How Djibouti emerged as a commercial and strategic crossroads of the world

Special How Djibouti emerged as a commercial and strategic crossroads of the world
Djibouti’s location, on the Bab Al-Mandab strait and at the intersection of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, has proved a blessing in countless ways. (AFP)
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Updated 16 September 2022

How Djibouti emerged as a commercial and strategic crossroads of the world

How Djibouti emerged as a commercial and strategic crossroads of the world
  • Tiny African nation’s Red Sea ports service trans-shipments between Europe, the Middle East and Asia
  • Location and relative stability enabling Djibouti to become the linchpin of global maritime commerce

RIYADH: If geography is destiny, then all small countries with much bigger neighbors perforce have to learn to capitalize on the advantages while handling the challenges with tact and finesse.

Few countries come close to Djibouti, a tiny African nation squeezed between Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, in pulling off this feat.

Djibouti’s location, on the Bab Al-Mandab strait and at the intersection of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, has proved a blessing in countless ways. Its ports serve as the main gateway for trade for landlocked Ethiopia, handling 95 percent of the country’s trade. As a gateway to the Suez Canal, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, Djibouti’s ports also service trans-shipments between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Relative political stability and strategic location have also made Djibouti an ideal site for foreign military bases, which in turn has ensured a steady flow of government revenue and foreign assistance. The government holds longstanding ties to France, which maintains a military presence in the country, as does the US, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, and China.




Tourism is also one of the growing economic sectors of Djibouti and is an industry that generates between 53,000 and 73,000 arrivals per year. (Shutterstock)

Radical Islam, which has caused havoc in neighboring Somalia among other African countries, has not been able to make inroads into Djibouti, a predominantly Muslim country with a smattering of other faiths.

During a visit in March, Ferid Belhaj, the World Bank’s vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, reaffirmed the bank’s commitment to Djibouti’s “resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19 and its efforts to accelerate more and better investments in people.”


INTERVIEW

Djibouti president stresses importance of preserving peace in ‘sensitive’ Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region


According to the African Development Bank Group’s “Djibouti Economic Outlook” report, the economy began to recover in 2021 with gross domestic product growth of 3.9 percent, up from 1.2 percent in 2020. The pickup was supported by a revitalized services sector, which generates about three-fourths of GDP, port activities in particular.




Djibouti’s ports also service trans-shipments between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. (AFP)

The group report said: “The outlook is positive. Average GDP growth over 2022 to 23 is forecast to reach 4.3 percent and remain supported by port and investment activities.”

In recent decades, Djibouti has invested heavily in building new ports and modernizing existing infrastructure. Work is ongoing on new facilities including a liquefied natural gas terminal, a business zone, ship repair yards, a crude oil terminal, an international airport, and railway lines connecting Tadjourah, Mekele, and the capital Addis Ababa with the Port of Djibouti.

Every day, an estimated 2,500 ships pass through and call through the port, with hopes pinned on it to turn Djibouti into the linchpin of global maritime commerce. As recently as Tuesday, a UN-chartered ship loaded with thousands of tons of Ukrainian wheat arrived in Djibouti, destined for some of the 22 million people at risk of starvation in the Horn of Africa.

Tourism is also one of the growing economic sectors of Djibouti and is an industry that generates between 53,000 and 73,000 arrivals per year. Besides historical sites, a national park, beaches, and mountain ranges, the country’s attractions include rock-art sites in Abourma, islands and beaches in the Gulf of Tadjoura and the Bab Al-Mandab, scuba diving, fishing, trekking, and hiking.

The right to own property is respected in Djibouti and the government has reorganized the labor unions. There are an estimated 15,000 foreigners residing in the country.

The indigenous population is divided between the majority Somalis (predominantly of the Issa tribe, with minority Isaaq and Gadabuursi representation) and the Afars (also known as the Danakils).

Djibouti is a member state of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League. It strongly supports mediation efforts in the war in Ethiopia and promotes vaccination against COVID-19.

The history of Djibouti, recorded in the poetry and songs of its nomadic peoples, goes back thousands of years to a time when Djiboutians traded hides and skins for the perfumes and spices of ancient Egypt, India, and China. Through close contacts with the Arabian Peninsula for more than 1,000 years, the Somali and Afar tribes in the region became the first on the African continent to adopt Islam.

Trader and diplomat Rochet d’Hericourt’s exploration into Shoa (1839 to 1842) marked the beginning of French interest in the African shores of the Red Sea, an interest that grew in step with increased British activity in Egypt and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In 1884 and 1885, France expanded its protectorate to include the shores of the Gulf of Tadjoura and Somaliland.

The administrative capital was moved from Obock to Djibouti in 1896. Djibouti attracted trade caravans crossing East Africa, as well as Somali settlers from the south. The Franco-Ethiopian railway, linking Djibouti to the heart of Ethiopia, was begun in 1897 and reached Addis Ababa in June 1917, further facilitating the increase of trade.




Diplomat Rochet d’Hericourt’s exploration into Shoa (1839 to 1842) marked the beginning of French interest in the African shores of the Red Sea. (AFP)

In 1957, the colony was reorganized by the French government to give the people considerable self-government. The next year, in a constitutional referendum, French Somaliland opted to join the French community as an overseas territory.

In March 1967, in a referendum conducted by the French government, 60 percent chose to continue the territory’s association with France. In July of that year, a directive from Paris formally changed the name of the region to the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

Djiboutians voted for independence in a May 1977 referendum, and the Republic of Djibouti was established on June 27, 1977. Hassan Gouled Aptidon became the country’s first president and was re-elected multiple times until 1999, when Ismail Omar Guelleh became the new president.


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18
Updated 2 min 31 sec ago

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reschedules postponed Beijing visit for June 18
  • First trip by a top US diplomat to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo in October 2018
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week, rescheduling a visit that was canceled in February after a saga over a suspected surveillance balloon, US officials said Friday.
Blinken is expected to arrive in Beijing on June 18, the first trip by a top US diplomat to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo in October 2018, US officials said on condition of anonymity.
The State Department has not officially announced his travel. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby recently said the United States would announce travel by senior officials “in the near future” without giving details.
Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in Bali in November and agreed to try to stop high tensions from soaring out of control, including by sending Blinken to Beijing.
Blinken abruptly canceled a trip scheduled in early February after the United States said it detected — and later shot down — a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the US mainland, drawing fury from US lawmakers and denials by Beijing.
But the two sides have more recently looked again to keep tensions in check including with an extensive, closed-door meeting between Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna last month.
Tensions have risen sharply between the world’s two largest economies in recent years, especially over Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims and has not ruled out seizing by force.
The two countries are also at odds over China’s increasingly assertive posture in the region and over trade and human rights.
Biden, however, has looked to limited areas for cooperation with China, such as climate change, in contrast with the more fully adversarial position adopted at the end of the administration of his predecessor Donald Trump.

4 children lost in jungle for 40 days after plane crash are found alive in Colombia

4 children lost in jungle for 40 days after plane crash are found alive in Colombia
Updated 10 June 2023

4 children lost in jungle for 40 days after plane crash are found alive in Colombia

4 children lost in jungle for 40 days after plane crash are found alive in Colombia
  • The pilot and 2 adult passengers of the Cessna single-engine propeller plane did not survive the May 1st plane crash
  • Colombia’s army employed 150 soldiers with dogs into the jungle to track the four siblings, who were missing from the crash site

BOGOTA, Colombia: Four Indigenous children who disappeared 40 days ago after surviving a small plane crash in the Amazon jungle were found alive Friday, Colombian authorities announced, ending an intense search that gripped the nation.

The children were alone when searchers found them and are now receiving medical attention, President Gustavo Petro told reporters upon his return to Bogota from Cuba, where he signed a cease-fire agreement with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebel group.
The president said the youngsters are an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”
No details were immediately released on how the youngsters managed to survive on their own for so many days.
The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.
The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.
Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt for the children and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area to track the group of four siblings, ages 13, 9, 4 and 11 months. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.
On Friday, the military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.
“The union of our efforts made this possible” Colombia’s military command wrote on its Twitter account.
During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick folliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used megaphones that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.
Rumors also emerged about the childrens’ wheareabouts and on May 18, President Petro tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.
The group of four children had been traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare, a small city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.
On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.
But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle. He said that he hoped to meet with the children Saturday.
“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”


UN peacekeeper killed, 8 seriously injured in northern Mali attack

UN peacekeeper killed, 8 seriously injured in northern Mali attack
Updated 10 June 2023

UN peacekeeper killed, 8 seriously injured in northern Mali attack

UN peacekeeper killed, 8 seriously injured in northern Mali attack
  • Mali, ruled by a military junta since a 2020 coup against an elected president, has faced destabilizing attacks by armed extremist groups since 2013

UNITED NATIONS: Attackers killed one UN peacekeeper and seriously injured eight others Friday in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region, an area where extremists continue to operate, the United Nations said.

The peacekeepers were part of a security patrol that was targeted first by an improvised explosive device and then by direct fire in the town of Ber, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The United Nations joins the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, El-Ghassim Wane, in srongly condemning the attack, Dujarric said.
Mali has been ruled by a military junta since a 2020 coup against an elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. It has faced destabilizing attacks by armed extremist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group since 2013.
In 2021, France and its European partners engaged in the fight against extremists in Mali’s north withdrew from the country after the junta brought in mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group.
The United States warned Mali’s military government in April that it would be “irresponsible” for the United Nations to continue deploying its more than 15,000 peacekeepers unless the western African nation ends restrictions, including on operating reconnaissance drones, and carries out political commitments toward peace and elections in March 2024.
The warning came as the UN Security Council considers three options proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres for the peacekeeping mission’s future: increase its size, reduce its footprint, or withdraw troops and police and turn it into a political mission. Its current mandate expires on June 30.
Dujarric said the peacekeeper killed on Friday was the ninth to die in Mali this year.
“This tragic loss is a stark reminder of the risks that peacekeepers in Mali and other places around the world face while tirelessly working to bring stability and peace to the people of Mali,” he said.


Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says

Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says
Updated 10 June 2023

Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says

Donald Trump described Pentagon plan of attack and shared classified map, indictment says
  • Indictment paints an unmistakably damning portrait of Trump’s treatment of sensitive information
  • Says Trump not only intentionally possessed classified documents but also boastfully showed them off to visitors

MIAMI: Former President Donald Trump described a Pentagon “plan of attack” and shared a classified map related to a military operation, according to a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents that was unsealed Friday and that could instantly reshape the 2024 presidential race.

The indictment paints an unmistakably damning portrait of Trump’s treatment of sensitive information, accusing him of willfully defying Justice Department demands to return documents he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, enlisting aides in his efforts to hide the records and even telling his lawyers that we wanted to defy a subpoena for the materials stored in his estate.
“I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” one of Trump’s lawyers described the former president saying, according to the indictment. He also asked if it would be better “if we just told them we don’t have anything here,” the indictment says.
Noting the “tens of thousands of members and guests” who visited the “active social club” of Mar-a-Lago between the end of Trump’s presidency in January 2021 through the August 2022 search, prosecutors argued that Trump had “nevertheless” stored the documents there, “including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, and office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”
The indictment arrives at a time when Trump is continuing to dominate the Republican presidential primary and one day before a scheduled campaign trip to North Carolina. Though other candidates have largely attacked the Justice Department, rather than Trump, for the investigation, the indictment’s breadth of allegations and startling scope will be harder for Republicans to rail against than an earlier New York criminal case that many legal analysts had derided as weak.
The 49-page charging document, alleging that Trump not only intentionally possessed classified documents but also cavalierly and boastfully showed them off to visitors, is startling in scope and in the breadth of allegations. The indictment is built on Trump’s own words and actions as recounted to prosecutors by lawyers, close aides and other witnesses, with prosecutors even using against Trump his own words as a candidate and president professing to respect and know procedures related to the handling of classified information.
The indictment includes 37 counts — 31 of which pertain to the willful retention of national defense information, with the balance relating to alleged conspiracy, obstruction and false statements — that taken together could result in a yearslong prison sentence.
Trump is due to make his first court appearance Tuesday in federal court in Miami, where the case was filed. He was charged alongside Walt Nauta, an aide and close adviser to Trump who prosecutors say brought boxes from a storage room to Trump’s residence for him to review and later lied to investigators about the movement. A photograph included in the indictment shows several dozen file boxes stacked in a storage area.
The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. But among the various investigations he has faced, legal experts — as well as Trump’s own aides — had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as the most perilous threat and the one most ripe for prosecution. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.
Enumerating the defense and foreign intelligence-related information included in the documents, prosecutors wrote that their “unauthorized disclosure ... could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”
 


Evidence grows of explosion at collapsed Ukraine dam

Evidence grows of explosion at collapsed Ukraine dam
Updated 10 June 2023

Evidence grows of explosion at collapsed Ukraine dam

Evidence grows of explosion at collapsed Ukraine dam
  • Russia has accused Kyiv of destroying the dam. The Russian foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the SBU statement

MOSCOW: Evidence was growing on Friday that there was an explosion at the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine around the time it collapsed, according to Ukrainian and US intelligence reports and seismic data from Norway.
Ukraine’s security service said it had intercepted a telephone call proving a Russian “sabotage group” blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric station and dam early on Tuesday in the Kherson region.
Norway’s research foundation Norsar said that data collected from regional seismic stations showed clear signals of an explosion.
And US spy satellites detected an explosion at the dam, a US official was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

Streets are flooded in Kherson, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023 after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed. (AP)

The destruction early on Tuesday of the facility — which had been in Russian hands since shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — unleashed mass flooding, forcing thousands of residents to flee and wreaking environmental havoc.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) posted a one-and-a-half minute audio clip on its Telegram channel of the alleged conversation, which featured two men who appeared to be discussing the fallout from the disaster in Russian.
Reuters could not independently verify the recording.
Russia has accused Kyiv of destroying the dam. The Russian foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the SBU statement.
“They (the Ukrainians) didn’t strike it. That was our sabotage group,” said one of the men on the recording, described by the SBU as a Russian soldier. “They wanted to, like, scare (people) with that dam.”
“It didn’t go according to plan, and (they did) more than what they planned for.”
The man also said “thousands” of animals had been killed at a “safari park” downstream as a result.
The other man on the line expressed surprise at the soldier’s assertion that Russian forces had destroyed the dam.
The SBU offered no further details of the conversation or its participants. It said it had opened a criminal investigation into war crimes and “ecocide.”
“The interception by the SBU confirms that the Kakhovskaya HPP (Hydroelectric Power Plant) was blown up by a sabotage group of the occupiers,” the SBU said in a statement. “The invaders wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and staged a man-made disaster in the south of our country.”
The US official said that satellites equipped with infrared sensors detected a heat signature consistent with a major explosion.
Norsar said in a statement that the data from one seismic
station in Romania showed activity at 02:54 a.m. local time on Tuesday, indicating an explosion, and the timing coincides with media reports of the dam collapse.
Together with the power station, the dam helped provide electricity, irrigation and drinking water to southern Ukraine, including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Water levels were high in the reservoir in the buildup to the explosion, media reported.
Hundreds of Ukrainians were rescued from rooftops in the flooded areas during the week. The governor of the southern region of Kherson said some 600 square kilometers, or 230 square miles, were under water.
“By blowing up the Kakhovskaya HPP dam, the Russian Federation definitively proved that it is a threat to the entire civilized world,” SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk was quoted as saying in the statement.
“Our task is to bring to justice not only the leaders of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s regime, but also the ordinary perpetrators of crimes,” he said.