Somalia offers US ‘control’ over strategic ports

The letter comes as Somalia battles to hold onto critical breakaway coastal regions amid concerns that the US could end its support for the nation’s state-building.

“Who are they to offer that access?” said Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are offering this as a way of getting the US to recognize the legitimacy of the Somali state over these breakaway regions.”

Somaliland, a self-governing region within Somalia, has been seeking recognition as an independent state for more than three decades, and it sees in the Trump administration, a renewed opportunity. As Semafor first reported in December, members of the US president’s new team have expressed interest in recognizing Somaliland: The move could enable US intelligence to set up long term operations to monitor the movement of weapons in a volatile region as well as keep an eye on Chinese activity. And in January an influential US-China subcommittee in the US House of Representatives called for the State Department to open a representative office in Somaliland.

Somaliland’s Berbera port and airbase are crucial spots that could be leveraged to monitor and counter Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. In 2022 Somaliland itself offered the US access to the port in exchange for recognition.

Earlier this month Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Abdirahman Dahir Adan told an Israeli public broadcast that it was open to absorbing Gazan citizens in exchange for recognition.

Puntland severed ties with Mogadishu last March following years of political disputes. It’s Bosaso port is also strategically situated on the Gulf of Aden and is a commercial port. The Islamic State has established a stronghold in the mountainous region in Puntland, and has been the focus of Emirati and American airstrikes. Bosaso has been a staging ground for the Puntland Defense Forces fight against the militants.

Currently, the main operator at the ports of both Berbera and Bosaso is DP World, a multinational logistics company based in the United Arab Emirates, whose government has been a key backer of Somaliland’s quest for independence and also maintains ties with Israel.

Recognition of any kind for Somaliland could make for potential conflict in a volatile region. Tensions heightened last year when the self-autonomous territory said that it reached an agreement to lease land to landlocked Ethiopia to build a naval facility on the Berbera coast in exchange for recognition. Somalia managed to rally international support against the deal, and with Turkey acting as a mediator, the move was quashed.

According to Hudson, the Somali government is concerned that the US is going to cut ties with the federal Government and end its decade-long state building project to instead focus on counter-terrorism from key bases. “The idea among Republicans is ‘this is not a state.’ It is not in our interest to try to build a functioning state in Somalia. We can carry out counter-terror operations without that,” he explained.

“It reeks of desperation,“said Mohamed Mubarak, head of the Puntland Security Coordinator Office, of the letter Mogadishu sent to the White House. “Rhe Federal Government does not control any territory beyond Mogadishu and its environs and it’s a desperate attempt at projecting its influence beyond that region.”

Bashe Omar, a former representative of Somaliland to the UAE and Kenya, told Semafor the strategic importance of Berbera “cannot be underestimated.” He added that the new Trump administration appears more open to reviewing longstanding US foreign policy and so there “may be more openness to assign relationships based on strategic interests and on-the-ground realities rather than legacy policies.”