers of people, with estimates ranging from the low hundreds of thousands to as high as 600,000. Sudan’s war has also killed vast numbers of people, with estimates running well into the hundreds of thousands, displaced more than 13 million people, produced famine conditions, and turned cities and markets into battlefields. Both conflicts are treated as separate crises. Ethiopia as a troubled but still functioning state, Sudan as a collapsed neighbor. That separation could be becoming harder to sustain. The Sudan-Ethiopia dynamic now looks like a cross-border proxy system: both governments are fighting internal enemies, and both suspect the other of helping those enemies.

The sad part is that both countries may be telling the truth. Sudan has real reasons to believe Ethiopia is giving the RSF strategic depth through the UAE-linked networks now surrounding the war. Ethiopia, in turn, has real reasons to believe the SAF is leaning into ties with it’s enemies. The SAF has deepened ties with Ethiopia’s adversaries in Tigray and Eritrea, while on Ethiopia’s side, the key link is its relationship with the UAE, alleged RSF logistics, and historical relationships with armed actors near Sudan’s border, including the SPLM-N faction led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, which is aligned with the RSF and active around the Blue Nile State frontier.

That is a real danger. Not simply that Sudan’s war expands outward, but that Sudan’s war and Ethiopia’s unresolved internal conflicts begin to overlap. If that happens, the region is no longer dealing with one civil war next to another unstable state. It is dealing with the possible merger of two mass-casualty conflict systems into a single regional battlefield.

the place to watch is blue nile state.

Blue Nile sits in southeastern Sudan, directly along the border with Ethiopia and South Sudan. It borders Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region, the same region that hosts the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and it connects Sudan’s southeast to routes leading north toward Sennar, Gezira, and eventually Khartoum.

For much of the war, Blue Nile was relatively quiet compared with Khartoum or Darfur. That has started to change. Sudan is also accusing Ethiopia of allowing the RSF and its allies to use Ethiopian territory bordering Blue Nile State as rear depth. Those claims are still denied by Addis Ababa, but the fighting is largely happening exactly where SAF says the problem is. Reuters has reported that Ethiopia hosted a camp in Benishangul-Gumuz to train thousands of RSF fighters, with alleged UAE financing and logistical support, and that Asosa airport had been upgraded with infrastructure consistent with drone operations. This is why Sudan’s accusation cannot be treated as just another diplomatic spat.

the rsf’s supply network has never depended on one route.

Sudanese officials and outside observers have pointed to networks running through Chad, the Central African Republic, Libya, South Sudan, and maritime corridors connected to the UAE. I’ve previously written about how Chad and CAR as part of the RSF supply line. The Sudanese army has also accused similar drone-linked activity around Bosaso in Somalia, suggesting that the war’s logistics have stretched from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden into the Sahelian interior. Ethiopia’s naming extends that map.

But Ethiopia is not just another route on that list. Chad and Libya feed the war from Sudan’s far west, through Darfur and the desert corridors. Somalia is not that close to Sudan. The Ethiopian frontier sits much closer to Sudan’s central and eastern core and the routes lead toward Khartoum. That means an Ethiopian route brings the war closer to Sudan’s agricultural heartland, population centers, and state infrastructure.

so why now?

The first reason is military momentum. The Sudanese army has regained ground since 2025. That changed the political atmosphere around the war. The RSF’s early image as brutal, mobile, terrifying, and seemingly unstoppable has been damaged. The army has been able to present itself as the side restoring the capital, reopening roads, reviving airports, and returning state authority. Even limited recovery matters in a war of narratives.

But momentum does not mean consolidation. Sudan is increasingly becoming a checkerboard rather than a two-sided battlefield. The SAF may hold the north, east, and much of the center, while the RSF and allied forces remain entrenched in Darfur and parts of the south and southeast. The country is not simply moving toward victory by one side. It is drifting toward de facto partition.

The second reason is Ethiopia’s own pressure. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is governing a country that has never fully stabilized after the Tigray war. The Pretoria agreement ended one phase of fighting, but it did not produce a durable national settlement. Tigray remains politically fractured, and the possibility of renewed fighting there now hangs over the region. The Amhara region has been consumed by conflict with Fano militias. Oromia remains unstable. Ethiopia’s quest for sea access has alienated and sharpened tensions with Somalia and Eritrea.

For Abiy, the RSF and its allies may offer a way to create breathing room along Ethiopia’s western frontier. Not only for GERD but also for stopping Sudan from becoming a pipeline for weapons, fighters, and political support into Ethiopia’s own conflicts. The RSF has its own reasons to see Tigrayan forces as hostile, since Ethiopia and RSF-aligned readings of the war increasingly place TPLF-linked fighters on the SAF side of the conflict. So if the UAE-backed RSF weakens SAF-controlled border areas, Addis Ababa may see that as useful, even if it never says so openly.

Ethiopia does not need to invade Sudan for the two wars to begin merging. If Tigrayan or Amhara fighters, SAF-aligned networks, Eritrean-backed forces, RSF units, or eastern Sudanese militias begin moving across these borderlands with greater purpose, Sudan’s civil war will become entangled with Ethiopia’s unfinished wars. What looks like two separate conflicts on a map can become one chain reaction of proxy ties, ethnic border communities, rebel units, and state patrons pulling each other into the same battlefield.

This is also where Abiy Ahmed’s broader regional posture becomes relevant. Ethiopia is pushing for Red Sea access and managing renewed tensions with Eritrea. That does not mean Addis Ababa is acting irrationally. From an Ethiopian strategic perspective, a weakened SAF is less able to coordinate with Cairo and Asmara against Ethiopia over the Nile and the Red Sea. But it does mean Ethiopia may be attempting regional leverage from a position of internal fragility. That is a dangerous combination.

the uae is not just another foreign partner to addis ababa.

It has been one of the central external pillars of Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia from the beginning. In 2018, shortly after Abiy came to power, the UAE pledged $3 billion in aid and investment to Ethiopia, including a $1 billion deposit into the National Bank of Ethiopia to ease a severe foreign-currency shortage. That was not ordinary development finance. It was fast Emirati statecraft: direct, political, and binding.

By the end of 2022, UAE investment in Ethiopia had reportedly reached about $2.9 billion across more than 100 projects, and the relationship has since expanded through trade, energy commitments, security cooperation, and financial instruments. In July 2024, the two countries signed a currency swap agreement worth up to roughly $817 million, giving Ethiopia another buffer against its chronic hard-currency problem.

During the Tigray war, Emirati drone support was widely reported as part of the military balance that helped Abiy’s government survive one of its most dangerous periods. More recently, that relationship has moved beyond money and drones into police training, cybercrime cooperation, VIP security, counterterrorism, and defense ties. Ethiopia’s relationship with the UAE is therefore not simply diplomatic. It is financial, military, technological, and political. It is tied to Abiy’s economic survival, his security architecture, and the regional strategy that followed.

None of this proves Ethiopia helped launch drones into Sudan. It does explain why Sudan’s accusation has strategic logic. If Addis Ababa has grown dependent on Emirati security ties, and if the UAE sees Sudan as a central front in its regional project, then Ethiopia becomes a plausible platform.

The third reason is the UAE’s own position. The UAE has been losing the public-relations battle over Sudan. Its denials have not erased the growing body of reporting, diplomacy, and Sudanese accusations linking it to the RSF. The more the RSF is associated with atrocities, looting, ethnic violence, and the destruction of Sudanese cities, the more toxic that relationship becomes.

This is where deniability becomes useful. A drone launched from Emirati territory would be absurd. A drone supplied through Emirati-linked networks, moved through third countries, launched from an African state such as Ethiopia, Libya, or Somalia, and then attributed to the RSF is the logic of modern proxy war. Nobody fully owns the violence. The sponsor can deny it. The host state can deny it. The militia can absorb the blame. The fog benefits the actors most invested in deniability.

Sudan’s accusation against Ethiopia is not yet independently proven in the public record. Governments use external enemies to explain internal weakness, and wartime claims need evidence. But the broader pattern is familiar: move the tools through regional corridors, launch from somewhere plausibly deniable, and force everyone else to prove what the architecture already suggests.

what will egypt do if it believes ethiopia has entered sudan’s war.

Cairo has already signaled where it stands, condemning attacks launched from the territory of a neighboring country as a violation of Sudanese sovereignty. Saudi Arabia used similar language, calling on Sudan’s neighbors not to let their territory become a launchpad for attacks. Neither statement needed to name Ethiopia directly for the message to be understood.

Cairo has every reason to see this through the lens of encirclement. Egypt has historically treated Sudan as part of its natural sphere of influence, not simply as a neighboring state. The Nile runs through both countries and their militaries, intelligence services, borders, and political histories are deeply entangled. Sudan is supposed to be the strategic depth that protects Egypt’s southern flank. Instead, Sudan has become a battlefield where Ethiopia, the UAE, and the RSF can pressure Egyptian interests from below.

That is especially dangerous because Egypt is powerful, but strategically constrained. They have a large military, a huge population, the Suez Canal, and major diplomatic weight. But it lacks the financial depth, commercial networks, deniable logistics, and indigenous defense-industrial ecosystem that allow the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey to project influence more flexibly. So Egypt is left making mostly defensive moves like deepening ties with Eritrea, expanding cooperation with Somalia and Djibouti, backing the SAF, issuing statements on Sudanese sovereignty, striking RSF supply routes, and applying diplomatic pressure about the GERD. It’s something but it’s limited. They can slow the UAE-RSF network down, but they do not give Cairo the same freedom to shape the battlefield that Abu Dhabi has built through money, logistics, and proxies.

Egypt has recently become more active, offensively. In February, Reuters reported that Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drones had been deployed to Egypt’s East Oweinat airbase near the Sudanese border. The New York Times also reported that Akinci drones were operating from southwestern Egypt and striking RSF convoys in western Sudan, with Egyptian officials saying Cairo’s position had hardened after the fall of El Fasher. Egypt and Saudi pressure, tighter airspace access, scrutiny on Haftar’s Libya route, and the heat around Chad have all made the old UAE-to-RSF pipeline through Libya and Chad more costly.

Chad can be pressured. Libya has been Balkanized. Ethiopia is different. It is a major Horn of Africa state with more than 120 million people, has a large army, controls the GERD, and has serious regional weight. That means it can absorb more outside criticism than a smaller transit country and still maneuver freely. That makes it harder to pressure, and more useful to Abu Dhabi, as other RSF supply routes become more visible and politically costly.

In February, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan met Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa. Officially, it was a standard diplomatic meeting about bilateral and regional issues. But the fact that nothing publicly shifted afterward is the point. Saudi Arabia does not appear to have much leverage over Ethiopia on this file. Abiy had little reason to distance himself from Abu Dhabi, because the UAE relationship is central to Ethiopia’s money, security, and regional strategy.

With Emirati money, security ties, drones, trade, and political cover behind it, Addis Ababa can push outward even while it is under severe internal pressure. Egypt, by contrast, is tied to the UAE in a very different way. Abu Dhabi was one of the outside powers that helped stabilize the post-2013 order with Gulf aid, deposits, fuel support, and political backing. A decade later, Egypt’s foreign-currency crises and deals like Ras El Hekma show how much Cairo still depends on Emirati capital. The UAE appears to benefit from a stronger, more assertive Ethiopia, while also benefiting from Egypt remaining financially dependent and strategically cautious.

Saudi Arabia shares some of Egypt’s concerns in Sudan, especially when it comes to limiting UAE influence, protecting Red Sea stability, and preventing the RSF from becoming the dominant force. But Riyadh is still a state that moves like a state. Slowly, cautiously, and only when Sudan intersects with Saudi priorities. Egypt may want faster backing, but Saudi Arabia is not Cairo’s patron or its instrument. It will move when the issue affects Saudi interests too like competition with Abu Dhabi, the future of the Red Sea, Sudanese state collapse, or the RSF becoming too powerful. That gives Egypt a useful partner, but not a force multiplier it can command.

Ethiopia’s relationship with the UAE works differently. Addis Ababa does not command Abu Dhabi either, but it does not need to. The UAE’s own regional project already benefits from a stronger, more assertive Ethiopia. Egypt gets selective Saudi support when interests overlap. Ethiopia gets Emirati backing that actively expands its room to maneuver. That is what makes the UAE’s role in Sudan humiliating for Egypt. One of the countries Cairo relies on financially is also helping shape a battlefield Cairo considers part of its own security depth.

what can happen next?

Sudan’s war and Ethiopia’s internal conflicts are already starting to feed into each other. The next stage would be worse: the crisis would no longer stay mostly inside Sudan and Ethiopia. Eritrea could be pulled in from the north. Somalia, Somaliland, and Djibouti could become part of it. South Sudan could be drawn in from the southwest. Egypt would be pulled in through the Nile.

Cairo already sees the GERD as a threat to Egypt’s survival. That does not mean Egypt is likely to enter the war directly. A direct war with Ethiopia would be enormously risky. The more realistic danger is that Cairo decides a hotter Sudan-Ethiopia front is strategically useful: a way to pressure Addis Ababa, keep Ethiopia stretched, and protect Egypt’s position on the Nile without formally going to war. That would still be dangerous. Once a state starts seeing another country’s war as useful leverage, it has an incentive to fan the flames rather than contain them.

There are now a few things to watch. Does Sudan produce drone wreckage, flight data, or other evidence tying the attacks to Bahir Dar or Asosa? Does commercial satellite imagery show new activity around Ethiopian airfields near the Sudanese border? Does Egypt move beyond diplomatic language and deepen military coordination with Eritrea, Somalia, or the SAF? Does fighting in Blue Nile push closer to Sennar, or Benishangul Gumuz? On May 23, the Sudanese army said it had shot down another hostile drone near Ed Damazin after it crossed into Blue Nile from the direction of Ethiopia. That claim is not independent proof of the entire Sudanese case, but it lands exactly in the corridor this piece is tracking.

Sudan’s war began as an internal struggle between two armed factions fighting over the state. It has since become a regional conflict in which Sudan is the battlefield, the UAE is accused of supplying the tools, Ethiopia is accused of providing the launchpad, and Egypt is forced to watch a war inside what it has long considered its own strategic depth.

Sudan has accused neighboring states before. That alone is not new. What is new is the country being named. Ethiopia is not a distant transit point or a weak, insignificant border state on the edge of the war like Chad. It is a large populous country, Egypt’s Nile rival, the host of the GERD, one of the central powers in the Horn of Africa, and a state already dealing with deep internal conflicts of its own. If Sudan is accusing Ethiopia of being the launchpad, then the war is no longer just about UAE money or RSF supply routes. It is about one major Horn of Africa/Red Sea state accusing another of helping attack its capital. That is what makes this different.

The idea of Uganda going up against Iran doesn’t just sound unrealistic, it falls apart immediately under very basic scrutiny.

Uganda has no navy, no long-range airlift, and no ability to sustain operations thousands of miles away in one of the most militarized regions in the world. Its defense industry is limited, it’s mostly assembly and modification of light armored vehicles, small arms, and basic equipment, often based on foreign designs. Iran, by contrast, runs a mature military‑industrial system. It produces ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges into the thousands of kilometers, fields large fleets of kamikaze drones, maintains layered air defense networks, and sustains domestic R&D under sanctions. This isn’t the usual insurgency Ugandan troops deal with. This is a state built to absorb and respond to sustained attack at scale.

But anyways, treating Muhoozi’s tweets as a joke misses what’s actually being revealed because this isn’t really about capability. It’s about how power is imagined by the people who hold it and how far that imagination can drift from reality.

Muhoozi’s statements sound ridiculous because they are. But they’re also useful. They show what happens when political ambition, personal ideology, and global conflict all come together in a country that doesn’t actually control any of it.

this is what delusion looks like

Muhoozi Kainerugaba isn’t just some loud figure online. He’s the head of Uganda’s military, and he is also widely seen as the potential successor to his father, the President Yoweri Museveni.

Over the past few weeks, he has expressed deep support for Israel in the Iran-Israel/USA conflict. In the first, he positioned Uganda as a potential backer: “If Israel needs help, it only need ask. Their Ugandan brothers are ready to assist,” and warned that any attempt to destroy Israel would bring Uganda “into the war on the side of Israel.” (This tweet was deleted)

Then, he pushed even further on April 10–11. He claimed to have “about 500,000 war hungry young men” who would “eat that Tehran for free,” and that all they needed was money (He deleted the tweet). He declared “You threaten Israel… you are fighting us!”, (This tweet was also deleted). He said he was ready to deploy “100,000 Ugandan soldiers in Israel. Under my command. To protect the Holy Land. The land of Jesus Christ our God!” and framed the conflict in openly religious terms: “We are coming to reclaim our land in Jerusalem… given to us by Jesus Christ,” adding that Iran is “NOTHING” until it acknowledges “the supremacy of Jesus Christ.” (Those two tweets were also, you guessed it, deleted). (NOTE: He’s offering troops to defend Israel… while also talking about “reclaiming” Jerusalem from them as Christian land. Those two don’t line up. It makes no sense I know!)

That kind of rhetoric doesn’t mean Uganda is entering the war. But it does, at least rhetorically, pull the country into a conflict it has no role in shaping. Which is of course a risky move. This starts to make more sense when you zoom out (or not, idk).

Uganda is a centralized state. Real power runs through Museveni, (the presidency) and the military chain of command. But in practice, it often speaks in two directions at once.

Museveni has taken a relatively balanced position criticizing both Iran and Israel, pointing to Western involvement, and calling for restraint. That aligns with Uganda’s broader non-aligned posture. On April 12, he met with Iran’s ambassador, Majid Saffar. It wasn’t dramatic or anything, it was just damage control. A way of telling Iran: don’t take Muhoozi’s tweets as official policy. Uganda isn’t trying to escalate anything.

Muhoozi is doing the opposite. He’s picking sides. Publicly and loudly. This probably isn’t a contradiction at all. This looks like a system where one voice maintains diplomatic flexibility, while the other tests boundaries, signals aggression, and says what the state itself cannot officially say. Father and son. Two tones. Same center of power.

And if you’ve followed Muhoozi for a while, you’ll know, this is how he operates. Push first. Say something big. Force a reaction. Almost like the system is testing its boundaries through him. Then, when it goes too far, it gets walked back. Deleted. Reframed as personal. Not official. Business as usual.

We saw it in January after the election where he publicly framed Bobi Wine as a fugitive, suggested troops had orders to bring him in “dead or alive,” and accused the U.S. Embassy of helping him escape. Within hours, the posts were deleted. An apology followed. Cooperation resumed.

We saw it with Kenya years ago, one of the earliest examples, when he threatened to capture Nairobi in two weeks, triggering a diplomatic response that forced a formal apology from the Ugandan government.

And now, recently we saw it again with Türkiye. In a single day, he demanded $1 billion, threatened to cut diplomatic ties, talked about shutting embassies and warned Ugandans not to travel there, then added a bizarre personal demand for “the most beautiful woman in that country for a wife.” He also claimed Turkey had “no chance” against Uganda and framed it in religious-military language “We are an army inspired by Jesus Christ and Muhammad Ali… Let them surrender my wives!”, before walking parts of it back and deleting posts after backlash (like usual).

The next day, the government moved to contain it. Uganda’s foreign minister, Gen. Jeje Odongo, met Turkey’s ambassador in Kampala and stressed that relations remain strong, with plans to keep cooperation going. In other words, tweets on one side, cleanup on the other.

That cycle of push, backlash, retreat, isn’t random. That’s the Muhoozi pattern.

The problem isn’t just that the statements are unrealistic and disturbing. The problem is that they’re coming from someone who controls the army and could one day control the state. Right now, there’s a ceiling above him that contains it. But that ceiling is tied to Museveni, and Museveni won’t be there forever (he is an old guy). If that restraint disappears, Uganda is left with the same behavior but fewer limits, and that’s when it stops being just erratic tweets and becomes actual policy.

Maybe it doesn’t happen. Maybe Museveni doesn’t hand power to his son. But it wouldn’t be surprising if he did. A lot of these long‑serving leaders don’t think much about what comes after them, as long as they get what they consider “theirs”.

You could read Muhoozi’s behavior as something calculated. You could say he is pushing boundaries, testing reactions, then walking things back, like he and his dad are playing 5D chess or something.

But that reading is probably giving it way too much credit. The simpler explanation fits better, it’s tolerated. Many Ugandans believe Muhoozi’s impulsive and chaotic posting style is linked to drinking, even though he has publicly said he no longer drinks. Museveni may just not care enough to deal with it or he doesn’t want to publicly (or even privately) check his own son.

but the bigger issue right now isn’t just muhoozi. it’s exposure, and uganda isn’t unique.

Every country feels shocks from conflicts like this. Uganda can’t project power into the Middle East, but the effects of the Middle East can still hit Uganda directly and they will, whether Muhoozi says anything or not.

Uganda depends heavily on global energy and shipping. It spends about $2 billion a year on fuel, and it’s byproducts. A lot of that supply comes from, or is linked to, the Persian Gulf.

Fertilizer is another dependency. Uganda imports tens of millions of dollars’ worth each year, much of it connected to Gulf producers and remember Uganda is at the very end of this supply chain because it’s landlocked. Everything comes in through ports like Mombasa or Dar Es Salaam, then moves inland by road. Every step adds cost and delay. If the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted, fuel prices jump. Shipping gets more expensive. Transport costs rise. Fertilizer gets more expensive too. Everything follows. Then, over time, food production drops. That’s the real risk. Not war. Exposure.

Let’s say Muhoozi and Museveni are actually playing some kind of 5D chess. Then the thinking probably looks like this: siding with Israel, and by extension the United States, brings real, tangible gains like elite training, weapons access, intelligence, protection, and money. For a military like the UPDF, that is a solid deal. It could be a lot. When some countries are stepping back right now with their cooperation with the US and Israel, stepping in can look like a smart move. A profitable one. The risk is though, you could be hitching a ride on a losing side. That’s why others are stepping back. Sure, there’s a “big risk, big reward” logic to it. But if it fails, it fails badly. Good luck.

Also, It’s kinda ironic that Muhoozi talks in religious terms but what he’s actually chasing is power, money, influence, women… all very earthly stuff.

iran’s reaction to all of this has been mockery.

Iran hasn’t responded with threats. It’s responded with sarcasm. After Muhoozi claimed a Ugandan brigade could take Tehran in 72 hours, Iran’s embassy in South Africa posted: “Ladies and gentlemen, the latest phenomenon to entertain you on Africa’s Got Talent.” That pretty much set the tone.

Across diplomatic channels and pro-Iran accounts, the reaction has been the same, treating his statements as comedy. The claims about 100,000 troops or “eating Tehran for free” aren’t being debated. They’re being laughed at.

Even Iran’s ambassador in Kampala took a calm, measured approach. He made it clear Iran has no intention of bringing the conflict to East Africa and that its focus remains on Israel and the United States.

So on one side, you have Muhoozi talking like Uganda is stepping into a global war. On the other, you have Iran treating it like background noise. That gap says everything. Because it shows how Uganda is actually seen in this equation. They are not seen as a player, not even as a threat, but as something that doesn’t need to be taken seriously.

muhoozi in israel

Muhoozi is or was in Tel Aviv. He confirmed it himself on X (but then he deleted the tweet, so maybe he isn’t in Tel Aviv??). From the moment he began tweeting about this war, Israeli media and pro-Israel outlets were already picking him up, amplifying him, and praising him on his stances. Muhoozi being in Tel Aviv also doesn’t exactly mean Uganda is entering the war now. At minimum, this is symbolic, just a show of alignment, a way for Israel to point to global support at a time when many countries are more cautious.

At the same time, it raises a different question. Why entertain him at all?

You would think a military power like Israel wouldn’t need Ugandan troops. There can’t (or shouldn’t) really be a serious military scenario where Uganda takes on Iran.

But the situation isn’t completely normal right now. Israel’s own military leadership has warned about manpower shortages. And history shows that when things get tight, the question stops being “does this make sense?” and becomes “what is even available?”. For Netanyahu, staying in power means avoiding drafting the Haredim, who are the last large pool of untapped manpower. That’s politically off-limits for him. But staying in power also means keeping all the wars going, which requires a steady supply of troops. In a worst-case scenario (which they are in now!), it wouldn’t be surprising if Israel borrowed from the UAE playbook of using foreign fighters or even contracting whole units of other national armies. Bibi would look for manpower anywhere else before touching the Haredim, even something as unlikely as Ugandan troops.

It probably would not be 100,000 troops. That’s unrealistic. But a smaller number? Probably not against Iran directly but in places like Lebanon against Hezbollah, or even in Gaza in secondary roles. Holding positions, freeing up Israeli units, taking pressure somewhere else? In a bad enough scenario, you can at least see how it could be possible.

That doesn’t mean it will happen because the problems are obvious. Moving thousands of troops across continents in the middle of a war is extremely difficult. Coordinating them is even harder. Realistically, only the United States has the strategic airlift and logistics network to move and sustain forces at that scale. And these aren’t exactly US-level forces, you’d be dealing with gaps in training, equipment, communication, and command. Language, command structure, training, all of it quickly turns into a problem instead of an advantage.

Then there’s the optics. Using foreign troops like that would signal weakness, both militarily and diplomatically. Militarily, it suggests they don’t have enough people to sustain the fight on their own. Diplomatically, it shows that stronger allies either couldn’t or wouldn’t step in, and that Israel had to look much further afield for support. And militarily, it’s not clean. You’re putting underprepared soldiers into a very complex war. So no, it’s not likely. But it’s also not impossible if things get worse.

However, even if Ugandan troops aren’t used against Iran, they could still be used elsewhere, which is far more likely. They could be redirected into nearby conflicts. Supporting Israeli allies like the RSF in Sudan or Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia, Ugandan troops could expand their footprint in Somalia aiming to cause problems, or operate in the DRC in ways that bring in money tied to Israeli interests. Those moves are simpler, quieter, and much easier to deny.

So it might not look like Uganda joining the Israel–Iran war. It could just look like Uganda getting pulled deeper into the wars already happening around it.

uganda isn’t shaping this conflict in any meaningful way. but this conflict will probably shape landlocked uganda.

They will feel every shock. From fuel, shipping, transportation costs, fertilizer, food prices, electricity all without having any control over how those shocks start or where they go and that is a problem for them.

One of its most powerful figures is acting like Uganda is a key player in this Middle East conflict, but it’s not. Uganda is not in control, but it is firmly in the blast radius. That is not strategy. It is reckless grandstanding. You don’t have to be religious to see how this usually plays out. People in power who act like Muhoozi, who are loud, impulsive, convinced they’re bigger than they are, and using religion in a pretentious, dishonest, and corrupted way to justify their politics, tend to push things too far. And when that happens, reality (or God, depends how you look at it) steps in. Usually fast. And usually in a way that costs the country, not just the person. Can Uganda afford that right now?

That reading doesn’t hold up anymore.

What we’re seeing now makes something much clearer, that this pact was never about Israel. It was always about Iran. And more specifically, it was about a war Saudi Arabia fears it cannot fight on its own.

a war riyadh hoped others would fight for it

Saudi Arabia didn’t want to be stuck in a long regional war with Iran. Over the past few years, the kingdom has been trying to stabilize, not escalate. Vision 2030, foreign investment, tourism, megaprojects, none of that works in a region where missiles are flying over Riyadh.

They even tried diplomacy. In 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore relations in a deal brokered by China, reopening embassies and committing to non-interference after years of hostility. That alone tells you where Saudi thinking was: avoid this exact scenario if possible. But avoiding a war and wanting your main rival weakened aren’t the same thing.

There are reports that Mohammed bin Salman saw this conflict as a chance for the U.S. and Israel to weaken Iran, while Saudi Arabia stayed out of the main fighting and avoided paying the biggest price.

That contradiction is the point.

Riyadh didn’t want a prolonged war on its own territory. But it may have wanted Iran hit hard enough that the problem is solved by someone else. But now that scenario it didn’t want, is here.

Iran has been hitting bases and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia tied to U.S. interests. But if it can do that, it can obviously hit Saudi Arabia directly. Fighter jets, bases, infrastructure, government buildings. The vulnerability isn’t theoretical anymore.

Read more

GERD sits in Benishangul-Gumuz, which is the same western Ethiopian region now being referenced in allegations about cross-border activity tied to Sudan’s war.

This overlap between Sudan’s battlefield and Ethiopia’s most strategically sensitive infrastructure zone highlights a strategic reality, that a stronger Ethiopia benefits actors who are seeking to completely reshape the balance of power along the Nile and the Red Sea.

Setting aside the United Arab Emirates, whose material and logistical interests in the Red Sea corridor are evident, Israel has long treated Nile politics and Red Sea dynamics as strategically relevant. Under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia and Israel have expanded economic, technological, and diplomatic cooperation. At the same time, the conflict in Sudan shows little sign of ending soon; Eritrea remains strategically vulnerable (with a population of roughly 3–4 million compared to Ethiopia’s more than 120 million); Somaliland’s legal status remains unsettled, with Israel publicly and the UAE more quietly pushing for changes to that status; Egypt continues to frame Nile water security as existential while warming relations with Turkey, a key partner of Somalia’s federal government.

At the same time, Cairo has deepened security coordination with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia, deployed forces to Somalia under an African Union mandate, and signed port and security agreements with Eritrea (in Assab, a port of strategic interest to Ethiopia) and Djibouti (in Doraleh, a key commercial port Ethiopia currently relies on, as a landlocked country) that expand Egyptian naval access along the Red Sea corridor. Egypt has also strengthened ties with Saudi Arabia, forming a loose alignment of states whose interests increasingly converge around counterbalancing Ethiopia’s regional ambitions. While these arrangements stop short of a large permanent Egyptian base, they signal a deliberate effort to position military access points around Ethiopia’s maritime flank.

None of these developments exist in isolation.

A stronger Ethiopia, with consolidated western borders, potential influence over a Sudan led by the RSF, a Red Sea coastline with a navy, and full operational control over the Nile’s most consequential upstream project, would significantly affect the balance of power in the Horn of Africa and the strategic pressure on Egypt would likely intensify south and east of its borders.

The document below, published in August 2020 by the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations in Beirut, examines the argument that Israel has strategic interests in how this regional balance evolves.

Whether one agrees with all of its conclusions or not, it offers a framework for understanding why GERD is not merely an infrastructure project and why developments in Blue Nile State in Sudan, Egyptian–Ethiopian tensions over the Nile, and the broader Red Sea power contest involving Ethiopia, Eritrea, Israel, the Gulf states, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Turkey, Houthis/Iran and the U.S. cannot be treated as separate files. They interact, overlap, and increasingly shape one another.

Pa Walid Abdalhay Israel Ethiopian Dam 8 20 Eng

6.23MB ∙ PDF file

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The answer was interesting, not because I believed it literally, but because it avoided the trap the journalist was attempting to put him in. Exactly a year later, on Feb 3rd 2026, in a speech, Kagame explained that a more direct response could have been used in legal or diplomatic proceedings. Ambiguity was safer. It reduced exposure. It kept control.

For years, that approach worked for Rwanda. The country mastered the art of operating in gray zones, saying little, committing less, and framing everything through the language of security.

But the Washington Accords changed the terrain.

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“A rebel without a gun,” he wrote. “Hiding in plain sight and yet you can’t find me because I’m concealed by the people. Catch me if you can.”

By that point, the country’s chief of defence forces had already escalated the confrontation. Muhoozi had described Wine as a fugitive, suggested troops had orders to bring him in “dead or alive,” accused the U.S. Embassy of helping him escape, and publicly announced a suspension of military cooperation with Washington, including coordination linked to operations in Somalia.

Within hours, the accusation against the US was deleted. An apology followed. The suspension was walked back. Military cooperation, he said, would continue as usual.

And both men were still posting.

If the episode reads like parody, it is only because it unfolded in full public view. But this was not theater. It was a contest over the direction Uganda would head towards. A possible turn toward a Bobi Wine-led alternative, or continued rule under Museveni in the short term and, in the long term, under his chosen successor, his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

the two realities

Uganda’s January 15 election returned President Yoweri Museveni to office for a seventh term. He has ruled the country since taking power through a military takeover in 1986. The Electoral Commission announced a decisive result, roughly 71.65% of the vote for the incumbent and 24.7% for Wine. The opposition rejected the outcome, citing ballot irregularities, intimidation, and suppression.

An internet blackout preceded the vote and lingered afterward. The shutdown was justified as a measure against misinformation. It also limited public visibility during the most sensitive phase of counting and enforcement.

In the days after the results were declared, two official narratives began circulating simultaneously.

In one, government ministers insisted the country was calm. They said the opposition leader was not being pursued. They dismissed talk of a manhunt as “drama.”

In the other, the country’s top military officer announced arrests, labeled opposition supporters “terrorists,” claimed dozens had been killed in post-election operations, and openly threatened Wine.

The contradiction was not subtle.

It showed that the civilian government and the military were operating in tandem, pursuing the same objective but through different tones, one was projecting reassurance, the other projecting force.

the raid

On the night of January 23, soldiers raided Wine’s residence in Magere, outside Kampala.

The following day, Barbie Kyagulanyi spoke to the media from the hospital. She said soldiers had forced their way into the home late at night, pointed guns at her, demanded access to her phones, and filmed her during the encounter. She described the experience as humiliating and said she lost consciousness before being taken for medical treatment.

On January 25, Gen. Kainerugaba responded on X.

“My soldiers did not beat up Barbie,” he wrote. “We do not beat up women. They are not worth our time. We are looking for her cowardly husband.”

On January 29, he escalated. He posted a photograph of Barbie seated on the floor during the raid and wrote: “This is when our soldiers captured and then released Kabobi’s wife Barbie. She was very helpful in helping us find her husband.”. He has since deleted that post. In another post, he mocked Wine directly: “Kabobi is next… The definition of an IDIOT!” and “As far as I’m concerned we captured the man, Barbie… The fugitive on the run is the wife… Kabobi” .

• “Kabobi” is a nickname made up by Muhoozi to mock Wine’s stage name “Bobi.” In the Luganda language, it suggests something small or unimportant, like calling him a “little Bobi” to make fun of his poor background and make him seem weak in politics.

• He has deleted these posts from Jan 29.

In the early hours of January 30, Muhoozi added: “Barbie was a decent lady. Whatever she said later was probably for the benefit of her castrated husband.” (he deleted this tweet). Minutes later, he insisted that any soldier who had “attempted to touch Barbie” would be punished and inviting details.

Later that morning, Wine posted his own account. He alleged that soldiers had held his wife at gunpoint, demanded her phone passwords and his whereabouts, torn her nightdress while filming her, lifted her by the torn fabric, and that she later lost consciousness due to high blood pressure and was rushed to hospital.

The raid shifted the crisis from the electoral sphere into the domestic sphere. Whatever the precise details of the encounter, the search had extended into private space. And the argument over what happened was now being conducted in public, in real time.

The assault allegation was not handled through formal channels. It was contested through posts, screenshots, and taunts. Each message drew hundreds of thousands of views.

Political power was being exercised and contested through social media.

the general as narrator

Gen. Kainerugaba uses his personal X account as a channel for operational updates and political commentary.

Since the contest election results, he announced arrests of opposition figures, including MP Muwanga Kivumbi. He declared that over 2,000 opposition supporters had been detained. He banned Wine, as chief of defence forces (and presumed heir to his father), from future participation in Uganda’s electoral exercises.

He alternated between declaring peace and issuing new threats.

At one point, he warned that any foreign power assisting Wine’s escape would create a “serious rupture” in relations. Shortly afterward, he accused the U.S. Embassy in Kampala of aiding Wine and announced that the Uganda People’s Defence Forces were suspending all cooperation with the current U.S. administration in Kampala, explicitly including joint work in Somalia, where Ugandan troops make up one of the largest contingents in regional security operations in that country, making any suspension strategically significant beyond Uganda’s borders.

“We, as UPDF, suspend all cooperation with the current administration at the US Embassy in Kampala. This includes our work in Somalia,” he wrote.

Within an hour, the posts were deleted. A public apology followed.

“I was being fed wrong information,” he wrote at 04:42 GMT, adding that military cooperation with the United States would continue as usual.

The rapid reversal revealed a boundary.

Internal coercion could be publicly displayed. External escalation required recalibration.

Muhoozi’s social media behavior is not impulsive, it is characteristic. This is how he has always consistently operated. Back in May, I wrote about his online threats, public taunts, and open displays of coercive authority, including a now-infamous post boasting that an aide to Bobi Wine was “in my basement”.

This is also the same pattern that saw him previously threaten to capture Nairobi in two weeks, forcing a diplomatic apology to Kenya.

the american reaction

The episode drew immediate attention in Washington.

The following day, U.S. Senator Jim Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, responded… on X. Muhoozi, he said, had “crossed a red line,” and the United States would reevaluate its security partnership with Uganda, including sanctions and military cooperation. Deleting tweets and issuing what he called “hollow apologies” would not be enough. The U.S., he warned, would not tolerate instability and recklessness where American personnel and interests were at stake.

The warning carries weight. Uganda receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually in U.S. assistance spanning health, development, security cooperation, and military training programs. Washington supports Uganda’s regional deployments and counterterrorism role, and Kampala relies on that partnership for funding, training, and diplomatic cover.

Soon after, Muhoozi tweeted that after nearly eleven years on X and more than a million followers, he would reduce his interactions and return to fasting and praying.

The sequence of threat of rupture, suspension, deletion, apology, diplomatic reassurance, unfolded in hours and whatever the motivation behind the reversal, the scale of U.S. assistance and security cooperation helps explain why the accusation against the embassy could not stand for long.

hiding in plain sight

Meanwhile, Wine continued posting.

His strategy was simple: proof of life, proof of movement, proof of support.

He framed himself as protected by “the people.” He described security operatives searching for him in Busabala and Gomba. He suggested the military’s inability to locate him was evidence of weakness.

The dynamic created an unusual spectacle: the army searching for one man, and the man narrating the search.

On February 3, Wine posted another update. Military forces, he said, had re-entered his Magere residence the previous night and were now occupying it fully. No family member had been allowed access since the initial January 23 raid. He said he had not even been able to assess what had been taken, damaged, or vandalized.

Hours later, Gen. Kainerugaba posted again. He had earlier claimed he would reduce his activity on X but then deleted that announcement as well. Quoting criticism from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he corrected his title and dismissed the suggestion that he had crossed any “red line.” The United States, he wrote, was free to reassess relations, but it would “never DEMEAN and DEGRADE us” or reduce Uganda to “slaves.”

In the forty-eight hours leading up to that post, he amplified a coordinated defense instead of taking a break from X like he said he would. He retweeted allies who framed the U.S. rebuke as colonial overreach. One compared him to anti-colonial figures like Mandela and Lumumba. Another insisted the election had been “free and fair” and that Washington had no authority to question it. A cabinet minister suggested the American criticism was merely a distraction from the Epstein Files controversy at home.

The message was that sovereignty was under threat, foreign interference was real, and national pride demanded resistance. The tone ranged from defiant to conspiratorial. It also carried a certain irony. Uganda is largely insignificant to the United States beyond serving as a pool of boots on the ground for regional security operations in places like Somalia, South Sudan and the DRC and even in that role, they can be replaced. Yet the framing cast the dispute as part of a grand global confrontation.

On February 4, he escalated again. “I still demand $1 billion from the USA for the UPDF annually. And they will pay it,” he wrote, and (of course deleted after). The audacity was striking. After threatening to suspend cooperation, apologizing, and recalibrating, he pivoted to demanding tribute-level funding in public. Whether meant as provocation, leverage, or performance, the post reinforced the pattern: confrontation first, calculation later.

It is easy to read all of this as theater. It is not.

The stakes are real.

the succession question

President Museveni is 81. This term is widely expected to be his last, although Paul Biya was reelected in Cameroon at 92, making it premature to rule out another Museveni run if he remains politically and physically able too, or, at minimum, still breathing.

His son, Gen. Kainerugaba, is frequently discussed as a potential successor. Whether or not succession is imminent, the politics of positioning are visible.

Muhoozi has long treated Bobi Wine not as a routine opponent but as a threat to regime continuity. In 2022, he wrote plainly: “Kabobi should know that we will never allow him to be President of this country.” Last month, he declared Wine “wanted” and giving ultimatums that framed him as a destabilizing force. Muhoozi has always been consistent, a Wine presidency was not an acceptable outcome.

Inside ruling coalitions, public displays of loyalty, toughness, and ideological clarity are signals. They show commitment to continuity. They warn potential rivals. They reassure military elites and party loyalists that power will not drift.

Seen in that light, the general’s posts were not only aimed at Bobi Wine. They were messages to the security establishment, the National Resistance Movement hierarchy, and anyone inside the system calculating the future. They signaled that succession, when it comes, will be managed and that dissent, even at the margins, will be contained.

The performance of control can be as important as control.

But performance carries risk. It introduces volatility. It compresses decision cycles. It invites international reaction.

The accusation against the U.S. Embassy, which was at first quickly withdrawn is a case study in that risk.

the precedent

The immediate crisis may subside. Wine may reappear publicly. He may be arrested. He may leave the country. The security operations may recede from headlines.

What will remain is the method.

Post-electoral consolidation in Uganda is no longer conducted solely through quiet detentions and closed-door directives. It is narrated in real time. It is argued online. It is retracted, reframed, reposted.

The absurdity of the spectacle should not obscure its function.

Power is being exercised. It is simply being exercised loudly and uniquely.

And in the background of the noise sits the central reality: Uganda has not experienced a peaceful presidential transfer of power ever and that Yoweri Museveni has led the country for nearly 40 fucking years.

editor’s note

At the time of this article’s publication, Bobi Wine remains in hiding, with his most recent public update posted on February 3. Gen. Kainerugaba continues to post actively on X, still deleting his more diplomatically volatile posts shortly after posting them.

On December 28, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi went further than vague warnings. In a televised address, he said the Houthis would treat any Israeli presence in Somaliland as a military target, calling Israel’s recognition an act of aggression against Somalia and Yemen, and a threat to the Red Sea and regional security. He rejected the move outright as illegitimate, arguing that Israel was seeking to turn part of Somalia into a foothold for its own regional war.

This is what I mentioned in my last article:

“Israel’s biggest Red Sea threat right now is coming from Yemen. A foothold on the African side of the Gulf of Aden is a different kind of leverage than diplomacy in Europe or lobbying in Washington because it’s geography. And if Somaliland becomes part of Israel’s military or intelligence posture against the Houthis, it also becomes a legitimate target in that conflict, with all the risks that come with being within missile range of Yemen.”

The Houthis did not wait for an Israeli base to be announced. They did not ask whether Somaliland intended to host military or intelligence assets. They responded to trajectory. From their perspective, Israel’s recognition signals they have access to ports, intelligence reach, and a closer position across the Gulf of Aden.

That reading is not fringe, it’s basically the default, “look-at-a-map” interpretation. Somaliland sits on the Gulf of Aden, across from Yemen, near the Bab el‑Mandeb, and Israeli analysts have explicitly argued it could function as a forward position for things like intelligence monitoring and other operations linked to the Houthi problem.

And that angle isn’t the only reason this recognition is triggering wider reactions. There’s also the Gaza displacement subtext hanging over it.

In a December 28 X Space, Dr. Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs claimed that Somaliland privately approved resettling up to 1.5 million Palestinians from Gaza on December 20, just days before Israel’s recognition on December 26. He framed it as a “generous offer” tied to stability.

I’m including this not because it’s confirmed, but because even the idea of dumping Gaza’s population elsewhere is radioactive and because, if Diker is right, it explains another reason why the Houthis would see Somaliland not as neutral territory but as something they are obligated to confront, given their long‑stated claim that their war with Israel is being fought on behalf of Palestinians.

Somalia’s federal government framed the recognition as a direct attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud warned that Somali territory would not be used to launch attacks against other countries or be dragged into external wars, a line later reinforced by the foreign ministry and parliament. Somalia’s Federal Parliament passed a resolution declaring Israel’s recognition unlawful, null, and void, reaffirming that Somaliland remains an inseparable part of the Federal Republic.

That position was echoed regionally. Turkey and Egypt condemned the move as unlawful and destabilizing. Across the wider region, a bloc of Arab, Islamic, and African states, including Saudi Arabia, rejected both the recognition itself and any attempt to link Somaliland to schemes involving the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, reaffirming support for Somalia’s unity and internationally recognized borders. South Africa called Israel’s move a “direct threat” to peace in the Horn of Africa, even China publicly reaffirmed its support for Somalia’s territorial integrity.

INTERESTING FACT: Over 20 mostly Muslim countries signed a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, three Muslim‑majority states stood out for saying nothing, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. All three are Abraham Accords signatories with close ties to Israel. The silence was especially notable in the UAE’s case, given its deep investment in Somaliland, long‑standing presence in Berbera, and role as one of Israel’s closest regional partners. Factors that help explain why Abu Dhabi has been widely seen as instrumental in pushing this recognition forward.

All of that context is why the Houthi response matters. They’re not responding to a signed deal or an announced base, they’re responding to where this is clearly heading. Recognition makes the “what if” feel less hypothetical and if you’re within missile range of Yemen, the Houthis don’t need proof of an Israeli base to decide that a new front has opened.

What’s different now is that the Houthis aren’t the only ones raising the alarm. Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, all for their own reasons and with their own red lines, have moved to defend Somalia’s territorial integrity and warn against turning the Somaliland coast into a new platform in a wider Red Sea fight.

And that’s the twist: Cairo, Riyadh, and Ankara are in the same “no” camp as Sanaa (and by extension Tehran) on this specific issue, which creates the closest thing to a shared front against the Israel–UAE security project in the Red Sea, Middle East and Africa.

What’s surprising though is not the Houthi response to Israel’s recognition, but Somaliland’s posture to the Houthis.

As of now, Somaliland’s current leadership has made no public statement addressing the Houthis’ warning. Official messaging has focused on sovereignty, legitimacy, and diplomatic breakthrough. The security implications, especially the risk of being dragged into an active regional conflict, have been left unaddressed.

That silence says something important, that recognition has become the overriding objective, and other risks are being treated as secondary (that is, if they are being thought about at all!). After three decades of being ignored, it becomes tempting to treat any recognition as a win, even when it comes with obvious strategic costs.

Somaliland’s location has always been its leverage, and its risk. Even before this, Somaliland’s leadership was already talking in security terms. In late May 2024, former Somaliland president, Muse Bihi publicly argued that the Ethiopia–Somaliland deal could help secure “freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden corridor and deter Houthi attacks on shipping. Translation: recognize us and we’ll help you “secure the Red Sea” against the Houthis.

So when Israel recognizes Somaliland, the Houthis don’t read it as diplomacy. They read it as positioning, a signal that a new location has just been drawn into the conflict.

From their point of view, that makes Somaliland fair game.

They have already shown they are willing to internationalize their conflict, disrupt global trade, and absorb retaliation. They have also been explicit: any Israeli footprint near their theater of operations is unacceptable. Whether that footprint is real today is beside the point.

Put simply, recognition from Israel doesn’t add legitimacy. It just changes how Somaliland is seen and that shift alone is enough to turn it into a potential target.

The Houthis did not misunderstand Israel’s move. They interpreted it exactly as they were meant to. Somaliland is no longer just an unresolved African question. It is now part of a live Red Sea/Middle Eastern conflict map.

That is probably not what Somaliland’s people were promised when recognition was sold as a diplomatic win. But it may be the reality their government has chosen to risk.

But recognition is not the same as legitimacy and this recognition in particular, raises an uncomfortable question:

Is this actually good for Somaliland?

a historic first, with an asterisk

There is no minimizing the significance of what happened. Somaliland has spent more than three decades lobbying African states, Western capitals, and international institutions for recognition. Every attempt ran into the same wall: the African Union’s commitment to Somalia’s territorial integrity and the fear of opening a precedent for secession across the continent.

Israel’s decision breaks that deadlock. It proves that recognition is possible, that it does not require African consensus, and that it can be achieved through bilateral, transactional diplomacy. For Somaliland’s leadership, this is validation. This is proof that the independence project was not futile.

But it also comes with an asterisk. Israel is not just the first country to recognize Somaliland. It is the first and only one and it has done so at a moment when Israel is diplomatically isolated across much of the Global South.

That matters.

optics matter

Somali society, including Somaliland, is overwhelmingly pro‑Palestinian. This is not a fringe position; it is rooted in religion and anti‑colonial solidarity. Israel’s war in Gaza has intensified those sentiments, not weakened them. Against that backdrop, Israel being the first country to recognize Somaliland reads as alignment.

Fair or not, the optics are unavoidable, Somaliland’s first recognition appears tied to Israel’s security agenda in the Red Sea rather than to African self‑determination or democratic merit. That perception will shape how this move is understood by the world and across Somali communities at home and in the diaspora.

And there’s a second optics problem that’s easy to miss if you only look at Somaliland–Somalia.

African states have spent decades treating secession as a red‑line question because the continent is full of unresolved separatist pressures. From long‑running insurgencies to political autonomy movements that flare up when central authority weakens. That is precisely why the African Union has historically leaned so hard on territorial integrity and colonial borders. Not because every border is fair, but because changing them is a contagion risk.

So when Somaliland gets its first recognition through a high‑profile, politically charged partner like Israel, and doing it outside African consensus, outside AU mediation, and outside any negotiated settlement with Mogadishu, it does two things at once.

First, it makes other African capitals more hesitant to touch Somaliland’s recognition file, because they can see the precedent, recognition can be pursued through external bargains rather than regional process. Even governments that privately sympathize with Somaliland’s case will worry about what it legitimizes.

Second, it advertises a playbook that other separatist or autonomy movements could try to copy: bypass the continent, cut a deal with an outside power, and turn recognition into a transactional exchange. That is the nightmare scenario for states sitting on their own internal fractures. The last two African countries to win internationally recognized independence were Eritrea and South Sudan and whatever you think of the outcomes, it was done through a long, formal process tied to war, negotiations, referendums, and internationally managed agreements.

A one‑off recognition secured through external bargaining, outside a continent-led framework looks like a shortcut and that is exactly why many African governments will want to discourage it. Once that perception takes hold, Somaliland doesn’t just face pushback from Somalia, it faces a wider instinct across African governments to shut the door before the precedent spreads.

Recognition that arrives through controversial alignment can cost more legitimacy than it creates.

why this is a clear win for israel

For Israel, the benefits are immediate and largely uncontested.

Somaliland sits astride the Gulf of Aden, near the Bab al‑Mandeb chokepoint. A vital artery for global trade and energy flows. Access, cooperation, or even quiet intelligence presence in Somaliland expands Israel’s strategic depth at a time when Red Sea shipping has been repeatedly disrupted and militarized.

And the hard reality is that recognition can open doors that informal ties cannot. Even if no base is announced today or tomorrow, Somaliland offers Israel the option of forward positioning with intelligence collection, maritime domain awareness, logistics, and, in the most escalatory scenario, a future military footprint that can watch the Bab al‑Mandeb and shorten response times if the Red Sea re-enters a high-intensity phase.

Israel’s biggest Red Sea threat right now is coming from Yemen. A foothold on the African side of the Gulf of Aden is a different kind of leverage than diplomacy in Europe or lobbying in Washington because it is geography. However, If Somaliland becomes part of Israel’s military or intelligence posture against the Houthis, it also becomes a legitimate target in that conflict, with all the risks that come with being within missile range of Yemen.

Israel did not have to compromise its position on Gaza, concede territory, or alter policy. It gained diplomatic access, potential basing options, and a friendly authority in a sensitive region, all without significant cost.

When one side gains immediate benefits while the other absorbs long‑term political risk, recognition begins to resemble leverage rather than a partnership.

a move born of desperation

This recognition did not come at the start of Somaliland’s diplomatic campaign. It came at the end. Only after years of trying (and failing) to win recognition through the routes Somaliland has traditionally pursued like African Union diplomacy, Western capitals, and the argument that Somaliland is “stable enough” to be treated as a state.

Over time, and especially after the Ethiopia–Somaliland MoU triggered regional backlash and internal unrest, Somaliland’s leadership appears to have shifted toward a more transactional approach: get one recognition first, then use it to pressure others. That can work tactically but it also raises the risk of overpaying.

Because when recognition becomes the primary objective, it becomes easier for outside partners to demand high-cost concessions (security access, diplomatic alignment, controversial policy commitments) in exchange for a symbolic breakthrough. At that point, it’s no longer about the terms, but the price.

the gaza resettlement rumors

Unconfirmed reports that Somaliland may accept displaced Palestinians in connection with this recognition are politically radioactive. These rumors emerged in early this year as international media reported that U.S. and Israeli officials had explored, at least at the level of internal discussion and outreach, whether governments in East Africa, including Somaliland, Somalia, and Sudan, could be approached about hosting displaced Palestinians as part of post‑Gaza planning. No agreement was reached, and Somaliland’s government publicly denied holding any such talks.

Even if false, the fact that these rumors are plausible enough to circulate widely tells us something important, that Somaliland’s leadership is now perceived as willing to trade sensitive political ground for diplomatic gain. That perception alone carries political cost.

Any move that frames Somaliland as a solution to Israel’s Gaza problem, even indirectly, or merely through association, would trigger even more backlash across Somali society and the wider Muslim world. It would collapse domestic legitimacy for Somaliland overnight and hand opponents of recognition an unassailable argument, regardless of the legal merits of statehood.

Some deals are too costly to even appear to consider.

recognition does not fix internal fractures

If you’ve been reading CIVIL INTEREST this year, you’ve basically watched the runway get built in real time. An outside-recognition push on one side, and a slow internal erosion of Somaliland’s territorial and political story on the other.

But if you are new, rather than re‑explain all of that here, I’m going to point you to the two pieces that were written before for this exact moment ⬇️

1️⃣ the somaliland recognition roadshow (aug 12, 2025)

The PR campaign and policy pitch that tried to package Israel–Somaliland recognition as “stability” and “maritime security,” when the real deal was access, leverage, and a Red Sea security bargain.

2️⃣ firdhiye’s election and the collapse of somaliland’s independence narrative (sep 03, 2025)

The internal map problem: SSC‑Khaatumo/Northeastern State, effective control, and why foreign recognition does not resolve a state that is losing political consent and territorial authority.

a fragile win, or a strategic trap?

Israel’s recognition could be the first domino Somaliland hopes will trigger a bigger wave of recognition, ideally from the UAE, the United States, and Ethiopia.

That bet only works if other governments move soon. Israel’s recognition by itself does not change Somaliland’s status inside Africa, at the UN, or with major international institutions. The idea in Hargeisa seems to be, once one strategically important country breaks the taboo, others with similar interests will feel less scared to do the same.

There’s also important context for why Israel moved first. The UAE has spent years building deep leverage in Somaliland. There is no public proof that Abu Dhabi officially brokered Israel’s recognition but the UAE’s footprint helps explain why Israel may see Somaliland as usable strategic ground.

But that plan immediately ran into a problem. Within hours of Israel’s announcement, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly signaled that Washington is not ready to follow Israel’s lead. Asked about the move, Trump dismissed the idea of automatic U.S. recognition, saying the issue was “under study” and even questioning Somaliland’s relevance by asking whether anyone really knows where it is. For a strategy built around momentum, that kind of reaction from Washington is a big blow. Without U.S. recognition, it becomes much harder to imagine quick follow‑through from other cautious players, especially those who tend to wait for U.S. political cover before taking risks.

And if recognition becomes tied, in people’s minds, to foreign bases, a more militarized Red Sea, or Gaza politics, Somaliland could trade one kind of isolation for another by being boxed into a narrow security lane instead of gaining broad legitimacy.

Either way, this is a real diplomatic milestone. It shouldn’t be brushed off. But it is also a gamble because it prioritizes symbolic recognition over internal cohesion, and short‑term breakthroughs over long‑term legitimacy.

A state built around outside agendas is fragile. It relies on patrons staying interested, and on publics staying quiet. Neither is guaranteed.

Recognition can strengthen a state. It can also put a spotlight on its weak points. For Somaliland, the question now isn’t whether recognition is possible, it’s whether the way it’s being achieved actually strengthens Somaliland, or quietly weakens it.

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Fifteen years ago, the West threw its full moral weight behind Alassane Ouattara. They elevated him as the responsible adult in a country spiraling into chaos, the democrat who would restore institutions, the technocrat who would save Cote d’Ivoire from the strongman who refused to leave. They presented him as the antidote to Laurent Gbagbo’s stubbornness and as the embodiment of a new era of governance that’s transparent, open, fiscally sound, and integrated with the world. This was the man they told Ivorians, would rebuild a democracy shattered by two internal conflicts.

And now, the same man has secured a fourth term, after already pushing through an equally controversial third term by arguing that the 2016 constitution had “reset” his mandate. An interpretation widely condemned as unconstitutional. At 83 years old, he has tightened political space, disqualified opponents, controlled the electoral machinery, and choked dissent. All the while the very governments and institutions that once championed his democratic credentials remain silent. Not even uncomfortable. Just quiet. As if this was always the plan.

Because maybe it was.

a man designed in washington, polished in paris, installed in abidjan

To understand why nobody outside Cote d’Ivoire is protesting, why Washington doesn’t blink, why Paris doesn’t object, why the IMF keeps pumping money into the country, you have to understand the kind of figure Alassane Ouattara is. He is not just a former IMF official who happened to end up in politics. He is someone whose entire career was shaped inside the structures of global finance, someone the IMF trained, elevated, and treated as one of its own. For decades he absorbed its worldview, its priorities, and its institutional culture. By the time he emerged as a political actor, he embodied the IMF’s logic.

Alassane Ouattara’s employment biography on the IMF’s official website

But his rise didn’t depend on Washington alone. Long before the 2010 post‑election crisis (the violent standoff that left thousands dead after former President Gbagbo refused to step down), France had already positioned Ouattara as a trusted partner. This was part of a long French tradition of cultivating Western‑trained technocrats who could preserve the old economic order without appearing overtly colonial.

For decades, Paris relied on leaders who could do two things at once: speak the fluent, soothing language of Western financial institutions, and manage the delicate networks of political and business elites at home. Ouattara fit that script almost too perfectly. He studied abroad, built a career through the IMF, and internalized the economic doctrines France wanted its former colonies to follow. Doctrines that prioritized fiscal discipline, investment‑friendliness, and the stability of the CFA franc system that keeps West Africa tied to the French treasury.

In the 1980s and 1990s, when structural adjustment was the gospel of global finance, Alassane Ouattara was one of its senior priests. In 1990 he was appointed Prime Minister explicitly to implement Cote d’Ivoire’s structural adjustment program, a role that placed him at the center of the austerity doctrine reshaping the region. Structural adjustment was an ideological export and Ouattara became one of its most loyal evangelists. Privatize, liberalize, open up, cut subsidies, trust the market, discipline the budget, reassure investors. These were the pillars of an economic order that bound African economies to Western financial centers. France needed leaders who believed in them. Washington needed implementers. Ouattara was both.

By the time he stepped into Ivorian politics, he carried the entire playbook of Western economic policy in his bloodstream. He spoke the language Western lenders love. Stability, macroeconomic discipline, fiscal consolidation, risk mitigation, investor confidence. And when Paris looked at him, they saw continuity. They saw a future where Cote d’Ivoire remained anchored to the CFA franc, the French treasury, French corporations, French banks, and French strategic influence. To them, Ouattara was a modern Houphouët‑Boigny. Not the old power-broker of the cocoa barons, but the updated version shaped by global finance.

He also understood how to build what the IMF calls “credibility”, and “credibility” in the eyes of these institutions, rarely means democracy. It means predictability. It means comfort. It means knowing that when the phone rings in Abidjan, someone on the other end will speak the same language. Economically, politically, strategically speaking. Whether that language is English or French.

The West didn’t back Ouattara because he loved democracy. They supported him because he was theirs. He’s an IMF man. He’s a safe pair of hands in a region slipping into uncertainty. Democracy was the packaging. Economic alignment was the substance.

That is why today, as he bends the constitution even further to stay in power, they don’t oppose him. They don’t interfere. They don’t reprimand. They don’t even raise their voice.

It’s because he is their man.

the irony burns, but it is not an accident

When Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after the internationally certified results of the 2010 election showed he had lost, major Western governments, including France, the United States, the EU, and the UN, quickly aligned behind Alassane Ouattara. They insisted that the electoral outcome had to be respected and that Gbagbo’s refusal threatened to push Cote d’Ivoire back into the instability of the 2000s. Western statements stressed the need to uphold institutions, protect the vote, and prevent another national crisis. The conflict was widely framed as a confrontation between an entrenched incumbent defying election results and a reform‑minded technocrat whom the international community recognized as the legitimate winner. In Western media and diplomatic language, Gbagbo became the autocrat clinging to power, and Ouattara the responsible statesman positioned to restore order and rebuild the country.

Obama’s statement on the election results in Cote d’Ivoire

That was the narrative sold to Ivorians and to the world. When the situation escalated into violence, with at least 3,000 people killed between late 2010 and April 2011, the narrative hardened even further. France activated Opération Licorne, its long‑standing military mission in Cote d’Ivoire, to support UN forces already on the ground. The UN’s peacekeeping mission, UNOCI, moved to enforce the internationally recognized election results, backing Ouattara as the legitimate winner. Laurent Gbagbo was eventually arrested after a siege on his residence by pro‑Ouattara forces supported by French and UN troops. He was later transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in November 2011. All of it was wrapped in the language of protecting democracy.

But the reality under the surface was more complicated. Western powers weren’t acting out of moral outrage or democratic principle, they were fighting for the continuity of a geo‑economic system. Cote d’Ivoire is the anchor of the Francophone West African economy, the largest market in the CFA zone, the engine that keeps the currency union credible. A prolonged crisis threatened not just political stability but a financial architecture Paris and Washington had no interest in losing. Protecting Ouattara was protecting that architecture.

And now, fifteen years later, the irony becomes impossible to ignore. Ouattara is not repeating Gbagbo’s playbook in identical form, but he is pursuing the same end result by staying in power beyond widely accepted constitutional limits. Gbagbo defied election results outright in 2010, triggering a deadly standoff; Ouattara has instead engineered the legal and institutional terrain so that he never faces a real contest. Different methods but with the same destination, a leader refusing to relinquish power and reshaping the system to make his continued rule possible. But this time the international outrage is gone. The press releases are gone. The moral arguments are gone. No one speaks of democracy. No one calls it a crisis. No one demands accountability.

The contradiction is the system revealing itself. Western governments never cared about Cote d’Ivoire’s democratic health. They only cared about its alignment. They only cared about a stable partner who wouldn’t challenge the fundamentals of the arrangement. Ouattara was the man who ensured that nothing foundational would ever be questioned. And now, when democracy becomes inconvenient to that vessel, the requirement is quietly discarded. The system simply updates itself. Stability over political openness, predictability over pluralism, continuity over constitutionalism.

Power protects its investments, not its principles.

the imf’s silence is their approval

People like to pretend the IMF is some neutral calculator, an institution above politics that is just crunching numbers and handing out advice. But that’s not how it works. The IMF is shaped by the countries that fund it and command its voting power. The United States can block anything it doesn’t like. Europe pushes its own priorities. And France, in francophone Africa, carries far more influence than people admit. In reality, nothing big moves through the IMF without Washington signing off first.

And yet, even as Cote d’Ivoire shuts down political space, the IMF continues approving large disbursements. In June, after reviewing Cote d’Ivoire’s economic programs, the IMF approved another round of support, releasing about US$758 million. Three months later, in September, IMF staff reached another agreement that cleared the way for an additional US$843.9 million pending Executive Board approval. Each review repeated the same polished language, “progress remains solid,” “reforms are on track,” “the authorities remain committed”, even as the country’s political environment narrowed. The Fund focuses on macroeconomic benchmarks, not democratic conditions, creating the sense that Cote d’Ivoire’s political reality exists in a different universe from the one the IMF chooses to evaluate.

The contrast with other countries only makes it clearer. When Egypt intensified its repression and filled its prisons, the IMF continued lending because Cairo remained central to regional security arrangements and economic stability in the Middle East. When Rwanda consolidated into a tightly controlled political system and also launched incursions into the neighboring country, DRC, its IMF programs continued smoothly because Paul Kagame delivered exactly the kind of fiscal discipline and macro‑stability the institution prioritizes. When Ethiopia fell into civil war, lending paused, but largely due to uncertainty and economic collapse, not because of human rights concerns. And when Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger broke with France and the West after their coups, their access to international financing shrank sharply. Not because their democracies had weakened, but because they had stepped outside the political and economic architecture that underpins IMF engagement.

Cote d’Ivoire hasn’t stepped outside that architecture. It hasn’t challenged the system or disrupted the economic order the IMF and its shareholders depend on. And because it stays inside the framework, the framework continues to reward it.

It still serves the system. So the system still serves it.

france’s last stronghold cannot be allowed to fall

If you want to understand why Paris has not muttered a word about Ouattara’s fourth run, look north. France has been chased out of Mali, humiliated in Burkina Faso, expelled from Niger, put simply, the whole Sahel region that France once relied on as the center of its influence has now turned sharply against it. Its influence has evaporated in a matter of years.

Cote d’Ivoire is one of the last major francophone economies where Paris still holds deep economic influence, even as its soldiers leave the region. French firms are structurally embedded in key sectors. Eranove, through its subsidiary CIPREL, runs one of the country’s main independent power producers and the largest thermal plant on the grid. TotalEnergies is the leading fuel distributor and a major player in offshore oil and gas. Orange Cote d’Ivoire dominates the telecom market. Société Générale’s Ivorian arm remains one of the largest banks in West Africa. A French consortium of Bouygues, Alstom, Colas Rail and Keolis is building Abidjan’s metro system. And the Agence Française de Développement finances markets, urban upgrading schemes, and transport corridors across the country.

These are not isolated deals, they form an ecosystem and layered over all of it is the CFA franc. It is not the only place where France maintains interests, but it is by far one of the most strategically important ones left. The day Cote d’Ivoire chooses another direction is the day France becomes a spectator, not a player, in African affairs.

Macron knows this. The entire French foreign policy establishment knows this.
Which is why Paris will accept virtually anything Ouattara does, as long as he keeps the system stable and the country aligned.

If the choice is between democracy and a loyal partner, France will choose the partner every time.

the u.s. isn’t acting out of principle, it’s acting out of strategic self-interest

Meanwhile, Washington sees Cote d’Ivoire as one of the last reliable islands in a turbulent region. The Sahel has been swallowed by coups. Guinea is unpredictable. Chad is fragile. Nigeria is overwhelmed. Senegal is redefining itself. Liberia remains volatile. Sierra Leone is wobbling between stability and crisis. Ghana is stable but smaller.

Under the Global Fragility Act, Cote d’Ivoire is included among the five coastal West African countries placed into a ten‑year U.S. stabilization strategy. Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire. The State Department reports that the United States has committed nearly US$300 million in stability and security assistance to this corridor since 2022, consistently presenting Cote d’Ivoire as the anchor of that regional effort.

Stability, not democratic standards, drives U.S. engagement.

In this context, an IMF‑aligned technocrat running the region’s most important economy is not just acceptable to Washington, it is ideal. He aligns with U.S. security priorities, poses no threat to American influence, and keeps the coastal corridor predictable. And so the U.S. stays quiet, signs off on IMF lending rounds, frames the partnership in the language of “resilience” and “counter‑extremism,” and lets the financial institutions deliver the real message that Cote d’Ivoire is too important to lose, and too strategically positioned to antagonize over constitutional decay.

inside cote d’ivoire, the opposition is learning this the hard way

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It was the kind of statement that makes a region pause. Because if you strip away the metaphors and the old-man storytelling, Museveni was talking about Kenya. He was talking openly, directly, and without the diplomatic padding African leaders usually hide behind. He was saying that Kenya sits on a coastline that Uganda needs, deserves, and might one day fight over.

For Kenya, the remark landed abruptly, forcing Nairobi to confront a level of rhetoric it did not anticipate. For Uganda, the statement functioned as a public release of long‑standing frustration, a political expression rather than an emotional one. But for East Africa, it was something else. A warning about the new political economy forming in the region, where geography is becoming destiny again, and the leaders of landlocked states are no longer pretending to be comfortable with it.

Museveni framed his argument in the language of injustice. He compared Uganda to an upper-floor resident in an apartment building, someone entitled to use the shared compound but prevented from reaching it because the ground-floor neighbor controls the only direct access. Kenya, he suggested, had taken more than its share, acting as if the ocean were its private property. This wasn’t a technical conversation about port fees or customs delays. It was a fundamental question of sovereignty, narrated as a story of exclusion.

And that is what made it so explosive.

Kenya responded cautiously, with Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi reiterating that Kenya has no intention of obstructing Uganda’s use of the Port of Mombasa and noting that international conventions guarantee the rights of landlocked states. His remarks echoed Kenya’s long‑standing position rather than signaling any policy shift. Kenya’s response offered reassurance but did not engage with the deeper issue Museveni raised: that Uganda remains vulnerable because its main trade infrastructure lies entirely outside its borders.

A significant share of Uganda’s external commerce, particularly fuel imports and containerized goods, continues to move through Kenyan territory via the Port of Mombasa and its connected transport corridors. In 2024, Uganda accounted for roughly two‑thirds of all transit cargo handled at the Port of Mombasa, about 8.8 million tons out of 13.4 million, according to Kenyan port data. This scale of reliance illustrates how central the Mombasa corridor remains to Uganda’s external trade, even as Kampala explores gradual diversification through Tanzania’s Port of Dar es Salaam. The dependence itself is not new; it has defined Uganda’s trade geography for decades. What is new is Museveni’s decision to elevate this reliance from a logistical reality to a strategic grievance, framing it as a vulnerability that carries political weight rather than merely an economic cost.

The timing of all this isn’t accidental. Museveni is entering another election cycle, having already confirmed earlier this year that he intends to run again. At 81 and amid growing signs of public fatigue with his decades-long rule, he has every incentive to lean on nationalist rhetoric, especially rhetoric that reframes external constraints as historical injustices only he is strong enough to confront. Raising the sea‑access issue now functions as political mobilization, a way to turn a structural vulnerability into an electoral rallying point and cast himself as the sole defender of Uganda’s sovereignty.

Across the region, something is happening. Ethiopia, the most populous landlocked state on Earth, is relentlessly pushing its argument for Red Sea access. Not only to reshape its regional position but to consolidate internal cohesion at a time of political fragmentation. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has framed port access as an existential matter, using it to rebuild nationalist energy after years of internal conflict, ethnic fractures and declining public trust. By turning maritime access into a question of identity and historical justice, Ethiopia normalized the idea that losing a coastline is an injury that must be politically corrected. Once that framing entered the regional bloodstream, it gave other leaders permission to speak the same way. Museveni watched that shift, recognized how effectively it redirected domestic frustration outward, and decided it was his moment too.

Uganda’s situation is not uniquely personal, nor is it distinct in a way that sets it apart from other landlocked states in the region. Museveni’s statement that “the ocean belongs to me” should therefore be understood not as a special case of bilateral tension with Kenya, but as part of a broader discourse shared by landlocked countries seeking to challenge long‑standing structural disadvantages. His rhetoric mirrors a regional pattern, exemplified most clearly by Ethiopia’s recent posture, where questions of access, dependency, and sovereignty are being reframed as political grievances rather than technical constraints. The intention is to highlight imbalance, assert agency, and shift the debate toward rights and entitlements.

This framing matters because it shows how maritime access is becoming a wider regional argument rather than an isolated dispute between two states.

Across the region, competition over ports, transit corridors, and access routes is becoming increasingly prominent in regional politics. Coastal states such as Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia serve as logistical gateways for trade, giving them structural advantages within regional supply chains. Landlocked states including Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Chad and South Sudan continue to rely on these coastal corridors for the bulk of their imports and exports. While this does not necessarily indicate that future conflicts will center on maritime access, it does show that questions of transit rights, infrastructure control, and economic vulnerability are becoming more central to regional debates and diplomatic positioning.

Museveni’s comments should be understood through that lens. He is not preparing to invade Kenya. But he is announcing, loudly, that Uganda will no longer pretend to be content with the arrangement. He is signaling that the age of quiet acceptance is over and he is placing Kenya in a position where doing nothing now looks like arrogance, and doing something looks like concession.

A broader shift is occurring in African politics, one in which maritime access is becoming a strategic concern, a kind of maritime nationalism that feels both inevitable and destabilizing at the same time. Ethiopia wants the Red Sea. Uganda wants the Indian Ocean. Kenya and Eritrea are being forced into defensive postures they didn’t choose. And external powers like the UAE, US, Israel, China, India, Turkey and Russia see opportunity in the friction. Ports are the new oil wells. Maritime corridors are the new borders.

In this context, when Museveni said “the ocean belongs to me,” he wasn’t joking, and he wasn’t rambling, he was unveiling a grievance decades in the making, shaped by an economy built on someone else’s shoreline. He was telling Kenya that Uganda’s patience has limits. And he was telling the rest of the region that the politics of water, who can reach it, who controls it, who depends on it, will define the next phase of East African geopolitics.

How this moment develops will depend on diplomatic choices and regional economic planning rather than immediate confrontation. It is also possible that the intensity of this rhetoric will fade if leaders, whether in Kampala or Addis Ababa, feel they have regained firm control at home and no longer need to rely on nationalist narratives to consolidate support. But what this moment reveals, regardless of whether the tension escalates or dies down, is that the old geography is being questioned. Museveni’s remarks ensured that the region can no longer avoid that conversation.

For readers who want the broader context of Museveni’s internal power architecture, the full report is linked below:

For readers who want the deeper picture of Uganda’s external strategy across the region, the full analysis is linked below:

Read my previous piece from five months ago to see how the warnings of this moment were already unfolding:

Read more

This wasn’t a one-off. EX-76018 ran over 20 Bosaso–Kufra loops in October alone, each carrying up to max 40 tons of weapons, drones, mercenaries and ammunition for the RSF in Darfur. The cargo enters Sudan overland from Kufra, just 200 km from the border via routes controlled by Khalifa Haftar, another UAE proxy.

In October, trackers had logged over 60 such flights. Il-76s and Boeing 747s shuttling between between UAE airfields, Bosaso in Puntland, and the Libyan hubs of Benghazi and Kufra. These weren’t commercial runs. They were the lifeline keeping Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) armed and operational amid accusations of genocide in Darfur.

Sudan’s civil war, now in its third year, has claimed over 150,000 lives and displaced millions (the death toll is most likely far higher). The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), stands accused by the UN and human rights groups of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, targeting non-Arab communities like the Masalit with mass killings, rape, and forced displacement. The fall of El Fasher, after months of siege, marked a turning point. RSF forces overran the city, killing thousands in what survivors described as systematic atrocities.

Even with international sanctions in place, the RSF continues to operate effectively thanks to a steady flow of supplies. Much of this support is widely believed to come from the UAE, which allegedly uses a complex network of partner groups and intermediaries across East and North Africa to move supplies indirectly and avoid direct accountability.

This isn’t a rogue operation. It’s a deliberate extension of Abu Dhabi’s foreign policy. Which is a imperialist strategy that uses economic leverage, private contractors, and semi-autonomous allies to project power without the mess of direct occupation. In Sudan, it means arming the RSF to secure influence over the country. The cost? A war that’s turned Sudan into a graveyard.

Who exactly are the RSF? Read this piece on who they are, their filmed cruelty and the warped faith driving their war:

building the pipeline

The UAE’s foothold in the Horn of Africa dates to 2010, when Abu Dhabi helped set up the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) in Bosaso to combat Somali piracy. What began as a maritime initiative has since evolved into a broader logistics footprint. By this year, open-source imagery and reporting revealed expanded aprons and fortified compounds at Bosaso, along with the installation of a high-performance radar system near the airport. Identified by multiple outlets as the Israeli-made EL/M‑2084. The radar was reportedly deployed through a confidential UAE-Puntland arrangement that bypassed Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu. The EL/M‑2084 is a multi-mission system capable of detecting aircraft, drones, and missile trajectories at ranges of up to roughly 470 km, providing broad surveillance coverage of the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and Red Sea corridors. These are key arteries for both military and commercial traffic.

Puntland’s semi‑autonomous status makes it attractive for external patrons. Public reporting indicates President Said Abdullahi Deni relies on roughly $50 million in annual UAE funding for the PMPF, a force of several thousand that secures Bosaso’s airport and port (and fights “ISIS”). Emirati financing and concessions give Abu Dhabi significant leverage over these facilities.

Dubai’s DP World, through its subsidiary P&O Ports, operates Bosaso Port under a 30‑year, $336 million concession signed in 2017. Next door stands the Bosaso International Airport, operated since January 2021 by the Emirati firm Bosaso International Airport Co. (BIAC), a subsidiary of Terminals Holding, whose majority shareholder is Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ, chaired by Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The site has drawn roughly $170 million in Emirati investment tied to a 2008 development agreement with Dubai’s Lootah Group. Between 2023 and 2024, the UAE military built a restricted compound within the airport perimeter, accessible only to its personnel, where drone hangars now support operations against ISIS‑Somalia in the Cal Miskaat Mountains. Also, The same compound doubles as a transit hub for hundreds of Colombian mercenaries recruited by UAE firms and flown straight to RSF frontlines in Darfur. The base remains active.

Taken together, these projects reflect hundreds of millions of dollars in Emirati‑backed infrastructure in Puntland, all part of a wider pattern of UAE investment across Somalia. A senior PMPF commander at Bosaso Airport who spoke to Middle East Eye described hearing the roar of heavy aircraft landing at night and seeing guarded offloads at the airport, along with operations under PMPF supervision with little to no customs oversight. He said such flights, once rare, have become routine, and that shipments are swiftly moved to restricted areas before departure. While he couldn’t confirm what the cargo contained, he believed the secrecy indicated foreign-bound logistics, a view echoed by multiple local sources and investigations tracing movements to eastern Libya toward Sudan. He and other PMPF officers expressed unease about these operations, fearing that their work might be indirectly aiding the RSF’s war and atrocities in Sudan.

Somaliland plays a parallel role. Since 2016, the UAE has invested roughly $442 million into Berbera Port through DP World. They secured a 30-year lease, partial military basing rights, and a reliable revenue stream that contributes an estimated 10–15 percent of Somaliland’s $556 million budget via lease fees, customs, and associated trade activity.

Like Puntland, Somaliland’s de facto independence from Mogadishu shields Emirati operations from federal scrutiny, but unlike Puntland, Abu Dhabi’s leverage runs deeper here. The self-declared republic’s fiscal isolation and chronic need for foreign funding have given the UAE an outsized role in shaping its infrastructure and security policies.

A sharp look at how Hargeisa, Abu Dhabi, and Washington are reshaping diplomacy into another tool of control:

Berbera is the UAE’s Trojan horse in the Horn of Africa, a commercial success story on paper, a discreet logistics node in practice. While Bosaso absorbs the heat of covert arms traffic, Berbera functions as the quieter, protected backup. A port and airfield draped in legitimacy and shielded from scrutiny because Abu Dhabi can’t afford to taint its flagship investment.

Also run by DP World, the port opened a direct Dubai–Berbera route last month. A $3 billion railway to Ethiopia is next, all presented as “development.” Yet beside the cranes sits a UAE military zone with radar towers, drone pads, and fortified compounds designed for power projection, not just defense or trade.

For Somaliland, still unrecognized and struggling for legitimacy, this partnership is survival. It trades access and autonomy for investment and diplomatic attention, letting Abu Dhabi turn a sovereignty vacuum into leverage. Modern empire doesn’t rely on conquest anymore, it runs on contracts, cargo, and plausible deniability.

Puntland and Somaliland act as areas through which the UAE can expand its influence. Because they are self-governing and outside Mogadishu’s full control, the UAE can use them as buffers and logistics zones, effectively letting it counter rivals (like Turkey and Qatar) and manage covert shipments without direct interference from Somalia’s federal government. This arrangement allows Abu Dhabi to bypass UN embargoes, using Bosaso and, possibly, Berbera as staging points for arms shipments to the RSF.

This proxy dynamic came into sharper focus last month, when Puntland and Somaliland, who were actually rivals over disputed territories like Sool and Sanaag, signed a rare cooperation pact in Nairobi. The agreement, framed as a boost to trade, freedom of movement, and anti-terrorism efforts, includes coordinated border patrols and joint security operations. But the real driver was the rise and success of the SSC-Khaatumo movement (Dhulbahante clan’s self-declared Northeastern State), which expelled Somaliland forces from Lascanood in 2023 and formally aligned with Mogadishu in July as a new federal member state. This Northeastern State of Somalia, threatens both breakaway entities by legitimizing federal influence in their claimed borderlands, potentially opening the door to Turkish and Qatari-backed interventions that the UAE opposes.

This is how a new Somali federal state is quietly dismantling Hargeisa’s dream of recognition:

For Deni and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Irro), the pact is a pragmatic realignment to unite against a common foe to preserve autonomy and UAE-backed economic lifelines. UAE mediation is implicit. Abu Dhabi gains a stabilized Gulf of Aden corridor, ensuring uninterrupted RSF resupply and broader Red Sea/Gulf of Aden control without more Somali federal interference.

The flights follow a pattern. Il-76s from Kyrgyz operators like Skyline and Fly Sky, fronts for UAE logistics, handle the Bosaso-Kufra corridor, carrying up to 40 tons per load. Heavier Boeing 747s, like Moldova’s ER-MDR (operated by Pecotox Air), fly direct from UAE bases to Benghazi, offloading to Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). Haftar, another UAE proxy, controls eastern Libya. He facilities overland transfers to RSF-held Darfur.

to the horn and beyond

From Bosaso to Berbera to Kufra, the pattern is unmistakable. The UAE has assembled a transnational logistics regime with planes, bases, and private contractors sustaining wars that blur the line between state and enterprise. In many ways, it resembles a modern Dutch East India Company: a profit‑driven network that merges trade, militarism, and private interests to build a 21st‑century pirate empire, the first to make such a model succeed in the new age.

The Emirati model functions through jurisdictional gray zones. Semi-autonomous regions like Puntland and Somaliland, fractured governments like Sudan and Libya, pliant allies like South Sudan and Chad. In each, Abu Dhabi trades money and protection for access. Instead of a traditional empire, the UAE builds a network of dependent states that look independent but rely on it for money and protection.

Khartoum has not remained silent. Sudan’s government has formally accused Puntland of facilitating the flow of arms and mercenaries, lodged official complaints with Mogadishu, and sent its intelligence chief, Lt-Gen Ahmed Ibrahim Ali Mufaddal, to the Somali capital back in August to demand action against UAE-linked flights and mercenary pipelines.

Yet the federal Somali government has responded cautiously. On Wednesday (11/5), Defense Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi appeared before the upper house of parliament and confirmed that cargo flights from Bosaso to Sudan do occur. He offered no detailed schedule or inspection plan, and stated that Mogadishu has no verified information on what is inside the shipments.

The government acknowledged the accusations as “serious” and promising to “review” them, but taking no visible enforcement steps, such as inspecting Bosaso or banning overflights, while a UAE delegation arrived in Mogadishu the very next day (after Sudan’s intelligence chief left). Officials in Mogadishu have emphasized ongoing “diplomatic consultations,” balancing their ties with Abu Dhabi against Sudan’s anger.

This inertia stems from Somali Federal Government’s deep economic reliance on the UAE. Despite being a Turkish-Qatari “ally” (with Ankara training Somali forces and Doha mediating federal-state disputes), Mogadishu benefits from hundreds of millions in UAE debt relief, millions in port and infrastructure investments, and security aid that bolsters recovery from decades of conflict, making confrontation with Abu Dhabi a non-starter.

Sudan has warned that if the corridor continues to fuel RSF operations, it will consider external sponsors complicit. A message aimed as much at Puntland as at the Gulf backers behind it. The RSF’s atrocities in Darfur and the militarization of Puntland are all extensions of the same system. Each flight departing Bosaso does more than carry weapons, it reinforces a regional system where conflicts are driven by private interests, contractors, and proxy forces, creating a self-sustaining order built on profit and influence rather than governance or stability.

empire by contract

What’s clear from the UAE’s actions in Africa is that its influence doesn’t come from wars or invasions but from business deals. Instead of conquering land, it builds power through contracts. Working with logistics companies, private security forces, and port operators, so that control comes through money and trade, not just fighting on battlefields.

Haftar in Libya, Hemedti in Sudan, Deni in Puntland, Irro in Somaliland, and Hassan Sheikh in Mogadishu all lean on Abu Dhabi’s patronage, each for different reasons. Haftar depends on Emirati weapons and funding to sustain his hold over eastern Libya; Hemedti relies on UAE arms and gold trade links to finance his RSF; Deni counts on Emirati cash to bankroll Puntland’s security forces; Irro seeks investment and recognition for Somaliland’s unrecognized state; and Hassan Sheikh needs debt relief and security aid. Together, they illustrate how the UAE buys influence through tailored incentives rather than force. In exchange, they surrender slices of sovereignty: land for bases, airspace for overflights, ports for concessions, money for silence and complicity. Haftar gets drones to hold Benghazi; Hemedti, arms to seize Darfur’s gold; Deni, cash to fund his personal army. The pattern repeats, turning leaders into middlemen.

For the UAE, it’s ruthlessly efficient. A web that extends power across the Red Sea and Sahel without the weight of occupation or the glare of accountability. No troops to deploy, and no colonies to defend, just investments that lock in loyalty. For the states entangled, it’s a slow erosion (While their leaders get rich! for example, Deni secretly pocketed $20 million from the UAE for oil blocks and Garacad Port). Chad learned this the hard way, hosting UAE flights through Amdjarass until UN scrutiny forced a pivot, only to see the relationship morph into quieter economic ties. (Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Déby touched down in Abu Dhabi this week with a 200-strong delegation, publicly begging for $30 billion in “development” funds to keep his regime afloat.)

The Il-76s flying over the Horn, the Colombian mercenaries shuttled to Darfur’s front lines, the discreet pacts in Nairobi, they’re all cogs in the same apparatus. A system where fragile nations trade their futures for sponsorship, and Abu Dhabi converts petrodollars into puppet strings, orchestrating conflicts without pulling a trigger. In the end, it’s the people of Sudan who pay the blood price, while the architects count their gains from afar.

Boycott the UAE.

Don’t go to Dubai.

But on RSF social media channels, there is no remorse. Fighters record themselves laughing beside the dead, posing in looted homes, and praising commanders with names that sound Quranic in their defiance.

Abu Jahl, Ya’juj (Gog), Abu Lu’lu.

These are not pseudonyms of concealment, they are declarations of intent. Each name is a reference to figures condemned in Islam. Abu Jahl, the Meccan merchant who mocked the Prophet; Ya’juj, the destroyer of worlds; Abu Lu’lu, the assassin who murdered a caliph. The men who adopt these names know exactly what they mean. They take them not to hide but to announce what they are, people who no longer fear judgment. When men begin naming themselves after the cursed, it is rebellion against morality itself.

Mohamed Tahir, the RSF commander known as Abu Jahl, was killed in a drone strike in Kordofan back in August. On RSF pages, he is glorified as a martyr. In Islamic tradition, Abu Jahl represents the height of arrogance, the man who saw truth and rejected it. As a senior RSF commander, Tahir was part of a hierarchy responsible for systematic violence and terror across Sudan’s war zones.

Another RSF figure goes by Gog (Ya’juj), a name drawn from the Qur’anic/Biblical story of Gog and Magog, who are beings unleashed to consume and destroy. In a verified video shared by doamuslims on X, he calls himself Gog and declares that rape, killing, and looting are the RSF’s right in Sudan. His fighters have been filmed celebrating destruction in Darfur, posting their own footage online as if violence were a badge of belonging. Their goal is not victory but annihilation, turning cruelty itself into identity.

Then there is Abu Lu’lu (Al‑Fateh Abdallah Idris), a commander whose name appears in verified reports and videos. As The New Humanitarian documented, several videos show him travelling from site to site, executing people without mercy. Wearing a white scarf, he poses among corpses, grinning and raising his gun while boasting about his kills. In one clip he tells a wounded man, “I will not give you any mercy,” before shooting him dead. In another, he praises Hemedti, saying, “Hemedti is the best,” moments before killing a line of captives. On social media, he mixes scripture with mockery, wearing gold and calling himself chosen.

After massive outrage online and growing pressure on the UAE (the RSF’s main sponsor), the RSF announced his arrest. But the move appeared more like a PR stunt than accountability, a brief performance to quiet the anger before returning to business as usual.

The first Abu Lu’lu was remembered for corrupting justice with revenge; this one turns vengeance into theatre, his so‑called arrest a performance to appease outrage while the RSF carries on killing. He doesn’t hide his cruelty, he sells it, turning mass murder into content.

Together, these names form the RSF’s theology of power. They are the rejection of every sacred restraint. Their violence transcends politics, it reflects a deeper moral and spiritual decay. A deliberate defiance of the very foundations of human decency. They deliberately drone strike mosques and slaughter Muslims at point‑blank range. All the while, shouting God’s name, not out of ignorance but as a proclamation of defiance against the moral order they reject. This is not belief but domination, a theology of rebellion expressed through intimate and grotesque violence. A theology where cruelty itself becomes the act of worship.

Most RSF fighters come from Sudan’s margins. From tribes left poor by the state, raised in drought and displacement. They are predominantly Arabs (although not pure Arabs). However, not the sedentary/urban Nile Valley Arabs or city-dwelling Arabs from Khartoum or Omdurman. They come from Darfur and Kordofan, from Arab pastoral tribes, whose identity and status are socially and geographically distinct from Sudan’s central riverine (from along the Nile river) people.

These communities have historically been marginalized and drawn into militias through promises of wealth and recognition. They descend directly from the the Janjaweed (translates to devils on horseback), the militias that once burned villages in Darfur, Kordofan and South Sudan for Khartoum’s wars. But even before that, they came from generations of warriors hardened by drought, conflict, and cattle raids. They were used again in the Darfur war, promised money and status in exchange for blood. Later, they were sent by rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE as mercenaries for wars in Yemen and Libya. Every massacre ignored by the world became proof that cruelty works. They learned that fear brings respect, and that pity is weakness. Now they kill to feel infinite.

Inside the RSF, status is earned through terror. Mercy is mocked. Reputation is measured in brutality. Many sincerely believe their power is divine justice, that God elevated them from hunger to dominance as a reward. Their faith mirrors the nations that fund them. Victory as virtue, dominance as destiny. The RSF does not hide its crimes. It records them. Evil no longer wears a mask, it smiles for the camera. This is cruelty that knows itself, proud and self‑aware.

Behind every atrocity lies a system that enables it. Gold smuggled to Dubai, drones imported from abroad, and fuel supplied by allies who denounce war in public and finance it in private.

Watch their footage long enough and you notice what’s missing, emotion. No rage, no fear, no triumph, just emptiness. They seem drained by history and driven only by vengeance. Into that emptiness flows the logic of profit and domination.

Abu Jahl, Ya’juj, and Abu Lu’lu are not exceptions; they are what a world without empathy produces. The devils on horseback never disappeared. They learned to fly drones and post on social media. Evil is no longer hiding, it is efficient, monetized, and proud of itself.

And it has names.

Boycott the UAE.

Don’t go to Dubai.

But in Gulf politics, words often serve as theater. For the UAE, such warnings are more about appearances than actual consequences.

performance diplomacy

The Emiratis almost never go public with warnings. The fact that they did so was meant to show Arab and Islamic audiences that Abu Dhabi still “cares” about Palestinians. The Doha strike only amplified this theater. After Israeli warplanes targeted Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, the UAE summoned Israel’s deputy envoy, condemned the act as “cowardly,” and joined emergency summits. Yet beyond communiqués and handshakes, nothing structural changed. In fact, while these summits were taking place, Emirati military planes were allegedly still landing in Israel, underscoring the gap between rhetoric and reality.

The point wasn’t to confront Israel, it was to manage perception. By speaking loudly, the UAE shields itself from accusations of complicity, while continuing to reap the benefits of normalization.

annexation might come, either way the uae will stay

Behind the posturing lies a simple reality, the UAE is not going to sever ties with Israel, even if annexation happens. Material interests dominate. Abu Dhabi’s partnership with Israel delivers surveillance technology, cybersecurity capabilities, investment opportunities, and a foothold in Washington. These are not concessions it will sacrifice over the Palestinians.

Annexation will proceed eventually, whether in sweeping form or in pieces through “maximum land, minimum Arabs” maps pushed by Israeli ministers like Bezalel Smotrich. And when it does, the UAE will issue another round of condemnations, maybe recall an ambassador for show, but the trade flights, the defense contracts, and the shared intelligence networks will carry on.

competing in the marketplace of posture

The UAE’s red lines are about competition. Abu Dhabi wants to keep pace with Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom posture as defenders of Palestine. But they operate with very different capacities. Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are large states with tens of millions of people and real strategic depth. Saudi Arabia has well over thirty million citizens. They can act like middle powers because size, geography, and industry give them leverage the Emirates simply do not have.

The UAE is a small state where citizens are a minority and expatriate workers are the majority. Its influence travels through money and patronage, not population. The model is straightforward. Oil‑and‑finance rents fund soft power; hosting bases and buying advanced weapons secure hard guarantees from bigger powers. That dependency sets the ceiling on confrontation. Israel functions as an extension of U.S. power in the region (or the U.S. functions as an extension of Israeli power), so an open break with Israel would amount to picking a fight with the same patron that also underwrites Emirati security.

This becomes clear in the details. The federation was stitched together in 1971. Roughly one million Emirati citizens sit within a population close to ten million. The U.S. Air Force operates out of Al Dhafra Air Base near Abu Dhabi and there is a French naval facility in the capital. These are constant reminders that core security is outsourced to foreign powers. Influence, in other words, is rented upward. Matter of fact, the country is so secured that Abu Dhabi instead pours money into destabilizing ventures abroad. With core security outsourced to Washington and Tel Aviv, the Emirates can export disruption instead of worrying about defense at home.

Qatar mirrors much of this profile. Independence in 1971, expatriate‑heavy demographics, single‑family rule, and, like the UAE, has poured its resource wealth into destabilizing ventures abroad.

The contrast comes down to tools though. Doha leans on gas and media e.g. Al Jazeera while Abu Dhabi markets itself as a hub for finance, logistics, tourism, and arms. Both punch above their weight only because they rely on external protection, but in this article the focus remains squarely on the UAE.

The roots are colonial. Under British protection in the twentieth century, London secured Gulf shipping lanes and oil by backing loyal rulers across what became the Trucial States. A coastline once associated with pearls and piracy was folded into rentier monarchies whose survival depended on outside guarantees. The formula hasn’t changed till now. They still attach themselves to a dominant power and purchase security through dependence. That is why, even after an Israeli strike in a Gulf capital, Abu Dhabi limited itself to diplomatic protest. No boycotts, no sanctions, no freeze on joint ventures, only statements and summits in place of penalties. Which is enough, for now, to keep the balancing act intact.

the real risk is exposure

The Abraham Accords were marketed as a path to peace, but in practice It functions as a license for Israel to keep going with occupation while Gulf monarchies cashed in on tech, arms, and capital. For Palestinians, annexation is not an abstraction. It means more dispossession, more fragmentation, and life under an ever‑hardening apartheid system. For Abu Dhabi, annexation registers as a public‑relations headache, not a strategic rupture.

The real danger for the UAE is not a break with Israel, it probably will not happen anytime soon. The danger is exposure. That Israel’s actions strip away the fiction of balance and make the hypocrisy impossible to hide.

A red line drawn in speeches but erased in practice is no red line at all. It is theater. And theater eventually loses its audience. When that happens, Abu Dhabi will be left with what it has always had. Dependence disguised as diplomacy, and a performance no one takes seriously anymore.

The result is that Ukraine under Zelenskyy looks less like a democracy defending itself and more like a NATO proxy exporting instability wherever Western power demands it.

Since 2022, Zelenskyy has tied Ukraine’s survival to one fact, being indispensable to Washington and Brussels. Ukraine has positioned itself as a subcontractor in NATO’s wider confrontations, using the war as leverage to embed itself in Western agendas. To maintain its lifeline of weapons and financing, Kyiv has become a player in multiple theaters, well beyond its own territory.

One of those theaters is the Sahel. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have formally accused Ukraine of aiding Tuareg rebels. In August 2024, the three juntas petitioned the UN Security Council to condemn Kyiv for what they described as “open and assumed support for international terrorism”. Their accusations centered on remarks by Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman, who admitted Kyiv had provided “the necessary information” for rebel operations at Tinzaouaten, an attack in which Malian troops and Wagner mercenaries suffered losses.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Senegal appeared to confirm these statements. For the Sahel countries, this was nothing short of proof. While the Tuareg coalition later denied receiving material aid, Le Monde and Reuters both reported that Ukrainian intelligence was at least exploring collaboration with anti‑junta fighters. The line between insurgency and foreign interference blurred.

Ukraine’s outreach in Africa is expanding. Kyiv offered to train Mauritanian armed forces, reviving a pre‑2022 relationship and presenting Mauritania as another front in its rivalry with Moscow. It has also deepened ties with Ghana, moving toward drone purchases, cybersecurity links, and broader defense cooperation. Similar discussions have taken place with other African governments, as Ukraine seeks to counter Russia’s growing sway on the continent. Ukrainian officials present these moves as contributions to stability. Yet to the people of the Sahel , this is sabotage. A NATO proxy is meddling in their neighborhood.

In short, Ukraine’s strategy in Africa mirrors its posture in Europe, they are casting themselves as indispensable to the West by turning fragile regions into new battlegrounds of the NATO‑Russia conflict.

the global south sees through this

Zelenskyy understands that Western support is fickle. If Ukraine is seen only as a war‑torn victim, sympathy wanes. But if Ukraine proves itself useful to NATO beyond its own borders, by striking at Russia’s partners in Africa, building security links in the Middle East (Ukraine just restored ties with Syria, which is now Al-Qaeda run), and echoing Washington’s narrative globally, then it becomes too valuable to abandon. Destabilization, then, isn’t an accident. It is strategy. It is a deliberate survival tactic that keeps Western money and weapons flowing by making Ukraine a spearhead in conflicts far beyond its own.

For the governments in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey, Ukraine is seen as a NATO subcontractor. That is why their ambassadors’ trip to Crimea a few days ago mattered. This was a calculated statement. By stepping onto territory Kyiv claims as its own, they signaled a rejection of Ukraine’s narrative.

In Crimea, they met with local authorities and agreed to expand cooperation in trade, energy, mining, transport, and education. For them it was direct reciprocity. Ukraine had supported fighters in their region, and now they were making moves in Crimea. It was a declaration of alignment with Moscow and a message that they view Ukraine as a destabilizer.

Across much of the Global South, this perception resonates. Leaders frustrated with Western demands increasingly view Moscow as a more flexible partner, willing to provide security and trade without lectures about democracy. At the same time, they see how the West used Ukraine as a pawn to try to overthrow the Russian government, and so they may now look at their own neighbors with suspicion. Especially if those neighbors are Western‑aligned or if they, themselves are drifting away from the West in ways that anger Washington and Brussels. Ukraine’s attempt to build its own African influence is just the familiar language of interference, the old colonial dynamic in new colors.

the irony of a proxy

Ukraine was never primarily destabilized by Russia. It was the West that deliberately destabilized Ukraine, using it as a pawn against Moscow and ignoring Russia’s long‑standing sensitivity about its security. Rather than resisting this role, Kyiv went along with it, embedding itself deeper into NATO’s confrontations. By participating in destabilization abroad, Ukraine secures its own war chest at home.

This strategy may keep the arms pipeline open in the short term (and fill Zelenskyy’s pockets). But it alienates the Global South, strengthens Russia’s influence in Africa and across the world, and ensures Ukraine either remains permanently dependent on Western patrons or its bound to be a future Russian region eventually.

The reality is blunt. Ukraine under Zelenskyy is one of the top exporters of instability… wherever NATO needs it.

In plain terms, Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear power, and Saudi Arabia, guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, were making their alliance official.

why now?

The timing of the pact was no accident. It a week after Israel bombed Doha, the Qatari capital, in an attempt to kill Hamas political leaders. For Saudi officials, that strike was a blunt warning that Israel could hit Arab capitals with impunity.

Around the same time, Egyptian intelligence reportedly foiled an Israeli plan to assassinate Hamas figures in Cairo, and Turkey began voicing concern over direct Israeli threats. Coupled with Israeli ministers and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk of a “Greater Israel” which the final version stretches into Arabia, Riyadh was reminded of just how vulnerable it is.

Iran is not the primary target here. Since the 2023 détente, Tehran and Riyadh have reopened embassies and managed their rivalry. Nor is India the driving force. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine remains India-focused, but Islamabad probably doesn’t expect Riyadh to fight its wars with New Delhi. Saudi support would likely be financial, weapons and diplomatic, not troops.

The subtext is Israel. Riyadh wanted to show it is not defenseless. Pakistani officials hinted that Saudi Arabia could be covered by Islamabad’s nuclear deterrent if its survival were threatened. That alone alters Israel’s calculations.

the marriage of money and muscle

This pact is the codification of a decades-old bargain. Saudi Arabia was one of the first to recognize Pakistan after independence in 1947. Since then, Pakistani troops have been deployed to the Kingdom multiple times. In the 1980s and 90s, as many as 15,000-20,000 Pakistani troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, guarding holy sites and manning sensitive borders. Pakistan has trained thousands of Saudi officers since the late 1960s, building a military-to-military relationship that shaped Riyadh’s armed forces.

In return, Saudi Arabia provided oil on deferred payments, cash bailouts, and political cover when Pakistan’s fragile economy wobbled. Crucially, during the 1970s and 80s, Riyadh also bankrolled parts of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, providing loans and oil subsidies that freed Islamabad’s resources to push forward its bomb project. This history is why so many people today assume Saudi Arabia could call in the favor if it ever wanted a nuclear guarantee.

This recent agreement simply put into writing what was already practiced: Pakistan provides the manpower, training, and nuclear shadow. Saudi Arabia provides money and oil.

For Pakistan, the rewards are immediate. Riyadh is already slated to be its largest external financier in the 2025–2026 fiscal year, with over $6 billion in loans and deposits. For Saudi Arabia, the benefit is also very clear as this is a deterrent that Washington can’t veto. U.S. bases and weapons come with political conditions. Pakistani soldiers and ambiguous nuclear cover don’t.

will pakistan base nukes in saudi arabia?

Speculation abounds. Journalist Bob Woodward even quoted Mohammed bin Salman as saying he didn’t need uranium because “I will just buy one from Pakistan.” But the reality is murkier. The agreement, as published, makes no mention of nuclear weapons. Pakistani officials insist their arsenal is India-centric. Riyadh continues to claim it only wants civil nuclear energy, even as it insists on enrichment rights.

Stationing warheads on Saudi soil would be explosive, Legally, politically, and militarily. It would invite sanctions, destabilize Pakistan’s economy, and risk Israeli or Indian preemptive action. The likelier scenario is strategic ambiguity, which means Pakistani troops in the Kingdom, higher readiness levels, and hints of nuclear protection without physical deployment.

In terms of reach, Pakistan’s longer-range missiles (such as the Shaheen-III) are designed to cover the Middle East, meaning Israel is within theoretical range, even if Islamabad has never declared it a target.

pakistan’s chance at the global stage

This agreement also raises a larger question, can Pakistan turn Saudi financing into genuine global clout? On paper, yes. It fields one of the world’s largest militaries, a nuclear arsenal, and a pivotal location. Pakistan is also a major buyer of Chinese weapons. A fact that could now draw Saudi Arabia more firmly into Beijing’s orbit. With China already importing large volumes of Saudi oil, the pact effectively ties the Persian Gulf to western China by land, under the protection of a mutual defense commitment. By embedding itself in Gulf security, Islamabad stretches its influence far beyond South Asia.

Other Muslim states are watching. This pact could become a template for similar deals with Qatar or the UAE. Pakistani officials have already floated the idea of broader Arab-Islamic defense cooperation. The symbolism matters because for Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and even Turkey (with whom Pakistan also has a defense cooperation pact), Pakistan now looks like the natural military partner in a Muslim world facing Israeli aggression and waning U.S. credibility. Even African states with Gulf ties, such as Egypt, Sudan or Somalia, may see value in Pakistani training if Riyadh bankrolls it.

But there are limits. Without economic reform, Pakistan risks becoming a subcontractor, basically Riyadh’s mercenary, not a global pole. Military might alone cannot substitute for a resilient economy.

pakistan’s paradox

the contradictions in Pakistan are glaring. It fields nuclear weapons and one of the world’s largest armies, yet still depends on IMF bailouts. For most citizens, daily life is defined by inflation, blackouts, and unemployment rather than the pride of deterrence.

The army dominates politics. They sideline elected governments and enriching itself while ordinary people bear the costs. That gap fuels resentment (and resentment can be weaponized. Mossad, infiltrated Iran by exploiting disaffected Iranians and disaffected Afghan refugees). For many Pakistanis, the nuclear arsenal feels distant, while corruption, nepotism, weak institutions, and decaying infrastructure are immediate realities.

Then there is India, which is bigger, richer, and ambitious. Its economy is ten times larger and its population six times greater. India continues to modernize its forces, giving it some long-term advantages (overall ranked 4th in the world). Still, Pakistan has shown it can punch above its weight. During the brief conflict back in May, Islamabad claimed it downed several Indian jets, including advanced models, while New Delhi countered with its own claims of Pakistani losses. The skirmishes showed Pakistan’s ability to score tactical wins, even if India’s larger resources tip the balance in the long run.

Both nations are however deeply divided and under economic strain. That alone makes a full-scale war unlikely. Oil ties add another layer of caution because Saudi Arabia provides about one-fifth of India’s crude imports, and the wider Gulf remains a vital supplier. Disrupting those flows is in neither side’s interest. Still, the same pressures can create conditions ripe for conflict and if war did erupt, both countries would emerge weaker.

Israel, for decades has insisted that no Muslim state should be allowed to develop nuclear arms, and it watched Pakistan’s program warily from the start, reportedly even weighing strikes in the 1980s. Today, its tight partnership with India, which is built on intelligence sharing, arms sales, and joint military drills, leaves Pakistan feeling cornered. The very arsenal that guarantees Islamabad’s survival also makes it a marked target.

Pakistan’s uniqueness cuts both ways. As the only Muslim-majority nuclear power, it is a source of pride across the Islamic world but also a magnet for pressure from the West, India, and Israel. Its survival depends on managing this paradox: strong enough to deter, yet fragile enough to be destabilized.

the bottom line is that…

this pact is a signal to Israel, that Riyadh has cover. It is a reminder that Gulf states are losing faith in the U.S. umbrella and are reaching for alternatives. This is also a continuation of what Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have always been to each other: oil for soldiers, money for nukes, bailouts for brigades.

Whether this marks Pakistan’s emergence as a genuine global player depends on what comes next. If it uses Saudi money to stabilize its economy and reform its politics and economy, it could step onto the world stage as more than a spoiler. If not, it risks remaining what it has long been, indispensable but dependent, powerful but precarious. A state defined by the paradox of strength without stability.

a stockpile in limbo

The supplies in question, which are contraceptive implants and IUDs, were purchased by USAID under the Biden administration, intended largely for distribution in sub-Saharan Africa. But after Donald Trump returned to power in 2025, USAID was dismantled, the Mexico City Policy (the “global gag rule”) was reinstated, and thousands of ongoing contracts were canceled. Suddenly, millions of contraceptives sat in warehouses because they were deemed politically unacceptable.

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot publicly urged the U.S. to donate the stockpile instead of incinerating it, warning that some of the supplies were deteriorating in poor storage conditions. Flemish officials confirmed that much of the stockpile was housed in a warehouse in Antwerp, though they insisted no destruction could occur without regional approval. Belgium positioned itself as the defender of African women’s rights. But the outcry raised uncomfortable questions, why does Europe care so deeply about Africa’s birth control?

the population question

Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent, projected to double its population by 2050, reaching over 2.5 billion people. Western think tanks, demographers, and policymakers have long viewed this growth as both a challenge and a threat, raising fears of mass migration, instability, and “strain” on global resources.

Foreign aid programs around family planning have been running for decades. On the surface, they are about helping women, by reducing deaths in childbirth, avoiding unwanted pregnancies, and easing the pressure of poverty on families. But I think the real goal is about keeping Africa’s population growth in check. Instead of backing projects that build industries or transform economies, Western aid often ends up focusing on lowering birth rates instead of building real economic strength. That doesn’t feel like real help, it feels more like outside interference.

The suspicion isn’t paranoia; it has roots in history. In the 1970s, India’s government, with encouragement and financial backing from agencies like USAID and the World Bank, launched a family planning drive that veered into coercion. Poor men and women were sterilized in huge numbers, often without real consent, and the scandal left scars that are still remembered. Two decades later in Peru, President Alberto Fujimori presided over another dark chapter. Indigenous women in rural areas were subjected to sterilization campaigns that international donors quietly supported in the name of modernizing health care. In Africa, throughout the 1960s and 1980s, development loans and food aid were frequently tied to population policies. Donor governments leaned on African states to introduce aggressive family planning programs, reinforcing the idea that the continent’s greatest problem was the number of babies being born, not the structures of global inequality.

Against this history, Belgium’s sudden passion for saving contraceptives reads less like altruism than a continuation of an older mindset. What is framed as humanitarian concern is in practice another way of exerting control over something.

trump’s usaid dismantling

Trump’s move to shutter USAID was part of a wholesale restructuring of foreign aid. Entire health programs like HIV prevention, malaria treatment, food assistance, were drastically reduced or eliminated. A new body, DOGE, led the dismantling of USAID, and the remaining programs were shifted into the State Department. Reviving the global gag rule ensured that no U.S. money could flow to organizations that even hinted at support for abortion rights. The result was a sharp divide, some praised the move as stopping American taxpayers from bankrolling social engineering overseas, while others saw it as a disaster that erased years of progress, either way it exposed how dependent many countries had become on a donor they could never truly control. The case of Eswatini, where U.S. aid cuts forced the closure of the Miracle Campus and revealed the monarchy’s deliberate refusal to build public institutions, shows both sides of the dilemma. Aid had saved lives, but it also allowed local elites to avoid responsibility. When it vanished, the system collapsed, exposing the politics of dependence.

Although most outlets painted Trump’s policy as reckless, You can interpret it another way, one that resonates with long‑standing critiques of Western aid in Africa. Cutting off the flow of foreign‑funded contraceptives, vaccines, food aid, and development projects could force African governments to build their own health systems, food and education networks, and welfare structures instead of relying on charity (or at least find better partners). The episode also exposes a skewed set of priorities, there always seems to be money for tightly defined donor projects, but rarely for infrastructure, industrialization, or fair trade that would empower Africans on their own terms. In ending these programs, intentionally or not, Trump disrupted decades of demographic and economic engineering dressed up as philanthropy.

the bigger picture

Belgium’s outspoken defense of the contraceptive stockpile is loaded with irony. As the former colonizer of the Congo, Belgium presided over one of history’s most brutal regimes. They were extracting resources, mutilating workers, and devastating entire communities. Now, Belgium positions itself as a humanitarian champion of African women’s rights. The audacity of these people! the same state that once exploited African bodies now insists on controlling African reproduction in the name of compassion.

This clash isn’t really about $10 million worth of contraceptives. It’s about who decides Africa’s future. Western governments use aid to manage migration, maintain influence, and promote their values. Humanitarian organizations insist aid is life‑saving and morally essential. I counter that aid undermines sovereignty, fosters dependency, and imports foreign agendas. Trump’s dismantling of USAID, while chaotic and ideologically driven, lays bare these contradictions. If aid is so tied to control, maybe Africa is better off without it.

The audacity of Belgium lies not only in urging Washington about contraceptives, but in the deeper assumption that Africa’s population is theirs to manage. Whether through colonial rule or contraceptive stockpiles, its the same logic: Africa is a problem to be solved, not a continent with agency and sovereignty.

For once, the Trump administration’s wrecking ball may have revealed a hard truth, sometimes breaking the aid machine is the first step toward letting people chart their own path.

Western think tanks are now helping to push Somaliland’s case, publishing essays that linked it to Red Sea trade and U.S. strategy. Israeli media outlets like JNS and the Jerusalem Post repeated the message, presenting Somaliland as a natural partner on the Bab al‑Mandab. In the Gulf, Emirati outlets such as The National praised DP World’s Berbera port deal as proof that investment could reshape the region, whether local people agreed or not. Even American politicians, like Senator Ted Cruz, began to describe Somaliland as a partner in U.S. counterterrorism and Red Sea strategy, pointing to Berbera’s port as the prize. The subtext was always less about democracy than about geopolitics because recognition of Somaliland would give the U.S., Israel, and the UAE stronger positions along the Red Sea, supporting their wider campaigns against Houthi disruptions in nearby waters and also all the while weakening the influence of Turkey and Qatar in Mogadishu.

gobolka waqooyi bari ee soomaaliya

On August 30, in Laascaanood, Abdikadir Ahmed Aw-Cali, known as Firdhiye, was elected the first president of the Northeastern State of Somalia.

His election marked the institutionalization of the SSC-Khaatumo movement, which had already taken shape in 2023 when local clan militias drove Somaliland forces out of Laascaanood after months of fighting. The uprising was led primarily by Dhulbahante clans, long resentful of what they saw as marginalization under Hargeisa’s rule. Whereas Somalia operates under a federal system that distributes power among member states, Somaliland remains a centralized project largely controlled by Isaaq elites in Hargeisa. By reorganizing themselves as a federal state aligned with Mogadishu, and building their own local governance structures in Laascaanood and surrounding areas, these groups stripped Somaliland of one of its central claims, that it still held effective control over the borders inherited from the British colonial protectorate.

The election itself was contentious, to say the least. Regional lawmakers chosen by clan elders voted after days of heavy lobbying, cash handouts, and clear federal involvement. Local media described widespread vote‑buying, with reports of candidates offering thousands of dollars per MP and claims that Mogadishu sent in funds to back Firdhiye.

The election system followed Somalia’s usual indirect model, where elders select MPs who then elect leaders. This was different from Somaliland’s direct popular votes for president and parliament, though even there, the process is flawed, with repeated delays, disputes, clan dominance, and only three state‑approved parties allowed to compete.

Firdhiye emerged as Mogadishu’s preferred choice, backed by allies eager to weaken both Puntland and Somaliland (for Puntland, the threat comes from the Northeastern State’s claim over parts of Sanaag that Puntland already administers. This not only weakens Garowe’s political weight but has also led to troop deployments in eastern Sanaag, highlighting how directly the new state challenges Puntland’s authority). For President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who may run again in 2026, the Northeastern State helps shift parliamentary seats away from Puntland and extend his influence in the north. For people in the now Northeastern State, the outcome brought formal representation in Somalia’s federal system and a clear rejection of Hargeisa’s authority.

This turn of events strikes at the heart of Somaliland’s independence claim. For years, Hargeisa argued that its strength came from stability and clear colonial‑era borders. Somaliland’s leaders have denounced the Northeastern State as illegal interference, insisting that Sool and Sanaag are still part of their territory and accusing Mogadishu of creating division. It still runs parts of western Sool and sections of Sanaag, including Erigavo, but the east has shifted to the Northeastern State with Mogadishu’s backing. Laascaanood, the new state’s capital, is firmly against Hargeisa’s rule. Under international law, a territory cannot credibly seek independence unless it exercises what jurists call "effective control", the ability to administer, police, and govern all the land it claims. By losing authority in parts of its territory, Somaliland’s case is weakened. Campaigns in Washington, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi may still push for recognition, but the case now depends less on legal principles than on geopolitics. For the U.S. and UAE, Berbera’s port and a possible Red Sea air base count more than Somaliland’s shaky claim to intact borders.

If Somaliland were recognized as independent by foreign powers, the Northeastern State would not disappear. Instead, it would stand as clear evidence that Somaliland’s borders are disputed and that its authority is resisted on the ground. Recognition would not settle the issue but open a new conflict. Hargeisa would be strengthened by diplomatic support, Mogadishu would harden its backing for Firdhiye, and outside powers would line up on opposite sides. Rather than stability, recognition would likely fuel escalation, with the UAE, Israel, and the United States backing Somaliland, while Turkey, Qatar, and Somalia rally behind the Northeastern State.

All of the local actors in this conflict are ethnically Somali, sharing the same language, religion, and identity. This makes Somaliland’s independence claim difficult to justify under international law, which requires effective control and usually a clear basis such as ethnic, cultural, or historic separation. Unlike South Sudan or Eritrea, which seceded from states with very different peoples, Somaliland rests its claim on colonial borders rather than distinct identity. If a region of Somalis can secede from a Somali state, it risks setting a precedent that could embolden separatist groups worldwide, destabilizing international norms. The African Union in particular has long upheld colonial borders as a safeguard against secessionist wars, and breaking that principle would risk fresh conflicts, redrawn borders by force, and deeper foreign interference in fragile regions.

Firdhiye’s election shows just how fragile Somaliland’s independence bid has become. Once hailed as a rare success story in the Horn, it now finds whole regions rejecting Hargeisa’s authority. The more it leans on foreign patrons, the less it looks like a state in its own right and the more it appears as a pawn in larger power games.

Recognition in this region has never been about democracy or self‑determination. Eritrea was recognized only after three decades of war, when it held all its territory and capped it with a UN‑run referendum, and crucially it was seceding from Ethiopia, a state made up of different peoples. South Sudan was recognized only through a political bargain to end decades of war, breaking away from a fundamentally different ethnic and religious majority and even then it collapsed soon after. Somaliland has achieved neither a decisive military victory nor an internationally brokered settlement. Firdhiye’s election makes that absence impossible to ignore. Without full control over its claimed territory, Somaliland’s case rests solely on what it can offer foreign powers.