By Zuri Omer
On 26 December 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel had recognised the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state, the first UN member ever to do so. The announcement was framed in the language of self-determination. Somaliland, Netanyahu said, was “a stable democracy for almost 35 years.” The declaration was signed, in his words, “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.” Somaliland’s president pledged his country would join those Accords, aligning a small, impoverished territory on the Horn of Africa with Washington’s regional normalisation framework.
Nine weeks later, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Khamenei and triggering a full-scale regional war.
To understand what happened in December, it is necessary to understand what had already been planned in Washington, and what control of the Red Sea means for US imperialism in the current period.
Djibouti, a country of barely a million people, hosts the most strategically concentrated patch of military infrastructure on earth. France, the US, China, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and the UK all maintain a military presence there. Camp Lemonnier, AFRICOM’s Horn of Africa headquarters, sits six miles from China’s first overseas military base, the People’s Liberation Army Navy Support Facility, completed in 2017.
Djibouti has managed competing great power interests by maintaining strict neutrality. It hosts foreign bases for counterterrorism and anti-piracy operations and does not permit them to be used for operations against states or quasi-state actors. Neutrality is the basis on which a small, surrounded country keeps itself viable.
That position became a problem for Washington when Ansar Allah, the Yemeni movement commonly referred to in Western media as the Houthis, began targeting Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea in late 2023 in solidarity with Gaza. The US wanted to use Camp Lemonnier to strike back. Djibouti refused. US foreign policy figures immediately accused Djibouti of being pro-Chinese and an unreliable partner. The American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin claimed China was directly “interfering with US operations” at the base.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page blueprint for Trump’s second term, whose authors now hold senior positions in the administration, named Djibouti explicitly (the only African country to be named in the document). It warned of America’s “deteriorating position” there and recommended recognition of Somaliland as “a hedge against the US’s deteriorating position in Djibouti.”
By March 2025, Trump administration representatives were in direct talks with Somaliland officials about establishing a US military base near Berbera, Somaliland’s main port on the Gulf of Aden, in exchange for a form of recognition. Israel formalised the arrangement in December.
The Abraham Accords are described in Western media as a peace process, a framework for normalisation between Israel and Arab states. What they have produced in practice is a military coordination network linking Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco into a US-led security structure spanning the Middle East and Africa. Somaliland is the latest addition to that structure. The UAE signed a $442 million deal in 2016 to build a port in Berbera. A year later, the port was expanded to include a naval and air base, used since 2018 for launching Emirati strikes inside Yemen. Abu Dhabi is currently building a $3 billion railway from Berbera to Aysha in Ethiopia, positioning Berbera as an alternative trade hub to Djibouti, where China Merchants Group holds a significant stake in the port authority and operates the Doraleh Multipurpose Port. When the joint Arab-Islamic statement condemning Israel’s Somaliland recognition was circulated, the UAE refused to sign it.
Israel had already established a joint military-intelligence base with the UAE on Abd al-Kuri island in the Socotra archipelago in the Gulf of Aden, following the deterioration of relations with Eritrea from 2020 and the freezing of Sudan’s normalisation process after civil war broke out in 2023. Somaliland fills the remaining gap, giving Israel a presence at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden pointed directly at Yemen. This is US strategy, sub-contracted to Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. Netanyahu explicitly framed the move as being “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” publicly acknowledging it as part of a US-designed framework.
The Red Sea connects the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal, carrying roughly 15% of global trade. At its southern end sits the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, bordered on the Yemeni side by Ansar Allah-controlled territory and on the African side by Djibouti and Eritrea. At the mouth of the Persian Gulf sits the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes, between Iran and Oman. From late 2023, Ansar Allah targeted Israeli-linked shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb in response to the genocide in Gaza, severely disrupting the route and forcing major shipping companies to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope. They suspended operations in November 2025 following the Gaza ceasefire. On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel bombed Iran, assassinating Supreme Leader Khamenei and launching a sustained air campaign across 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial traffic there collapsed by more than 90%. At the time of writing, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed due to the US. The Bab el-Mandeb remains open but is under active threat, with major shipping companies avoiding it and Iranian-aligned forces signalling its closure as a live option. Berbera sits 260 kilometres from Ansar Allah-controlled coastline, on elevated terrain above the Gulf of Aden. Bloomberg reported in March 2026 that Israeli security officials had visited the Somaliland coast to survey sites for a military base or installation. Somaliland’s minister of the presidency confirmed that a “strategic security relationship” is being developed. The strategic purpose of a base at Berbera is control of the Bab el-Mandeb, directed against Ansar Allah and against Iran.
Western coverage of Somaliland has rested on a particular claim: that Somaliland is a functioning democracy that held elections, built institutions, and maintained stability for over 30 years while the rest of Somalia collapsed. This framing is used to present recognition as a principled act rather than a strategic one. The claim was always partial. Since 2023 it has been false.
In late 2022, following a series of assassinations of local figures in Las Anod, the capital of the Sool region in Somaliland’s east, residents staged mass protests. Somaliland security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing and injuring dozens of civilians. An armed uprising followed. By mid-2023, the SSC-Khatumo movement, representing the Dhulbahante clan who had never accepted Hargeisa’s authority, had expelled Somaliland’s administration from the entire eastern region. Hundreds were killed, thousands wounded, and over 200,000 people displaced. In April 2025, the Somali federal government formally recognised SSC-Khatumo as its sixth Federal Member State. In July 2025, delegates in Las Anod reconstituted the territory as the North Eastern State of Somalia. Somaliland now controls roughly 45% of the territory it claims as former British Somaliland.
Israel has therefore recognised a state within borders it does not control. Hargeisa’s government cannot deliver on any agreement covering Las Anod, Sool, or Sanaag because it has no authority there. The recognition was about Berbera and the coastline facing Yemen, both of which Hargeisa does control. Somaliland’s president Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, who signed the recognition deal after winning his election in November 2024, has staked his presidency on securing the international recognition needed to unlock loans, aid, and investment that decades of diplomatic isolation have blocked. A deeply impoverished population is being asked to host a military installation for a state conducting genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, that is in an active regional war, in exchange for the possibility of development finance. This transaction illustrates the structure of dependent sovereignty under imperialism with unusual clarity.
The regional response to the recognition has been broad. Somalia’s government denounced it as “an unlawful step” and “a deliberate attack on its sovereignty.” Egypt, Turkey, Djibouti, and Somalia coordinated their response immediately, with their foreign ministers issuing a joint statement rejecting the recognition, warning against unilateral steps that could undermine stability or create what they called ‘parallel entities’ to Somalia’s state institutions. The African Union Peace and Security Council held an emergency ministerial session on 6 January 2026, strongly condemning the recognition, calling for its immediate revocation, and declaring it null and void under international law In April 2026, Somalia’s ambassador to the African Union announced a ban on Israeli-linked vessels passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, explicitly citing the Somaliland recognition. The Somali government subsequently denied that a formal ban had been enacted, but the episode reflects the pressure on Mogadishu to respond to what is being treated across the region as an act of aggression
Turkey’s opposition is material, not rhetorical. Ankara has provided over $1 billion in aid and development assistance to Somalia since 2011, operates its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, and holds hydrocarbon exploration and drilling rights in Somali waters under a 2024 agreement. A US-Israeli foothold in Somaliland directly threatens that position. The Somaliland move has also created a fracture within the Western alliance itself, with a NATO member state in direct opposition to US-Israeli policy in the region. China supports Somali unity and views the Abraham Accords framework as a US instrument for consolidating regional dominance. The Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia axis has hardened further since the recognition. Sudan’s al-Burhan government has aligned with it. Lebanese Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, who cannot be described as an anti-imperialist, stated publicly that an Arab state with close ties to Israel — widely understood to mean the UAE — is working to encircle Saudi Arabia through Hadhramaut, destabilise Sudan, and press toward Egypt’s southern borders.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland was not a unilateral initiative or a diplomatic improvisation. It was the execution of a plan openly stated in US policy documents, actively negotiated between Washington and Hargeisa for months, and timed to precede a war that Washington and Tel Aviv were already preparing to launch against Iran. The Abraham Accords are a military and intelligence network being constructed across the Middle East and into Africa. They serve US imperialism’s drive to maintain hegemony in the face of China’s growing economic presence, to contain Iran’s regional alliances, and to establish control of the maritime corridors through which global trade and energy supplies pass.
The recognition of Somaliland was a military act. The base being planned at Berbera is part of an active war. The peoples of the Horn of Africa are being drawn into a conflict whose objectives have nothing to do with their interests.
Image: Somaliland; Pix4free.org; Author: Nick Youngson; Original Image: https://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/highway-signs/s/somaliland.html; Licensed under Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0; Image cropped