UAE sought a shared Eritrean island base for Israel as early as 2016. Asmara sees closer Israel-UAE alignment on Ethiopia

The UAE is pursuing “port imperialism” across Africa, the foreign minister of Eritrea told Middle East Eye in an exclusive interview from Asmara.

“The UAE has port facilities everywhere in the region, and African countries have to ask why,” Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh told MEE. “Is it just for economics? No.”

The UAE’s two port groups, DP World and AD Ports, have stakes in or manage facilities in Egypt; Tanzania; Somaliland, a breakaway republic of Somalia recognised only by Israel; and Puntland, a semiautonomous region in Somalia that earlier this year defied Mogadishu’s decision to cut ties with Abu Dhabi.

While some have welcomed the UAE’s investments, Abu Dhabi’s bid to establish port stakes along East Africa’s coast has not been smooth sailing with others.

Djibouti cancelled a DP World concession in 2018.

Sudan's government called off a 2022 agreement that would have seen AD Ports Group establish a $6bn port on Sudan’s Red Sea coast. The UAE supports the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary accused of genocide, fighting against Sudan’s military. 

The UAE has officially denied having imperial ambitions in Africa, but the oscillating ties between Eritrea and the UAE offer a case in point on the wariness regional countries have towards the UAE.

Why Eritrea rejected UAE port role

Asmara is Eritrea's capital, a strategic Red Sea littoral state with over 700 miles of coastline. The city sits in Eritrea’s highlands, almost 8,000 feet above sea level, and is famed for its Italian colonial-era architecture and bicyclists.

MEE visited Asmara to speak with Saleh and other senior Eritrean officials who have the ear of President Isaias Afwerki, who has ruled Eritrea since it gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

The UAE established a military base in Eritrea’s southern port of Assab in 2016, which it used to wage war on the Houthis in neighbouring Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia. But ties between the UAE and Eritrea soured in the years after the UAE arrived.

Eritrea’s independence fighters historically enjoyed good ties with Zayed bin Sultan, the founder of the UAE, who developed the seven emirates after independence from Britain in 1971. But Eritrea’s leadership didn’t see eye to eye with his son, Mohamed bin Zayed, the UAE’s current president.

A senior Eritrean official told MEE that Eritrea rejected a request from the UAE around 2016 to establish a military base on one of the islands in the Dahlak Archipelago that would have been shared between the UAE and Israel, roughly five years before the two signed the US-backed Abraham Accords, making their close ties public.

While the UAE’s port stake in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, is commercial, others, like in Somaliland’s port of Berbera, have come alongside an extensive military footprint. 

“We didn’t want DP World [in Eritrea],” Saleh told MEE. “We do not want any foreign power to have a ‘hub’ in Eritrea.”

Eritrea is at loggerheads with the UAE in several theatres across the region.

Eritrea sees closer Israel-UAE alignment on Ethiopia

The UAE backs the RSF in Sudan, while Eritrea has hosted Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan twice in the last two months. The Sudanese army is also backed by Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Ethiopia and Eritrea patched up their fraught ties temporarily to fight together in the former's 2020-2022 civil war, where they joined forces against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Ethiopia's state of Tigray. That war sparked allegations of atrocities and widespread massacres.

Eritrea and Ethiopia's tactical alliance has since broken down, and the two are at daggers drawn. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of supporting TPLF factions, which Eritrea denies.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has spiked tensions by staking a claim to Eritrea's Red Sea coast. While Eritrea says it is open to a commercial arrangement, Ethiopia has often framed its claims in revisionist terms. 

In recent years, Ethiopia has emerged as a key UAE ally. Ahmed has a close relationship with the UAE's ruler, and Addis Ababa has deployed Emirati drones and other weapons systems. Ethiopia also hosts the RSF at bases, MEE and other media outlets have reported. 

In Asmara, Eritrean officials see increasing cooperation between the UAE and Israel in Addis Ababa.

Israel has a historical precedent for supporting Ethiopia. In the late 1970s and late 1980s, Israel provided arms to Ethiopia's Marxist Derg government, which were used against Eritrean fighters. 

"The UAE and Israel have already converged on Somaliland," Saleh told MEE, referring to the breakaway Republic where Somaliland officials have openly told MEE they want an Israeli military presence. 

"[Abiy Ahmed] has a two-waters strategy like Israel. Only for him it is from the Nile River to the Red Sea," he said, referring to an Israeli expansionist vision that stretches from the Gaza Strip to the River Jordan at the frontier of the occupied West Bank. 

Israel and Eritrea established diplomatic ties after the latter's independence. In 1993, when Afwerki fell into a coma because of cerebral malaria, the US airlifted him to Israel for treatment. 

But in recent years, Eritrean and Israeli ties have grown cold.

"We have to ask why Israel is running to control the Horn of Africa? Why do they need a base in Somaliland?" Saleh said. 

Saleh said Asmara sees Israel and the UAE coalescing around Ethiopia. "They already converge on Somaliland," he told MEE. 

"We decided we didn't want their (Israeli) embassy here. We are not antagonistic to Israel, but we just decided we didn't want any relations."

they've seized mokha and now some of the hanish islands. rumours spreading that the yemeni vp and commander tareq saleh has fled to eritrea after being btfo'd. seems unwise to make any overtures to the powers that be rn at the risk of provoking a reaction from ansarallah and putting lives at risk. seems best to wait and see what happens and who reaches out.

it does seem like one of those fantastical 03 tales but the timelines do match up with him hiding just a stones throw from the eritrean border on al bashir's dime and the military intervention in eastern sudan due to jihadist violence. i vividly remember reading an excerpt about it from a non-shabia american author some years ago but can't seem to find the book/thesis. has anyone else heard of the story and if so possibly provide more info?

This is off the back of a £3.1 million bid by Sporting Kansas City of the MLS. There are also rumours of his teammate Tesfaldet Tekie possibly being sold to Hajduk Split

will not bore you with any value judgements since these have already been made clear by the thousands of others online.

just two things that came to mind

1. to "reclaim" a derogatory term levied towards you by a perceived outgroup is obviously not novel. we've seen it already with the n-word, b-word, h-word etc. it's not creative and it hasn't proven to be emancipatory.

2. there is a subtle level of emnity towards white and black women in the "movement". in an attempt to break free from their own cultural norms, they've chosen to identify with a depiction of "western sexual freedom" that is obviously a demeaning caricature (promiscuity is nowhere near as prominent as they would like to make out). so strangely, to exalt another culture's sexual norms at the expense of their own, they can only do so in the derogatory terms articulated by the very culture they're trying to belittle. so in a weird unintentional inversion, "sharmutamaxxing" ends up subverting itself.

title

the last 15 years or so of emigration is clearly of a different profile to the first post-independence wave preceding it. seems that initially the country was haemorrhaging educated, middle class urbanites (economically productive human capital)

by the time the european migrant crisis rolls around, this is completely inverted. selection pressures also change with the collapse of gaddafi regime, with libya acting as a filter for low time preference/impulse individuals. starts to become more evident when eritrean crime rates in western countries grow exponentially (even when normalised for demographics - young males)

eritrean gdp per capita is said to be somewhere around the $700 mark (in reality it's probably higher, figure more like a grand) but the individual contribution will be heavily skewed towards a select group of the population and a select few govt ran enterprises. large part of the populace are probably a net negative when you account for govt subsidies in food and utilities.

knowing this, the govt probably encourages the emigration of undesirables (economically unproductive and criminal) to lighten burden on state coffers. when they reach a western country and send back money in the form of remittances at the fake exchange rate set by the govt, they then suddenly become net contributors to the system. simultaneously, they probably try to retain (or at least ameliorate the exit of) their more elite human capital.

in the words of trump: "they're not sending their best"

has it worked? perhaps. they seem to be running at a current account surplus as of recent

was wondering about the backgrounds of some of the prominent members. i know that monkey attended the university of washington and that charlie studied maths at imperial (which is surprising given how sesquipedalian he is at times, would think he studied something literary). amb. andebrhan notably dropped out while he was undertaking his phd at harvard to go to meda. are there any other western educated officials?

i've seen a lot of what seems like propaganda from both sides (sharing old videos and photos and claiming that they're the aftermath of the fighting). seems like it was inconclusive

for personal consumption. are they regulated under any of the laws concerning tobacco products?

He's pushed the contact line of any potential conflict much further south than Eritrea's own borders while simultaneously raising the expected cost of an irredentist military campaign by the Ethiopians. He's been diplomatically prudent and made himself appear like the adult in the room to onlookers which seems to be culminating in Eritrea-US/EU rapprochement (delegation to Asmara rumoured to be sent next week). He avoided the folly of getting in too deep with the Russians (which I was advocate for at the time). Fair play

like nationally or sub-nationally. i remember being told that the youth raised in saudi arabia had a reputation of larping as west-coast/east-coast gangsters whenever they went back home, given that they were avid viewers of mtv.