18 Feb The UK’s Role in the Horn of Africa

Choosing the right priorities in foreign policy is relentlessly challenging, even for politicians and diplomats. It is always a matter of some luck and faith, as well as insight and expertise. The risk of failure is high: United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will not easily live down declaring in 2023, eight days before the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades”.

Nevertheless, these choices have to be made. Foreign policy is carried out with finite resources, and even the largest diplomatic service can only focus on so many issues at one time.

This burden of choice, the responsibility of making the right call, is acutely true of the United Kingdom now. Having recently marked the fifth anniversary of its formal withdrawal from the European Union, it has still, in fulfilment of at least half of Dean Acheson’s waspish condescension, not yet found its role in the world. The Prime Minister is currently balancing links with the new Trump administration in Washington and his cherished “reset” of relations with Europe. Nevertheless, the UK should spare some capacity to focus on the Horn of Africa.

The disruption to maritime commerce which began in October 2023 when Houthi militants in Yemen began attacking merchant ships passing through the Bab-el-Mandeb straits into the Red Sea was a reminder of something we should not have forgotten. A safe and reliable trade route from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean is essential for global prosperity.

Taken together, the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal represent one of four major international choke points for trade, along with the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca.

A Brief History

European nations are already involved in the security and stability of the region. Since 2008, Operation Atalanta has seen the EU deploy a standing task force to the waters round the Horn of Africa, principally to defend against Somali piracy.

Western involvement goes back further than that, to the two United Nations missions in Somalia (UNOSOM I in 1992-93 and UNOSOM II in 1993-95) which attempted to create political stability during the Somali Civil War. The lack of success has left Somalia a haven for piracy and terrorism, as political vacuums often are. It is a deeply dysfunctional state, rated as a “closed autocracy” by the V-Dem Institute; it has a low and fragile GDP, more than half the population lives in poverty and there are significant human rights violations. These weaknesses have allowed the expansion of Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qa’eda, al-Shabaab and Islamic State, as well as financially motivated pirates.

The regional situation was made more volatile still in 2014 with the outbreak of civil war in Yemen, across the Red Sea, which led to the intervention of Saudi Arabia in support of the President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. He was deposed by the Houthi movement who brought the security of the Horn of Africa back to prominence in 2023.

A more recent geopolitical development has been the increase in Chinese influence in the region. In 2017, the People’s Liberation Army Navy opened its first overseas facility in Djibouti on the Red Sea coast, believed to be large enough to accommodate aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. In the immediate area, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen are all members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

When the Houthi began to threaten maritime commerce in the region in 2023, the United States acted swiftly to establish Operation Prosperity Guardian to provide protection. The UK was quick to make a contribution, deploying the guided missile destroyer HMS Diamond. It is deeply regrettable that other European nations, especially France, Italy and Spain, were more stinting and qualified in their support. While the threat has been mitigated, however, there will be no significant progress towards security and prosperity without a coordinated regional solution.

The Case for UK Leadership

As a permanent member of the Security Council, the UK is currently the United Nations “penholder” for Somalia, responsible for drafting and introducing relevant resolutions. We therefore have a degree of initiative and authority. We also have a special envoy for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, currently Alison Blackburne, whose role is to lead the UK’s response to events in the region.

There is also a degree of imperial legacy. The northern part of modern-day Somalia was a British protectorate from 1884 to 1960 as British Somaliland, while across the Red Sea, the Yemeni port of Aden and the surrounding area were under British control until 1963. That legacy, as in any region which was formerly part of the Empire, is mixed, but it gives the UK continuity of presence and some familiarity. The Foreign Office provided counter-terrorism training to Yemen after 9/11; the UK signed a Joint Defence Agreement with Oman in 2019; and a British Office opened in Hargeisa in 2012, the de facto government of Somaliland regarding good relations with the former colonial power as providing potential leverage.

Where to Next?

In 1991, the northern part of Somalia declared independence as the Republic of Somaliland, which regards itself as the legitimate successor to the former British Somaliland Protectorate, united with the former Italian Somaliland to create Somalia. However, no country has yet recognised Somaliland’s independence, and Western policy in the region is predicated on the preservation of the unitary state of Somalia.

This stance should be revisited. The government of Somaliland has consistently looked to the UK as a potential ally and patron, and has advocates in Parliament (in 2023 former defence secretary Sir Gavin Williamson introduced the Republic of Somaliland (Recognition) Bill). Somaliland faces enormous challenges, many of them rooted in its lack of international recognition, but, as I argued a year ago in The Hill, it has a reasonably free and fair democratic system and some faint signs of enterprise and growth. International recognition would help Somaliland gain access to global markets and trading networks, as well as being a step towards eligibility for loans and assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It is certainly a better than Somalia.

British recognition of Somaliland’s independence might also be valuable pour encourager les autres: Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland last January which is still in place, though some elements of the agreement have been set aside after protests by Somalia; there are economic links between Somaliland and the UAE, including the development of the port at Berbera by Dubai-based DP World; and Taiwan and Kenya also have official representation in Hargeisa.

Furthermore, if the West is serious about checking the expansion of Chinese influence, it must devote more attention to the Horn of Africa. Last June, a regional peace conference was held in Beijing, aiming “to promote peace, cooperation, and progress, helping transform the Horn of Africa into a corner of peace, cooperation, and prosperity”. The region is becoming a zero-sum geopolitical game: quite simply, if the West does not offer support, development and partnership, China will.

US President Donald Trump’s apparent, if partial, scepticism towards American sponsorship of international development may leave a hegemonic vacuum. The United Kingdom cannot by itself fill that void, but if the government is looking for strategically critical areas in which some influence can be exercised, the Horn of Africa must be a strong candidate. The UK’s UN penholder status, its close and long-standing relationship with Saudi Arabia, one of the dominant players in the Middle East, and its potential partnership with Somaliland could be building blocks for a wider scheme to bring the essential ingredients: security, stability and prosperity. If no action is taken, the likely result is that the region, with its vital control of commerce, falls under China’s influence. It is hard to see how that would be in the UK’s interests.

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