WHISTLEBLOWER

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BY ERICK SAN JUAN
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Checkmate

DJIBOUTI, a resource-poor nation of 14,300 square miles and 875,000 people in the Horn of Africa, rarely makes international headlines.
But between its relative stability and strategic location—20 miles across from war-consumed Yemen and in destroyer range of the pirate-infested western edge of the Indian Ocean—it is now one of the more important security beachheads in the world.
Its location also matters greatly to global commerce and energy due to its vicinity to the Mandeb Strait and the Suez-Aden canal which sees 10 percent of the world’s oil exports and 20 percent of its commercial exports annually.
Since November 2002, the country has been home to Camp Lemonnier, a US Expeditionary base—the only American base on the African continent—along with other bases belonging to its French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese allies.
The United States maintains numerous small outposts and airfields in Africa, but officially regards Lemonnier as its only full-scale military base on the continent. (Source: Joseph Braude and Tyler Jiang @ HuffPost)
For 15 years (and another renewal for 10 years), the US military and its allies dominate the Djibouti nation and now two key players are joining the band – China and Saudi Arabia. In January 2016, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry announced an agreement with Djibouti to host its first-ever base beyond the South China Sea, and construction commenced days later.
Though Beijing called the installation a “logistics and fast evacuation base,” the Asian power’s “near-abroad” rivals such as Taiwan opined that it is more likely the beginning of a new, aggressive military build-up to rival the United States.
Six weeks later, Saudi Arabia declared that it would construct a base in Djibouti, apparently as part of its newly assertive policy of countering Iranian proxies politically and militarily throughout the region.
Both new players have made substantial economic and soft power investments in the country to boot. Since 2015, Beijing has poured over $14 billion into infrastructure development. Saudi Arabia, itself a prominent donor to Djibouti’s public works, has spent generously on social welfare projects for the country’s poor; built housing, schools and mosques for its swelling Yemeni refugee population; and dispatched teachers and preachers from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, long a pillar for the promulgation of Saudi-backed interpretations of Islam.
Augmenting Saudi aid, moreover, has been further spending by some of its Arab military allies. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have poured millions into charitable work over the past few months—and the UAE in particular is working to spur economic development along the lines of the “Dubai model.” Even cash-poor North Sudan, newly returned to the Saudi orbit after a year-long alliance with Iran, began construction of a hospital in Djibouti in early February.
Neither the timing nor the confluence of these projects is mere coincidence. America’s perceived diminishing global military footprint has begun to affect the calculation of allies and rivals alike, and the outsized role Djibouti is poised to play in its neighborhood presents a case in point of the consequences.
An examination of the changing role the country plays in American, Chinese and Arab security policy offers a glimpse into potential conflicts as well as opportunities arising from the shift and some steps Americans can take to prepare for both.
The strategic location of Djibouti is the main reason why the abovementioned countries are maintaining its military presence in that small country.
With the advent of the “One Belt, One Road” project initiated by China, the new military base in Djibouti will secure China’s interest in the region. This could be China’s main goal due to the presence of US (and its allies) military base there.
In the article “US vs China in Djibouti” by Thomas Mountain, the rivalry between China and US has gone beyond the South China Sea and the new arena also posts a threat in the African and Middle East region.
The tiny country of Djibouti sitting at the strategically critical entrance from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea is quickly turning into the latest confrontation between the USA and China in Africa.
“Djibouti, home to the only US permanent military presence in Africa, has recently notified the American military that they have to vacate Obock, a small secondary base which will see the installation of some 10,000 Chinese troops in their place.
The announcement, made the day after then US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Djibouti last May (2015), is deeply worrying for Pax Americana for it comes on top of a major package of economic investments by China that has Djiboutian President Guelleh openly talking about the importance of his new friends from Asia. Sounds familiar?
China is about to complete a $3-billion railroad from the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Africa’s second largest country, to Djibouti (Ethiopia’s only outlet to the sea). China is also investing $400 million in modernizing Djibouti’s notoriously undersized port, where for the past 17 years (since the Ethiopians tried and failed to take Eritrea’s port of Assab during Ethiopia’s war against Eritrea from 1998-2000), Ethiopia has been forced to import 90 percent of its fuel and food from.
The US military pays Djibouti $63 million a year for the use of Camp Lemonnier, home to 4,000 US troops and one of the world’s largest drone bases used to terrorize the populations of Yemen and Somalia. This is a pittance really when compared to the hundreds of millions a year that the Chinese investments will bring into Djiboutian government coffers.
The fact that 10,000 Chinese troops are being installed next door to such a critical US military base is causing powerful members of the US Congress to suddenly discover that Djibouti, long a de facto province of Ethiopia, is a “major violator of human rights”, dangerously “undemocratic”, and that it is time for “regime change” in the tiny country of about half a million people, long one of the poorest and most repressive on the planet. Again, sounds familiar?
So don’t be surprised if we wake up one morning and find that in the name of “democracy” there has been a military coup in Djibouti and that the Chinese, like what they are experiencing in South Sudan, find themselves at the short end of the stick when it comes to their rivalry with the USA in Africa.
Like what I have been saying for quite some time now, the war between US and China is inevitable and that it will happen either in this region or in Africa-Middle east area.
Let’s watch the confluence of events./PN
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